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Towards Post-Soviet Pre-Modernism: on recent approaches to early Rus(s)ian hagiography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Simon Franklin
Simon Franklin*
Affiliation:
Clare College, Cambridge
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Extract

The appearance of Paul Hollingsworth’s book of translations, The Hagiography of Kievan Rus’ (Hollingsworth 1992), provides the pretext for this survey. Tales of saints, or of candidates for sainthood, constitute a substantial proportion of the extant native literature of pre-Mongol Rus, comparable in volume only with the chronicles. This in itself has ensured that the study of hagiography has had a prominent place in the study of early Rus literature and culture, and hence in the wider field of byzantinorussica. In recent years native saints have benefited additionally from changes in the cultural and political climate: the advent of glasnost (from 1985), one of whose main themes was the recovery of the past; the millennium of the Conversion of the Rus, whose celebration in 1988 became a test and a manifestation of glasnost; and eventually, at the end of 1991, the collapse of the USSR and the sharpening of competition between national mythologies (competition for the same cultural space) both within and between the newly independent East Slav states of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The surge of ‘native’ interest has been matched, only in part fortuitously, by an increase in western publications.

Type
Critical Study
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 18 , 1994 , pp. 249 - 275
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1994

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References

1. A am grateful to Professor Poppe for sending me an advance copy of this article.

2. Khoroshev (1986: 8) correctly notes that the Russian word kanonizatsiia is a nineteenth-century import.

3. Podskalsky, G., Christentum und theologische Literatur in der Kiever Rus’ (988-1237) (Munich 1982) 159–170 Google Scholar; cf. 106-145 on Hagiographie. Compare the less systematic coverage in Likhachev, D.S. (ed.), Slovar’ knizhnikov i knizhosti Drevnei Rusi. XI-pervaia polovina XIV v. (Leningrad 1987)Google Scholar, where some works are listed by title, others by author, none by genre.

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5. Kantor, M., Medieval Slavic Lives of Saints and Princes (Ann Arbor 1983) 165.Google Scholar Kantor translates the Narration and the miracles (165-253).

6. The Laurentian codex states that Iaroslav was in Novgorod for twenty eight years. On this passage see Povest’ vremennykh let, ed. Likhachev, D.S., Adrianova-Peretts, V.P., 2 (Moscow, Leningrad 1950) 362–363.Google Scholar

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19. But Toporov fails to note a significant exception: when the text is part of an image. Hence the frequent labelling the saint in Russian iconography: see Franklin, S., ‘Greek in Kievan Rus’, DOP 46 (1992) 76–81.Google Scholar

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22. The Life and the Primary Chronicle differ as to how exactly the typikon was acquired. See Povest’ vremennykh let 1, 107.

23. The relevant version is that which was issued in 1034 by the Patriarch Alexios the Studite for the Monastery of the Dormition. It may or may not be coincidental that the main church in the Monastery of the Caves was dedicated to the Dormition.

24. Annotated English translation of part of the liturgical section (not from the earliest or most complete manuscript): Petras, D.M., The Typicon of the Patriarch Alexis the Studite: Novgorod-St. Sophia 1136 (Cleveland, 1991)Google Scholar. Extracts from the section on monastic discipline ed Ishchenko, D.S., ‘“Ustav studiiskii” po spisku XII v. Fragmenty’, in Kotkov, S.I., Deriagin, V. Ia. (ed.). Istochniki po istorii russkogo iazyka (Moscow 1976) 109–130 Google Scholar. Manuscripts with only the liturgical rule are more common than those which also have the rule for monastic discipline. The fullest study is still Lisitsyn, M., Pervonachal’nyi slaviano-russkii tipikon (St. Petersburg 1911)Google Scholar. A completed but unpublished edition by Korotkov is reported by Podskalsky (1990: 719).

25. Pushkareva, N.L., Zhenshchiny Drevnei Rusi (Moscow 1989) 39 Google Scholar; cf. Levin, E., Sex and Society in the World of the Ancient Slavs, 900-1700 (Ithaka and London 1989)Google Scholar; also, with broader scope, Romanov, B.A., Liudi i nravy Drevnei Rusi. Istoriko-bytovye ocherki XI-XIII vv., 2nd ed. (Moscow, Leningrad 1966) 154–181.Google Scholar

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