Kievan Rus' in the Medieval World

Harvard Historical Studies • 177 Published under the auspices of the Department of History from the income of the Paul Revere Frothingham Bequest Robert Louis Stroock Fund Henry Warren Torrey Fund Reimagining Europe Kievan Rus in the Medieval World Christian Raff ensperger Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2012 Copyright © 2012 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Raff ensperger, Christian. Reimagining Europe : Kievan Rus in the medieval world / Christian Raff ensperger. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978- 0- 674- 06384- 6 (alkaline paper) 1. Kievan Rus—History—862–1237. 2. Kievan Rus—Civilization—Byzantine infl uences. 3. Kievan Rus—Relations—Europe. 4. Europe—Relations— Kievan Rus . 5. Christianity— Kievan Rus. I. Title. DK73.R24 2012 947'.02—dc23 2011039243 For Cara Contents Introduction: Rethinking Rus 1 1 Th e Byzantine Ideal 10 2 Th e Ties Th at Bind 47 3 Rusian Dynastic Marriage 71 4 Kiev as a Center of Eu ro pe an Trade 115 5 Th e Micro- Christendom of Rus 136 Conclusion: Rus in a Wider World 186 Appendix: Rulers of Rus 191 Notes 193 Bibliography 283 A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s 323 Index 325 Reimagining Eu rope Introduction Rethinking Rus Students of history oft en begin by seeking “the facts,” a set of concrete pieces that will create an edifi ce of “truth” and thus an explanation. Th is is diffi cult to accomplish even for something as recent as World War II, much less an arena of study dealing with events that took place a thousand years ago. Simon Franklin, one of the most distinguished scholars of medieval Rus, aptly states the problem for those of us working in Rusian history: Historians of Kievan culture spend much of their time trying to fi nd plausible ways to fi ll the gaps between the sparse fragments of real evi- dence, contemplating the unknown and the unknowable. Any con- nected account of Kievan culture is an agglomeration of hypotheses. Worse than that: virtually any reading of any word in a Kievan text is hypothetical. Th e manuscripts are late, the variants are prolifi c. Either we retreat behind raw data, or else we accept that choices have to be made but that certainty is unattainable, that there is an implicit “perhaps” in every statement. It may seem odd to begin a book that seeks to prove, or disprove, as the case may be, a vision of medieval Rus and Eu rope with a quotation il- lustrating that everything is in fl ux; however, this is a requirement for understanding the arguments within this book, as well as much of Kie- van history. While I am fi rm in my commitment to the facts, arguments, and hypotheses presented here, much of what I say contains “an implicit ‘perhaps.’ ” Following the German historian Gerd Althoff I believe that “it is better to admit ignorance on specifi c issues than to manufacture apparent certainties that create more problems than they resolve.” 1 2 Introduction With these caveats understood, the work presented here attempts to overturn the historical misperception that Rus in the tenth, eleventh, and twelft h centuries was part of a Byzantine Commonwealth, and thus separate from Europe, substituting instead a broader picture in which Rus was a functioning part of the larger medieval Eu ro pe an community alongside its neighbors, such as Sweden, Poland, the Ger- man Empire, and Hungary. Th is perspective and the framework for the argument that is laid out here challenge the conventional wisdom in regard to the place of Rus in Eu rope with the aim of creating a wider medieval Eu rope and a broader historiography in which Rusian scholars can draw on Eu ro pe an materials, and vice versa, to show the inter- relationship of the various Eu rope an societies, Rus included. Such a change in the scholarship would lead to a better understanding of all the parties involved and would build on the framework of a Euro pe an Rus that has been created in this book. Th e idea of “Eu rope” itself can be interpreted in many ways. Europe is a continent, though one with no fi rm eastern border, but also an idea. Latin has traditionally been used to defi ne “Eu rope” for medievalists. Th e language of the Roman Empire, appropriated by the Roman Church, has seemed coterminous with the boundaries of medieval Eu- rope. However, this presents a variety of problems, to note only two: One, the majority of the Eu ro pean (however defi ned) elite were illiter- ate in this period, while two, Latin was clearly a language of religion for the Roman Church, but not for all Christianity and not for one single po liti cal entity. Th e plurality of po liti cal entities leaves space for the viability of other languages, and the existence of multiple languages for Christianity allows them all to participate in a larger Christian oik- oumene. Th us if one speaks of “Christendom,” this should include all Christian po litical entities, at least in the period before serious schism between the Constantinopolitan- and Roman- based churches. Th is problem is not the focus of this book, and is much larger than it, but for the purposes of argument here, Eu rope will be a geo graphi cal con- struct, as well as what Timothy Champion has called “a culturally constituted entity.” Th e participation of Rus i n b r o a d e r E u ro pe an a ff airs, religion, marriage, culture, and so forth inherently includes Rus in a single culturally constituted entity, for which we will use the identifi er Eu rope. Introduction 3 Th e scholarship that has focused on Rus over the past two centuries has rarely used the formulation “medieval Rus,” which I use here. Th e reason for this exemplifi es the problem that this book hopes to solve. Th ose writing about the Middle Ages, or medieval Eu rope, rarely include Rus except for an almost obligatory mention of the Vikings, the conversion to Christianity (with emphasis on the “Byzantine” portion of the conversion), or the Mongols, depending on the book’s subject or time period. Th ose writing about Rus write about Drevniaia Rus, using the Russian formulation of “ancient Rus,” and focus almost exclusively on Rus itself, Rus as progenitor of the Rus sian or Ukrainian state, the traditional Rusian–Byzantine ties, or sometimes Rusian– Scandinavian ties (though usually only early Viking- era relations such as the Nor- manist controversy, which I view as resolved). Th e two scholarships have been divided somewhere along the eastern border of Germany, and their lack of interaction has left enormous lacunae in the historiography. Hidden in those lacunae are the connections between Rus and the rest of Eu rope in the medieval period. Th is book is an attempt to draw out those connections in a few key areas, specifi cally dynastic marriages and religious and trade connections, to show the engagement of Rus with Eu rope and remedy the division in medieval Eu ro pe an scholarship. Th is book also strives to revise the idea of the Byzantine Common- wealth codifi ed in the writings of Dimitri Obolensky in his book of the same name. Th is idea has played into the common perception, advo- cated originally by Muscovite theoreticians to create a closer tie with Byzantium’s legacy, that the conversion of Rus to Christianity through the mediation of Byzantine priests placed Rus in the orbit of the Byzan- tine emperor. Following the publication of Obolensky’s classic work, this idea became interwoven into the minds of historians working on all aspects of medieval history, including Byzantium, medieval Eu rope, and Drevniaia Rus. Th e problem is that Obolensky’s formulations, though well researched and formulated, create a fl awed picture by focusing almost exclusively on the Slavs, and so a major theoretical portion of this book has been devoted to revising his idea. Th e Byzantine Ideal, advanced in Chapter 1, lays out the idea that Byzantium was the magistra Europae, and not just the master of the Slavs, due to its continuity with the Roman Empire. In addition, Rus (and other Slavic- based po liti cal entities) did not copy from Byzantium or have Byzantine ideas/titles/ 4 Introduction and so on imposed upon them— rather, they were appropriating Byzan- tium, as were other peoples of Europe, because of Byzantium’s grandeur and its imperial legacy. Th is change in formulation results in a changed medieval world in which Byzantine infl uence is not an either/or proposi- tion, but rather a sliding scale. Rus was not a satellite of Byzantium, but one of many Eu ro pe an kingdoms appropriating Byzantine titulature, art, architecture, coinage, and so on to reinforce their own legitimacy. Th is book as a whole lays out a new framework for medieval Rusian history, one in which Rus is part and parcel of medieval Eu rope. Th e topics and ideas advanced here could each be dealt with in a book, or books, of their own, by specialists in history, art history, linguistics, and numismatics. Th is book truly is a framework, a base, upon which to build future research for myself and other scholars. But it is also a brief window into Rusian history from the end of the tenth through the mid- twelft h century.

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