Ruthenica. Supplementum 4 EARLY CHRISTIANITY on the WAY
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Ruthenica. Supplementum 4 EARLY CHRISTIANITY ON THE WAY FROM THE VARANGIANS TO THE GREEKS Edited by Ildar Garipzanov аnd Oleksiy Tolochko KIEV 2011 НАЦІОНАЛЬНА АКАДЕМІЯ НАУК УКРАЇНИ ІНСТИТУТ ІСТОРІЇ УКРАЇНИ ЦЕНТР ДОСЛІДЖЕНЬ З ІСТОРІЇ КИЇВСЬКОЇ РУСІ Рекомендовано до друку вченою радою Інституту історії України НАН України У разі передруку матеріалів узгодження з видавцями обов’язкове Висловлюємо подяку «Фонду катедр українознавства» за підтрим- ку видання http://history.org.ua/ Адреса редакції: 01001, м. Київ, вул. Грушевського, 4 e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Факс: +380 (44) 279-63-62 © Ruthenica, 2011 Свідоцтво про державну реєстрацію Серія КВ № 6937 від 04.02.2003 р. ISSN 1995-0276 CONTENTS List of Figures .....................................................................................................7 List of Abbreviations ...........................................................................................8 Introduction: Early Christianity on the Way from the Varangians to the Greeks by Ildar Garipzanov and Oleksiy Tolochko ..................................................9 Early Christian Scandinavia and the Problem of Eastern Influences by Ildar Garipzanov ...................................................................................17 Scythian Christianity by Henrik Janson ......................................................................................33 ‘Varangian Christianity’ in Tenth-century Rus´ by Oleksiy Tolochko ....................................................................................58 Symbols of Faith or Symbols of Status? Christian Objects in Tenth-Century Rus´ by Fedir Androshchuk ................................................................................70 How Christian Were Viking Christians? by Elena Melnikova ....................................................................................90 The Advent of Christianity and Dynastic Name-giving in Scandinavia and Rus´ by Fjodor Uspenskij .................................................................................108 Rus´ and Scandinavia: the Orthodox–Latin Division in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and in Reality by Tatjana N. Jackson...............................................................................120 Concluding Remarks by Jonathan Shepard ................................................................................133 List of Figures Fig. 1. The finds of cross-pendants of the ‘Scandinavian type’ (after Jörn Staecker, 1999, type 1.4.3). Fig. 2. The early finds of cross-pendants in Rus´ (after V. Ia. Petrukhin and T. A. Pushkina, 2009). Fig. 3. Tating ware jugs from Ladoga: above – distribution of sherds in the Ladoga hillfort (after Plochov, 2007); below – a jug from a female grave in the Plakun cemetery. Fig. 4. The Viking Age site of Staraia Ladoga (after Jansson, 1997). Fig. 5. A chamber grave with two horses placed under the top of a large barrow in the vicinity of Plakun (after Nosov, 1985). Fig. 6. Early types of cross-shaped pendants in early Rus´: left – from Uglich; right – from Gnezdovo (after Korzuchina and Peskova, 2003). Fig. 7. Remains of a purse made of leather and silk with a cross-shaped decora- tive mount discovered in Grave 49 in Kiev (elaborated after Ivakin, 2007). Fig. 8. Finds of cross-shaped pendants in association with beads (elaborated after Egorov, 1996). Fig. 9. A cross-shaped pendant in association with ornaments found in a hoard in Kryzhovo, former Pskov region, Russia (after Korzuchina 1954, no. 52). Fig. 10. Cross-shaped pendants discovered in a double grave in Podgorcy (elaborated after Liwoch, 2005). Fig. 11. Bronze mould for producing cross-shaped pendants found in Kiev (after Movchan and others, 2005), and a pendant from a hoard found in Gnezdovo (after Pushkina, 1994). Fig. 12. Matrimonial links between the Rus´, Polish and Danish ruling families. Fig. 13. Matrimonial links between the Rurikids and the Swedish and Anglo- Saxon royal families. List of Abbreviations Adam, Gesta Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, ed. by Bernhard Schmeidler, MGH SRG, 2. Hanover: Hahn, 1917. Från Bysans till Norden Från Bysans till Norden: Östlige kyrkoinfluenser under vikingatid och tidig medeltid, ed. by Henrik Janson. Skellefteå: Artos, 2005. MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica SRG Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum SRG ns Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, nova series PSRL Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei, 44 vols, 2nd edn. St Petersburg, Leningrad, and Moscow: Akademiia Nauk SSSR and Iazyki slavianskoi kul´tury, 1908—. Rom und Byzanz im Rom und Byzanz im Norden: Mission und Norden Glaubenswechsel im Ostseeraum während des 8.— 14- Jahrhundert, ed. by Michael Müller-Wille, 2 vols (Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, 1998) Introduction: Early Christianity on the Way from the Varangians to the Greeks by Ildar Garipzanov and Oleksiy Tolochko There has been a long-standing gap between Slavists studying the process of Christianization in Rus´ with a focus on Byzantine Orthodoxy and medievalists studying the same process in Scandinavia with a focus on Latin Christendom. Such a historiographic dichotomy is partly the understandable result of the institutional and linguistic divisions between medievalists and Slavists, but it is also due to the realities of modern European geopolitics, whereby Scandinavia and Eastern Europe belong to two distinct parts of Europe differing in terms of their political organization, social complexion and culture. This contemporary division has been projected upon the remote historical past all the way back to the advent of Christianity in these northern and eastern regions of medieval Europe. Yet such a ‘teleological’ approach to early Christianity contradicts material evidence, which points to common social, political and cultural processes that were developing in late Viking Age Scandinavia and Rus´. In this north-eastern edge of medieval Europe, the contacts and links between the two regions in the tenth and eleventh centuries were as numerous and influential as the better-explored relationships between Scandinavia and its western neighbours on the one hand, and the well- established links between Rus´ and Byzantium on the other.1 The question, then, is whether we should expect that the dissemination of early Christianity in Scandinavia and Rus´ in that period was profoundly different from more general patterns of interactions between the two regions. When Western medievalists and Scandinavian scholars in particular discuss the Christianization of Scandinavia, their accounts focus upon the process by which a ‘package’ of Christian faith and culture was brought from Latin Europe to Scandinavia, with particular emphasis on the roles of the Anglo-Saxon and German missions. In Eastern European studies, meanwhile, the Christianization of early Rus´ is discussed as a process influenced chiefly by Byzantium, and researchers working within the latter academic tradition follow in one or another 1 See especially Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard, The Emergence of Rus, 750–1200 (London and New York: Longman, 1996), pp. 3–180; and Drevneishie gosudarstva Vostochnoi Evropy, 2009 god (Moscow: Indrik, 2010). 10 Ildar Garipzanov and Oleksiy Tolochko way the paradigm constructed after the hagiographic discourse of medieval Rus´, whereby Christianization is perceived as a phenomenon resulting from a series of individual conversions of Rus´ rulers with the country following in their footsteps. Regardless of their differences, both master narratives — ultimately guided by medieval histories, chronicles and the lives of saints — continue to discourage scholars from exploring contacts and borrowings across the north- eastern fringe of European Christendom and do not take into account the growing body of archaeological evidence indicating intensive socio-economic and cultural exchanges between Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. This contradiction has become even more apparent in recent years, when archaeologists have shown that the transmission of artefacts associated with early Christianity seems to follow this wider pattern of exchange.2 At the same time, archaeological evidence indicating early Christian cross-boundary contacts still lacks a coherent interpretative model. The discrepancy between the master narratives portraying two separate and essentially different stories of the Christianization process and archaeological evidence showing close contacts between Scandinavia and Rus´ in the tenth and eleventh centuries illustrates the gap that exists between archaeologists and text- based scholars in research on Christianization in medieval northern Europe. This is the result of a more general academic split between archaeologists and historians; as one opponent of such a division puts it: ‘Modern scholarship fragments the past on the basis of types of evidence — archaeologists study objects, historians study words.’3 Text-based scholarship focuses on the earliest Christian narratives, which demonstrate the gradual forging of a Christian identity in written discourse produced by the intellectual elite. On the other hand, archaeological investigations concentrate on material evidence that shows the spread of Christian beliefs at a ‘grass-root’ level. Such a separation fosters the continuing existence of two separate, and in some respects incompatible, images of early Christianity in the two regions. This collection of essays, written by specialists in textual history and archaeology who come from different