The Grand Princely Family Fresco in Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, and the Identity of Agatha the Wife of Edward Atheling: The Search Continues David Jay Webber I. Introduction The question of the parentage of Agatha, the wife of the eleventh-century romantic figure Edward Atheling (or Edward the Exile), is not definitively settled to the satisfaction of all medieval historians and genealogical scholars.1 A strong case for settling this question was made by Norman W. Ingham, in a long and detailed article published in 1998 in the journal Russian History, “Has a Missing Daughter of Iaroslav Mudryi Been Found?”2 As the title of his article indicated, Ingham argued for an identification of Agatha as a heretofore unidentified daughter of Yaroslav the Wise, Grand Prince of Kyiv from 1016 to 1018 and again from 1019 to his death in 1054. One of the things that Ingham took into account in developing his theory of Agatha’s identity, is the historical existence of a ktetor (donor or patron) fresco in the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, which was built by Yaroslav. According to its original eleventh-century appearance, this fresco was comprised of three sections or panels. The center panel, in the rear of the nave and directly above the western doorway or main entrance of the cathedral, featured an image of Jesus Christ, probably enthroned. We know that such an image of Jesus was originally to be found in the middle of this center panel of the fresco from “the testimonies of Rus pilgrims of the XII-XIV centuries, according to which over the Western doors of St. Sophia they saw an 1In a 2010 Internet article on “Agatha, Wife of Eadweard the Exile” – on The Henry Project website – Stewart Baldwin offers a thorough summary and a careful analysis of the various theories that have been set forth over the years in scholarly articles regarding Agatha’s origin and identity. Baldwin’s article is at sbaldw.home. mindspring.com/hproject/prov/agath000.htm At a more popular level, two compendia of the medieval royal ancestries of those seventeenth-century settlers in the North American colonies who are known to have had such ancestry, do not agree in their conclusions regarding Agatha’s parentage. According to the eighth edition of Ancestral Roots, Agatha was “probably dau[ghter] of Iaroslav I, Grand Prince of Kiev, by his wife Irina (Ingigerd) of Sweden. This parentage for Agatha is now the most probable” (Frederick Lewis Weis et al., Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America before 1700 [eighth edition] [Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 2004], 2. The eighth edition was prepared by William R. Beall and Kaleen E. Beall). But the more recently-published Royal Ancestry states only that “Edward the Ætheling” was married to “Agatha, kinswoman of Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor” (Douglas Richardson, Royal Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families [six volumes] [Salt Lake City: 2013], IV:576). 2Norman W. Ingham, “Has a Missing Daughter of Iaroslav Mudryi Been Found?,” Russian History 25:3 (Fall 1998), 231-70. This article built on an earlier and shorter piece by Ingham, “A Slavist’s View of Agatha, Wife of Edward the Exile, as a Possible Daughter of Yaroslav the Wise,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 152 (April 1998), 217-23. That article, in turn, was inspired by, and sought to lend support to, an earlier piece by René Jetté, published in the same journal, “Is the Mystery of the Origin of Agatha, Wife of Edward the Exile, Finally Solved?” (150 [October 1996], 417-32). 1 icon of the Saviour.”3 Also on this center panel of the fresco, to the left of the image of Christ (from the viewer’s perspective), was a representation of Grand Prince Volodymyr the Great (Yaroslav’s father), and to the left of Volodymyr’s image was a representation of Yaroslav, holding in his left hand a model of the cathedral that he was presenting to Christ. The portrayals of Volodymyr and Yaroslav as here described were seen and sketched by the Dutch artist Abraham van Westervelt in 1651. To the right of the image of Christ was, in all likelihood, a representation of Grand Princess Olha (Volodymyr’s grandmother and Yaroslav’s great- grandmother), and to the right of this hypothesized image of Olha was a representation of Grand Princess Iryna (or Ingegerd), Yaroslav’s second wife. The portrayal of Iryna was seen and sketched by van Westervelt in 1651. These were the five personages originally pictured on the center panel of the fresco. To the left of this center panel, on the south wall of the cathedral, was another panel, on which four figures were portrayed, representing four of Yaroslav and Ingegerd’s children. To the right of the center panel, on the north wall, was a third panel, also portraying four figures, representing four additional children of Yaroslav. The four persons pictured on the left panel and the four persons pictured on the right panel of the ktetor fresco were likewise seen and sketched by van Westervelt, according to the way they appeared in 1651 (see Illustrations 1 and 2). The center panel of the ktetor fresco no longer exists, except for a small trace of the image of Yaroslav.4 The left panel does exist today, and is a popular attraction for visitors to the cathedral. According to its current appearance, this left panel seems to portray – and by its 1930s-era restorers was intended to portray – four daughters of Yaroslav (see Illustration 5). Speaking of this left panel of the Saint Sophia Cathedral ktetor fresco, Ingham said that the images of “four of the daughters are relatively well preserved.”5 He considered this artistic portrayal ostensibly of four daughters of Grand Prince Yaroslav to be significant for his theory that Agatha was one of those daughters, since from medieval documentary sources the identities of only three daughters of Yaroslav are known. This would mean, then, that according to the fresco, Yaroslav had at least one additional unaccounted-for daughter. Ingham then argued, on the basis of various strands of circumstantial and indirect evidence, that Agatha was in fact that previously unaccounted-for daughter. Other researchers concurred in Ingham’s conclusion. One of them was Igor Sklar, who summarized the evidence for this identification by noting – with respect to the purported four daughters of Yaroslav pictured on the surviving left panel of the fresco – that Russian chronicles do not mention any of them. Foreign sources, however, permit us to identify them with: 1) Anastasia the Queen of Hungary; 2) Anna the Queen of France; 3) 3Andriy M. Domanovsky, “St. Sophia of Kyiv Cathedral’s Millennium in Contemporary Ukrainian Historiography (A Critical Survey),” Newsletter of the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, No. 1138 (2014), 9 [published in English]; online at dspace.univer.kharkov.ua/bitstream/123456789/10308/2/domanovsky.pdf 4See the photograph in Sergei A. Vysotsky, Svetskiye Freski Sofiyskogo Sobora v Kiyeve [Secular Frescoes of Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kiev] (Kiev: Naukova Dumka, 1989), 74 [published in Russian]. 5Ingham, “Has a Missing Daughter of Iaroslav Mudryi Been Found?,” 213. 2 Elisaveta the Queen of Norway. What happened with the fourth daughter has long been a puzzle. Several years ago it was proposed that Agatha, the wife of Edward the Exile, was this “lost princess.” Many chroniclers point out that Agatha was a Hungarian Queen’s sister, and the only Hungarian Queen available is Anastasia Yaroslavna. The marriage [of Agatha and Edward] took place ca. 1043 in Kiev, where Edward was an exile.6 Anastasia married Andrew of Hungary under similar circumstances several years before that. It is remarkable that all the daughters of Yaroslav had Greek names. Agatha was the name of the aunt of Yaroslav’s Byzantine stepmother; [Yaroslav’s grandson] Vladimir Monomakh also had a daughter named Agatha. Edward and Agatha’s children had either traditional English (Edgar) or Swedish (Christina, Margaret) names. The Russian princess’s mother was indeed a Swede. And to crown it all, one of the English chroniclers says that Edward’s wife was a noblewoman from Rus. The only conflicting piece of evidence is the chronicler’s phrase that Edward’s wife was a relative of Emperor Heinrich. This could be a misunderstanding of later chroniclers; but we should keep in mind that at the time when the chronicler wrote this, the wife of Emperor Heinrich IV [Eupraxia of Kiev] was indeed a granddaughter of Yaroslav and so a niece of the “lost princess.”7 But is it true that the ktetor fresco in Saint Sophia Cathedral shows us that Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise had four daughters? Does the current appearance of the surviving left panel of the fresco accurately reproduce its original appearance? Is there actually a “lost princess” from this family who might have been Agatha the wife of Edward Atheling? 6Christian Raffensperger, in Ties of Kinship: Genealogy and Dynastic Marriage in Kyivan Rus’ (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2016), writes that Agatha and Edward were married “ca. 1028” (202 [table 3]). But a marriage year of 1028 for Agatha and Edward is too early, in view of the fact that their son Edgar was said (by Orderic Vitalis) to be the same age as Robert of Normandy, who was born around 1050 or 1051 (Baldwin); and in view of the fact that their daughter Margaret married King Malcolm III Canmore of Scotland in 1068 or 1069 (Richardson, IV:576), which would put Margaret’s likely year of birth somewhere between 1047 and 1053. It is also generally accepted that Edward Atheling was born in 1016 or 1017 (Ingham, “Has a Missing Daughter of Iaroslav Mudryi Been Found?,” 234), so that he would have been only 11 or 12 years old in 1028.