A History of the Russian Church to 1488

John L. Fennell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317897194
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia russa

The Russian church is central to an understanding of early Russian and Slav history, but for many years there has been no accessible, up-to-date introduction to the subject in English - until now. The late John Fennell's last book, is a masterly survey of the development, nature and role of the early Church in Russia from Christianization of the country in 988, through Kievan and Tatar poeriods to 1448 when the Russian Church finally became totally independent of its mother-church in Byzantium.

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

An Outline of Kievan History, to 1240

1

It is difficult to become acquainted with the history of the Russian Church without some background knowledge of at least the bare outlines of the political and social history of the Russian State in each of the periods under investigation. But in this, the first period, where to begin?

Perhaps the first question we ought to put is: who were the Russians? Where did they come from? The prehistory of the Eastern Slavs, however, is complex and largely conjectural. Rather, therefore, than inflict upon the reader a summary of the often conflicting views of scholars on the subject, it is proposed here to start with the midninth century when the Varangians or Vikings from Scandinavia began to penetrate the vast complex of Slavonic tribes, as well as some of Finno-Ugric and Baltic extraction, which inhabited the lands watered by the upper reaches of the Dnepr, Volga, Western Dvina and Western Bug rivers and the east bank of the Dnestr, an area stretching from the Gulf of Finland and Karelia in the north to the Carpathians in the south-west. The aim of their penetration was Byzantium, and their route the Dnepr down to the Black Sea.

Now, in the earliest Russian chronicle (the so-called Tale of Bygone Years or, as it is now more commonly known, the Primary Chronicle), the final editing of which dates from the second decade of the twelfth century, we are told how in 859 the Scandinavian Varangians came from over the Baltic Sea and began to levy tribute on the northern tribes. Three years later these same tribes chased out the Varangians, but owing to their inability to rule themselves, decided to send for their previous masters: ‘They went beyond the [Baltic] Sea to the Varangians, to the Rus′, for these Varangians were called Rus′, just as other Varangians are called Swedes, and others Norwegians, Angles, and others Gotlanders – so too these [were called Rus′].’ Their request was simple and it smacks of folklore, as does the reaction of the Varangian ‘Rus′’:

‘Our land is great and abundant, but there is no order in it. Come and rule and take command over us.’ And three brothers were chosen with their clans and they took all Rus′ with them and came. And the eldest, Ryurik, settled in Novgorod; the second, Sineus, in Beloozero [the White Lake district north-east of Novgorod] and the third, Truvor, in Izborsk [southwest of Novgorod]. And from these Varangians the Russian land got its name.¹

This naïve-sounding tale of the origins of the Russian State has given birth to one of the greatest and longest-lasting of all scholarly conflicts in Russian historiography – the so-called Normanist Controversy. It has worried and divided historians and linguists ever since the mid-eighteenth century. What role did the Varangians-Vikings-Normans-Norsemen from Scandinavia play? Were they ‘summoned’, as the chronicler would have us believe? And were they the Rus′ as the chronicle insists? Or were the Slavs the Rus′? Did Ryurik and his two ‘brothers’ actually exist? Was the dynasty of the ruling princely family which stemmed from the chronicle’s ‘Ryurik’ predominantly Scandinavian or Slavonic? It would be tedious in the extreme to outline the by now tired arguments of both sides: of the ‘Normanists’, who tend to believe the general message of the chronicle; and the ‘Anti-Normanists’ (mostly Soviet), who consider that Rus′ means Slavs, that the chronicle story is a dismissable myth and that the ‘summoning’ of the princes is merely a reflection of the tendency in medieval historiography to attribute the origins of the ruling dynasty of a nation to a foreign State (for example, the Venerable Bede’s tale of the invitation of Hengist and Horsa to fight the Picts; terra lata et spatiosa (‘a wide and spacious land’), they were allegedly told).²

Taking a ‘Normanist’ standpoint, this writer considers that the most reasonable and probable solution of the problem is as follows: in the first half of the ninth century, Rus′, from which Russia(n), or, as some modern historians would have it, the ugly-looking ‘Rus′ sia(n)’ derives, clearly meant Scandinavian Varangians not only to the scribes and editors of the Russian Primary Chronicle but also to contemporary and near-contemporary Greek, Arab and Latin writers.³ It is unlikely that these Varangian-Rus′ ‘founded’ any State on arrival (as some ‘Normanists’ claim), nor did they find a ready-made Slavonic State (as some ‘anti-Normanists’ think). One cannot talk of the establishment of anything more than a loose federation of tribes which came under the eventual overall control of the Varangians in the second half of the ninth century. But were these Varangian-Rus′ ‘summoned’ in the first place? Or did they simply invade? Perhaps the anti-Normanist view of the mythical element in the summoning story of the chronicle is the correct one. But it matters little whether they came invited or whether they invaded. What does matter is that they stayed in the Russian land, that their leaders formed the ruling dynasty, their Scandinavian names becoming slavonicized (Helgi – Oleg; Ingvarr – Igor′; Helga – Ol′ga; perhaps Valdimarr – Vladimir, etc.), and that in a remarkably short time they were absorbed in the great Slavonic sea, just as the earlier Asiatic Bulgars, who in the seventh century had migrated to the predominantly Slavonic region near the mouth of the Danube, were absorbed by the native population.

Very little is known either of Ryurik’s ethnic origins (was he Swedish, Danish?⁴) or of his career in Russia. It would appear that he settled in Novgorod in about 856 and quickly spread his authority over much of the north of present-day European Russia. As for Sineus and Truvor, no more is heard of them except that they died in 858. In the year after Ryurik’s arrival in Russia, however, two members of his entourage, Askol′d and Dir, ‘asked permission [to go] to Constantinople’.⁵ On their way they seized the Slavonic settlement of Kiev on the Dnepr, subjugating the local west-bank tribe of the Polyane. In 860 they ineffectually besieged Constantinople and returned to consolidate their control over Kiev and its district.⁶ Ryurik did nothing to interfere with their rule in the south, but after his death in 879, his kinsman Oleg, who seems to have been appointed as regent for Ryurik’s son Igor′, killed Askol′d and Dir, took Kiev and made it the capital of his realm, thus uniting the whole of Rus′ from the Gulf of Finland to the lower reaches of the Dnepr river. One after another the neighbouring tribes to the north-west, the north and the east of Kiev were brought under Oleg’s control.

Why did Oleg abandon the security of Novgorod, close to the source of Varangian mercenaries in Scandinavia? The answer must be found in the lure of Constantinople. For after some twenty-five years of consolidation Oleg attacked Constantinople (907) and obliged the Greeks to sign a treaty which opened the Black Sea for Russo-Varangian commerce with Byzantium and perhaps even gave Oleg a foothold in what was to become for Russia the important centre of Tmutarakan′ on the Kuban′ peninsula.

Concerning Igor′’s reign (913–44), only fragmentary information is available. Little is known of his dealings with the subject tribes: the chronicle does not tell us how they were administered or what their relations with Kiev were. All that we know is that the neighbouring Drevlyane killed Igor′ as a result of his extortionate demands for tribute: ‘he was tied to two trees’, according to the tenth-century Byzantine historian Leo the Deacon, ‘and torn into two parts’.⁷ His wife Ol′ga is said to have avenged his death by slaughtering a large number of Drevlyane in various bizarre and bloody ways.⁸ Abroad he undertook two raids on Byzantine territory (941 and 944), the second of which ended with yet another trade treaty similar to that of Oleg in 907.

Igor′’s successor to the throne of Kiev, Svyatoslav, was the odd man out amongst all the rulers of Russia from his grandfather Ryurik to Ivan the Terrible: glamorous, tough, adventurous, militarily highly successful, the archetypal warrior-prince:

His gait was as light as a panther’s and he waged many a war. On his campaigns he took no waggons with him, no kettles, nor did he boil his meat; but he would cut thin strips of horse-flesh or the meat of wild beasts or beef, cook them on coals and eat them. He had no tent, but would spread a piece of saddle-cloth beneath him and would use his saddle as a pillow.⁹

Describing his meeting with Emperor John Tzimisces, Leo the Deacon gives us the following picture of his physical appearance:

He was of medium height, neither too tall nor too short, with bushy eyebrows, blue eyes, a flat nose, a shaven beard, with thick long hairs hanging down from his upper lip. His head was completely shaven – on one side, however, a lock of hair hung down signifying nobility of birth. His neck was thick, his shoulders broad, and his figure was well-proportioned. He appeared gloomy and fierce. From one ear there hung a gold earring adorned with two pearls and a ruby inserted between them. His clothing was white and in no way different from that of the others with him – except for its cleanliness.¹⁰

His foreign adventures – and this is practically all we know about his activities in general – were on a far grander scale than those of his predecessors. It would appear that his eastern campaigns (966–67) were aimed at clearing the Volga of hostile forces, opening up trade routes with the east, penetrating the Caucasus and perhaps even gaining a foothold on the Byzantine possessions in the Crimea. I say ‘it would appear’, because in fact all we have are the barest details: an attack on the Moslem State of ‘Old Great Bulgaria’ at the junction of the Volga and Kama rivers;¹¹ war with the vast Khazar Kaganate stretching from the Volga in the east to the Don and the lower reaches of the Dnepr in the west – war which ended with the defeat of the Khazars and the fall of their capital Itile on the estuary of the Volga; victory over the north-Caucasian Ossetians and Circassians which presumably brought him to the Taman′ peninsula on the east bank of the straits of Kerch.¹²

But can we believe that such a vast campaign was possible in the course of two – or even three or four – years? How many warriors did Svyatoslav have at his disposal? How many boats, waggons? How did he cover the huge distances: Kiev to Bulgary (he is said to have sailed up the Oka and Volga rivers¹³), Bulgary to the Caspian, the Caspian to within striking distance of the Sea of Azov and the eastern promontory of the Crimea? Did he overcome the whole of Khazaria? Owing to the paucity of the sources, these questions are impossible to answer. We can, however, gauge the long-term results.

Certainly the attack on Bulgary, if it ever took place, does not seem to have been decisive, for the Old Bulgar State continued to be a thorn in Russia’s side for many a year. Nor do we hear of any lasting results of Svyatoslav’s conquest of the Ossetians and Circassians. But Khazaria appears to have been disastrously debilitated by Svyatoslav’s invasion, and, as historians never tire of pointing out, the virtual destruction of the great buffer State on the south-east borders of Russia opened the floodgates to the nomadic Turkic hordes from the east who were to plague the Russians for centuries to come.

But the most immediate result of Svyatoslav’s eastern campaign was the fact that his conquests brought him into close contact with Byzantine possessions on the north of the Black Sea. Whether he intended to round off his expedition by attacking the Crimea we do not know. But evidently the emperor Nicephorus Phocas considered that the situation was a highly dangerous one for Byzantium. In early 967 he urged, and heavily bribed, Svyatoslav to attempt an easier military objective – trans-Danubian Bulgaria, the old enemy of Byzantium. The lure was great: not only was Svyatoslav attracted by tales of the fabulous wealth of the country, but also he realized that the conquest of Bulgaria could bring him to the very gates of Constantinople.

His first Balkan campaign (967) was immediately successful: a Bulgarian army was defeated, a number of towns on the Danube were captured (eighty, according to the generous reckoning of the Primary Chronicle) and he established his headquarters in Little Preslav (Pereyaslavets is the Russian version), probably near the influx of the Prut into the Danube, i.e. in the extreme north-east corner of Bulgaria. Worried by Svyatoslav’s initial successes, Nicephorus made peace with the Bulgarians and in all probability set the nomadic Turkic Pechenegs on Kiev (968). Leaving his army in Little Preslav, Svyatoslav hastened home, defeated the Pechenegs and spent a year in Kiev appointing his sons as viceroys, but mainly collecting reinforcements ...