The Routledge Handbook of the Mongols and Central-Eastern Europe

Alexander V. Maiorov, Roman Hautala, Alexander V. Maiorov, Roman Hautala

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367409326
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000417500
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia dell'Europa medievale

The Routledge Handbook of the Mongols and Central-Eastern Europe offers a comprehensive overview of the Mongols' military, political, socio-economic and cultural relations with Central and Eastern European nations between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries.

The Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous land empire in history, and one which contributed to the establishment of political, commercial and cultural contacts between all Eurasian regions. The Golden Horde, founded in Eastern Europe by Chinggis Khan's grandson, Batu, in the thirteenth century, was the dominant power in the region. For two hundred years, all of the countries and peoples of Central and Eastern Europe had to reckon with a powerful centralized state with enormous military potential. Some chose to submit to the Mongols whilst others defended their independence, but none could avoid the influence of this powerful empire. In this book, twenty-five chapters examine this crucial period in Central-Eastern European history, including trade, confrontation, and cultural and religious exchange between the Mongols and their neighbours.

This book will be an essential reference for scholars and students of the Mongols, as well those interested in the political, social and economic history of medieval Central-Eastern Europe.

Part I
Before and after the Great Western Campaign

1
Omens of the apocalypse
The first Rus’ encounter with the Mongols through the prism of the Medieval mind

Fedor N. Veselov

Introduction

In the conclusion to his report, the Letter about the [way of] life of the Tartars, completed at the beginning of 1238,¹ Dominican Friar Julian writes:

one Russian cleric, [who] recorded to us something from history from the Book of Judges, said that the Tartars were the Midianites, who, together with the Cethym, had descended upon the Sons of Israel, [and] had been defeated by Gideon, as it is told in the Book of Judges. Thus, the mentioned Midianites had fled [from there] and inhabited [places] near a river called the Tartar, that is why they are called the Tartars.²

It appears that Julian’s remark about the Mongols being the godless Midianites was well known in Europe.³ Apart from the evidence from Rus’ clerics that came down to us as part of Friar Julian’s letter, we have information about a speech made by a certain Rus’ archbishop [‘archiepiscopus Russie’], named Peter, at the First Council of Lyon in 1245.⁴ The information about the speech can be found in the records of Matthew of Paris, in the Burton Annals, and in the recently obtained manuscripts kept in Cambridge, Copenhagen, and Linz.⁵ The personality of Peter himself remains a mystery; scholars have held widely divergent opinions regarding his identity. Was he Peter Akherovich, hegumen of the Monastery of the Holy Saviour at Berestovo, who later became Metropolitan of Kiev,⁶ or was he the bishop of Belgrade?⁷ Did he come from Suzdal,⁸ Vladimir, or Riazan?⁹ Did he even exist?¹⁰ However, the most important thing is that the information about the Mongols presented to the Council of Lyon in 1245 by ‘Peter, a Rus’ archbishop’ and the information provided by the ‘Rus’ clerics’ from Julian’s letter obviously cited grim details of the eschatological prophesies from the Revelation of Pseudo-Methodius of Patara (hereafter, the Revelation). The Revelation is an apocryphal work, which describes the history of the world from its creation till the End of Times.

The conventional title of this work (Revelation of Pseudo-Methodius of Patara) reflects the past tradition of attributing the text to Methodius, Bishop of Patara in Lycia, who died at the beginning of the fifth century. However, doubts with regard to this attribution emerged already in the early eighteenth century. According to the contemporary point of view, this eschatological Apocrypha was written in the second half of the seventh century, either in North Mesopotamia or in Eastern Syria, in the Nestorian or Melkite communities, as a reaction to large-scale Arab conquests in the Near East.¹¹ Soon enough, the text of the Revelation was translated into Greek. This translation is known in at least four recensions;¹² it served as a basis not only for the Latin (the oldest copies date back to the eighth century) and Slavonic versions of the Revelation, but also for a specific branch of Byzantine apocalyptic literary tradition.

The text of the Revelation is logically divided into two parts. The first part, historical, starts from the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. Then, the author writes about the Great Flood and the succession of Great Kingdoms, and gives two precursory prophesies about the exile of the Sons of Ishmael to the desert of ‘Ethrib’ (Yathrib), and the godless peoples of Gog and Magog, confined between the high northern mountains by Alexander the Great. The first part ends with the confrontation between the Empire of Rome and the Turkic and Avarian tribes. In the second, prophetic, part, the author writes about the increasing sinfulness of Christians and the imminent emergence of the Ishmaelites from the desert of ‘Ethrib’, a tribe which will destroy a great many people for their sins and bring the entire world under their rule. But the king of Greeks will ‘awaken from his sleep’ and put an end to the Ishmaelite yoke, and there will be peace. The tribulations, however, will not end there. The Great Gates of the North will open, and the armies of Gog and Magog will flood the world of the pious. The armies will be destroyed by the Angel; then the Antichrist, ‘the son of perdition’, will emerge, but Christ will triumph over him on his Second Coming.

There is no doubt that the Rus’ evidence about the Mongols as forerunners of the End of Times influenced the way they were perceived in Catholic Europe. However, not long before this part of the Christian universe looked with hope at the events in the East. Crusaders in the Holy Land listened with interest to the reports about the defeats suffered by the Saracens at the hands of some unknown enemy. Christians had interpreted that information as a sign pointing at the movement of the armies of the legendary King David. However, Matthew of Paris, in his record for the year 1238, already writes about ambassadors from the ‘Old Man of the Mountain’ (the Nizaris), people who came to the King of France, ‘sent on behalf of the whole of the people of the East’, in order to ask for assistance against ‘a monstrous and inhuman race of men’, sent as a plague against humankind.¹³ The Alexandreis by Quilichino of Spoletto and the so-called letter of Al-Kindi, contemporaneous to this record, repeat the idea that the Mongols are the peoples of Gog and Magog, who had escaped from the Northern Mountains where they had been confined by Alexander the Great.¹⁴

However, the ‘Russian trail’ is independent from the sources mentioned above. The Rus’ archbishop Peter, described by Matthew of Paris, and the Rus’ clerics whose information was used by Friar Julian and the Annals of the Abbey of Saint-Médard de Soissons,¹⁵ provide an accurate reference to the Revelation. They talk about the Ishmaelites expelled by Gideon and the Midianites, whose invasion is the first sign of the End of Times. Apart from the sources mentioned above, the Tartars are described in a very similar manner in the Annals of Tewkesbury Abbey,¹⁶ the Chronicle of Baldwin of Brabant,¹⁷ the Annals of Schäftlarn Abbey on the Isar,¹⁸ and the Deeds of the Trevians (‘Gesta Treverorum’).¹⁹

The idea that Rus’ evidence at some point influenced the way Europeans viewed the Great Western Campaign of the Mongols is not new and has been developed sufficiently in the historiography of Mongol campaigns.²⁰ However, the first Rus’ impression of the Mongols was recorded one and a half decades earlier than the time of Friar Julian’s expedition. This evidence has a more accurate reference to Pseudo-Methodius and appears in the Tale of the Battle on the Kalka River (1223). The Tale is recorded in the oldest surviving Rus’ chronicles. However, the question arises, how did these apocalyptic impressions appear in Rus’?

In this chapter, we are going to review how the apocalyptical image of the nomads emerged in the minds of Medieval Rus’ and how it was used at the time of the first encounter with the enemy, who after the encounter, had not been seen near the borders of Rus’ principalities for the next15 years.

The Tale of the Battle on the Kalka River (1223) in Rus' chronicles

First of all, it appears necessary to confirm the date of the Tale of the Battle on the Kalka River (hereafter the Tale). Scholars agree that the original text of the Tale is represented in three oldest Rus’ chronicles²¹: Laurentian,²² Hypathian,²³ and the First Chronicle of Novgorod, the Older Recension.²⁴ Below there are three extracts from the beginning and concluding parts of the Tale, where the chronicler gives his answer to the question: who were the unknown people and who defeated the Rus’ princes on the Kalka?

Laurentian	The First Chronicle of Novgorod	Hypathian
The same year, for our sins, an unknown tribe came, of whom no one exactly knows who they are, nor whence they came out, nor what their language is, nor of what race they are, nor what their faith is; but they call them Tartars and others say Taurmenia, and others Pecheneg people, and others say that they are those of whom Bishop Methodius of Patom says that they came out of the Etriev desert, which is between East and North. For thus Methodius attests that, at the End of Time, those are to appear whom Gideon scattered, and they shall subdue the whole land from the East to the Efrant, and from the Tigris to the Pontus sea, except Ethiopia. God alone knows who they are and from whence they came. Very wise men know well, who understand books; but we do not know who they are… …This evil happened on May 30, on St. Eremia’s Day. Vasil’ko heard about all that had happened in Rus’, returned back from Chernigov, being saved by God and the power of the Holy Cross and by the prayer of his father, Konstantin and his paternal uncle Yuri, and came back to his Rostov, blessing God and St. Mother of God.	The same year, for our sins, an unknown tribe came, of whom no one exactly knows who they are, nor whence they came out, nor what their language is, nor of what race they are, nor what their faith is; but they call them Tartars and others say Taurmen, and others Pecheneg people, and others say that they are those of whom Bishop Methodius of Patom says that they came out of the Etriev desert, which is between East and North. For thus Methodius attests that, at the End of Time, those are to appear whom Gideon scattered, and they shall subdue the whole land from the East to the Efrant, and from the Tigris to the Pontus sea, except Ethiopia. God alone knows who they are and from whence they came. Very wise men know well, who understand books; but we do not know who they are……This evil happened on May 31, on St. Ermei’s Day. And the Tartars turned back from the river Dnieper, and we know not from whence they came, nor where they hid themselves again; God knows whence he fetched them against us for our sins.	(1223) 6732 (1224). An enemy, hitherto unknown, appeared: the godless Moabites called the Tatars [who] attacked the Polovcian land… …And God, who waited for repentance from the Christians, turned [the Tatars] back to the Eastern land, and they waged war against Tangut and other lands.

The detailed narration and the exact chronology of campaign have led some scholars to conclude that the Tale was written down from an oral account provided by some witness of the battle, relatively soon after the event and, most probably, in Southern Rus’.²⁵ Following A. V. Emmausskii,²⁶ D. S. Likhachev traces the Tale back to the Chronicle of Pereyaslavl’ Yuzhny, from where it was taken and written down in the Vladimir Chronicle of 1228. Thus, the date 1228 becomes the terminus ante quem (the latest possible date of producing) for the Tale (terminus post quem (the earliest possible date) is 1223).²⁷ V. N. Rudakov analyses the information about the good fortune of Vasil’ko Konstantinovich, who came too late to join the Rus’-Cumanian forces and did not take ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of abbreviations
• List of contributors
• Introduction: from the Great Western campaign to the decline of the Golden Horde: new tendencies in the study of the Mongol factor in the history of Eastern and East Central Europe
• Part I Before and after the Great Western Campaign
• Part II The Mongols and Central Europe
• Part III The Mongols and Southeastern Europe
• Part IV The Golden Horde and Russia
• Part V The Golden Horde and Lithuania
• Part VI Trade and economic relations
• Part VII Cultural exchange and church-religious interaction
• Index