Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000-1300 2503588492, 9782503588490, 9782503588506

Table of contents :
List of Illustrations xi
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction: The Historiography of New Peoples and Polities in Northern and Eastern Europe / WALTER POHL and VERONIKA WIESER 1
Scandinavian and Baltic Origins
Adam of Bremen’s Use of Earlier History / IAN WOOD 45
National Identity in Scandinavian Chronicles (Saxo and Snorri) / SVERRE BAGGE 65
Orkney, Óláfr Tryggvason, and the Conversion to Christianity / ROSALIND BONTÉ 81
Biblical Motifs and the Shaping of Ethnic Categories in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia / STEFAN DONECKER and PETER FRAUNDORFER 117
Cosmas of Prague, the 'Gesta principum Polonorum', and their Western Contexts
The 'Legenda Christiani', the 'Chronica Bohemorum', and the Bohemian Slavs / PAVLÍNA RYCHTEROVÁ 143
Space and Identity in the 'Chronica Bohemorum' of Cosmas of Prague / JAN HASIL 179
Helmold of Bosau and our Reading of his 'Chronica Slavorum' / JAN KLÁPŠTĚ 203
Creating Dynastic Identity: Gallus Anonymus’s 'Chronicle' / ZBIGNIEW DALEWSKI 231
'By the Crown of My Empire! The Things I Behold Are Greater than I Had Been Led to Believe!': The Narrative Pattern 'Sheba Visits Salomon' in Medieval Narratives (Gallus’s 'Chronicle', 'Chronicon Salernitanum', and 'Pèlerinage de Charlemagne') / JACEK BANASZKIEWICZ 251
Hungarian Origins and their Political Uses
Hungarian Origins and Carolingian Politics in Regino of Prüm’s 'Chronicle' / MAXIMILIAN DIESENBERGER 273
Us and Them: The Description of Foreigners and Indigenous Peoples in Master P.’s and Simon of Kéza’s 'Gesta' (Thirteenth Century) / DÁNIEL BAGI 287
Christian Identity versus Heathendom: Hungarian Chroniclers Facing the Pagan/Nomadic Past and the Present / LÁSZLÓ VESZPRÉMY 305
Histories of Origins from the Adriatic and the Balkans
Circles of Identity: The Narratives of Thomas of Split and Domnius de Cranchis of Brač / NEVEN BUDAK 321
Grado as Aquileia Nova and Split as Salona Nova?: Local Historiography and Local Identity / PETER ŠTIH 337
Patria Venecia: John the Deacon’s Search for Venetian Origins / FRANCESCO BORRI 367
The 'Dioclean Tradition' in Serbian Literature of the Early Thirteenth Century / ALEKSANDAR UZELAC 389
The Rus’ 'Primary Chronicle', the Old Testament, and the Byzantine Background
The Debate over Authorship of the Rus’ 'Primary Chronicle': Compilations, Redactions, and Urtexts / DONALD OSTROWSKI 415
Creating Time, Forging Identity, Building a State: The 'Primary Chronicle' of Rus’ / OLEKSIY TOLOCHKO 449
Historiography of the New Europe: Comparative Perspectives / WALTER POHL 467
Index 485

Citation preview

Historiography and Identity V

CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS IN LATE ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES General Editor Yitzhak Hen, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Editorial Board Barbara Bombi, University of Kent Paul M. Cobb, University of Pennsylvania Adam S. Cohen, University of Toronto Kate Cooper, Royal Holloway, University of London Maria Mavroudi, University of California, Berkeley Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, University of Oxford and École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris Carine van Rhijn, Universiteit Utrecht Peter Sarris, University of Cambridge Daniel Lord Smail, Harvard University Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book. Volume 31

HISTORIOGRAPHY AND IDENTITY The six-volume sub-series Historiography and Identity unites a wide variety of case studies from Antiquity to the late Middle Ages, from the Latin West to the emerging polities in Northern and Eastern Europe, and adding a Eurasian perspective that includes the Islamic World and China. The series aims to develop a critical methodology to harness the potential of identity studies to add to the understanding of the construction and impact of historiography. Volume 5v Volume

Historiography and Identity V The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000–1300

Edited by

Walter Pohl, Veronika Wieser, and Francesco Borri

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Research results from: Austrian Science Fund (FWF): SFB F42-G18.

Cover image by Dagmar Giesriegl, images taken from Codex Gigas © wikimedia commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Codex_Gigas

© 2022, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-2-503-58849-0 E-ISBN: 978-2-503-58850-6 DOI: 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.119563 ISSN: 1378-8779 E-ISSN: 2294-8511

Printed in the EU on acid-free paper D/2022/0095/127

In memory of Stefan Donecker

Contents

List of Illustrations

xi

Acknowledgements

xiii

Introduction: The Historiography of New Peoples and Polities in Northern and Eastern Europe WALTER POHL and VERONIKA WIESER

1

Scandinavian and Baltic Origins Adam of Bremen’s Use of Earlier History IAN WOOD

National Identity in Scandinavian Chronicles (Saxo and Snorri) SVERRE BAGGE

Orkney, Óláfr Tryggvason, and the Conversion to Christianity ROSALIND BONTÉ

Biblical Motifs and the Shaping of Ethnic Categories in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia STEFAN DONECKER and PETER FRAUNDORFER

45 65 81

117

Cosmas of Prague, the Gesta principum Polonorum, and their Western Contexts The Legenda Christiani, the Chronica Bohemorum, and the Bohemian Slavs PAVLÍNA RYCHTEROVÁ

143

Contents

viii

Space and Identity in the Chronica Bohemorum of Cosmas of Prague JAN HASIL

Helmold of Bosau and our Reading of his Chronica Slavorum JAN KLÁPŠTĚ

Creating Dynastic Identity: Gallus Anonymus’s Chronicle ZBIGNIEW DALEWSKI

‘By the Crown of My Empire! The Things I Behold Are Greater than I Had Been Led to Believe!’: The Narrative Pattern Sheba Visits Salomon in Medieval Narratives (Gallus’s Chronicle, Chronicon Salernitanum, and Pèlerinage de Charlemagne) JACEK BANASZKIEWICZ

179 203 231

251

Hungarian Origins and their Political Uses Hungarian Origins and Carolingian Politics in Regino of Prüm’s Chronicle MAXIMILIAN DIESENBERGER

Us and Them: The Description of Foreigners and Indigenous Peoples in Master P.’s and Simon of Kéza’s Gesta (Thirteenth Century) DÁNIEL BAGI

Christian Identity versus Heathendom: Hungarian Chroniclers Facing the Pagan/Nomadic Past and the Present LÁSZLÓ VESZPRÉMY

273

287

305

Histories of Origins from the Adriatic and the Balkans Circles of Identity: The Narratives of Thomas of Split and Domnius de Cranchis of Brač NEVEN BUDAK

321

Contents

ix

Grado as Aquileia Nova and Split as Salona Nova? Local Historiography and Local Identity PETER ŠTIH

Patria Venecia: John the Deacon’s Search for Venetian Origins FRANCESCO BORRI

The ‘Dioclean Tradition’ in Serbian Literature of the Early Thirteenth Century ALEKSANDAR UZELAC

337 367

389

The Rus’ Primary Chronicle, the Old Testament, and the Byzantine Background The Debate over Authorship of the Rus’ Primary Chronicle: Compilations, Redactions, and Urtexts DONALD OSTROWSKI

Creating Time, Forging Identity, Building a State: The Primary Chronicle of Rus’ OLEKSIY TOLOCHKO

Historiography of the New Europe: Comparative Perspectives WALTER POHL

Index

415

449 467 485

List of Illustrations

Figure 7.1, p. 183. Říp Mountain. Photo courtesy of Martin Gojda. Figure 7.2, p. 198. Diagram of fieldwork on prehistoric and early medieval hillforts in Bohemia. Map 4.1, p. 83. Map of Orkney, showing places mentioned in the text. Map courtesy of Damien Bonté. Map 7.1, p. 183 Cosmas’s geography of mythical Bohemia and the visibility range from Říp Mountain. The visibility analysis was created by David Novák, Institute of Archaeology of the CAS, Prague. Map 7.2, p. 185. Evolution of the early medieval settlement of Bohemia. Map 7.3, p. 187. Geographical limits of the oldest Wenceslaus‒Ludmila legends. Map 7.4, p. 190. Cosmas’s geography of Bohemia in about 970–1086. Map 7.5, p. 190. Variations in intensity of archaeological field works of early medieval sites in modern-day self-governing regions. Map 7.6, p. 191. Spatial distribution of the archaeological evidence connected to the institutions of the early Přemyslid state before 1000. Map 7.7, p. 194. The geography of Bohemia during Cosmas’s lifetime (c. 1086– 1125), outlining the basic communication lines in medieval Bohemia. Map 7.8, p. 196. Location of medieval fortifications in the first half of the tenth century.

Acknowledgements This volume, and the series on Historiography of Identity of which it forms a part, originated in the research cluster ‘Visions of Community: Comparative Approaches to Ethnicity, Region and Empire in Christianity, Islam and Buddhism (400–1600  ce) (VISCOM)’, funded by the Austrian Research Fund (FWF) from 2011 to 2019.1 In this cluster, medieval historians, social anthropologists, and philologists worked together to compare the role of universal religions in the formation of particular communities in medieval Europe and Asia. We are very grateful to the FWF and to the cluster’s two host institutions, the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, for their support. The Institute for Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy provided an excellent institutional hub for our work. We are grateful to both the staff and guests at the institute and its VISCOM partner institutions for their help in organizing the workshops and preparing the volumes for publication. Several people helped with preparing this book; in particular, we would like to thank Nicola Edelmann, Peter Fraundorfer, and Lena Kornprobst for the copyediting, Thomas Gobbitt, Christina Pössel, and Nicola Wood for correcting the English of some of the articles, and Dagmar Giesriegl, who was responsible for the wonderful cover illustrations of the series. We are very grateful for having been able to work with such an excellent group of scholars on this volume. We would like to thank them for their participation, their contributions, and their patience with the inevitably lengthy publication process of such a large-scale undertaking. The editors

1

The FWF (Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung in Österreich) funded the cluster as SFB (Spezialforschungsbereich) F 42–G 18.

Introduction: The Historiography of New Peoples and Polities in Northern and Eastern Europe Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser

O

ne of the most momentous developments in the medieval history of Europe was the rise of new polities in the north and east of the continent, roughly east of the Elbe and the Adriatic around the year 1000.1 Mostly, these were regions that had never been part of the Roman Empire, and had only peripherally been involved in the imperial revival staged by the Carolingian dynasty. The Romans had regarded the inhabitants as barbarians, the Christians as pagans. In these vast and thinly populated stretches of land, the communities that had succeeded each other before the tenth century  ce could hardly be defined as states, perhaps with the exception of the steppe realms that formed along the Black Sea and the Danube. No consistent use of literacy can be detected there, until runic inscriptions began to appear with some frequency in Scandinavia. Under the ethnographic gaze of Greek and Latin authors, these had largely remained prehistoric societies. That does not mean that the European north and east had been cut off from developments in 1

Graus, Nationenbildung; Franklin and Shepard, Emergence of Rus; Berend, ed., Christiani­ zation and the Rise of Christian Monarchy; Garipzanov, ed., Historical Narratives; Bagge, Cross and Scepter; Mitthof, Schreiner, and Schmitt, eds, Handbuch zur Geschichte Südosteuropas. Walter Pohl is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the University of Vienna and former Director of the Institute for Medieval Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Veronika Wieser works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Medieval Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000–1300, ed. by Walter Pohl, Veronika Wieser, and Francesco Borri, celama 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 1–41 FHG 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.130252

2

Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser

the Mediterranean and Atlantic regions of the continent. There were communications, exchanges, migrations, and we find sophisticated products and traces of considerable wealth in some archaeological contexts. However, the societies of non-Roman Europe essentially maintained their outlook and ways of life that were rather different from the Mediterranean world. Between the fourth and the sixth centuries, Germanic and Gothic warrior groups abandoned large parts of the Germania, roughly between the Elbe and the Vistula rivers, for careers in the Roman Empire.2 Successively, in the early Middle Ages, three distinct social forms emerged beyond the late Roman sphere of direct influence. In Scandinavia, the dynamic of intense overseas connections and of a status-oriented warrior culture led to increased social differentiation and left a rich archaeological record of settlements and graves — a social world not unlike the Germanic lands in the later Imperial Period. 3 In the steppe zones along the Black Sea and the Danube, the expansive empires of the Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Hungarians or Chazars accumulated great wealth through the transfer of riches from the Mediterranean states.4 At first, their rule tended to erode when their expansive dynamic subsided, but eventually the Bulgar and Hungarian realms became more resilient by integrating the agricultural population on their territory and by adapting to post-Roman ways of life. The third form was the most successful although initially the least visible one: in what has been termed ‘the obscure progression of the Slavs’, most parts of eastern Central and Eastern Europe became Slavicized between the sixth and the eighth centuries.5 Initially, this way of life meant little division of labour and social differentiation, no specialized warrior caste, no conspicuous status representation or investment in the afterlife, and no stable supraregional power structures. Therefore, early Slavic cultures left only few archaeological traces. The infrastructure in large swathes of land between the Aegean, the Danube, and the eastern Alps, which had been Roman for half a millennium, fell into disuse.6 2 Pohl, Völkerwanderung; Halsall, Barbarian Migrations; Brown, Rise of Western Christen­ dom; Heather, Empires and Barbarians; Meier, Geschichte der Völkerwanderung. 3 Sawyer, Kings and Vikings; Winroth, Conversion of Scandinavia; Garipzanov with Bonté, eds, Conversion and Identity. 4 Maenchen-Helfen, World of the Huns; Golden, Ben-Shammai, and Róna-Tas, eds, World of the Khazars; Ziemann, Vom Wandervolk zur Großmacht; Curta with Kovalev, eds, The Other Europe in the Middle Ages; Pohl, Avars. 5 Musset, Les Invasions, ii; Curta, Making of the Slavs. 6 Curta, Southeastern Europe.

introduction: the historiography of new peoples and polities

3

Early medieval Latin and Greek authors described these three interlocking ways of life using ethnographic categories and ethnic labels: Normanni/ Northmen/Scandinavians, Scythians/Huns, Slavs/Wends, each with numerous subcategories. However, in most cases we know little about their actual ethnic identities, and should basically regard them as ecologically and socially complementary groups of population.7 Different as they were, what became of most of them in the course of the ninth to eleventh centuries is surprisingly similar: relatively extensive Christian kingdoms that gradually adopted Latin or Greek literacy and a comparable status-oriented culture. In Scandinavia, the kingdoms of the Danes, Norwegians, and later Swedes emerged; in eastern Central Europe, duchies and kingdoms of the Poles, Bohemians, Hungarians, and Croats were established; in the Orthodox world, Bulgars (already present in the north-eastern Balkans since the end of the seventh century), Serbs, and the Rus’ became prominent. Only a few zones of ‘pagan’ resilience and more regional power structures remained, such as the Slavs east of the Elbe, the Baltic lands, and nomads north of the Black Sea. The process in which these new Christian realms formed has mostly been studied, since the nineteenth century, separately and from national perspectives.8 That included common interest in Slavic or in Scandinavian national origins. If a European perspective was adopted, the new polities were usually seen as an extension of the Christian West, or as a proliferation of a national model. Perhaps paradoxically, the post-war generation of medievalists in Germany regarded the emergence of Slavic kingdoms in the tenth/eleventh centuries as a welcome parallel to the supposed origins of the German nation in the same period.9 This comparative approach — medieval nation-building in Europe, west and east — has brought valuable results. 10 The question whether what appeared around the turn of the first millennium were in fact ‘nations’ has, however, remained controversial.11

7

Pohl, ‘Conceptions of Ethnicity’. The shared romantic interest in distant national origins in the earlier nineteenth century soon turned into rival visions of the past: Leerssen, National Thought in Europe; Berger and Lorenz, eds, Contested Nation. 9 Ehlers, ed., Ansätze und Diskontinuität. 10 Graus, Nationenbildung. 11 Wehler, Nationalismus; Scales and Zimmer, eds, Power and the Nation, esp. Reynolds, ‘Idea of the Nation’, and Breuilly, ‘Changes in the Political Uses’; Smith, Cultural Foundations of Nations; Gat with Yakobson, Nations. 8

Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser

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Whether nations were ‘primordial’ or ‘modern’ is a terminological problem that depends on the definition of ‘nation’.12 On the whole, both positions risk projecting teleological assumptions into the study of the Middle Ages. If we regard nations as modern, we may tend to lock the medieval period into an essential otherness and reaffirm Dark Age stereotypes and an Enlightenment teleology of progress. On the other hand, if we consider nations as primordial, we risk de-historicizing them as an essential part of human societies at least since the rise of Sumer and Egypt. Furthermore, both positions tend to imply a Eurocentric perspective by regarding successful nation-building as an asset and a benchmark for non-European cultures dominated by backward empires or weak states. Either Europe came first in creating ‘the’ modern nation, or it was most successful in implementing a primordial form of human community. In fact, modernists diverged in their assessment of the modern European nation. Some scholars, following an Enlightenment teleology of progress, regarded it as a marker of European superiority. Others, sceptical after the experience of the first half of the twentieth century, saw modern nationalism as an aberration and the nation as an unfortunate episode in history that would soon give way to supra-national forms of social organization.13 This modernist conception of the nation as a historical episode led to perceptions of the Middle Ages as a period in which ‘ethnicity did not matter’.14 The emergence of new nationalisms in the twenty-first century makes it difficult to share these late twentiethcentury hopes. Many scholars were aware of such problems in research on ethnicity and the nation and sought to avoid them. Yet the binary logic of the debate between ‘primordialists’ and ‘modernists’ made it difficult to escape them. One such escape route which has become popular is the grand deconstructive gesture of avoiding ‘the nation’, ‘ethnicity’, and perhaps also ‘identity’ as a research topic in Medieval Studies altogether. It might not be wise, though, to leave the field to a new wave of identity politics and national(ist) narratives of the past. Furthermore, I have often argued that leaving all these forms of conceptualizing large-scale human commonalities and differences aside would make essential ways in which people in the period perceived their social world difficult to grasp.15 To understand their mental maps, we can hardly avoid using our own terms, not only theirs. Yet we have to be careful to adapt them to the concepts 12 13 14 15

Pohl, ‘Ethnicity, Race, and Nationalism’. Gellner, Nations; Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism. Fine, When Ethnicity Did Not Matter in the Balkans. Pohl, ‘Debating Ethnicity’.

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used in the period and historicize them. This is a difficult dialogue with the past, but we have to meet this hermeneutic challenge. Therefore, the aim of this volume is not simply to see how ‘national histories’ responded to the needs of emerging ‘nations’. We pose the problem from a different angle: Which forms of identification mattered in the new kingdoms, and how were identities constructed by the histories produced there? This means not taking the national or ethnic identity of the people and the political, territorial, religious, or dynastic identity of the realm for granted.16 The historiography of the new polities usually incorporates all of these elements, but in rather different constellations. It is unsurprising that Saxo Grammaticus wrote a history of and for the Danes, Gallus of the Polish kingdom, and Cosmas of the Bohemians/Czechs: Gesta Danorum, Gesta principum Polonorum, and Chronica Bohemorum.17 Many of the Latin works discussed in this volume have the ethnonym in the title, and we should not seek to explain away this fact. More can, however, be said about what this meant, and how the different strands of identification are related in these texts. Far from being linear constructions of identity, these texts present complex and subtly designed strategies of identification. They connect kingdoms, peoples, dynasties, churches, territories, and places in a variety of manners. Our efforts can build on some valuable recent comparative studies on the process of identity formation in the realms of the New Europe at the time.18 The historiography under scrutiny in the present volume has received considerable, also comparative attention in recent research.19 These works have often been classed as ‘national histories’, and that can be a useful categorization, even if one avoids the term ‘nation’ for the polities concerned, as Norbert Kersken has done.20 Yet, as I have argued in my introduction to the first volume of Historiography and Identity: Gallus Anonymus deals more with the dynasty of the Piasts than with the Poles; and the concern of the Hungarian Anonymus (Master P) is more with the geography of the realm than with the history of the people. These histories are all usually 16

Cf. Innes, ‘Historical Writing’. For an overview, see Kersken, Geschichtsschreibung; Berend, ‘Historical Writing’. 18 Garipzanov, Geary, and Urbańczyk, eds, Franks, Northmen and Slavs; Garipzanov, ed., Historical Narratives; Berend, ed., Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy; Rychterová, ‘Holes in the Tapestry’. 19 e.g. Plassmann, Origo gentis; Kersken, Geschichtsschreibung; Berend, ‘Historical Writing’; Bagge, ‘Scandinavian Historical Writing’. 20 Kersken, Geschichtsschreibung, p. 9. 17

Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser

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included in lists of ‘national histories’, and perhaps rightly so; yet that may reflect not so much their authors’ intentions but rather modern ideas about […] the Poles and the Hungarians as emerging nations.21

We have, therefore, chosen to open up the range of texts selected for this volume. This volume also includes chronicles written from an outside perspective, such as Adam of Bremen’s History of the Church of Hamburg or Helmold of Bosau’s Chronicle of the Slavs. It addresses the question of how ecclesiastical histories framed the history of the realms, for instance, in the Churches of Split or Grado. It deals with smaller realms and their relations to mightier neighbours, from early Venice to the Orkney Islands. Read alongside the histories of larger peoples and polities, these texts help to recreate some of the dialogue between outside perceptions and self-identifications, and between larger and smaller realms and communities. There is a further way in which this volume explores unusual perspectives. The chronicles by Cosmas, Gallus, or Magister P can profitably be compared to roughly contemporary works from the West, such as Thietmar of Merseburg, Ademar of Chabannes, or William of Malmesbury. However, in this series we have renounced to addressing the well-studied histories of Western Europe since the fall of the Carolingian Empire, and branched off in another direction. We cannot adequately deal with the titanic task of an overview of the history of medieval European historiography, as Norbert Kersken has addressed it with encyclopaedic knowledge in his massive volume.22 The position of the present volume in the Historiography and Identity series rather suggests diachronic comparison, both with previous works since Late Antiquity and with the later historiography of eastern Central Europe.23 The model of rule in the name of a people had emerged in the fifth and sixth centuries, when Goths, Burgundians, Franks, Angles, Saxons, Lombards, and others established their kingdoms on the territory of the Western Roman Empire.24 This was not a natural result of ‘barbarian’ peoples grabbing power in imperial 21

Pohl, ‘Historiography and Identity — Methodological Perspectives’, p. 10. Kersken, Geschichtsschreibung. See also the overviews in: Grundmann, Geschichtsschrei­ bung; Deliyannis, ed., Historiography; Bak and Dunphy, eds, Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle; Foot and Robinson, eds, Oxford History of Historical Writing, ii; Wolf and Ott, eds, Handbuch Chroniken; Campopiano and Bainton, eds, Universal Chronicles. 23 Pohl and Wieser, eds, Historiography and Identity, i; Reimitz and Heydemann, eds, His­ toriography and Identity, ii; Reimitz, Kramer, and Ward, eds, Historiography and Identity, iii; Pohl and Mahoney, eds, Historiography and Identity, iv; Rychterová and Kalhous, eds, His­ toriography and Identity, vi. 24 Pohl, ‘Christian and Barbarian Identities’. 22

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lands. It took a while until the new rulers realized the potential of legitimizing their rule by their gens, the people that constituted the army and dominated the provincial majority population. The title rex Francorum is only attested as an official self-designation almost a century after King Clovis had established a Frankish monarchy in c. 500 ce; but it remained in use throughout the Middle Ages. Biblical narratives and ecclesiastical support for the new kingdoms helped to create this post-imperial model of a multiplicity of ethnically defined, Christian large or mid-sized realms.25 Its success was not due to the resilience of the kingdoms, most of which lost their independence after a few decades or centuries. What remained of them (with the exception of England) converged in the eighth century in the Carolingian Empire of the Franks, and when Charlemagne revived the lofty title of emperor in 800, it could seem as if the political role of the gentes had been reduced to provincial identities in a recreated Roman Empire. Yet in spite of the ambitious politics of imperial integration pursued by Charlemagne and his successor, Louis the Pious, ethnic distinctions remained on the mental map of the Carolingian and post-Carolingian elites. As a reaction to the Frankish construction of an inclusive imperial identity, more particular identities were reaffirmed in the Carolingian world.26 In the tenth century, Bavarians, Alamans/Swabians, Saxons, Burgundians, and Aquitanians had political momentum, and Frankishness receded to two former core areas, the Île de France and a regional Francia along the Middle Rhine. Ethnic identifiers were now used to distinguish between duchies rather than kingdoms. Many of them became involved in the second attempt to renew the Western Roman Empire, now under Saxon rule. Emperor Otto I’s ambassador Liudprand of Cremona famously replied to the Byzantine emperor Nicephorus who had questioned the Roman identity of his empire that ‘we, that is, Lombards, Saxons, Franks, Lotharingians, Bavarians, Swabians and Burgundians, regard “Roman!” as one of the worst insults’.27 Within a loose imperial frame, multiple ethno-territorial identities could be accommodated. This was the context in which new duchies and kingdoms emerged to the north and east of the restored empire. It is interesting to trace the successive attempts of building new realms in regions that had never been Roman or where Roman infrastructure had largely disappeared. For over two hun25

Pohl, ‘Disputed Identifications’. Esders and Reimitz, ‘Diversity and Convergence’. 27 Liudprand of Cremona, Relatio de legatione Constantinopolitana, ed. Becker, xii, pp.  182–83 (author’s own translation); for an excellent analysis: Gandino, Il vocabolario, pp. 257–70. 26

Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser

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dred years, the Avar khaganate dominated much of eastern Central Europe, until Charlemagne’s armies destroyed it at the end of the eighth century. The Avars faded into oblivion soon after the fall of their khaganate — we owe to the Russian Primary Chronicle the observation that their disappearance had become proverbial.28 In its western periphery, the first Slavic realms had already formed. The ephemeral kingdom of Samo in the seventh century left no trace when it crumbled after his death. The Carantanian duchy in the eastern Alps passed from Avar to Bavarian to Frankish suzerainty until the Carolingians dissolved it in 828; yet its name remained to design a duchy of the empire, Carinthia.29 The Carolingian Empire exerted some influence on its periphery, but the Slavic duchies it installed in former Avar territories (for instance, in Mosapurc/ Zalavar on Lake Balaton) left no lasting mark. In the ninth century, the Moravian principality created more momentum, and mostly managed to navigate quite independently from Frankish dominion. It became the place where the missions of Cyril and Methodius implemented Slavic script and liturgy, thus creating a model of a Slavic Christian Church and polity that was to become influential in the Orthodox realms of the Bulgarians and Rus’, and beyond them.30 Although Moravia was destroyed by the Hungarians around 900 ce, it re-emerged later and has remained on the map as a regional unit under Bohemian/Czech rule. The Bohemian duchy had a less conspicuous early history in the late and post-Carolingian period, but came into its own in the tenth century. Along the eastern Adriatic, a Croatian duchy formed in the second half of the ninth century.31 In the north, the Carolingian Empire seems to have had an impact on the formation of a Danish kingdom.32 Empires can favour the growth of polities in their vicinity both implicitly and explicitly, by challenging and legitimizing them or by voluntary or involuntary transfers of riches to neighbouring powers. In that respect, the impact of the Ottonian Empire was more marked than that of the Carolingians before. Within the century of Ottonian rule (919–1024) and Middle Byzantine resurgence, the kingdoms of the Norwegians, Danes, Poles, and Hungarians emerged, were consolidated, and converted into Christian states, and Bohemia, the realm of the Czechs, became an important political node between the 28 29 30 31 32

Nestorchronik, trans. by Müller, Vorgeschichte, 90, p. 11. Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume; Pohl, Avars. Betti, The Making. Dzino, Becoming Slav. Garipzanov, ‘Peripheral Polities’.

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Western Empire and the Slavic world. In parallel, the Rus’ became a Christian power in the Orthodox sphere. It may seem paradox that at a point when the model of ethnic kingdoms had seemingly become contested in the west, it reemerged strongly in the north and east. In some respects, this second wave of Christian kingdoms and peoples resembles the first: the interaction with neighbouring ‘Roman’ empires; the Christianization of founder kings; the rise of ‘micro-Christendoms’ within a common western Christianity; the rivalries between the new kingdoms;33 the beginnings of Latin (or Greek) literacy; and the role of — usually clerical — ‘cultural brokers’ who conveyed shared Christian values and political models to the new elites.34 These ‘cultural brokers’ also helped to legitimize the identities of the new peoples and the position of their rulers and dynasties within a shared matrix of Christian politics. Sooner or later, one or the other of these representatives of Christian Latin culture wrote histories and reaffirmed the position of the kingdom, the people, and the ruler/s within a Christian political landscape. This is where the diachronic perspective suggested by the Historiography and Identity volumes becomes productive. It is well worth asking to what extent the histories of the second wave of new kingdoms resembled those of the first, or whether they are shaped by the concerns of a rather different epoch. In both cases, what was at stake was constructing identities that had no clear precedent. When Cassiodorus, Jordanes, and Isidore wrote, one could read about Goths in ancient histories, but not about Christian Gothic kingdoms in former Roman provinces. The new forms of identification, their origins, and their significance for the cohesion of the kingdom had to be integrated into a single narrative. These were not ethnic histories in the sense that only the origin of the gens mattered; they also had to account for the origin of the regnum, the patria, the ecclesia, the leges, the relationship to the imperium, and, in most cases, the stirps or genealogia of the kings.35 They were, however, ethnic in the sense that the name of the gens served as the common denominator for all these related, but not necessarily coinciding levels of identification. What we wanted to explore in the present volume, then, is in what ways these various levels of identification mattered, and how they were balanced in the early histories of the Danes and Norwegians, Letts and Livs, Czechs and Poles, Hungarians and Croats, Serbs or the Rus’. 33 34 35

Brown, Rise of Western Christendom, pp. 355–80. Reimitz, ‘Cultural Brokers’. Pohl, ‘Gotische Identitäten’.

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Chapters of this Volume The first section, Scandinavian and Baltic Origins, starts with Ian Wood’s chapter that addresses the historiographic view a close outsider had of Scandinavia in the eleventh century: Adam of Bremen, whose archdiocese had vested interests in the newly converted and missionary areas of the north. His Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum was written in the 1070s, building on an impressive variety of sources. As in other cases (Gregory of Tours, Bede, and later Thomas of Spalato) church history became a vehicle to assess the growth and significance of peoples and kingdoms — in this case, a diocesan chronicle, the History of the Archbishops of Hamburg­Bremen. Interestingly, the Gesta start with a substantial account of the origin of the Saxons, which extensively uses a similar beginning of the ninth-century Translatio S. Alexandri:36 As we are to write a history of the Church of Hamburg, and because Hamburg once was a most noble city of the Saxons, we do not regard it as unfitting or useless if we first write about the people of the Saxons and the nature of this province.37

Adam’s fourth book offers an ethnographic panorama of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Wood discusses Adam’s sources and the use he makes of them. Some of his information goes back to the ‘missionary lives’ of the pioneers of Nordic missions and of the diocese of Hamburg, Anskar and Rimbert, in the later ninth century.38 Adam also used a rather wide range of Carolingian and post-Carolingian annals and histories, and was inspired by classical authors. Yet the main focus of Wood’s chapter is on Adam practising oral history with one of the best-informed and educated interview partners, the Danish king Sven Estridsen. King Sven could brief Adam on his family history, but also about the history of Sweden, where he had spent some years, and about the progress of Christianization in Nordic lands. The hints to his interlocutor that the author gives are detailed enough to trace some of the king’s bias and interest in the way he tells his stories. To what extent, for instance, does the representation of Nordic ‘paganism’ in the History rely on actual observation, ancient 36 Translatio S. Alexandri, ed. by Pertz, iv–vii, pp. 674–76; Adam of Bremen, Gesta, ed. by Trillmich, i.1–7, pp. 164–70 (ed. by Schmeidler, i.1–7, pp. 4–8). 37 ‘Historiam Hammaburgensis ecclesiae scripturi, quoniam Hammaburg nobilissima quondam Saxonum civitas erat, non indecens aut vacuum fore putamus, si prius de gente Saxonum et natura eisudem provintiae ponemus’: Adam of Bremen, Gesta, ed. by Trillmich, i.1, p. 164 (ed. by Schmeidler, i.1, p. 4). 38 Wood, The Missionary Life.

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stereotypes, missionary polemic, or intra-Scandinavian tensions? Can we rely on the vivid description of the temple at Uppsala where golden statues of Thor, Woden, and Fricco were supposed to be venerated? Even though critical judgements prevail in recent historiography, what is striking is the amount of very plausible information in Adam’s text. Thus, Adam’s History does not simply relate outside perceptions, but also allows us to reconstruct an insider’s vantage point on the emergence of Christian kingdoms in Scandinavia and their situation in the recent past. Sverre Bagge’s contribution examines two major works of historical writing from medieval Scandinavia, the Gesta Danorum written by Saxo Grammaticus and the Heimskringla written by the Icelandic nobleman Snorri Sturluson, both composed in the thirteenth century.39 The Heimskringla was written against a dynamic political background of Iceland’s independence prior to the country’s internal struggles and submission to Norway in 1262, and of Snorri’s complicated and changing relationship with Håkon, the king of Norway. In contrast to the Gesta Danorum, which was composed in elaborate and complicated Latin, the saga, which was written in Old Norse, was much more approachable to its Icelandic and Norwegian audiences. Although the two works quite obviously differ in language and style from each other, Bagge shows how they share certain narratives, in particular the connection between Roman and Scandinavian history. Saxo’s aim was to establish parallels between Danish and Roman history, connecting the origins of Denmark and the foundation of Rome, Danish rulers and Roman emperors with each other. A similar parallel can also be found in the Heimskringla through the incorporation of an earlier work that positions the genealogical origins of Norwegian rulers in the times of Christ’s birth, although in his work Snorri chose Óðinn as the founder of the dynasty. Both Snorri and Saxo reach back to the classical past to bolster the origins of Danish and Norwegian rulership with a strong and illustrious historical background, while at the same time arguing for the independence of their kingdoms in the present day. A great challenge for both historians was how to narrate the conversion to Christianity, which had to demonstrate a well-balanced powerplay between political and religious authorities, without giving foreign influence and missionary activities too much room and without diminishing ancient religious customs. This could be done more smoothly for the Norwegian and Icelandic conversions as, in both cases, they were depicted as being undertaken with the 39

Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, ed. by Friis-Jensen, trans. by Fisher; Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, trans. by Hollander; Bagge, Society and Politics.

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free will of the respective peoples, and conducted in accordance with their customs and laws. In this respect, the Danish conversion, which was initiated by a missionary coming from the Roman Empire of the Franks, was more difficult to narrate. In this process, as Bagge argues, saintly kings, such as Óláfr Tryggvason and St Olaf Haraldsson, played a vital role in convincing their people of the Christian faith, through prayer, preaching, and the support of the elites, or, if necessary, by force. Clovis, Aethelbert, or even the Emperor Constantine had not acquired a similar saintly status in the first millennium.40 Although Saxo Grammaticus and Snorri Sturluson display different approaches in their works, both historians offer valuable sources of information for the early phase of Scandinavian state formation, in which contemporary rulership and independence was also shaped by their connections to the Roman past. Rosalind Bonté discusses and re-evaluates the conversion of the Orkney Islands by Óláfr Tryggvason in 995 as depicted in the Orkneyinga saga (OS), which is the most important medieval source for the islands’ history from the time of the Norse settlement up to the time of the saga’s production in the thirteenth century.41 In the saga, the conversion of both the islands’ broader population and its ruling class, who are described as being truly pagan, is narrated as a singular event. Tryggvason, who was on his way with a fleet to Norway, landed on one of the archipelago’s islands, where he happened to meet Orkney’s ruler, Jarl Sigurðr. Threatened with death, the pagan ruler was pressured into embracing the Christian faith. Orkney’s conversion is depicted as a top-down process, which was subsequently followed by apostasy, the return to the pagan cult of Óðinn, punishment, and correction. The OS is an important yet complicated literary source. The original form of the saga is lost and the extant manuscripts preserve only incomplete and fragmentary versions which, moreover, exhibit multiple stages of production and redaction. The repeated reshaping of the saga’s content at different times and in different contexts, with the main text coming from a manuscript that was heavily redacted in Iceland sometime in the 1230s, created a complex multilayered source of information. Therefore, as Bonté argues, the conversion account of Orkney as told in the saga should be treated with caution. It does not necessarily narrate a contemporary Orcadian perspective, but rather a thirteenthcentury Icelandic one. The saga’s account differs strongly from the archaeological record from Orkney, which indicates the construction of early chapels 40 A cult of Aethelbert is only attested from the thirteenth century onwards. Higham, Convert Kings. 41 Orkneyinga saga, ed. and trans. by Taylor.

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and the coexistence of Christian and pagan burial practices. Both suggest the existence of Christian communities predating the arrival of Óláfr Tryggvason. Reassessing the saga together with these material finds from a multidisciplinary perspective, Bonté convincingly argues that Orkney’s conversion process was more likely to have been a gradual, peaceable, and bottom-up one than being instigated by a single act of coercion. The specific depiction of the conversion in the saga resulted from the complex interests of the later Icelandic redactors and their context. They introduced the example of Orkney’s forced conversion in contrast with Iceland’s voluntary one. The Christian faith was introduced at an Icelandic Alþingi, or assembly, and conversion took place in agreement with traditional laws and the people’s consent. Thus, the redactors used this story as an element to reinforce Iceland’s identity, and its claim for independence and sovereignty when faced with increasing Norwegian influence. At the same time, the saga provides an explanation for Orkney’s submission to Norwegian rule. Stefan Donecker and Peter Fraundorfer’s chapter also addresses the topic of Christianization and conversion but from the perspective of ethnography. It examines the description of the eastern Baltic littoral, its peoples, and main political players through the lens of biblical motifs in the Chronicon Livoniae written by Henry of Livonia in the 1220s.42 The chronicle is a highly valuable source for the events of the Livonian Crusade between 1184 and 1227, in particular because of the author’s close proximity to the events which he described. Although it was originally intended as a report to the papal Curia, Henry’s aim was to deliver more than a mere documentation of events but also to integrate the peoples and events into salvation history. Donecker and Fraundorfer show convincingly and in much detail how Henry relied strongly on the biblical language and topoi of the Vulgate, the Breviary, and missals he had at his disposal in order to establish links between Livs, Letts, Estonians, Lithuanians, and smaller peoples and their possible eschatological role. While Greek and Roman ethnography and geography often play an important role in medieval historiography as a source of information and as models to categorize the world and its peoples, this option was not to hand in the case of the mainly nondescript eastern Baltic littoral. Henry, therefore, had to use the Bible to establish parallels between the past and the present, between regions and peoples, giving them ethnonyms and characteristic traits in relation to the area they inhabited or their actions. For instance, 42

The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, trans. by Brundage; Tamm, Jensen, and Kaljundi, eds, Crusading and Chronicle Writing.

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we find Rahab mentioned together with Babylonia, and the description of the territory of Ydumea with its inhabitants, the Ydumei, is a direct reference to the biblical land of Edom. However, Henry’s approach and use of biblical language is not consistent throughout the chronicle. He sometimes seems to have made rather haphazard use of terms such as gens, natio, and populus, which could be due to his quick, efficient way of writing. Nevertheless, the chronicle is a valuable example of how biblical language and topoi were used in order to appropriate less-known peoples and territories and to integrate them firmly into the Christian world and salvation history. Pavlína Rychterová’s chapter starts the section on ‘Cosmas of Prague, the Gesta principum Polonorum, and their Western Contexts’. She analyses the Chronica Bohemorum of Cosmas of Prague, written between 1118 and 1125.43 This was one of the most successful texts of the period in the new realms, as can be gleaned from its manuscripts, continuations, and uses in later works. Like many other works discussed in this volume, it was also central to concepts of national history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and as Rychterová argues, its interpretation largely remained geared to the research questions raised in that context even when their ideological framing lost its momentum. The main interest still is to reconstruct the beginnings of Czech history and early Czech society in the light of Cosmas’s depiction. Some time ago, the hypothesis of a strong and centralized Czech state under the Přemyslids that was only ‘privatized’ in the thirteenth century gained ground.44 Lisa Wolverton has taken a more critical stance, focusing on Cosmas’s pessimistic view of power.45 As Rychterová argues, both positions — Cosmas as a herald or as a critic of the sovereign exercise of Přemyslid power — are prompted by the diligently stylized account offered by his Chronicle. Cosmas, educated at Liège, carefully employed his excellent knowledge of Livy and Sallust to exalt and at the same time chastise the Czech dukes in the guise of ancient Roman leaders, playing out the tension between the sophisticated classical models and the uncouth Bohemian backwaters in a way only a few of his well-trained peers could fully grasp. Rychterová explores the historiographic strategies of Cosmas in conjunction with a second text, the account in the Legenda Christiani of the lives of 43

Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Bohemorum: The Chronicle of the Czechs, ed. and trans. by Bak and Rychterová. 44 Třeštík, Mýty. 45 Wolverton, Cosmas. See also Plassmann, Origo gentis, pp. 321–58; her assertion that ‘die gens als Identitätsstifterin hat sozusagen ausgedient’ (p. 357 — the gens has become unimportant for identity) somehow reduces the balanced range of identifications that Cosmas offers.

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the tenth-century dynastic saints Wenceslas and Ludmila.46 This is a problematic text, purportedly written in the late tenth century but only transmitted in the fourteenth, so that some scholars have regarded it as a late fabrication. Its authenticity is now generally accepted, because a number of tenth-century features would not have been easy to forge in the fourteenth century. Both texts concur in many ways, for instance in the origin legend about Přemysl and the prophetic princess Libuše, which Cosmas elaborates into a golden age fantasy integrating Roman and biblical elements. Still, it is remarkable where Cosmas differs from ‘Christian’. Cosmas makes little of the death of St Wenceslas, and only refers to other works available on that subject. Apart from the confusion of languages in Babylon, Cosmas gives no place of origin for the ancestor Bohemus and his people who settled in a pristine Bohemia. In particular, their Slavic identity is never emphasized. In spite of their Slavic language, the Czechs are an entity of their own, aloof from their Slavic neighbours. Country, dynasty, language, and gens generally remain in balance as points of reference. The bishops of Prague appear as key figures for the well-being of the country, not surprisingly for a canon of St Vitus Cathedral. The history of the dynasty provides the red thread in the narrative, and Cosmas voices strong opinions about its members, dishing out praise and blame. The literary quality and classical veneer of the text surely account for much of its success as a text of identification for the Bohemi/Czechs and their dynasty. Its seductive narrative has also convinced many modern scholars, and Rychterová’s differentiated critique of its value as a source for the early Bohemian duchy will hopefully inspire further work. Jan Hasil’s chapter looks at Cosmas’s Chronicle47 from an unusual angle, that of an archaeologist.48 He critically remarks that so far, archaeologists have relied too much on Cosmas’s take on the early history of the Bohemian duchy, and on the national master narrative built on it since the eighteenth century. This established perspective has influenced decisions about which sites to excavate and how to interpret the archaeological evidence. For instance, sites that Cosmas attributes to the Přemyslid dynasty have often taken precedence, and have been used to reinforce the hypothesis of a strong Bohemian state in the first centuries of the Bohemian duchy. Hasil advocates a different kind of interdisciplinary approach. He analyses the spatial distribution of the sites mentioned in the Chronicle, carefully distinguishing between the mythical, the legendary, and 46

Legenda Christiani, ed. Ludvíkovský. For a critical overview of the debate, see Kalhous, Legenda Christiani. 47 Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Bohemorum, ed. and trans. by Rychterová and Bak. 48 For an overview of medieval archaeology in Bohemia, see Klápště, The Czech Lands.

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the historical periods, and the accounts of events that Cosmas had personally witnessed. In a second step, he confronts the spatial configuration of the political landscape of Bohemia as laid out in the text with the archaeological evidence. He notices that in spite of numerous excavations conducted on Bohemian hillforts of the period, access to the data is difficult because beyond primary documentation, electronic access to key data is sorely missing. Still, the existing data largely correspond to the use of the sites mentioned by Cosmas in the period. Thus, they mostly confirm that the spatial structure of the early Bohemian duchy does not support current scholarly narratives dating the unification of Bohemia with the rise of the dynasty. Two points emerge from the spatial analysis of the political landscape in the Chronicle: first, the mythical cradle of the duchy is in the Elbe/Labe region to the north of Prague, around Říp Mountain, and not in the Prague Basin, where activities only shift in the historical period, starting with the baptism of Duke Bořivoj I at the end of the ninth century. And second, the activities of the tenth-century duchy unfold in a relatively limited space, the castra/urbes (or hillforts) of central Bohemia around Prague. Archaeology can detect further settlements of the period which do not appear in the narrative, but also indicates that some regions of Bohemia were only thinly populated. Only in Cosmas’s own time, around 1100 ce, do peripheral regions become more closely aligned to the Bohemian duchy and the Church of Prague by increased communication along radial trunk roads. The Bohemian identity that Cosmas constructs thus has more regional roots than often assumed. Jan Klápště discusses a text that describes ‘pagans’ from a Christian perspective, Helmold of Bosau’s Chronica Slavorum. It was written in the 1160s (with a later addition) by a priest in the diocese of Oldenburg/Lübeck who was directly, and sometimes precariously involved in the Slavic missions. In his time, after three centuries, Christian efforts to reach lasting submission under the authority of the Church and the empire finally overcame Slavic resistance. The Chronica Slavorum is one among a number of Saxon and Danish chronicles of the period — Thietmar of Merseburg, Adam of Bremen, Saxo Grammaticus — that give us glimpses of the Slavs along the Elbe. Unlike Czechs and Poles, they preserved their tribal structure and traditional creed until the twelfth century. Klápště emphasizes the close connection between the political and religious aspect of their identity. Each family and each village had its own deities and idols, which Helmold calls ‘penates et ydola’; and each regional group or tribe had its shared cult places where a particular god was venerated, such as Prove in Oldenburg, Siwa of the Polabi, Radigast of the Obotriti, or Swantewit of the Rugiani. In Helmold’s perception, they made up a Slavic pantheon comparable to that of the ancient Romans, but the Slavs also acknowledged a higher God,

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‘deus deorum’, like that of the Christians. However, according to their creed he only ruled in heaven and was aloof from affairs on earth, in which only the Slavic deities could be asked for help.49 As Klápště argues, we should not take this hierarchical view related by Helmold as an indicator of a unified Slavic religion in the way in which we think of Roman religion. Each local group clung to its own belief, just as they insisted on their autonomy and were averse to political unification, be it under Saxon rule or under Slavic princes. In the story that the Chronicle tells, Christian Slavic rulers keep emerging, mostly with Saxon support and, as we can surmise, with the intent to follow the Czech or Polish model of a Christian duchy or monarchy. But they were regularly replaced by others who returned to traditional ways. What Helmold pictures as anti-Christian revolt, then, was also an expression of resistance against the construction of a more centralized Christian polity. As Klápště sums up: For Christianization to develop from the inside of Slavic society, it would have had to be associated with early state formation. The universal principles of Christianity would have provided the essential support for this process, but the latter stalled just like Christianization. The ‘missionary church’ therefore could not develop into a ‘state church’.50

At first glance, it may seem surprising that the Bohemians, Poles, and even the distant Rus’ had already become Christians two centuries earlier than the closest neighbours of the Christian Roman Empire. Yet it likely was the very closeness of the Slavs east of the Elbe which made independent ‘early state formation’ more difficult. It was not least Saxon political interference that rendered Saxon missions so frustrating. Like Adam of Bremen (on whom the early part of his account relies) and Thietmar, Helmold could hardly avoid criticizing Saxon dukes and counts and even bishops for unduly burdening Christianized Slavs, and for not caring for their spiritual and material well-being. In this sense, Helmold’s work was not just an outsider’s view. He was, of course, very much averse to Slavic ‘pagan’ practices, and recounts how travelling in Slavic lands with the bishop they destroyed a sacred grove.51 On the other hand, he sympathized somehow with the Slavic folks that were objects of his missionary zeal, and tried to understand what motivated them. To that extent, he was a cultural broker who operated in a middle ground. In his work we can catch glimpses of Slavic identi49 50 51

Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.52, pp. 196–99, and i.84, pp. 288–91. Klápště, in this volume, p. 219. Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.84, pp. 288–91.

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ties that did not develop into regnal affiliations like in the works of Cosmas or Gallus, but mostly were doomed to fade out soon. Rather than an origo gentis, what Helmold relates is the slow erosion of an ethnic and cultural landscape. Zbigniew Dalewski’s contribution examines the Gesta principum Polonorum, written almost at the same time as Cosmas’s Chronica Bohemorum, between 1112 and 1118.52 The different focus of the two works is already indicated in the titles.53 Gallus’s work indeed focuses more on the princes and shows little interest in the origins or agency of the Poles. There is no origo gentis legend here (as there is in Cosmas), just a rather wide-ranging geographical setting of Poland (Polonia) as a part of Sclavonia (the land of the Slavs; again, unlike in Cosmas). Gallus enumerates the neighbours of the Poles, from Denmark (called Dacia here) to Russia (Rusia), and the lands of Sclavonia.54 Unlike in the Gesta Hungarorum, there is no detailed topography of the country itself. The backbone of the chronicle is indeed the succession of the princes from the Piast dynasty. It should be noted that the dynasty is not called by this name in the chronicle; we only hear that it was descended from Pazt, a domestic in the house of a ploughman from Gniezno, whose son Siemowit was to become duke of Poland.55 As in the Chronica Bohemorum, the humble origins of the family are emphasized; its vocation, however, is not expressed by a prophetess, but by a miracle. Dalewski offers a very plausible contextualization of the Gesta and its emplotment. In a prolonged fraternal struggle, Bolesław III had dethroned and killed his older half-brother Zbigniew in order to become prince of all of Poland, and the text streamlines the dynastic history of his predecessors to legitimize this controversial move. The Gesta do not address the pre-Piast history of Poland at all; Prince Popiel of Gniezno is just mentioned as a counterfoil to the emerging Piast family. More importantly, regnal divisions, non-reigning brothers, and side-lines of the family are consequently written out of the narrative — with the one exception of the transition to the branch of Bolesław III. 52 Gesta principum Polonorum, trans. by Knoll and Schaer. Plassmann, Origo gentis, pp. 292–321. 53 As the earliest transmitted manuscript is from the late fourteenth century, the title and the chapter headings may be later additions: Bisson, ‘Introduction’, p. xxiv. The author’s name, Gallus, is only mentioned in a marginal note in a sixteenth-century manuscript: ibid., p. xxv. The introduction of the chronicle states that its subject are the deeds of the princes of the Poles, ‘res gestas principum Polonicorum’, in the honour of Prince Bolesław III Wrymouth (1102–1138): Gesta principum Polonorum, trans. by Knoll and Schaer, Prohemium, p. 10. 54 Gesta principum Polonorum, trans. by Knoll and Schaer, Prohemium, pp. 10–15. 55 Gesta principum Polonorum, trans. by Knoll and Schaer, i.2, pp. 17–22.

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The aim is to delegitimize the initial division between Zbigniew and Bolesław. Yet, as Dalewski notes, the restructuring of Polish history of the realm along the lines of filial succession did not have an impact on future decisions. Even Bolesław III divided the country among his sons. However, and this is a parallel with most of the histories discussed in this volume: the Gesta shaped the historiography of the beginnings of Polish history, from the medieval works of ‘Master Vincent’ Kadłubek to modern scholarship.56 Jacek Banaszkiewicz addresses one particular story in the Gesta, in which the emperor is so stupefied by the splendour of the court of Bolesław I that he puts his own crown on the head of the Polish prince, and raises him to royal dignity. Tracing the story back to the Old Testament account of Queen Sheba visiting King Solomon, Banaszkiewicz contextualizes it in several medieval versions of high-ranking visitors being struck by extraordinary displays of rulership by their hosts. In the late ninth century, Notker of St Gall told the story about Byzantine ambassadors to Charlemagne who mistook a series of splendidly dressed court dignitaries for the ruler before even meeting him, and were maltreated as a consequence. In the later tenth century, the Chronicle of Salerno casts Charlemagne in the role of the visitor astonished by the splendour of Prince Arechis II’s court at Salerno. It is in a similar sense that Bolesław is depicted as impressing Otto III. The motif comes full circle in the twelfthcentury Pèlerinage de Charlemagne which relates his visit to the overwhelming glories of the Byzantine court. In the course of its uses in rather different contexts in the West, between Poland and southern Italy, the logic of the story was reversed: from a narrative glorifying Charlemagne and the nascent Western Empire it turned into a story in which Charlemagne (or Otto III) have to acknowledge the splendour of another ruler, mostly, a peripheral prince. As such, it served as a paradox vehicle to express imperial recognition, coupled with a dose of derision for the Western Empire in its neighbouring regions: although regional rulers could still gain from imperial acknowledgment, the empire was obviously regarded as somehow underperforming in terms of imperial power and representation. How this story travelled is unclear — it is unlikely that the Salerno Chronicle, preserved in a single manuscript, was known to the author of the Gesta at all.57 We can probably assume a number of oral versions linking Charlemagne with different 56 Banaszkiewicz, ‘Master Vincent’; Kersken, Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 686–89; Berend, ‘Historical Writing’, pp. 314–22; see also von Güttner-Sporzyński, ed., Writing History in Medieval Poland. 57 For the Salerno Chronicle, see Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, pp. 55–67.

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rulers and contexts, which the mysterious ‘Gallus’ took to Poland, whether he came from Gaul, Italy, or even Germany. It offered an attractive way to negotiate the relationship to the ‘Roman’ Empire for its neighbours, who were aware that the emperor’s resources rarely matched his pretensions, and were looking for occasions to outperform him.58 In the third section ‘Hungarian Origins and their Political Uses’, Max Diesenberger discusses a text that takes up several threads from late antique and earlier medieval historiography, and in turn became influential in later works (among others, in Cosmas and Master P.’s Hungarian chronicle). Regino of Prüm wrote his chronicle in the first years of the tenth century, and seems to have finished it soon after the last recorded events of 906.59 In an ethnographic digression attached to the year 889, he discusses the origin and nature of the Hungarians. The information available to him was restricted: the Hungarians came from Scythia, the steppes north of the Black Sea; they were driven out by the Pechenegs, and fled to Pannonia where the Avars had once lived; and they began to raid in Carinthia, Moravia, and Bulgaria, later extending their range of action to Italy.60 The rest of the digression is an ingenuous mixture of barbarian stereotypes derived from the millenarian tradition of classical ethnography.61 Regino’s main source was Justin’s Epitome (second century  ce) of the Historiae Philippicae of Pompeius Trogus, composed around the turn of the era.62 This work provided a synthesis of the history of the Scythians, the ancient steppe people whom Herodotus had described and whose name had already become an ethnographic category by the time when Justin wrote. As Diesenberger shows, Regino modified Justin’s relatively friendly description of the noble savages to draw a grisly picture of the gens Hungarorum, ‘extremely warlike and more savage than a beast’.63 This is more in tune with the mainstream of ancient Scythian stereotypes than Justin was; but Regino’s access to the works in which such topoi could be found seems to have been rather limited. For dramatic images of the havoc that the Hungarians wrought in Italy and elsewhere, he swiftly turned to Paul the Deacon’s description of Germanic 58

For similar cases of ‘contrarianism’ in Byzantium, see Shepard, ‘Countering Byzantium’s Shadow’. 59 MacLean, History and Politics, pp. 1–10. 60 Regino of Prüm, Chronicle, trans. by MacLean, s.a. 889, pp. 202–06. 61 Pohl, ‘Barbarische Herrschaftsbildungen’, pp. 543–50; Pohl, ‘Distant Peoples’. 62 Justin, Historiae, ed. and trans. by Emberger. 63 Regino of Prüm, Chronicle, trans. by MacLean, s.a. 889, p. 202.

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raids at the beginning of his Lombard history.64 And the next section from Justin about the way the Parthians fought was complemented by a comparison to Breton warfare, and by the old motif of the nomads eating raw meat and drinking blood. This rather haphazard mixture of alarming images could simply be explained by the attempt to turn to classical texts to get some clues about a new and dangerous enemy. Diesenberger offers a more sophisticated explanation. Regino uses the Hungarians to convey messages about Frankish politics in a time of crisis, when the Carolingian Empire had crumbled and a child ruled the East Frankish Kingdom. He dates the fatal blow to Carolingian rule to the death on Charles III in 888, and explains the appearance of the Hungarians as a direct consequence, by dating it to 889, when in fact no major raids had yet occurred. And he appealed to the loyalty of the quarrelsome Lotharingian and East Frankish aristocracy, who should remain faithful to the king and face the threat from the steppe together. The ‘Scythian’ stereotype applied to the Hungarians was later elaborated by other authors in the West, among them, Liutprand of Cremona, Radulf Glaber, Godfrey of Viterbo, and Otto of Freising (although the latter’s sister-in-law was a Hungarian princess). Eventually, writers in Hungary gave the images of savagery and military prowess of the Hungarians a positive spin, culminating in the humanists at the court of Matthias Corvinus in the fifteenth century.65 Dániel Bagi focuses on the two oldest Hungarian chronicles, by the socalled ‘Anonymus’ (Master P.), written after 1200, and by Simon of Kéza from the 1280s.66 The anonymous author had been a notary of one of the kings named Béla, who can with some probability be identified with Béla III (1172–1196). His history carefully balances several lines of identification. The work is called ‘Gesta Hunga[ro]rum’ in the thirteenth-century manuscript, and already in the prologue the author defines his topic as ‘the genealogy of the kings of Hungary and their noblemen’ and the deeds of the ‘nobilissima gens Hungarie’ and its migration from Scythia to Pannonia.67 The node of this narrative is the election of the first duke, Álmos, by the ‘seven leading persons (VII principales personae) 64

Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, i.1, p. 48. Bäuml and Birnbaum, eds, Attila; Róna-Tas, Hungarians and Europe, pp. 423–38. 66 Anonymus, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by Rady and Veszprémy, Prologue; Simon of Kéza, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by Veszprémy and Schaer. 67 Anonymus, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by Rady and Veszprémy, Prologue, pp. 2–5. For an overview of the early history of the Hungarians and the research problems connected with it, see Berend, Lszlovsky, and Szakács, ‘Kingdom of Hungary’. 65

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called Hetumoger’, and their oath to always have a duke from the descendants of Álmos.68 The main part of the Chronicle then deals with the way in which the Hungarian dukes and their noble milites became ‘radicated throughout Hungary’, offering an extensive topography of the noble families and their origins in their regions and centres.69 The Chronicle ends with the birth of Duke Géza in the 930s.70 The text also distinguishes clearly between the outside denomination ‘Hungarians’ and the self-designation Mogor —Magyars. The Anonymus unobtrusively places the genealogy of the Arpad dynasty in the matrix of two essential European ethnic origin myths. The prologue starts with a reference to the Trojan history by Dares Phrygius, which provided a summary of the Trojan War to serve as a prequel for the Frankish origin myth from Troy, and became widely known from the eighth century onwards.71 By contrast, Master P. derives the Hungarians from the Scythians and from the biblical peoples of Gog and Magog, who had also become linked with the Alexander romance, thus tapping into a mythical ancestry shared by many medieval peoples with a steppe background, without elaborating on these wellknown stories. In his account, the Arpad dynasty is descended from Attila King of the Huns, whose residence is placed in Buda. A main source for these connections is Regino of Prüm’s digression on the Hungarians. Simon of Kéza, also a royal notary, extended the Scythian background of the Hungarians only sketched in the earlier work. He included a history of the Huns and emphasized the identity of Huns and Hungarians. As Bagi argues, his extended treatment of the steppe background of the Hungarians was no coincidence, because Simon wrote under King Ladislas IV, whose mother was Cuman, and who cherished the ways of life of the Cumans who had withdrawn to Hungary under Mongol pressure. Bagi approaches both texts to analyse the way in which they deal with the ethnic plurality of the Hungarian kingdom, which they both acknowledge.72 In Bagi’s view, the difference between the two authors was that Master P. established a clear hierarchy between the conquering Hungarians and the subject peoples, while Simon of Kéza propagated a process of integration by which immigrants into the country (not least, the Cumans) could acquire the same legal status and cultural competence as the Hungarians. 68

Anonymus, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by Rady and Veszprémy, v–vi, pp. 16–19. Anonymus, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by Rady and Veszprémy, lvii, pp. 124–26. 70 Anonymus, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by Rady and Veszprémy, lvii, pp. 126. 71 Dares Phrygius, De excidio Troiae historia, ed. by Meister; Latin text at [accessed 6 September 2021]. 72 Cf. Berend, At the Gate of Christendom. 69

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Since then, and to this day, the steppe heritage of the Hungarians emphasized by the two chronicles has often provided a basis for identity politics. László Veszprémy largely deals with the same chronicles in a broader perspective. Simon of Kéza’s identification of Huns and Hungarians, he argues, also responded to western perceptions of the steppe peoples in the Carpathian Basin. Indeed, Huns, Avars, and Hungarians were often regarded as one and the same people by medieval Latin authors, a view suggested by the frequent use of ‘Huns’ (instead of or synonymous with ‘Scythians’) as an ethnographic umbrella term.73 This identification, as Vezsprémy emphasizes, had enormous impact on future self-perceptions of the Hungarians. Even nowadays, there are scholars who advocate the theory of a Hungarian ‘double land-taking’, proposed by the archaeologist Gyula László in the 1950s.74 Interestingly, Simon, who knew the work of Master P., abandoned his genealogical construction of tracing the Arpad pedigree back to Attila. And, as Veszprémy shows, he also replaced Magog as an ancestor of the Hungarians with the biblical hero Nimrod, a version that did not prevail in later historiography. The challenge for both thirteenth-century chroniclers, according to Veszprémy, was not only to convince Hungarians of their own noble past. They also sought to meet the challenge of western perceptions, where scholars hesitated to abandon the nomad and barbarian stereotypes and recognize Hungary as a Christian kingdom on a par with Western European realms. The response of the authors in Hungary was not to condemn or elide their own pagan past, and focus on more recent exploits. On the contrary, they built their claims of superiority on a recognized strand of shared knowledge of legends about steppe peoples, in which Gog and Magog in the Bible, the ancient ethnography of the Scythians and Amazons, the Alexander Romance, and the towering figure of Attila in late antique historiography and (as King Etzel) in German epic all played a role. The early Hungarians were pictured as dignified successors to these noble traditions. As both Bagi and Veszprémy note, the Hungarian kingdom had (in Simon’s view) been constructed and lived ‘Romano more’, by Roman custom. In Master P.’s version, its founding act had been an oath by the seven ‘principal persons’ with several legal clauses. Thus, one could say it had never been a barbarian-style tyranny, rooted in nature and in the ties of blood. It was a state ‘by constitution’, established by the free will of its proponents.75 73

Pohl, ‘Huns, Avars, Hungarians’. László, A kettös honfoglalás; for a critique, Bálint, ‘A “kettős honfoglalás”’ (forthcoming in English translation). 75 For this distinction, see Geary, Myth of Nations. 74

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This is also reflected in its poly-ethnic character, where integration was possible regardless of one’s blood and origin — a characteristic where the legacy of steppe empires in fact coincides with the Roman tradition. Indeed, as the two chapters demonstrate, Hungarian medieval chronicles display a complex picture of Hungarian identity, which gave later (and modern) historiography a choice of several narrative threads to elaborate. Turning to the ‘Histories of Origins from the Adriatic and the Balkans’, Neven Budak examines the construction of the communal identities of Split and Brač as depicted in the Historia Salonitana, written by Thomas, archdeacon of Split in the 1260s, and in the Chronicle of Domnius de Cranchis, composed in 1405.76 The History of Salona, which is one of the most important sources for the Croatian High Middle Ages, offers a broad historical perspective, describing local history as well as supraregional events such as the Mongol invasion. It was studied with great interest in the seventeenth century, when the genre of Croatian historiography was thriving, and it played a central role in the construction of Croatian, Italian, and Dalmatian identities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Written about 150 years after the Historia, the Chronicle, which is now only preserved in fragments, has a strong local focus on Brač. At the time of the Chronicle’s composition, Brač was an autonomous commune within the territory of Split, and the text thus offers a complementary perspective from the ‘Dalmatian province’. It is also an important historical document, as it provides the first description of the island. Although these two historical works are quite different in scope and style, with the Historia encompassing forty-nine elaborately written chapters while the Chronicle is rather short, they share the intention of creating identities for their respective communities and bolstering their independence against the background of interfering political interests and economic threats, as Budak convincingly shows. In order to establish a robust identity, Thomas started with the description of the history of Roman Dalmatia connecting Split with the ancient city of Salona. He argued that the citizens of Split were direct descendants of the ancient inhabitants of Salona, which had been the capital of the Roman province Dalmatia and an important late antique ecclesiastical centre. According to Thomas, it was destroyed and abandoned during the invasions of Goths, Avars, and Slavs in the sixth and seventh centuries. In Thomas’s days, a veritable challenge to the community of Split was posed by Venice’s dominant influence in Dalmatia, as well as by pirates. Establishing links to the ancient 76

Thomas of Spalato, Historia Salonitanorum atque Spalatinorum Pontificum, ed. and trans. by Karbić and others.

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past not only created an ideological framework that defined the inhabitants of Split as members of a larger community, of the gens Latina, but also had practical consequences. By understanding the Church of Split as a continuation of the metropolitan Church of Salona, the Historia asserted its rights and supremacy over other Dalmatian churches. As with the Historia, one aim of the Chronicle of Brač was to enforce the community’s contemporary interests. This was especially important as, in the thirteenth century, Split repeatedly tried to integrate the island into its territory even while it was constantly being threatened by pirate attacks. Therefore, it was vital for the chronicle’s author, Domnius, to legitimize the independence of the island. In the Chronicle he argued that a part of Brač’s population were directly descended from refugees from Salona and that they could thus claim their origins to be from Roman nobility, on a par with Split. As Budak shows, both authors used Salona and its imperial Roman past in their historiographical works to establish their communities’ identities and rights during times when the political landscape had been fundamentally changed and new players had appeared. Analysing several historiographic works and their descriptions of Grado and Split, Peter Štih offers an in-depth perspective on the important role of local historical works and how they contributed to the creation of local identities. The works under scrutiny are the Historia Salonitana, the Istoria Veneticorum, the Translatio sancti Marci, and three eleventh-century chronicles, the Chronicon Gradense, the Chronicon Altinate, and the Chronica de sin­ gulis patriarchis nove Aquileie.77 In these sources, the examples of the Churches of Grado and Split are used to demonstrate how archiepiscopal and metropolitan positions and rights could be (re)negotiated by reaching back to their beginnings and into the ancient past. In Late Antiquity, the Patriarchate of Aquileia, which for some time had been the second most important church in Italy, lost its prestigious position when the ecclesiastical province was divided following the Lombard invasion, and one part remained under the rule of the Byzantine emperor while the other came under the authority of the Lombard king. The destruction of the city by Attila the Hun in 452 had already diminished the influence of its see and unsettled its ecclesiastical authority. Patriarch Marcellinus eventually fled from the city to Grado. On the other hand, these 77

Cronache (= Ioannes Diaconus [ John the Deacon], Istoria Veneticorum; Chronica de singulis patriarchis nove Aquileie; Chronicon Gradense; Chronicon Altinate; Andreas Dandulus, Chronica per extensum descripta; Translatio sancti Marci), ed. by Fedalto and Berto; Borri, ‘Arrivano i barbari’.

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events became key elements in the history of the Church of Grado, which in the succeeding decades flourished as an influential ecclesiastical institution. Rivalry and conflicts between these two competing patriarchates, which were each supported by different political factions, the Carolingians and their successors on the one hand and Venice on the other, lasted well until the High Middle Ages. Štih then shows that, in the eleventh century, Grado succeeded in proving that the transfer of the patriarchal see from Aquileia to Grado had originally been intended to be a permanent one and that it was its legitimate successor as Aquileia nova. This idea is echoed in the contemporary historiographical works and was also supported by the leading clergy of the local cathedral in Grado. Eventually, this may have facilitated the further transfer of the patriarchal see from Grado to Venice. The ecclesiastical history of Split is in many aspects similar to that of Grado. It associated its own beginnings and its archiepiscopal and metropolitan position with the city of Salona. Like Aquileia, Salona had been a provincial metropolitan church, and it was invaded and destroyed sometime in the seventh century. While Split achieved its position through the transfer of its ecclesiastical see, there is no reflection in the local historiography of competition or fight over its heritage and legacy. Split’s position and reputation was grounded on the relics of St Domnius, martyred in the period of Emperor Trajan, and Salona’s destruction represented a clear-cut new beginning for Split. While ancient Salona was important for the identity and self-understanding of the Church of Split and of its municipal community, the city could also bolster its position by claiming continuity with Roman times because of the palace of Emperor Diocletian. Nevertheless, Salona remained an important part of Split’s local memory, linking the two cities also spiritually. Examining the establishment and development of the Churches of Grado and Split, Štih shows how, in times of changing political fortunes and wedged between different influential political players, the usage and claiming of past traditions offered communities the possibility to enhance their own authority and standing. This not only comprised the transfer of privileges and the ownership of rights and honours, but also a shared memory and spiritual heritage. Francesco Borri examines the different narratives of Venice’s origins in late antique and early medieval sources and their incorporation into a unified identity as depicted in John the Deacon’s eleventh-century Istoria Veneticorum.78 The Istoria is a political yet also highly informative source, providing a narra78

Giovanni Diacono ( John the Deacon), Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto; Berto, The Political and Social Vocabulary.

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tive framework for the history of the Adriatic and its neighbouring regions. Venetia first emerged in the times of Emperor Augustus, and in the course of Italy’s eventful history, with the Lombard and Frankish conquests in the sixth and eighth centuries, its description and perception underwent several transformations. As Borri shows, these broader political and social changes, as well as its growing autonomy, were mirrored in Venice’s changing terminological designations and meanings. In the eleventh century, during the reign of Duke Peter II Orseolo and against the background of dynastic struggles and wars with neighbours, John the Deacon reached back into Venice’s earliest tangible past in order to construct a robust and powerful identity for his present day. John composed a history of his people from many different sources and fragments, some of which are now unknown to us. Although the Istoria’s composition was strongly influenced by and dependent on the works of Cassiodorus, Jordanes, and especially Paul the Deacon, the author succeeded in creating an original approach to the historical materials. In the course of medieval history, the Venetici, described as descendants from both the Roman province and from an ancient gens who had inhabited the region in pre-Roman times, stepped from the fringes of the Lombard kingdom into the spotlight. Bringing the history of ancient Rome and of the Lombard kingdom together with myths and legends, John introduced motifs, such as the flight from barbarian invaders and the settlement in the wild marshes, which would become central elements in Venice’s identity. Thus, he created a patria Venecia that was on the one hand connected with the imperial past but on the other clearly distinguishable from adjacent regions and distinct from its Frankish and Lombard neighbours. In the Istoria, having emerged from a violent past, Venice’s present and future promised to be prosperous and fortunate. It was governed by dukes, who fostered important friendships with eastern and western emperors. In the final chapter of this section, Aleksandar Uzelac examines the emergence of Serbia, focusing first on the Kingdom of Dioclea or Zeta, which was situated between Lake Skadar and the Adriatic Sea and roughly corresponds to the southern parts of the modern Republic of Montenegro. This region emerged as a political power in eleventh-century Byzantine sources; however, periods of its early history remain obscure. Dioclea lost its influence for some time when, in the first half of the twelfth century, Serbia or Rascia became a leading power among the Slavic peoples in the eastern Adriatic. A governing system of shared principalities was established under the presidency of the arch-župan, who shared his power with family members. This system of shared dynastic rulership was promoted by Byzantium as it allowed the empire better control of

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this region. Independence from the empire became the goal of the Nemanjić dynasty, whose rulership started with the founding figure Stefan Nemanja in 1167 and would last until the fourteenth century. Right from the onset of his reign, Stefan Nemanja actively sought to build anti-Byzantine coalitions with Hungary, among Bulgar rebels, and with Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. These efforts eventually erupted in open military conflict and ended with his defeat in the Battle of Morava in 1190. Although he was defeated, Stefan did not have to resign but was instead able to strengthen his position by marrying one of his sons to a Byzantine princess. Two hagiographical works were written shortly after Stefan’s death by his sons, Sava’s Vita Simonis, written in 1207, emphasizing the monastic aspects of Stefan’s life, and a work by his second son Stefan, which focused on his secular life.79 Both brothers would hold a central position in Serbia’s history. Sava is considered to be the founder of the independent Serbian Orthodox Church, while Stefan became the first crowned king of Serbia in 1217. In the ensuing power struggles between the brothers, the region of Dioclea gained in influence and became closely connected to the rise of the dynasty, first as an element of the conflict, and also as the centre of a state that preceded the Nemanjić dynasty, and was later used as an important part of the dynasty’s identity and heritage. One of the most challenging texts discussed in the present volume is the chronicle in Old Russian about the origins of the Rus’, variously known as ‘Nestor Chronicle’, or under the Russian title preserved in the manuscripts, Povest’ vre­ mennykh let (PVL) and its various possible translations, such as ‘Chronicle of Bygone Years’ or ‘[Russian] Primary Chronicle’.80 In the final section, ‘The Rus’ Primary Chronicle, the Old Testament, and the Byzantine Background’, Donald Ostrowski offers a detailed account of the controversial debates about authorship and date/s of composition or compilation, and expounds his own explanation. Without doubt, the Chronicle originated in a Kyiv monastery, begins with the Flood, and takes its narrative to the year 1116. Beyond that, the problem is to make sense of the various and to some extent contradictory hints of authorship found in the six extant manuscripts. Similar to the seventh-century Frankish ‘Fredegar Chronicle’, and to the Gesta principum Polonorum ascribed to ‘Gallus’, the name ‘Nestor’ only occurs in one early modern manuscript, which could refer 79

Spisi Svetog Save, ed. by Ćorović (Sava); Stefan Prvovenčani, Sabrana dela, ed. by Jovanović (Stefan). For the historiography of South-Eastern Europe, see Guran, ‘Slavonic Historical Writing’. 80 ‘The Russian Primary Chronicle’, ed. and trans. by Cross; German translation: Nestorchronik, trans. by Müller. For an overview, see Shepard, ‘The Shaping of Past and Present’. Guimon, Historical Writing of Early Rus (c. 1000–c. 1400) in a Comparative Perspective.

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to a known author of saints’ lives active around 1100; but that may well have been a copyist’s conjecture. Another hint is a colophon in one group of manuscripts stating that one Sil’vestr, abbot (hegumen) of St Michael’s Monastery in Kyiv, had (a choice left open by the Russian word used) written, compiled, or copied the Chronicle in 1116. A third trace leads to a monk named Vasilii, who inserted himself as a messenger in his narrative for the year 1097. There are several other passages with bits of a first-person narrative, which may or may not point to the same Vasilii. Finally, there are also hints to a monk called Nikon. A plausible way to resolve these divergent traces of authorship is to assume multiple authors. Ostrowski offers a very solidly argued and sophisticated hypothesis in that respect, taking account of all hints in the transmitted texts. He assumes a break in the text in the year 1054, and ascribes the first part to Nikon, a monk of the Feodosii Caves Monastery at Kyiv. The second part would have been written by Vasilii, also of the Caves Monastery. Sil’vestr then only copied the text for another Kyiv monastery, adding his colophon, which is only preserved in one group of manuscripts. Ostrovsky asserts that the attribution to Nestor, the author of some hagiographical works of the period, was only due to a later mistake. Indeed, the monastic background and the annalistic structure of a large part of the text support a multi-authorial interpretation, and assuming two main compilers who wrote large parts of the text can be based on structural arguments. One might, however, ask why one of the most prominent religious figures of the time, the abbot and later bishop Sil’vestr, should have limited himself to simply copying the text without reworking it, a task he could have left to a less illustrious monk. This is where the scenario proposed by Oleksiy Tolochko diametrically contradicts Ostrowski’s version. He takes Sil’vestr’s colophon to indicate the abbot as a sole author of the Chronicle. The context makes this hypothesis attractive: under the rule of the educated Prince Volodimer Monomakh, a grand ceremony was staged for the translation of the dynastic martyrs and saints Boris and Gleb to the new cathedral built at St Michael’s in 1115, the year before Sil’vestr’s colophon was written. This event receives ample coverage towards the end of the text. It certainly provides a plausible reason for the composition of the text, and Sil’vestr is mentioned as abbot taking part in the ceremony. Whether it bears the weight of the argument for single authorship is not for the editors of this volume to decide; Sil’vestr must have used or incorporated previous annalistic texts. The authorship is, in any case, not the main thrust of Tolochko’s argument, which very commendably addresses the question how the Chronicle constructs identities. The long introduction of the Primary Chronicle in fact sets the stage for the rise of Rus’ in a wide-ranging ethnographic section, which is in many parts

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derived from the ninth-century Byzantine chronicle of George Harmatolos (or George the Monk).81 It begins with the ethnic genealogy starting with the sons of Noah, offering endless catalogues of ethnonyms, and affirms that the Slavs were one of the seventy-two biblical peoples. The text then turns to the Tower of Babylon, which is used to explain the emergence of the Slavic language. It then swiftly proceeds to an overview of the Slavic peoples, who at some time are supposed to have settled at the middle Danube. As Tolochko shows, this is not an origo gentis taking into account the earliest Slavs, but the narrative departs from the seminal missions of Cyril and Methodius in the Middle Danube area. It was from there, according to the Chronicle, that the Slavic peoples and tribes spread and derived their names from the regions where they settled, after rivers or the characteristics of the landscape. The narrative then zooms in on the Eastern Slavs. The focus is now on the Polyane living around Kyiv, and on the Slavic and non-Slavic peoples in the sphere that came to be dominated by the Rus’. Tolochko makes several important points in which older scholarship relied on flawed presuppositions. He insists that the narrative of the origin of the Slavs did not represent ancient collective memory, but is based on the erudition of the author and on his use of written sources. Perhaps more controversially, he warns us not to take Slavic identity for granted: ‘The Primary Chronicle is the first work to adopt this Byzantine label as a self-name and Sylvester was the first to embrace and promote a Slavic identity’. This argument relies, not least, on Florin Curta’s contention that the name ‘Slavs’ emerged as a Byzantine outside designation in the sixth century.82 We can, of course, only judge selfidentifications on the literate level. More than half a millennium after their appearance, the Chronicle was the first preserved major work of historiography written in a Slavic language and dealing with the emergence of the Slavs. One might, however, point to the Slavic lives of Cyril and Methodius as earlier texts promoting a Slavic and Christian identity. These texts were important sources for the Chronicle, and they were fundamental for its strategies of identification. Tolochko emphasizes the key role that Christianization played for both the emergence of the realm of Rus’, and for the identity of its Slavic subjects. As emerges from Tolochko’s chapter, identity construction was a particularly complex operation in the Primary Chronicle.83 By comparison, Cosmas 81

Georgios Monachos, Chronicon, ed. by de Boor and Wirth. Curta, Making of the Slavs. 83 See also Shepard, ‘Historical Writing in Rus’’, p. 290: ‘These rather clumsy bids to meld together Middle Dnieper regionalism, the ruling dynasty’s Scandinavian origins, and Slavonic linguistic ties fuel modern controversies as to the ethnic origin of the Rus’’. 82

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relatively swiftly constructed a linear narrative of the arrival of the Bohemians/ Czechs in their country and of the rise of their duchy, disregarding their Slavic origin.84 The early Hungarian chroniclers could appropriate ancient models of Scythian/Hun origins and history and insert the Hungarians, in a way similar to how Jordanes, in the sixth century, had incorporated the Goths into Scythian history. In the Primary Chronicle, the challenge was to align the Slavs in general, the Polyane of Kyiv, the other Slavic peoples (in particular, the Slovene of Novgorod), the Varangians, and the resulting realm of the Rus’. Tolochko quotes the passage in which the Chronicle tries to balance these overlapping elements of Rus’ identity: The Slavs and the Rus’ are the same people. For it is because of the Varangians that they took the name of Rus’, though originally, they were Slavs. Although they used to call themselves Polyanians, still they spoke Slavonic; and they were known as Polyanians because they lived in the plains, but the Slavonic tongue is common to all of them.85

The straightforward identification of Slavs and Rus’ contradicts the broader panorama of Slavic expansion cited before, which included Western and Southern Slavs; but it corresponds to the focus on the Rus’ in the main part of the Chronicle. They had abandoned their particular designation as Polyane to become the Rus’, which is thus demonstrated to be more than just a name for the dynasty or the elite, but is supposed to include the entire Slavic population of the area. However, the passage does not mention the other Slavic groups incorporated in the Rus’ realm, and in fact reduces ‘the’ Slavs to those around Kyiv. Still, it insists that the decisive criterion for affiliation is the Slavic language, which is emphasized twice in this short text. In a way not untypical for early/high medieval texts, a concentric structure of identification is built, without distinguishing between the different levels. The ‘tribal’ identity of the Polyane, the linguistic identity of ‘the Slavs’, the Christian identity of the Slav Orthodox Church (profusely mentioned elsewhere), and the political identity of Rus’ are treated as homologous, although they concern rather different groups of people who only overlap at the vantage point of the author/s. The language in which this fusing of identities is achieved is ethnic, and ethnonyms provide the overall system of distinction between named large social groupings. As argued elsewhere, ‘ethnicity’ as a cognitive mode of distinction between collectives does not necessarily imply actual 84

See the chapter by Pavlína Rychterová, in this volume. ‘The Russian Primary Chronicle’, ed. and trans. by Cross, p. 149 (quoted after Tolochko, in this volume, p. 449). German translation: Nestorchronik, trans. by Müller, s.a. 898.43–45, p. 29. 85

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ethnic identities, but serves as a tool for orientation in a landscape of different and often rather elusive peoples and groups.86 On the whole, the Russian Primary Chronicle offers an exemplary case for the issues discussed in the present volume. In the initial rubric, it poses questions that many works of historiography featured in this volume address: ‘These are the narratives of bygone years regarding the origin of the land of Rus’, who first began to rule in Kiev, and from what source the land of Rus’ had its beginning’.87 It is hard to disentangle the first and the third question, but one could rephrase the three questions as the origin of the land, its rulers, and its people. In spite of the dense ethnic discourse and large number of ethnonyms in the first, ‘ethnographic’ part of the Chronicle, it offers a considerable range of identifications for the Rus’. The introduction contains a lengthy passage from Hamartolos about the laws and customs of different peoples, including the Serae (Chinese), Indians, and Bactrians, which the Chronicle supplements with brief characterizations of the laws of the Polyane and of their Slavic neighbours.88 The focus here is on the contrast between Christian law and ‘pagan’ practice. Not surprisingly, the Christian identity of the Rus’, the history of Slavic missions, and the defence against pagan attacks is a key concern in the Primary Chronicle, which was recognizably produced in monastic environments. Slavic language and script, closely connected to the successful mission, are also core issues in the text. The country of Rus’ plays a prominent part in the text, although its extension remains ambivalent: Kyiv, its hinterland, and the larger territory (mostly settled by Slavs) which was gradually occupied by the Rus’ matter in different ways. Rus’ supremacy over non-Slavic peoples is repeatedly emphasized. Like in the Czech, Polish, and Hungarian cases, the founding dynasty, which also achieved the Christianization of the country, is presented as a basis for the political identity, and its Scandinavian origin fades out early in the narrative. As recurrent admonitions for unity show, dynastic strife is considered as a problem for the entire country. It is clear to any modern reader that these forms of Rus’ identification are not at all co-extensive: the realm and the land of Rus’, the speakers of a Slavic language, Orthodox Christians, their church and its leaders, experts of Slavic literacy and liturgy, representatives and/or subjects of Rus’ rule, and the Rurikid 86

Pohl, ‘Introduction — Strategies of Identification’. ‘The Russian Primary Chronicle’, ed. and trans. by Cross, p. 136; quoted after Tolochko, in this volume, p. 449. 88 ‘The Russian Primary Chronicle’, ed. and trans. by Cross, pp. 57–58; Nestorchronik, trans. by Müller, Vorgeschichte, 102–30, pp. 112–16. 87

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dynasty only overlap in part. This area of (more or less) overlap is the notional identity constructed in the Primary Chronicle. We need to assess the different conjunctions of such elements of identification in each case. The fact that ethnic terms are often used to define the king or prince, the realm, the people, the law, or the Church should not make us believe that ethnic (or national) identities were what counted most in the period. Nor should the rather diverse strategies of identification be understood as indicating that ethnicity did not matter at all. Rus’ identity was more difficult to define in ethnic terms than Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, or Czech identities. However, it is clear that the author/s of the Primary Chronicle were not at all satisfied to simply render it in political terms. They did all they could to anchor it firmly in a world of peoples, conjured up in the introduction, employing what is easily the most exuberant display of ethnic language and terminology in any chronicle of the period. It comes as no surprise that constructions of identity are neither straightforward nor simply (proto-)national in the texts under scrutiny in this volume. However, many of them focus on the new polities that had risen in regions where no large-scale Christian realm had existed before. Whether we call them nations, states, or, more vaguely, countries, realms, powers, or polities — they, their rulers, and their peoples framed much of the narratives. The texts diverge in the weight they lay on the different elements of the state-building process: the people (gens) and its origins; the dynasty and its legitimacy; Christian conversion and the deeds of holy men; the character of the country and the ways in which it was appropriated; a common language; or the rise of laws and a legitimate order. We can regard and analyse all these features as elements for a social and political identity, for a programme of belonging. They were usually constructed outward from a historical core, be it a pedigree, a biblical precedent, a migrating group, a band of conquerors, or a victory against oppressors. Yet they were conceived to include a plurality of groups. In perspective, they sought to align people, land, and realm, often also a particular ‘micro-Christendom’, in a conjunction of identities which could reinforce each other. The narratives were rarely streamlined so as to suggest a coherent aggregate of these different forms of identification, and that corresponded to realities of a very partial overlap between them. However, and not unlike earlier western histories such as the Liber historiae Francorum, Bede, or Paul the Deacon, these narratives sketched ambitious scripts for identity politics of the new realms that were to prove valuable for much later nations. *** Note We have respected some authors’ choices in transcription and use of native, latinised or English name forms; both versions appear in the index.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, ed. by Werner Trillmich, in Quellen des 9. und 11. Jahrhunderts zur Geschichte der Hamburgischen Kirche und des Reiches, Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters, 11 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1961), pp. 160–499; ed. by Bernhard Schmeidler, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 2, 3rd edn (Hanover: Hahn, 1917) Anonymus, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. and trans. by János M. Bak, Martyn Rady, and László Veszprémy, in Anonymus Notary of King Béla: The Deeds of the Hungarians / Master Roger’s Epistle to the Sorrowful Lament about the Destruction of Hungary by the Tartars, Central European Medieval Texts, 5 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2010), pp. 2–129 Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Bohemorum: The Chronicle of the Czechs, ed.  by János Bak and Pavlína Rychterová, trans. by Petra Mutlová and Martyn Rady with Libor Švanda, introduced and annotated by Jan Hasil with Irene van Renswoude (Budapest: CEU Press, 2020); The Chronicle of the Czechs, ed. and trans.  by Lisa Wolverton (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009) Cronache (= Ioannes Diaconus, Istoria Veneticorum; Chronica de singulis patriarchis nove Aquileie; Chronicon Gradense; Chronicon Altinate; Andreas Dandulus, Chronica per extensum descripta; Translatio sancti Marci), ed. by Giorgio Fedalto and Luigi Andrea Berto, Scrittori della Chiesa di Aquileia, 12.2 (Rome: Città Nuova, 2003) Dares Phrygius, Daretis Phrygii de excidio Troiae historia, ed.  by Ferdinand Meister (Leipzig, Teubner, 1873); Latin text at [accessed 6 September 2021] Gallus Anonymus, Gesta principum Polonorum, ed.  by Karol Maleczyński, trans. by Paul  W. Knoll and Frank Schaer, Central European Medieval Texts, 3 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2003) Georgios Monachos, Chronicon, ed. by Carl de Boor and Peter Wirth, Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012) Gesta principum Polonorum, ed. by Karol Maleczyński, trans. by Paul W. Knoll and Frank Schaer, Central European Medieval Texts, 3 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2003) Giovanni Diacono, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Luigi Andrea Berto (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1999) Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed.  by Heinz Stoob, Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters, 19 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973) Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed.  by Leonid Arbusow and Albert Bauer, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 31, 2nd edn (Hanover: Hahn, 1955); trans. by James A. Brundage, The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, 2nd edn (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003)

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Justin, Historiae, ed. and German trans. by Peter Emberger, Justin: Römische Weltgeschichte, Edition Antike (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2015) Legenda Christiani: Vita et passio sancti Wenceslai et sancte Ludmile ave eius / Kristiánova legenda: Život a umučení svatého Václava a jeho báby svaté Ludmily, ed. and Czech trans. by Jaroslav Ludvíkovský (Prague: Vyšehrad, 1978) Liudprand of Cremona, Relatio de legatione Constantinopolitana, ed. by Joseph Becker, in Die Werke Liudprands von Cremona, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 41 (Hanover: Hahn, 1915), pp. 175–212 Die Nestorchronik, trans. by Ludolf Müller, in Handbuch zur Nestorchronik, iv, ed.  by Ludolf Müller (Munich: Fink, 2001) (see also ‘The Russian Primary Chronicle’) The Orkneyinga saga: A New Translation with Introduction and Notes, ed. and trans. by Alexander Burt Taylor (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1938) Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Ludwig Bethmann and Georg Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum (Hanover: Hahn, 1878), pp. 12–187 Regino of Prüm, Chronicle, trans. by Simon MacLean, in History and Politics in Late Carolingian and Ottonian Europe: The Chronicle of Regino of Prüm and Adalbert of Magdeburg (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), pp. 61–231 ‘The Russian Primary Chronicle’, ed. and trans. by Samuel H. Cross, Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, 12 (1930), 77–297 (see also Die Nestorchronik) Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, ed.  by Karsten Friis-Jensen, trans. by Peter Fisher, Oxford Medieval Texts, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 2015) Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, trans. by Lee M. Hollander, Snorri Sturluson: Heimskringla, History of the Kings of Norway (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1964) Spisi Svetog Save, ed. by Vladimir Ćorović, Dela starih srpskih pisaca, 1 (Belgrade: Serbian Royal Academy, 1928) Stefan Prvovenčani, Sabrana dela, ed. by Tomislav Jovanović, trans. and commentaries by Ljiljana Juhas-Georgijevska (Belgrade: Serbian Literary Society, 1999) Thomas of Spalato, Thomae archidiaconi Spalatensis Historia Salonitanorum atque Spalatinorum pontificum / History of the Bishops of Salona and Split, ed., trans., and commentaries by Damir Karbić, Mirjana Matijević-Sokol, and James Ross Sweeney, Latin text by Olga Perić, Central European Medieval Texts, 4 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2006) Translatio  S. Alexandri, ed.  by Georg Heinrich Pertz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores, 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1828), pp. 673–81

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——  , Cross and Scepter: The Rise of the Scandinavian Kingdoms from the Vikings to the Reformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014) Bak, János, and Graeme Dunphy, eds, The Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 2010) Bálint, Csanád, ‘A “kettős honfoglalás” tételeiről’ (On the Theses of Double Conquest), Századok 155.4 (2021), 693–724 Banaszkiewicz, Jacek, ‘Master Vincent and his Making of the Oldest History of the Lechites-Poles’, in Historiography and Identity, vi: Competing Narratives of the Past in Central and Eastern Central Europe, c. 1200–1600, ed. by Pavlína Rychterová with David Kalhous (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 87–110 Bäuml, Franz J., and Marianna D. Birnbaum, eds, Attila: The Man and his Image (Budapest: Corvina, 1993) Berend, Nora, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and ‘Pagans’ in Medieval Hungary c. 1000–1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) ——  , ed., Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’, c. 900–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) —— , ‘Historical Writing in Central Europe (Bohemia, Hungary, Poland), c. 950–1400’, in The Oxford History of Historical Writing, ii:  400–1400, ed.  by Sarah Foot and Chase F. Robinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 312–27 Berend, Nora, József Lászlovsky, and Béla Zsolt Szakács, ‘The Kingdom of Hungary’, in Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’, c. 900–1200, ed. by Nora Berend (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 319–68 Berger, Stefan, and Chris Lorenz, eds, The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) Berto, Luigi Andrea, The Political and Social Vocabulary of John the Deacon’s ‘Istoria Veneticorum’, Cursor mundi, 12 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) Betti, Maddalena, The Making of Christian Moravia (858–82): Papal Power and Political Reality (Leiden: Brill, 2014) Bisson, Thomas N., ‘Introduction’, in Gesta principum Polonorum, ed.  by Karol Maleczyński, trans. by Paul W. Knoll and Frank Schaer, Central European Medieval Texts, 3 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2003), pp. xix–lxv Borri, Francesco, ‘Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! Foundation Myths and origines gentium in the Adriatic Arc’, in Post­Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 215–70 Breuilly, John, ‘Changes in the Political Uses of the Nation: Continuity or Discontinuity?’, in Power and the Nation in European History, ed. by Len Scales and Oliver Zimmer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 67–101 Brown, Peter R.  L., The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, a.d. 200–1000, 3rd edn (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013) Campopiano, Michele, and Henry Bainton, eds, Universal Chronicles in the High Middle Ages (York: Boydell & Brewer, 2017)

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Curta, Florin, The Making of the Slavs: History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region, c. 500–700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) ——  , Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500–1250 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) Curta, Florin, with Roman Kovalev, eds, The Other Europe in the Middle Ages: Avars, Bulgars, Khazars, and Cumans, East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450, 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2007) Deliyannis, Deborah Mauskopf, ed., Historiography in the Early Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2003) Dzino, Danijel, Becoming Slav, Becoming Croat: Identity Transformations in Post­Roman and Early Medieval Dalmatia, East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450, 12 (Leiden: Brill, 2010) Ehlers, Joachim, ed., Ansätze und Diskontinuität deutscher Nationsbildung im Mittelalter, Nationes, 8 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1989) Esders, Stefan, and Helmut Reimitz, ‘Diversity and Convergence: The Accommodation of Ethnic and Legal Pluralism in the Carolingian Empire’, in Empires and Communities in the Post­Roman and Islamic World, c.  400–1000, ed.  by Walter Pohl and Rutger Kramer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 227–52 Fine, John V. A., Jr, When Ethnicity Did Not Matter in the Balkans: A Study of Identity in Pre­Nationalist Croatia, Dalmatia, and Slavonia in the Medieval and Early­Modern Periods (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006) Foot, Sarah, and Chase  F. Robinson, eds, The Oxford History of Historical Writing, ii: 400–1400 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) Franklin, Simon, and Jonathan Shepard, The Emergence of Rus, 750–1200 (London: Routledge, 1996) Gandino, Germana, Il vocabolario politico e sociale de Liutprando di Cremona (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1995) Garipzanov, Ildar H., ed., Historical Narratives and Christian Identity on a European Periphery: Early History Writing in Northern, East­Central, and Eastern Europe (c. 1070–1200) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011) ——  , ‘Peripheral Polities North of the Carolingian Realm: The regnum Danorum’, in Emerging Powers in Eurasian Comparison: Shadows of Empire, 200–1100, ed.  by Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming) Garipzanov, Ildar H., with Rosalind Bonté, eds, Conversion and Identity in the Viking Age (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014) Garipzanov, Ildar H., Patrick Geary, and Przemysław Urbańczyk, eds, Franks, Northmen and Slavs: Identities and State Formation in Early Medieval Europe, Cursor mundi, 5 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008) Gat, Azar, with Alexander Yakobson, Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) Geary, Patrick J., The Myths of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001) Gellner, Ernest, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983)

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Golden, Peter B., Haggai Ben-Shammai, and András Róna-Tas, eds, The World of the Khazars: New Perspectives, Handbook of Oriental Studies, 17 (Leiden: Brill, 2007) Graus, František, Die Nationenbildung der Westslawen im Mittelalter (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1980) Grundmann, Herbert, Geschichtsschreibung im Mittelalter, 3rd edn (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978) Guimon, Timofey V., Historical Writing of Early Rus (c. 1000–c. 1400) in a Comparative Perspective (Leiden: Brill, 2021) Guran, Petre, ‘Slavonic Historical Writing in South-Eastern Europe, 1200–1600’, in The Oxford History of Historical Writing, ii: 400–1400, ed. by Sarah Foot and Chase F. Robinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 328–45 Güttner-Sporzyński, Darius von, ed., Writing History in Medieval Poland: Bishop Vincentius of Cracow and the ‘Chronica Polonorum’ (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017) Halsall, Guy, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376–568, Cambridge Medieval Textbooks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) Heather, Peter: Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) Higham, Nicholas J., The Convert Kings: Power and Religious Affiliation in Early Anglo­ Saxon England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997) Hobsbawm, Eric J., Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) Innes, Matthew, ‘Historical Writing, Ethnicity, and National Identity’, in The Oxford History of Historical Writing, ii: 400–1400, ed. by Sarah Foot and Chase F. Robinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 539–75 Kalhous, David, ‘Legenda Christiani’ and Modern Historiography (Leiden: Brill, 2015) Kersken, Norbert, Geschichtsschreibung im Europa der ‘nationes’: Nationalgeschichtliche Gesamtdarstellungen im Mittelalter, Münsterische Historische Forschungen, 8 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1995) Klápště, Jan, The Czech Lands in Medieval Transformation (Leiden: Brill, 2012) László, Gyula, A ‘kettős honfoglalás’ (Budapest: Magvető Kiadó, 1978) Leerssen, Joep, National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History, 3rd updated edn (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018) MacLean, Simon, History and Politics in Late Carolingian and Ottonian Europe: The Chronicle of Regino of Prüm and Adalbert of Magdeburg (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009) Maenchen-Helfen, Otto J., The World of the Huns: Studies in their History and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973) Meier, Mischa, Geschichte der Völkerwanderung: Europe, Asien und Afrika vom 3. bis zum 8. Jahrhundert n. Chr. (Munich: Beck, 2019) Mitthof, Fritz, Peter Schreiner, and Oliver Jens Schmitt, eds, Handbuch zur Geschichte Südosteuropas, i: Herrschaft und Politik in Südosteuropa von der römischen Antike bis 1300 (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019) Musset, Lucien, Les Invasions, ii: Le second assaut contre l’Europe chrétienne, Nouvelle Clio, 12.2 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1971)

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Plassmann, Alheydis, Origo gentis: Identitäts­ und Legitimitätsstiftung in früh­ und hoch­ mittelalterlichen Herkunftserzählungen, Orbis mediaevalis: Vorstellungswelten des Mittelalters, 7 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2006) Pohl, Walter, ‘Conceptions of Ethnicity in Early Medieval Studies’, in Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings, ed.  by Lester  K. Little and Barbara Rosenwein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 15–24 ——  , Werkstätte der Erinnerung: Montecassino und die Gestaltung der langobardischen Vergangenheit, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, Ergänzungsband, 39 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2001) —— , Die Völkerwanderung: Eroberung und Integration, 2nd edn (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2005) —— , ‘Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West: Introduction’, in Post­Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, ed.  by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 1–46 —— , ‘Introduction: Strategies of Identification: A Methodological Profile’, in Strategies of Identification: Early Medieval Perspectives, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 1–64 ——  , ‘Huns, Avars, Hungarians — Comparative Perspectives Based on Written Evidence’, in The Complexity of Interaction along the Eurasian Steppe Zone in the First Millennium ce, ed. by Jürgen Bemmann and Michael Schmauder (Bonn: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, 2015), pp. 693–702 —— , The Avars: A Steppe Empire in Central Europe, 567–822 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018) —— , ‘Disputed Identifications: The Jews and the Use of Biblical Models in the Barbarian Kingdoms’, in Barbarians and Jews: Jews and Judaism in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Yitzhak Hen and Thomas F. X. Noble (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 11–28 ——  , ‘Barbarische Herrschaftsbildungen in Spätantike und frühbyzantinischer Zeit’, in Handbuch zur Geschichte Südosteuropas, i: Herrschaft und Politik in Südosteuropa von der römischen Antike bis 1300, ed. by Fritz Mitthof, Peter Schreiner, and Oliver Jens Schmitt, pt. 2 (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019), pp. 543–99 ——  , ‘Historiography and Identity — Methodological Perspectives’, in Historiography and Identity, i: Ancient and Early Christian Narratives of Community, ed. by Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), pp. 7–50 —— , ‘Debating Ethnicity in Post-Roman Historiography’, in Historiography and Identity, ii: Post­Roman Multiplicity and New Political Identities, ed. by Gerda Heydemann and Helmut Reimitz (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 27–70 —— , ‘Ethnicity, Race, and Nationalism’, in A Cultural History of Democracy in the Middle Age, ed. by David Napolitano and Kenneth J. Pennington (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), pp. 135–55 ——  , ‘Gotische Identitäten’, in Theoderich der Große und die Goten in Italien, ed.  by Hans-Ulrich Wiemer, Schriften des Historischen Kollegs, 102 (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021), pp. 315–40

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—— , ‘Distant Peoples: European Ethnographies of the Steppe’, in Muslims on the Volga in the Viking Age: Diplomacy and Islam in the World of Ibn Fadlan, ed. by Jonathan Shepard (London: Tauris, forthcoming) Pohl, Walter, and Daniel Mahoney, eds, Historiography and Identity, iv: Writing History across Medieval Eurasia (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021) Pohl, Walter, and Veronika Wieser, eds, Historiography and Identity, i: Ancient and Early Christian Narratives of Community (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019) Reimitz, Helmut, ‘Cultural Brokers of a Common Past: History, Identity and Ethnicity in the Merovingian Kingdoms’, in Strategies of Identification: Early Medieval Perspectives, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 257–301 Reimitz, Helmut, and Gerda Heydemann, eds, Historiography and Identity, ii: Post­ Roman Multiplicity and New Political Identities (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020) Reimitz, Helmut, Rutger Kramer, and Graeme Ward, eds, Historiography and Identity, iii: Carolingian Approaches (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021) Reynolds, Susan, ‘The Idea of the Nation as a Political Community’, in Power and the Nation in European History, ed.  by Len Scales and Oliver Zimmer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 54–66 Róna-Tas, András, Hungarians and Europe in the Early Middle Ages: An Introduction to Early Hungarian History (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999) Rychterová, Pavlína, ‘Holes in the Tapestry — Eastern and Northern European Conversion Stories’, Early Medieval Europe, 19 (2011), 91–105 Rychterová, Pavlína, with David Kalhous, eds, Historiography and Identity, vi: Competing Narratives of the Past in Central and Eastern Europe, c.  1200–c.  1600 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021) Sawyer, Peter H., Kings and Vikings: Scandinavia and Europa, 700–1100 (London: Methuen, 1982) Scales, Len, and Oliver Zimmer, eds, Power and the Nation in European History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) Shepard, Jonathan, ‘The Shaping of Past and Present, and Historical Writing in Rus’’, in The Oxford History of Historical Writing, ii: 400–1400, ed. by Sarah Foot and Chase F. Robinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 287–311 ——  , ‘Countering Byzantium’s Shadow: Contrarianism among the Bulgars, Rus’ and Germans’, in Emerging Powers in Eurasian Comparison: Shadows of Empire, 200–1100, ed. by Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming) Smith, Anthony D., The Cultural Foundations of Nations: Hierarchy, Covenant, and Republic (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008) Tamm, Marek, Carsten Selch Jensen, and Linda Kaljundi, Crusading and Chronicle Writing on the Medieval Baltic Frontier: A  Companion to the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011) Třeštík, Dušan, Mýty kmene Čechů (7.–10. století): Tři studie ke ‘starým pověstem českým’ (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2003) Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, Nationalismus: Geschichte, Formen, Folgen (Munich: Beck, 2001) Winroth, Anders, The Conversion of Scandinavia: Vikings, Merchants, and Missionaries in the Remaking of Northern Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012)

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Wolf, Gerhard, and Norbert H. Ott, eds, Handbuch Chroniken des Mittelalters (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016) Wolfram, Herwig, Grenzen und Räume: Geschichte Österreichs vor seiner Entstehung, 378–907 (Vienna: Überreuter, 1995) Wolverton, Lisa, Hastening toward Prague: Power and Society in the Medieval Czech Lands (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001) ——  , Cosmas of Prague: Narrative, Classicism, Politics (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2015) Wood, Ian N., The Missionary Life: Saints and the Evangelization of Europe, 400–1050 (London: Routledge, 2001) Ziemann, Daniel, Vom Wandervolk zur Großmacht: Die Entstehung Bulgariens im frühen Mittelalter (7.–9. Jh.), Kölner historische Abhandlungen, 43 (Cologne: Böhlau, 2007)

Scandinavian and Baltic Origins

Adam of Bremen’s Use of Earlier History Ian Wood

A

dam of Bremen’s History of the Archbishops of Hamburg­Bremen is, of course, an ecclesiastical history. It is concerned first and foremost with the status of the archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen. Being what is essentially a work of propaganda it distorts the truth, as has long been recognized, and this issue has also been the subject of major recent consideration.1 Adam’s ecclesiastical concerns, although central, are, however, only one aspect of his account of the North, for while Scandinavia is one of the two major areas over which the archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen claimed authority (the other being parts of the northern Slav lands), he does more than simply list the history of the establishment of ecclesiastical authority, as he wished it to be remembered, in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Having provided a narrative which focuses on the authority of the bishops of Hamburg and Bremen in the first three books of his History, he sets out in Book iv a Description of the Islands of the North, Descriptio insularum aquilonis.2 Tim Reuter described this as the first systematic ethnography of a region, though it is introduced by Adam as ‘background information’ to Adalbert’s claims to appoint bishops throughout the

1

See Reuter, ‘Introduction to the 2002 Edition’; Sawyer and Sawyer, ‘Adam and the Eve of Scandinavian History’; Knibbs, Ansgar. See also Birgit Sawyer’s and Peter H. Sawyer’s unpublished lecture ‘Adam of Bremen’. 2 See Barnwell, ‘Missionaries and Changing Views of the Other’, pp. 73–142. Ian Wood is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the University of Leeds. Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000–1300, ed. by Walter Pohl, Veronika Wieser, and Francesco Borri, celama 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp.  45–64 FHG 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.130253

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lands to the north of Hamburg-Bremen. As such it marks the beginning of more systematic medieval ethnography.3

It is not my concern to pursue the question of Adam’s place as an ethnographer,4 but rather to look back to the sources of his information on the North, which include passages of classical and early medieval ethnography, mixed in with evidence supplied by eyewitnesses, who themselves had positions to uphold, but who also saw the region through the lens of traditional interpretations. As Adam himself makes clear, his History of the Archbishops is a history from Anskar to Adalbert. The main source to start with is therefore the Life of Anskar, written shortly after the saint’s death in 865 by Rimbert, his disciple and successor as bishop of Hamburg-Bremen.5 Adam does, however, make a sustained effort to set Anskar’s career in context by using various Carolingian annals to describe the situation in Denmark at the time of the death of Godfred,6 and these are also used to flesh out the background to the problems faced by the Christian community in the Swedish trading centre of Birka.7 In addition to the Vita Anskarii and the annals, Adam cites the Vita Willehadi, to deal with the translation of Willehad of Bremen that was undertaken by Bishop Willeric,8 as well as documents relating to the establishment of Hamburg-Bremen (many, if not all, of which are of questionable authority).9 He also makes some use of Einhard’s Vita Karoli — a fact to which we will return.10 However, most of the material in Chapters 19 to 31 of Book i of the History of the Archbishops is derived from Rimbert, whose interest in Anskar’s diocesan and missionary work fitted directly into Adam’s message. Rather than repeat the narrative provided by both Rimbert and Adam (with all the problems of factual accuracy that they raise), it is worth looking at what the latter most abbreviates in his résumé of the Life of Anskar. Leaving aside 3

Reuter, ‘Introduction to the 2002 Edition’, p. xvii. Lozovsky, ‘The Earth is our Book’, deals with many of Adam’s predecessors. 5 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed.  by Trillmich, i.14 (16), pp.  184–86; i.17–34 (19–36), pp. 190–207. 6 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed.  by Trillmich, i.14–17 (16–19), pp.  182–91. See Adam, History, trans. by Tschan, p. 20 n. 43. 7 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, i.15 (17), pp. 188–89. 8 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, i.18 (20), pp. 190–91. 9 Knibbs, Ansgar. 10 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, i.1, pp. 164–65; ii.18, pp. 248–49; iv.10, pp. 446–47, iv.20, pp. 458–59. 4

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the lengthy visionary sequences and the meditation on the nature of martyrdom, one of the most striking reductions concerns the depiction provided by Rimbert of missionary activity, and more broadly of Christian life, in Birka.11 What constitutes a very significant proportion of the earlier hagiographical text is reduced to three brief mentions in Book i of the History of the Church of Hamburg, although there is a subsequent allusion in Book iv to material relating to the trading station in the Life of Anskar, which had been omitted from the narrative account to be found in the first book.12 Of course, some of the excisions can be explained simply by consideration of Adam’s concern with Hamburg-Bremen. Frideburg, the Frisian matron who lived and died in Birka, but who instructed her daughter Catla to make benefactions back in Dorestad, would have added nothing to Adam’s Hamburg-focused story:13 understandably the tale of the two women is omitted from his narrative. The Swedish prefect of the trading centre, the convert Herigar, is only slightly less tangential to Adam’s concerns, and gets no more than a passing comment.14 The information supplied by Rimbert on raids launched from Birka against Courland, which is important for historians concerned with Baltic piracy (and which can now be seen, as a result of the Salme finds, to fit into a much longer history than we had known)15 is largely irrelevant to Adam’s argument, although he does allude to it in Book iv.16 Another passage which is also neglected until Book iv is that in which Rimbert reveals that one of the pagans of Birka claimed to have heard the gods debating whether they should accept the new cult of Christ, and deciding instead that they would rather elect the recently dead King Eric to their midst.17 These abridgements and omissions have the effect of downgrading the significance of the mission to Lake Mälaren in the days of Anskar and Rimbert, 11

Rimbert, Vita Anskarii, ed.  by Trillmich, 11, pp.  40–42, 17–18, pp.  52–54, 19–21, pp. 56–70, 26–27, pp. 82–88; Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, i.15 (17), pp. 188–89, i.21 (23), pp. 194–95, i.26 (28), pp. 198–99. See also i.60 (62), pp. 230–31. 12 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.26, pp. 470–71. 13 Rimbert, Vita Anskarii, ed. by Trillmich, 20, pp. 64–68. 14 Rimbert, Vita Anskarii, ed. by Trillmich, 19–20, pp. 56–64; Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, i.15 (17), pp. 188–89; i.21 (23), pp. 194–95. 15 Allmäe, Maldre, and Tomek, ‘The Salme I Ship Burial’; Peets and others, ‘Research Results’. 16 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.18, pp. 454–55. 17 Rimbert, Vita Anskarii, ed. by Trillmich, 26, pp. 86–88; Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.26, pp. 470–71.

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and thus of making more important the tenth-century mission of Archbishop Unni, who died in Birka in 936.18 As Adam tells us, the archbishop’s body was buried there, although his head was brought back to Saxony. For Adam the continuous history of the Birka mission clearly began with Unni rather than with Anskar and Rimbert, whose missionary efforts had been interrupted. Although Adam does refer to the election of Eric to the pantheon of the gods in Book iv, the omission of the story in Book i is worthy of attention. In Rimbert’s account this is the most detailed description of paganism among the Swedes, and indeed more generally among the northern peoples.19 His other great emphasis is on the casting of lots.20 In Adam’s presentation of paganism magic (that associated with sorcery rather than lot-casting ) is certainly important,21 although it is also something that tempted Christians, among them Archbishop Adalbert.22 Central to Adam’s depiction of paganism, however, are the gods Wodan, Thor, and Fricco, their temple, at Uppsala, and their statues,23 which are presented as being ubiquitous. 24 Destroying idols is an aspect of missionary activity in the tenth and eleventh centuries — when it can also be found in the writings of Thietmar, in his description of the activities of Bishop Reinbern of Kołobrzeg in Pomerania.25 This emphasis on idols and idolatry is not to be found in our ninth-century sources. This raises a very interesting problem. Is Rimbert’s description of paganism inadequate? One needs to be careful about concluding as much. Although we should be suspicious of what he has to say about Hamburg-Bremen, the ninth-century hagiographer was clearly writing in part to describe the reality of missionary life, which he himself had experienced at first hand.26 Would-be missionaries would have been at a disadvantage if they had misleading information about the religion against which they were acting — although, of course, 18

Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, i.62 (64), p. 232. Rimbert, Vita Anskarii, ed. by Trillmich, 26, pp. 86–88. 20 Rimbert, Vita Anskarii, ed. by Trillmich, 18, p. 54; 19, p. 62; 30, p. 96. Wood, ‘Christians and Pagans’, pp. 55–56. 21 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, ii.57 (55), p. 296; iv.32 (31), p. 478. 22 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iii.17 (16), p. 348, iii.63 (62), p. 410. 23 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.26, p. 470. 24 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, ii.62 (60), p. 302 (Thor); iv.9, pp. 444–46 (Fricco); iv.16, p. 454. 25 Thietmar, Chronicon, ed. by Trillmich, iii.19; vi.24; vii.72; viii.5(4)–6, pp. 106, 268, 434, 444–46. 26 Wood, The Missionary Life, pp. 132–34. 19

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any information received would have been an interpretation. Should we therefore assume that there was a major change in the paganism of Denmark and Sweden at the end of the ninth century? Did increased contact with the world of organized Christian religion — and perhaps with Slavonic idolatry, which is better evidenced — lead to a change in the North, and to the growth in the importance of idols and temples, and indeed to the wider dissemination of a pantheon of gods? There is good evidence that paganism on the edge of the Roman World underwent change in earlier centuries.27 Or has Adam recast the paganism of the North in the form of Old Testament idolatry? Although little statuettes and plaques representing deities are known from the archaeological record,28 there is not much to prove the existence of major idols in Viking Age Scandinavia, by comparison with what has survived from the Slav lands,29 which fits well with the written evidence provided by Adam and Helmold. 30 Modern debates over the famous description of the temple of Uppsala to be found in Book iv of the History of the Archbishops have pointed increasingly to the conclusion that it is an imaginary construct, even if it is by no means clear what the purpose of that construct is31 — although this is a question to which we will return. For the moment, however, what would seem to be important is the fact that, by effectively omitting the description of paganism to be found in the Life of Anskar, Adam was at liberty to present his own, and very different picture of the Scandinavian pantheon, its gods, idols, and its temple at Uppsala. With the deaths of Anskar and Rimbert Adam’s source material changes. He still turns, where relevant to his argument, to annals and also to Einhard, whose information is used to provide a description of the Slav lands,32 and he makes specific reference to Gesta Anglorum — a problematic citation, in that the closest English source seems to be the twelfth-century Historia regum of Symeon of Durham, a text written after Adam’s death. 33 Given that Æthelweard’s 27 Wood, ‘Jonas and Paganism’. The danger of assuming that one-eyed figures should always be read as Wodan is clear from Nash Briggs, ‘Reading the Images on Iron Age Coins’. 28 Price, ‘Belief and Ritual’, pp. 164–66. 29 Słupecki, Slavonic Pagan Sanctuaries, pp. 198–228. 30 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, ii.21 (18), p. 252; Helmold, Cronica Slavorum, ed. by Lappenberg and Schmeidler, i.17, p. 36, i.36, pp. 70–72, i.46, p. 91, i.52, pp. 102–03, i.69–71, pp. 130–37, i.84, pp. 159–64, i.95, p. 186, ii.101, pp. 199–200. 31 Janson, ‘Adam of Bremen’, pp. 83–85. 32 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, ii.18–19 (15–16), p. 248: Einhard, Vita Karoli, ed. by Waitz, 12, p. 15. 33 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, i.39 (41), p. 212; ii.25 (22), p. 258.

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Latin version of the Anglo­Saxon Chronicle was written for Matilda of Essen,34 one might have expected that version of the Chronicle to have been available to Adam. One has, instead, to conclude that he had access to a lost (perhaps Northumbrian) chronicle35 — and indeed we have every reason to believe that Symeon had access to a set of northern annals that no longer survive.36 In addition to this annalistic material, Adam used the Life of Rimbert, Anskar’s hagiographer,37 as well as a work that has not come down to us, which had information on the saint, by Bovo of Corvey.38 With Rimbert’s death, however, there was a lacuna in the source material, to which Adam himself draws attention, and indeed which he laments: ‘I have not seen anything further written about the history of the Danes nor have I learned that anyone else has’.39 Interestingly, he does not seem to have known Widukind of Corvey’s Res gestae Saxonicae, or Thietmar of Merseburg’s Chronicon, both of which would have provided him with some relevant information, and with which his narrative is sometimes at odds. Thus, Adam does not seem to have used many Ottonian sources. Perhaps as a result he makes a number of mistakes, for instance on one occasion mixing up Otto I and II.40 In fact, from the death of Rimbert onwards, apart from information drawn from the archives of the Church of Hamburg, relating to diocesan foundations and ecclesiastical appointments, and from classical and late antique authors — an issue to which we will return — his main source for the North appears to have be an oral one, the Danish king Sven Estridsen, to whose information Adam first makes reference immediately after his discussion of Rimbert, stating that it was from the king that he learnt about Helga in Norway, and about Olaf, followed by Cnuba and Gurd, in Denmark.41 Sven appears as Adam’s informant on a considerable number of occasions during the History of the 34

Æthelweard, Chronicon, ed. by Campbell, pp. 1–2. Adam, History, trans. by Tschan, p. 39 n. 120, lists the parallels with Symeon of Durham’s Historia regum. 36 Lapidge, ‘Byrhtferth of Ramsey’. For an attempt to reconstruct the ‘lost’ recension of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, see Stafford, After Alfred, pp. 106–34. 37 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, i.34 (36)–45 (47), pp. 204–16. 38 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, i.39 (41), pp. 210–12. 39 Adam, History, trans. by Tschan, i.xlvii (49), p. 43. Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, i.47 (49), p. 218: ‘De hystoria Danorum nihil amplius aut scriptum vidi aut ab alio visi comperi’. 40 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, ii.3, p. 236. 41 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, i.48 (50), p. 218. 35

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Archbishops,42 where he is described as ‘the most judicious king of the Danes’,43 ‘the most veracious king of the Danes’,44 and as ‘the long-to-be-remembered king of the Danes who held in memory all the deeds of the barbarians as if they had been written down’.45 He also appears as the new Solomon,46 although that epithet is clearly intended to be double-edged, for the biblical allusion in this instance is not to wisdom, but womanizing, and the king is openly condemned for his luxuria.47 The historian tells us specifically about one meeting with Sven.48 This was surely not the only occasion on which Adam questioned the king. For instance, he talks of his efforts to quiz him about the death of his great-grandfather Harald Bluetooth, at the hands of his son Sven Forkbeard.49 And he may have had first-hand knowledge of Sven’s intervention to stop Adalbert’s touring the North.50 It is worth pausing on Sven Estridsen, because the king, his family, and his career clearly impinge directly on Adam’s information. Sven was the son of Ulf Jarl, brother-in-law of Cnut the Great, and regent of Denmark in 1026:51 more important than his father, however, was his mother Estrid Svensdattir, the daughter of Sven Forkbeard, and it was through her that he inherited the throne of Denmark. Her importance is clear from the fact that Sven is remem42

Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, i.48 (50), p. 218, i.52 (54), p. 224, i.61 (63) p. 230; ii.28 (26), p. 262, ii.30 (28), p. 266, ii.34–35 (32–33), pp. 270–72, ii.38 (36), p. 274, ii.43 (41), p. 278, ii.55 (53), p. 294, ii.75 (73), pp. 216–18; iii.23 (22), p. 356, iii.54 (53), p. 396; iv.16, p. 454, iv.21, p. 460, iv.25, p. 468, iv.38–39 (37–38), p. 488. See also Sawyer and Sawyer, ‘Adam of Bremen’. The centrality of Sven as Adam’s informant on Scandinavian affairs is noted by Bartlett, ‘From Paganism to Christianity’, p. 48; Bagge and Walaker Nordeide, ‘The Kingdom of Norway’, pp. 137–38; Blomkvist, Brink, and Lindkvist, ‘The Kingdom of Sweden’, p. 181 n. 51. 43 Adam, History, trans. by Tschan, ii.xxxviii (36), p. 80; Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, ii.38 (36), p. 274. 44 Adam, History, trans. by Tschan, i.xlviii (50), p. 44; iii.xxxiii (22), p. 133; Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, i.48 (50), p. 218; iii.23 (22), p. 356. 45 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, ii.43 (41), p. 278. 46 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iii.12 (11), p. 340, iii.15 (14), pp. pp. 342–44. 47 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iii.54 (53), p. 396. On this, see now Lund, ‘Sven Estridsen’s Incest and Divorce’, which raises wider questions about the accuracy of Adam’s references to the Danish king. 48 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iii.54 (53), pp. 396–98. 49 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, ii.28 (26), p. 262. 50 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iii.72, p. 424. 51 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, ii.54 (52), pp. 292–94. Lund, ‘Scandinavia’, p. 223.

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bered by his matronymic, Estridsen, and not his patronymic, Ulfsson.52 He was, therefore, also the nephew of Harald II of Denmark as well as Cnut. The simple fact that Sven belonged to a ruling dynasty, and that he himself was king from 1047 to 1076, makes his role as an informant of Adam all the more important, not least when he describes the confused period of the rebellion of his grandfather, Sven Forkbeard, against his father, Harald Bluetooth. 53 Whether or not one follows Adam’s account of the episode (and the conflict between our various sources has been an endless matter for debate),54 what is particularly interesting is that Adam appears to have pushed Sven on the question of how he regarded his grandfather’s actions, and he recounts that the king acknowledged that the matter of parricide had had major repercussions for the family.55 Nor is it only on Denmark that Sven could be regarded as an authority and an eyewitness source. Before becoming king he had served at least one other Scandinavian ruler, Anund Jacob, king of the Swedes, which gave him firsthand knowledge of Sweden and Norway as well as Denmark, and indeed he was able to comment from personal experience that it took a month to cross Norway and two to cross Sweden.56 In addition, Sven had family ties with the Slav lands, which meant that he also provided Adam with information about the southern Baltic.57 And to information provided by Sven himself, one can add insights that came from his father Ulf Jarl, and from Harald Hardrada, king of Norway.58 Adam, therefore, had oral information from the highest levels of Scandinavian society. Much of the evidence from these figures relates to information on the political history of Scandinavia, and to its landscape (a question to which we will return). But Sven also had an interest in church matters. At the end of an account of the martyrdom of a group of Christians (including at least one relative of the king) from Oldenburg, which was perpetrated by the Slavs, Adam has the king say: ‘Stop, son. We have so many martyrs in Denmark and Slavia 52

Lund, ‘The Danish Empire’, p. 175. Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, ii.28 (26), p. 262. 54 Lund, ‘The Danish Empire’, pp.  166–67; Lund, ‘Harald Bluetooth’; Lund, ‘Sven Estridsen’s Incest and Divorce’. 55 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, ii.28 (26), p. 262. 56 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.21, p. 460. 57 Helmold, Cronica Slavorum, ed. by Lappenberg and Schmeidler, i.19, p. 41; Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, ii.26 (24), p. 260, ii.41, p. 276. 58 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.11, p. 450, iv.39 (38), p. 490. 53

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that they can hardly be comprehended in a book’.59 Adam also claims that it was the king who provided him with information on the political situation among the Swedes at the time of Unni’s mission to Birka in the early tenth century.60 And he implies that Sven was a source for Poppo’s conversion of the Danes,61 when, according to Adam, he underwent an ordeal by fire, wearing a waxed tunic. In his narrative Adam places Poppo’s ordeal after the death of Adaldag of Hamburg-Bremen (988), in the period following Sven Forkbeard’s overthrow of his father, and Erik of Sweden’s successes against Sven. No doubt deliberately, he omits the name of the king who was converted. The scholion added to an earlier chapter,62 however, is clear that the ruler was Harald, and it gives a date of 966. This fits reasonably well with the account of Widukind, who places the conversion in the days of Harald Bluetooth (936–985), perhaps in 963,63 and with Thietmar’s date of 965.64 The effect of Adam’s narrative account, of course, is to set Poppo’s mission very much later in the history of the Christianization of Denmark than was actually the case. It is usually assumed that his treatment of Poppo was determined by the fact that the missionary was not associated with the Church of Hamburg-Bremen, and this is surely a factor in his presentation of the evidence. But we might wonder whether it was Sven rather than Adam who caused the chronological confusion. Adam, after all, was fully aware that Harald was the first Christian king of the Danes, and indeed he effectively regarded him as a saint.65 We also know from his account that Sven was extremely concerned with the fact that his grandfather was involved in parricide. The crime would have been all the worse if the murdered man was effectively a martyr. Perhaps, then, it was Sven who downplayed the fact that it was Harald who was converted by Poppo, in order to make his grandfather’s crime less heinous. In 59

Adam, History, trans. by Tschan, iv.xliii (41), p. 85; Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, ii.43 (41), p. 280: ‘“Cessa”, inquit, “fili. Tantos habemus in Dania vel Sclavania martyres, ut vix possint libro comprehendi”’. 60 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, i.61 (63), p. 230. 61 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, ii.35 (33), pp. 270–72. See also Scholion 20 (21), attached to ii.25 (22), p. 256. See most recently Lund, ‘Sven Estridsen’s Incest and Divorce’, p. 135. 62 Adam Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, Scholion 20 (21), p. 256. 63 Widukind of Corvey, Res gestae Saxonicae, ed. by Bauer and Rau, iii.65, pp. 168–70. Gelting, ‘Poppo’s Ordeal’; Gelting, ‘The Kingdom of Denmark’, p. 80. 64 Thietmar, Chronicon, ed. by Trillmich, ii.14, p. 48. 65 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, ii.28 (26), p. 262. Lund, ‘Harald Bluetooth’.

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other words, we should beware of automatically attributing Adam’s mistakes to his own manipulation of events: he was not the only person who had an interpretation to offer. Moreover, there would seem to have been several accounts of Poppo’s miracle in circulation. Indeed, Adam acknowledges that his information came from more than one source, for he says that some thought the ordeal miracle had taken place in Ribe, some in Haithabu, and some in Schleswig.66 One place he does not mention is Tamdrup, which, to judge by the presence there of the great gilded altar panels depicting Poppo’s ordeal and the conversion of the Danes, was central to the missionary’s later cult.67 Sven obviously provided Adam with first-hand information on the political history of Scandinavia, and to this he could add information on the North Sea and beyond, derived from his father, Ulf Jarl, and from Harald Hardrada.68 The king’s family connections and the fact that he had served with Anund Jacob in Sweden69 mean that he could comment with authority on recent events throughout Scandinavia. But Adam relied on him not just for a knowledge of events, but also for information relating to the ethnography and landscape of the North: Sven’s information, as a result, underpins much of Book iv, the Descriptio insularum aquilonis. Sven knew the scale of Norway and Sweden:70 he had experienced the fact that the sun never set in the summer and never rose in the winter in the far North — as Adam comments ‘The king of the Danes and many others have attested the occurrence of this phenomenon there, as in Sweden and Norway and the rest of the islands in those parts’.71 Moreover he knew about Vinland: He spoke also of yet another island of the many found in that ocean. It is called Vinland because vines producing excellent wine grow there. […]  Beyond that island, he said, no habitable place is found in that ocean, but every place beyond is full of impenetrable ice and intense darkness.72 66

Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, ii.35 (33), p. 270. Lund, ‘Harald Bluetooth’, p. 308. 68 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.11, p. 450, iv.39, p. 488, iv.38, p. 488. See also iii.17 (16), pp. 346–48. 69 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.21, p. 460. 70 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.21, pp. 460–62. 71 Adam, History, trans. by Tschan, iv.37, p. 219; Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.38 (37), p. 488: ‘Itaque rex Danorum cum multis aliis contestatus est hoc ibi contingere sicut in Suedia et in Norvegia et in ceteris, quae ibi sunt, insulis’. 72 Adam, Gesta pontificum, trans. by Tschan, iv.38, p. 219; Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by 67

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And here there was additional information from Harald Hardrada, who had narrowly escaped sailing into the abyss at the edge of the sea.73 Sven may also be linked by Adam with information about the Amazons, who are placed in the neighbourhood of the Swedish city of Sigtuna, beyond the Rhiphaean Mountains, for directly after his discussion of their geography he talks about mysterious invaders, who have been described by the king: Whence they come is not known. They come up unexpectedly, […]  sometimes once in the course of a year or after a three-year period. Unless they are resisted with all one’s might, they lay waste the whole region and then withdraw.74

What is striking about much of this information is the extent to which genuine eyewitness information is mixed up with classical and post-classical ethnography. Thus, the edge of the sea, which Harald Hardrada almost reached, is called to mind in language reflecting the Aeneid.75 As for Adam’s discussion of the Amazons, who are grouped with the Cynocephali, Cyclops, and Himantopodes, it draws directly on Solinus.76 The Amazons, one might note, have already made an appearance in Book  iii, where Anund, son of Emund of Sweden (c. 1050–1060), is sent by his father to extend the boundaries of the kingdom. He enters the land of the Amazons, who destroy his army by poisoning the water, and the Swedes are then struck by a failure of their crops.77 Here Adam would seem to have been following reports he had heard from his ecclesiastical superior in Hamburg, since he goes on to say ‘Everything that happened in Sweden in his time the lord archbishop Adalbert described in grandiose language, as was his way’.78 So too, Adam was dependent on the archbishop for his Trillmich, iv.39 (38), p. 488: ‘Praeterea unam adhuc insulam recitavit ab multis in eo repertam oceano, quae dicitur Winland, eo quod vitis sponte nascantur, vinum optimum ferentes […] Post quam insulam, ait, terra non invenitur habitabilis in illo oceano, sed omnia, quae ultra sunt, glacie intolerabili ac caligine inmensa plena sunt’. 73 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.39 (38), p. 490. 74 Adam, Gesta pontificum, trans. by Tschan, iv.25, pp. 206–07; Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.25, p. 468: ‘Hiique incertum unde veniant; semel aliquando per annum vel post triennium […] subiti accedunt. Quibus nisi totis resistatur viribus, omnem depopulantur regionem, et denuo recedunt’. 75 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.39 (38), p. 490. 76 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.19, p. 458, iv.25, p. 468. 77 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iii.16 (15), pp. 344–46. 78 Adam, History, trans. by Tschan, iii.15, p. 127; Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iii.16 (15), p. 346: ‘Haec de Sueonibus suo tempore gesta domnus Adalbertus archiepsicopus amplifico sermone, ut solebat, omnia describens’.

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information on a group of Frisians who also tried to sail to the far North, were driven back, and narrowly escaped being killed by the Cyclops.79 Equally dependent on classical ethnography is the mention of the (totally legendary) Rhiphaean Mountains, the dwelling places of the Amazons, Cynocephali, Cyclops, and Himantopodes. As we have noted Adam placed them beyond Sigtuna,80 although earlier geographers had claimed that they lay either between the Danube and the Ocean or in the northernmost part of Asia, at the source of the Don.81 It is not just in the Descriptio of Book iv that Adam makes use of classical ethnographers: Solinus is cited in both the historical narrative and in the final ethnographic book, where there are occasional references to Martianus Capella and Orosius.82 But Adam was not dependent only on classical authors: writers of the eighth and ninth centuries were also of value. Most striking is the use of Einhard’s Gesta Karoli, which is cited in extenso on two occasions, the first, more or less reasonably, to describe the land of the Slavs,83 and the second to describe the Baltic.84 Here Einhard’s thoroughly confused account of the inland sea is juxtaposed with first-hand information that had come from Harald Hardrada and Ganuz Wolf, that is probably Sven Estridsen’s father, Ulf Jarl. It would seem that literary information had an authority that was not really matched by oral information, even if that information was first hand. There may be another Carolingian-period tradition on which Adam was drawing. His Amazons and Cynocephali do not occupy the same part of the world as they do in classical ethnography, where they belong in the South and the East. But they had already been placed in the North by the eighth-century Cosmography of Aethicus Ister, in its lengthy description of the septentrional islands.85 As we have noted, Tim Reuter presented Adam as the first to write 79

Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.40–41 (39–40), pp. 490–92. Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.25, p. 468. See also the comments on the ‘land of women’ in ibid. iv.14, p. 452, iv.17, p. 454, iv.19, pp. 456–58. 81 Dilke, ‘Geographical Perceptions’. 82 For Solinus, Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, ii.22 (19), p. 252; iv.19, p. 458, iv.21, p. 462, iv.25, p. 468, iv.35–36 (34–35), pp. 482–84; for Martianus Capella, iv.12, p. 450, iv.20, p. 460, iv.35 (34), p. 482, iv.39 (38), p. 490; for Orosius, i.3, p. 166; iv.21, p. 460. 83 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, ii.18–19 (16), pp. 246–48. 84 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.11, p. 450. 85 Wood, ‘Aethicus Ister’; Wood, ‘Categorising the cynocephali’; Wood and Indruszewski, ‘An Eighth-Century Written Source’. 80

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a systematic ethnography of the North.86 The precise accuracy of that claim depends on how one understands Aethicus Ister: Should it be taken as a serious cosmographical work, or is it a work of fantasy? Although there is no clear borrowing by Adam, there are marked similarities between what he has to say about the islands of the Baltic and some of the specific descriptions of peoples, not least in the account of the island (sic) of Estonia, and the islands of the Slavs, near the Wagiri and the Rani, as well as Samland,87 and what is to be found in sections of the Cosmography.88 There are, however, marked differences as well: for instance although the Amazons and Cynocephali appear in both texts, Adam’s Cynocephali are very different from those in the Cosmography. Above all, while in Aethicus Ister the Cynocephali have dog’s heads (as one would expect, both from their name and from classical ethnography),89 in Adam their heads rest on their breasts.90 But despite that difference, Adam’s description of the Baltic and its islands conforms in many ways to the account of the islands of the North in the Cosmography, and it uses similar rhetorical strategies in describing some of the wilder peoples of the region. Clearly Adam was tapping into the same tradition. The classical prism through which Adam saw the monstrous races is unquestionably one that had been transmitted by clergy. We have already noted that Adam referred to Adalbert in his description of Anund’s encounter with the Amazons.91 And the archbishop is named again as the source for the story of the escape of the Frisians from the Cyclops.92 Yet we should also ask whether this classical view of the monstrous races was also current in ecclesiastical and court circles in eleventh-century Denmark. In placing one of his descriptions of the monstrous races alongside Sven Estridsen’s comments on strange people who threatened Sweden,93 Adam may imply that his source of geographical information on the Amazons, Cynocephali, Cyclops, and Himantopodes was the king himself. Despite the clearly fantastic elements in his account, which 86

Reuter, ‘Introduction to the 2002 Edition’, p. xvii. Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.17–18, pp. 454–56. 88 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, ii.19 (16), p. 248; iv.18–20, pp. 454–60; Aethicus Ister, Cosmographia, ed. by Herren, 29, pp. 28–31; 31, pp. 30–31. 89 Aethicus Ister, Cosmographia, ed. by Herren, ii.28, pp. 26–28. Wood, ‘Aethicus Ister’; Wood ‘Categorising the cynocephali’. 90 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.19, p. 458, iv.25, p. 468. 91 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iii.16 (15), p. 346. 92 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.40–41 (39–40), pp. 490–92. 93 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.25, p. 468. 87

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derive from literary sources, this is not as unlikely as it may seem. Rimbert had been told that Cynocephali were to be found in territories where he and other missionaries might work.94 An even closer parallel to Sven Estridsen’s apparent understanding that the Amazons were to be found near Sigtuna, beyond the Rhiphaean Mountains, is Otto I’s belief, recorded by the Arab geographer Ibrahim Ibn Ya’qub, that Cynocephali lived to the west of the Rus’.95 What we would regard as mythical, was regarded as being very close at hand, even by rulers with a strong sense of Realpolitik. We have, therefore, to consider whether it was not just Adam who saw the North through the prism of classical ethnography, but also Sven Estridsen, perhaps under the influence of the leading clerics of his kingdom. And here it is worth remembering that Adam goes out of his way to praise Sven’s knowledge of letters.96 That Mediterranean culture was to be found in his court is shown by his coinage, which is striking for its use of Byzantine models.97 The fact that Sven was Adam’s chief source for the North may have implications for the historian’s description of Uppsala, which is envisaged as lying next to the land of the Cynocephali,98 and so might also be dependent to some extent on information supplied by the Danish king. This possibility is strengthened by the fact that the first mention of Uppsala in Adam comes in the account of Unni’s mission to Birka, which is directly stated as coming from Sven. 99 Perhaps the king should be seen as one of the sources of Adam’s understanding of paganism. It is worth remembering that Sven had served under Anund Jacob in Sweden,100 and that he would intervene to stop Archbishop Adalbert’s tour of the North.101 In addition, he surely knew the Swedish king Stenkil, who supposedly stopped the bishops Adalward of Sigtuna and Egino of Dalby from attempting to destroy the temple at Uppsala, allowing them instead to attack idols in the lands of the Goths (either Väster- or Östergötland).102 Adam also 94

Ratramnus, Epistolae (Epistula ad Rimbertum), ed. by Dümmler, no. 12, pp. 156–57. Wood, ‘Categorising the cynocephali’, pp. 131–32. 95 Jacob, Arabische Berichte, pp. 14, 17; Wood, ‘Categorising the cynocephali’, p. 136. 96 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iii.54 (53), p. 396. 97 Scheel, ‘Concepts of Cultural Transfer’, p. 64. 98 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.25–27, pp. 468–72. 99 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, i.61 (63), pp. 230–32. 100 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.21, p. 460. 101 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iii.72, p. 424. 102 Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.30, p. 474, iv.29, p. 474.

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tells us that Egino, who was in fact an appointee of Sven, and whose diocese was Danish, was responsible for the destruction of the idol of Fricco at Skara — an action that led him to be held in particularly high esteem by the king.103 The presentation of Scandinavian paganism in the History of the Archbishops of Hamburg­Bremen seems to be partially dependent on Sven and his clergy. Henrik Janson argued that Adam’s description of Uppsala should be read in the light of the Investiture Contest.104 Whatever one makes of that argument, I would suggest that Adam’s image of Scandinavian paganism derived in part from an imaginative construction made at the Danish court of Sven, and perhaps before him at the Swedish courts of Anund Jacob and Stenkil, intended to marginalize certain hostile groups in Svear society. If we acknowledge that Sven Estridsen had some influence on Adam’s reading of the North over and above the simple provision of factual information, we may also consider that it was the king as much as the historian who downplayed the input of missionaries other than those associated with Hamburg-Bremen. Bruno of Querfurt, for instance, in his letter to Henry II, written in the winter of 1008/09, talks of the success of a mission that he had sent to the Swedes, led by a bishop he had consecrated for the purpose and by the monk Robert.105 Bruno’s reference to the mission to Suigia has been dismissed, most recently by Bertil Nilsson, as relating to a people other than the Swedes,106 but Vladimir Rybakov’s recent commentary on Adam’s History has made it clear that Suigia is a standard variant of Suedia.107 Moreover, Bruno is obviously referring to a mission that would have been of some interest to the emperor Henry II, and not to an expedition to territory outside his ken. Although, for chronological reasons, there are problems in identifying the king whose conversion is mentioned by Bruno with Olof Skötkonung,108 there were no doubt other leaders who called themselves kings of the Svear — men of the sort who are mentioned in Russian sources,109 and one should note that at the very end of his life, when 103

Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iv.9, p. 446. Janson, ‘Adam of Bremen’. 105 Bruno, Epistola ad Henricum regem, ed. by Karwasińska, pp. 105–06. 106 Nilsson, ‘Kring några bortglömda tankar’. See also Blomkvist, Brink, and Lindkvist, ‘The Kingdom of Sweden’, p. 182. 107 Rybakov, Hronika Adama Bremenskogo, pp.  20–21, 35–44. See also Janson, ‘Konfliktlinjer i tidig nordeuropeisk kyrkoorganisation’, pp. 215–17, on the possibility that the mission sent by Bruno was directed to Olof Skötkonung. 108 But see Janson, ‘Konfliktlinjer i tidig nordeuropeisk kyrkoorganisation’, pp. 215–17. 109 See ‘Discourse 1’, in The ‘Paterik’ of the Kievan Caves Monastery, trans. by Heppell, pp. 1–5. 104

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he wrote his letter to Henry, Bruno spent more time in Kyiv than he did at the court of the Polish ruler Bolesław Chrobry,110 whose family connections with Scandinavia are sometimes seen as helping to explain Bruno’s comments. Perhaps Sven, as much as Adam, pushed a vision of the Christianization of the Swedes that could be presented, not just in terms of the activity of the bishops of Hamburg-Bremen, but also in terms of the actions of one particular coterie of kings. We should beware of seeing Sven as no more than a fund of anecdotes, denying him and his court any agency in the interpretation of evidence that they provided. As we have seen, the king might have had as much reason as Adam to tamper with the story of Poppo’s conversion of Harald Bluetooth. The past, even the recent past, for Adam was made up of hagiographical and annalistic narratives, ecclesiastical documents and diplomata, and classical and Carolingian ethnography. But, from our point of view, equally important — even if Adam himself seems usually to stress the authority of the classics — were the first-hand accounts, in which the dominant voice seems to have been that of Sven Estridsen. Ultimately much of Adam’s picture of Denmark and the lands beyond it, after the deaths of Anskar and Rimbert, beginning, in other words, with the episcopate of Unni, seems to come from Sven’s court — and it is surely symptomatic of this that at the end of Book iii, when he prepares the reader for what will come in Book iv, Adam states that he will ‘describe the location of Denmark, and the nature of the rest of the countries beyond Denmark’.111 This is the North from a Danish point of view, but that viewpoint is not yet what it would be for Sven Aggesen and Saxo Grammaticus. In other words, although his concern was the Church of Hamburg-Bremen, in order to provide an account of its work in the North, Adam was having to rely on the views of the Danish king, itself apparently a mixture of first-hand experience, eleventh-century learning, and court propaganda. This the historian then integrated into his other source material. As a result, although he was using the past to argue an ecclesiastical case, he accessed that past through a set of filters, which were neither exclusively Saxon nor ecclesiastical, but were in addition classical, Carolingian, and Danish. Perhaps most significant, the result has little in common with the mythical past of the later sagas, even if, unlike Rimbert, it acknowledged the cults of Wodan, Thor, and Fricco. 110

Wood, ‘Martyrdom’. Adam, History, trans. by Tschan, iii.lxxviii, p. 185; Adam, Gesta pontificum, ed. by Trillmich, iii.78, p. 432: ‘de situ vel reliquiarum, quae trans Daniam sunt, regionum natura describere’. 111

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Works Cited Primary Sources Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, ed. by Werner Trillmich, in Quellen des 9. und 11. Jahrhunderts zur Geschichte der Hamburgischen Kirche und des Reiches, Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters, 11 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1961), pp. 160–499; trans. by Francis J. Tschan, Adam of Bremen: History of the Archbishops of Hamburg­Bremen, trans. with a new introduction and selected bibliography by Timothy Reuter (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002) Æthelweard, Chronicon, ed.  by Alistair Campbell, The Chronicle of Æthelweard (Edinburgh: Nelson, 1962) Aethicus Ister, Cosmographia, ed. by Michael Herren, The Cosmography of Aethicus Ister: Edition, Translation, and Commentary, Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin, 8 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011) Bruno of Querfurt, Epistola ad Henricum regem, ed. by Jadwiga Karwasińska, Monumenta Poloniae Historica, n.s., 4.3 (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1973), pp. 85–106 Einhard, Vita Karoli, ed. by Georg Waitz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 25 (Hanover: Hahn, 1911) Helmold of Bosau, Cronica Slavorum, ed.  by Johannes  M. Lappenberg and Bernhard Schmeidler, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 32 (Hanover: Hahn, 1937) The ‘Paterik’ of the Kievan Caves Monastery, trans. by Muriel Heppell, Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature, English Translations, 1 (Cambridge, MA: Distributed by the Harvard University Press for the Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University, 1989) Ratramnus, Epistolae (Epistula ad Rimbertum), ed.  by Ernst Dümmler, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Epistolae Karolini aevi, 4: Epistolae, 6 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1925), no. 12, pp. 155–57 Rimbert, Vita Anskarii, ed. by Werner Trillmich, in Quellen des 9. und 11. Jahrhunderts zur Geschichte der Hamburgischen Kirche und des Reiches, Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters, 11 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1961), pp. 16–133 Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon, ed.  by Werner Trillmich, Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters, 9 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1957) Widukind of Corvey, Res gestae Saxonicae, ed.  by Albert Bauer and Reinhold Rau, in Quellen zur Geschichte der sächsischen Kaiserzeit, Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters, 8 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971), pp. 16–183

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Secondary Studies Allmäe, Raili, Liina Maldre, and Teresa Tomek, ‘The Salme I Ship Burial: An Osteological View of a Unique Burial in Northern Europe’, Interdisciplinaria archaeologica: Natural Sciences in Archaeology, 2 (2011), 109–24 Bagge, Sverre, and Sæbjørg Walaker Nordeide, ‘The Kingdom of Norway’, in Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’, c. 900–1200, ed. by Nora Berend (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 121–66 Barnwell, Timothy M., ‘Missionaries and Changing Views of the Other from the Ninth to the Twelfth Centuries’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Leeds, 2014) Bartlett, Robert, ‘From Paganism to Christianity in Medieval Europe’, in Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’, c. 900–1200, ed. by Nora Berend (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 47–72 Blomkvist, Nils, Stefan Brink, and Thomas Lindkvist, ‘The Kingdom of Sweden’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History, ii: c.  700–c.  900, ed.  by Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 167–213 Dilke, Oswald A. W., ‘Geographical Perceptions of the North in Pomponius Mela and Ptolemy’, Arctic, 37 (1984), 347–51 Gelting, Michael H., ‘The Kingdom of Denmark’, in Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’, c. 900–1200, ed. by Nora Berend (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 73–120 —— , ‘Poppo’s Ordeal: Courtier Bishops and the Success of Christianization at the Turn of the First Millennium’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 6 (2017), 101–33 Jacob, Georg, Arabische Berichte von Gesandten an germanische Fürstenhöfe aus dem 9. und 10. Jahrhundert, Quellen zur Deutschen Volkskunde, 1 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1927) Janson, Henrik, ‘Adam of Bremen and the Conversion of Scandinavia’, in Christianizing Peoples and Converting Individuals, ed.  by Guyda Armstrong and Ian Wood, International Medieval Research, 7 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), pp. 83–88 ——  , ‘Konfliktlinjen i tidig nordeuropeisk kyrkoorganisation’, in Kristendommen i Danmark før 1050, ed. by Niels Lund (Roskilde: Roskilde Museums Forlag, 2004), pp. 215–34 Knibbs, Eric, Ansgar, Rimbert, and the Forged Foundation of Hamburg­Bremen (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011) Lapidge, Michael, ‘Byrhtferth of Ramsey and the Early Sections of the Historia regum Attributed to Symeon of Durham’, Anglo­Saxon England, 10 (1982), 97–122 Lozovsky, Natalia, ‘The Earth is our Book’: Geographical Knowledge in the Latin West, ca. 400–1000 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000) Lund, Niels, ‘Scandinavia, c.  700–1066’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History, ii: c.  700–c.  900, ed.  by Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 202–27 ——  , ‘The Danish Empire and the End of the Viking Age’, in The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings, ed.  by Peter  H. Sawyer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 156–81

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——  , ‘Harald Bluetooth: A  Saint Very Nearly Made by Adam of Bremen’, in The Scandinavians from the Vendel Period to the Tenth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective, ed. by Judith Jesch, Studies in Historical Archaeoethnology, 5 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002), pp. 303–20 —— , ‘Sven Estridsen’s Incest and Divorce’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 13 (2017), 115–43 Nash Briggs, Daphne, ‘Reading the Images on Iron Age Coins: 4, One Eye’, Chris Judd List, 112 ( July 2010), 2–4 Nilsson, Bertil, ‘Kring några bortglömda tankar om Suigi och Olof Skötkonungs dop’, Fornvännen, 98 (2003), 207–13 Peets, Jüri, Raili Allmäe, Liina Maldre, Ragnar Saage, and Teresa Tomek, ‘Research Results of the Salme Ship Burials in 2011–2012’, Archaeological Fieldwork in Estonia (2012), 43–60 Price, Neil, ‘Belief and Ritual’, in The Vikings: Life and Legend, ed. by Gareth Williams, Peter Pentz, and Matthias Wemhoff (London: British Museum Press, 2014), pp. 164–95 Reuter, Timothy, ‘Introduction to the 2002 Edition’, in Adam of Bremen: History of the Archbishops of Hamburg­Bremen, trans. by Francis J. Tschan with a new introduction and selected bibliography by Timothy Reuter (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), pp. xi–xxi Rybakov, Vladimir Vladimirovich, Hronika Adama Bremenskogo i pervye hristianskie missionery v Skandinavii (Владимир Владимирович Рыбаков, Хроника Адама Бременского и первые христианские миссионеры в Скандинавии) (Moscow: Yazyki slavyanskih kul’tur, 2008) Sawyer, Birgit, and Peter H. Sawyer, ‘Adam and the Eve of Scandinavian History’, in The Perception of the Past in Twelfth­Century Europe, ed.  by Paul Magdalino (London: Bloomsbury, 1992), pp. 37–51 ——  , ‘Adam of Bremen’, unpublished lecture [accessed 3 January 2019] Scheel, Roland, ‘Concepts of Cultural Transfer between Byzantium and the North’, in Byzantium and the Viking World, ed. by Fedir Androshchuk, Jonathan Shepard, and Monica White, Studia Byzantina Upsaliensia, 16 (Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2016), pp. 53–87 Słupecki, Leszek Pawel, Slavonic Pagan Sanctuaries (Warsaw: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, 1994) Stafford, Pauline, After Alfred: Anglo­Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers 900­1150 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020) Wood, Ian, ‘Christians and Pagans in Ninth-Century Scandinavia’, in The Christianization of Scandinavia, ed.  by Birgit Sawyer, Peter  H. Sawyer, and Ian Wood (Alingsås: Viktoria Bokforlag, 1987), pp. 36–67 ——  , ‘Aethicus Ister: An Exercise in Difference’, in Grenze und Differenz im frühen Mittelalter, ed. by Walter Pohl and Helmut Reimitz, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 1 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2000), pp. 197–208

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—— , The Missionary Life: Saints and the Evangelization of Europe, 400–1050 (London: Routledge, 2001) ——  , ‘Categorising the cynocephali’, in Ego Trouble: Authors and their Identities in the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Richard Corradini, Matthew Gillis, Rosamond McKitterick, and Irene van Renswoude, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 15 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010), pp. 125–36 ——  , ‘Martyrdom in Early Christian Rus’’, Historia Slavorum Occidentis, 3.18 (2018), 11–26 Wood, Ian, and George Indruszewski, ‘An Eighth-Century Written Source on Ships and Navigation: The Cosmography of Aethicus Ister’, in Wulfstan’s Voyage: the Baltic Sea Region in the Early Viking Age, ed. by Anton Englert and Athena Trakadas, Maritime Culture of the North, 2 (Roskilde: Viking Ship Museum, 2009), pp. 220–34 ——  , ‘Jonas of Bobbio and the Representation of Germanic Paganism’, in Religion, Animaux et Quotidien au Moyen Âge, ed. by Jean-Marie Duvosquel, Jean-Marie Sansterre, Nicolas Schroeder, Michel de Waha, and Alexis Wilkin (Brussels, 2019), pp. 889–906

National Identity in Scandinavian Chronicles (Saxo and Snorri) Sverre Bagge

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axo Grammaticus and Snorri Sturluson are the two giants of historical writing in medieval Scandinavia. Saxo was a cleric, probably a canon at the Cathedral of Lund, and wrote his work on Danish history from the earliest times until 1185, the Gesta Danorum, in the early thirteenth century. He dedicated it to the archbishop at the time, Anders Sunesen, but his patron was Anders’s predecessor Absalon (d.  1201), who figures prominently in the latter part of the work. Very little else is known about Saxo’s life. Apart from a few fragments, the Gesta is only preserved in its first printed edition, published in Paris in 1514, but a redacted version from the fourteenth century survives in a number of manuscripts. Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241) was an Icelandic chieftain and one of the most prominent magnates on the island. He twice spent longer periods in Norway (1218–1220 and 1237–1239) and was a close friend of Earl (from 1237 Duke) Skule Bårdsson, the most powerful man in the country after the king. When Skule rebelled in 1239, Snorri left for Iceland and was later killed in connection with King Håkon’s revenge on his enemies. The almost contemporary Sturlunga saga has much information about Snorri’s participation in the various internal struggles in Iceland in the 1220s and 1230s. Much more is therefore known about him than about Saxo — with the key exception that we cannot be absolutely sure that he really was the author of the work to be discussed in the following, Heimskringla, the history of the Norwegian kings from the earliest times until 1177. His authorship is nevertheless accepted by most scholars and will be Sverre Bagge is Professor Emeritus of Medieval History at the University of Bergen. Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000–1300, ed. by Walter Pohl, Veronika Wieser, and Francesco Borri, celama 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp.  65–79 FHG 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.130254

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assumed here. However, we neither know when Heimskringla was composed, nor does it contain a dedication. The title of the work is modern, derived from the opening words of the narrative (after the preface), ‘kringla heimsins’, which means ‘circle of the earth’ and introduces a brief geographical description. In the following, the question of national identity in the two works will be discussed. This is fairly easy in the case of Saxo; his Danish patriotism is obvious throughout the work. It is more complicated in the case of Snorri. Iceland was an independent political unit in Snorri’s lifetime, and only submitted to the king of Norway in 1262. Snorri was involved in King Håkon’s attempts to make the Icelanders submit to his rule, but did not carry out his task to the king’s satisfaction. Depending on the time the work was composed, Snorri may be suspected of positive as well as negative attitudes towards the Norwegian monarchy. His friendship with Skule during the period of increasing enmity between the latter and Håkon may point in the same direction. The following discussion will deal with four aspects of national identity in the two works: (1) the authors’ statements about their aims in the prefaces; (2) their account of their countries’ ancient history and its relationship to universal history; (3) the accounts of the introduction of Christianity; and (4) the stories of the two royal saints, St Cnut in Denmark and St Olaf in Norway.

The Prefaces Because other nations are in the habit of vaunting the fame of their achievements, and joy in recollecting their ancestors, Absalon, Archbishop of Denmark, had always been fired with a passionate zeal to glorify our fatherland. He would not allow it to go without some noble document of their kind and, since everyone else refused the task, the labour of compiling a history of the Danes was thrown upon me, the least of his retinue; his powerful insistence forced my weak intellect to embark on a project too huge for my abilities. […] So it came about that my small talent, though aware of its inadequacy for this massive assignment, preferred to strive beyond its powers rather than refuse the bidding; if our neighbours exulted in the records of their past exploits, the reputation of our people should not lie forgotten under ancient mould, but be blest with a literary memorial.1 1

Saxo, Gesta Danorum, trans. by Fisher and ed. by Friis-Jensen, Praefatio, i.1, i, p. 3; ed. by Friis-Jensen, Praefatio, i.1., i, p. 72; ‘Cum cetere nationes rerum suarum titulis gloriari uoluptatemque ex maiorum recordatione percipere soleant, Danorum maximus pontifex Absalon patriam nostram, cuius illustrande maxima semper cupiditate flagrabat, eo claritatis et monumenti genere fraudari non passus mihi comitum suorum extremo ceteris operam abnuentibus res Danicas in historiam conferendi negocium intorsit, inopemque sensum maius uiribus opus

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As is evident from this passage, Saxo does not deal with national uniqueness in the modern sense; his point is not that the Danes possess a culture different from any other, but that they excel in the same virtues as other peoples and are able to compete with them. This is further underlined by Saxo’s use of Latin and his insistence that this is the only appropriate language for making the virtues of the Danes known to the world, which is Saxo’s duty, despite his alleged lack of qualification for the task. Here Saxo uses all his skill in rhetoric and Latin style to describe his own inadequacy in this respect! Saxo writes an extremely complicated Silver Age Latin that was much admired by later generations but apparently did not gain him many readers in his own country. In accordance with its language, Old Norse, Snorri’s work is addressed to an Icelandic and Norwegian audience; consequently, its aim is clearly not to convince an international audience of the virtues of the ancient Norwegians. Nor has Snorri in his preface or anywhere else much to say about the purpose of his work in general. Instead of stating why we should learn about the ancient kings, he focuses in the prologue on how we can know about them, presenting his sources and discussing their reliability.2 This does not necessarily make him any less national in his outlook than Saxo; he may simply have taken for granted that his work was supposed to praise the nation. Actually, there are patriotic expressions later in the work, although somewhat more subdued than in Saxo’s. Moreover, this difference between the two authors may also be a result of differences in style. While Saxo is constantly present in his narrative, commenting on events and praising or blaming the actors involved in them, Snorri mostly remains formally neutral; his opinions have to be traced indirectly. The stylistic difference between the two authors is also expressed in the contrast between Saxo’s extremely complicated, Silver Age Latin and the simple, direct Old Norse style of Snorri. Although Old Norse rarely becomes as complicated as Latin, there are examples of imitation of Latin syntax and rhetoric in his language as well. Snorri’s style is therefore the result of deliberate choice. Moreover, he is a master of this style, usually surpassing his predecessors when rephrasing passages used by them.3 ingredi crebre exhortationis imperio compulit. […] Quo euenit, ut paruitas mea, quamuis se predicte moli imparem animaduerteret, supra uires niti quam iubenti resistere preoptaret, ne finitimis factorum traditione gaudentibus huius gentis opinio potius uetustatis obliuiis repersa quam literarum monumentis predita uideretur’. 2 Snorri, Heimskringla, ed. Aðalbjarnarson, i, pp. 1–7; Engl. trans. by Hollander, pp. 3–5. 3 Lie, Studier in Heimskringlas stil; Amory, ‘Saga Style’; Bagge, ‘The Old Norse Kings’ Sagas’, pp. 5–13.

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The Ancient History of the North and Universal History Saxo’s European orientation is further expressed through a series of parallels between Danish and Roman history.4 With seventy-seven kings, Saxo seems to suggest that the history of Denmark goes back to the time of the foundation of Rome. He claims that the first kings of Denmark lived twenty generations before the birth of Christ. These were Dan and his brother Angul, the former of which gave the country its name, in the same way as Rome was named after Romulus but not after his brother Remus. Book v is entirely devoted to the reign of Frotho, the great king, conqueror, and legislator, whose long reign ended with a period of peace lasting thirty years, both analogous to, and at the same time as, the emperor Augustus’s rule. During this period, Christ was born. The next three books cover the period until the time of Charlemagne, when Christianity reached the border of Denmark; here Saxo explicitly mentions the Roman Empire, i.e. the contemporary empire centred in Germany for the first time. In the second half of the Gesta Danorum, Denmark’s relation to the ‘Roman’ Empire becomes an important theme. At the first stage, the Christianization leads to subordination under a ‘Roman’ = German archdiocese, centred on Hamburg-Bremen. The liberation from ‘Roman’ dominance with the foundation of a Scandinavian church province governed from Lund in Denmark is dealt with at the end of Book xii. However, there is still a ‘Roman’ threat in the following books, when Frederick Barbarossa claimed feudal suzerainty over King Valdemar I, although Saxo played this down as much as possible. Saxo ends his work with the crusades in the Baltic under the joint leadership of the king and his own patron, Archbishop Absalon. In this way, Saxo creates a link between the history of Denmark and the history of salvation, while at the same time presenting Denmark as a northern parallel to the Roman Empire. A similar parallel to Roman history is to be found in the twelfth-century Latin Historia Norwegie, whose genealogy is apparently based on an extant poem, Ynglingatal, probably composed in the Viking Age and preserved in Snorri’s Heimskringla.5 The entire prehistoric genealogy comprises twentyeight generations. According to the normal rule of one generation per thirty 4

For the following , see Friis-Jensen, ‘Saxo Grammaticus’s Study of the Roman Historiographers’, pp. 61–81. 5 For the following, see most recently Bagge, ‘Skandinavische Chroniken’, pp. 557–59. The date of the poem is disputed. Most scholars regard it as ancient but Krag, Ynglingatal argues that it dates from the twelfth century.

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years, this means 840 years, which brings the origin of the dynasty back to the time of the birth of Christ, although this is not stated explicitly. The genealogy is continued until Harald Finehair (c. 900), the first ruler of the whole of Norway. Snorri later gives a more detailed but largely similar account of the early history of the dynasty with extensive quotations from Ynglingatal. Snorri depicts the god Odin as the founder of the dynasty: Odin was actually a king who after his death was regarded as a god by his people. He lived at a time when the Romans were conquering the Mediterranean and understood that he had to establish his own kingdom in the north. Thus, Snorri, like Saxo, succeeds in creating a parallel history to that of the Romans while securing his dynasty’s independence from them. His reason for this was probably less political than Saxo’s; Norway was too distant for Germany to have been a real threat. Culturally, however, there may have been a wish to stress the indigenous tradition rather than seeking an origin in the classical past. Moreover, Snorri’s attempts to show parallels between Norwegian and Roman history is confined to the earliest period; apart from a few references to events abroad, there is no attempt to show similarities or differences between the history of Norway and that of the rest of Europe. Nor does Snorri exploit the early history to extol the virtues of the ancient Norwegians. On the contrary, his stories of the ancient kings mainly deal with their deaths and are often bizarre, as many of them were killed in strange and often shameful ways. Moreover, he focuses on the dynasty, not the people; the latter are only introduced when the dynasty leaves Sweden for Norway.

The Conversion to Christianity The conversion to Christianity represented an even greater challenge to the two historians than the relationship to the Roman Empire. Conversion meant that the country moved from darkness to light, but also that the ancestors were shown to be wrong by representatives of a new faith coming from abroad. In the case of Denmark, the importance of foreign missionaries could hardly be denied; the decisive event in the history of the conversion was the German cleric Poppo’s ordeal to prove the truth of Christianity.6 Thus Christianity was introduced not only by a foreigner but by a representative of the Roman emperor, now residing in Germany. Saxo introduces Danish agency in the conversion process, however, by showing the Danes’ own attempt to seek the true 6

Saxo, Gesta Danorum, ed. by Friis-Jensen, x.11.3–4, i, pp. 646–48.

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God. On King Gorm’s orders, Thorkel sets out on an expedition to the northern edge of the world, where, in great danger, he invokes the God of the universe and is saved. After this experience he goes to Germany, which has recently converted to Christianity, and learns the basic elements of Christian doctrine.7 Saxo’s Norwegian and Icelandic counterparts had an easier task. There seems to have been a tradition, probably with some basis in reality, that Norway was converted by indigenous kings. The historical sources mention two such kings, Olaf Tryggvason (995–1000) and St Olaf Haraldsson (1015–1030) who converted the Norwegians by preaching, prayers, alliances with the country’s leading men, as well as by the use of force against the recalcitrant who could not be converted in other ways. The emphasis varies according to the general ideology of the historical works. Hagiographic features are attributed to both kings to a greater or lesser extent in the various sources. Although Olaf Haraldsson became the country’s national saint and is the subject of a far greater number of texts than Olaf Tryggvason, the latter is more prominent in the stories of the conversion. This applies also to Snorri’s work. Coming at the end of a long tradition, Snorri repeats most of the facts and part of the interpretation of his predecessors; his main source is the saga of Olaf Tryggvason written by the monk Oddr Snorrason in the late twelfth century.8 Snorri represents a more secular attitude than Oddr and other preceding writers, although his narrative is not radically different. Most characteristic of his account are explanations in natural and ‘sociological’ terms, which also occasionally appeared in his predecessors’ works but which Snorri makes more explicit and systematic. Snorri explains that it is difficult to make people change religion; customs are well ingrained. The readiness to convert is partly a question of familiarity. As the southern, i.e. south-eastern, part of the country is more familiar with Christianity, conversion is less difficult here. Olaf Tryggvason has many friends and relatives there who tend to follow him. Moving to western Norway, Olaf converts this region by giving his sister in marriage to its leader. Further north, however, he meets with more resistance and uses force, killing or torturing those resisting him. Snorri’s main focus in this analysis is always on the elite. When the leading men convert, the people follow, according to Snorri’s aristocratic — but probably also realistic — understanding of human behaviour. Similar explanations can also be found in Oddr’s work but are not used as systematically. The effect of both peaceful as well as 7

Saxo, Gesta Danorum, ed. by Friis-Jensen, viii.14.2–15.10, i, pp. 562–77. For the following, see Andersson, ‘The Conversion of Norway’, pp. 83–95 and Bagge, ‘The Making of a Missionary King’. 8

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violent means is largely the same as in more secular contexts, in modern parlance: ‘nothing succeeds like success’, the winner normally gets what he wants. Thus crushing pagan idols demonstrates the impotence of the pagan religion in the same way as defeating or killing one’s opponent forms evidence of superiority. In both cases, the loser’s adherents join the winner. Comparing the conversion narratives of Saxo and Snorri, we find essential similarities, but differences in execution. Both authors insist on the importance of indigenous factors. Christianity is not imposed by foreign conquerors or missionaries; the countries’ rulers play an active part. Here Snorri has the advantage of being able to build on a long tradition, clerical as well as secular, which supports the claim that the kings played a more important role than the foreign missionaries. Saxo necessarily has to pay more attention to the latter but nevertheless insists on the Danes’ own agency and contribution. In addition, the emancipation of the Danish Church from German domination becomes a central issue in the part of the work following the account of the conversion, while ecclesiastical matters are less important to Snorri. Once again, Norway’s greater distance from Germany was probably an important factor in this.

Royal Biographies — From Hagiography to Political History Classical Antiquity’s clear distinction between history and biography became blurred in the Middle Ages. National history was largely identified with that of a people’s rulers, and few distinctions were made between the latter’s public and private life.9 An examination of a selection of royal biographies is therefore a good way to bring out some characteristic features of Scandinavian historiography, including the relationship between religious and secular aspects. Holy kings — who were quite common in the early Middle Ages, notably in newly converted countries — are particularly relevant in this context. Let us therefore examine our two authors’ accounts of their countries’ main royal saints, St Cnut in Denmark and St Olaf in Norway. The hagiography of St Cnut was developed shortly after his death in 1086 in the anonymous Passio Sti Canuti and in Aelnoth’s work, both strongly hagiographic.10 However, Aelnoth deals not only with Cnut’s reign but also with those of his predecessors and successors. In addition, he includes information 9 Leo, Die griechisch­römische Biographie; Kirn, Das Bild des Menschen, pp. 40–53; Bagge, ‘The Old Norse Kings’ Sagas’, pp. 19–21. 10 For the following, see Bagge, ‘Skandinavische Chroniken’, pp. 559–63.

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about the political conflicts in which Cnut was involved, including his planned expedition against England in order to liberate the English people from Norman tyranny — Aelnoth himself was probably an Englishman in exile — and the Danish people’s resistance to it. These themes are considerably developed by Saxo, who gives an essentially secular account of Cnut’s reign.11 When Cnut is rejected in the royal election, it seems that Saxo almost feels that he has to give an excuse for why Cnut does not take up arms against his brother. In Saxo’s account, Cnut is first and foremost a warrior hero. His planned expedition against England has nothing to do with religion; Cnut’s motive is his own honour. The reason for the rebellion against him is not his piety, but the lazy and cowardly Danes’ unwillingness to risk their lives in war and to carry the burden that the king’s ambitious plan would impose on them. Although Saxo strongly condemns Cnut’s killers, his reason for this is not that it is a crime to kill a king, but that Cnut was a good king and did not deserve to die. Moreover, Saxo’s account of the internal conflicts in the mid-twelfth century resembles Snorri’s of the contemporary struggles in Norway; neither of them is much concerned with ideas of lawful succession or the ideal of the rex iustus. Compared to his predecessors, Saxo also tones down any hagiographical features in his account of Cnut’s death. Cnut fights his numerically superior enemies like a true hero, and only towards the very end throws away his arms to accept death like a true martyr. In this way, Cnut excels in piety as well as in military glory, though unfortunately his enemies prevent him from gaining the victory he deserves. However, his ambitions and heroic qualities point towards the great victories in the Baltic area under his successors. In the case of St Olaf, the earliest prose account, the Passio Olavi, is pure hagiography and hardly gives any information about Olaf ’s life.12 The first step in the direction of a real history of Olaf is taken by Theodoricus Monachus, whose work contains a number of details about Olaf ’s reign, including how he came to power in Norway, his exile, return, and death in the Battle of Stiklestad, as well as the names of several of his adversaries and adherents. Ideologically, however, Theodoricus’s work is as hagiographic as the Passio Olavi; in contrast to the later accounts, there is no difference between the saint and the secular ruler; Olaf is represented as a saint throughout his life. The distinction between Olaf as a secular ruler, on the one hand, and as a saint, on the other, occurs for the first time in the so-called Legendary Saga, composed around 1200. Contrary to its nineteenth-century name, which was intended to 11 12

Saxo, Gesta Danorum, ed. by Friis-Jensen, xi.11–15, ii, pp. 38–61. For the following, see Bagge, ‘Warrior, King and Saint’, pp. 281–304.

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emphasize its difference from Snorri’s work, it contains much more on the secular aspects of Olaf ’s life and career than preceding works. The Legendary Saga presents two successive characterizations of Olaf.13 The first begins with a detailed description of Olaf in the traditional saga style, including comments about his character, his intelligence, piety, kindness to the poor, and severity towards pagans and evildoers. The second description of the king’s character is divided into a negative and a positive part. According to the former, Olaf was arrogant, tyrannical, vengeful, and mean, proud and irascible, and a ruler of this world. By contrast, the latter describes him as mild and modest, kind-hearted and sociable, prudent and amiable, generous and noble, famous and just, a good ruler, and attentive to God’s law and that of good men. Not surprisingly, the author adds that the latter description was the correct one, but despite this conclusion gives several negative glimpses of Olaf in his narrative. The young Olaf is arrogant towards his stepfather and goes on Viking expeditions to amuse himself. The author makes no attempt to hide Olaf ’s violent activities, although already at this stage they are interspersed with acts of asceticism and piety. In turn, Olaf ’s preparations for his martyrdom at Stiklestad are juxtaposed with displays of aggression and cynical comments on the death of his enemies. As in other respects, the Legendary Saga’s view of Olaf is a mixture of opposing elements, apparently without much attempt on the author’s part to deal with the relationship between them. One of Snorri’s challenges — probably the main one — in reorganizing this material was to harmonize and develop these various elements in order to reconcile their contradictions, at least to a point. One of his methods is simple adherence to the ‘objective’ saga style. Snorri mostly refrains from authorial comments, presenting his actors on the stage and either letting them express their motives themselves or simply reporting what they did. However, he also modifies the accounts of some of Olaf ’s most drastic expressions both of his piety and of his arrogance. Most importantly, Snorri manages to reconcile most of the contradictory material by constructing a chronology of three successive phases in Olaf ’s life, as Viking, king, and saint respectively.14 Snorri places two corresponding characterizations of Olaf in his account of these different phases, the secular one at the beginning and another, more religious one after Olaf has become king, where the Legendary Saga had also placed its characterization of Olaf.15 Finally, Snorri adds a third portrait of Olaf after the account 13

Legendary Saga, ed. by Heinrichs and others, 28, pp. 80–83. Bagge, Society and Politics, pp. 181–86. 15 Snorri, Heimskringla, ed. by Aðalbjarnarson, iii, pp. 3–4, 328–30; Bagge, Society and Politics, pp. 181–86; Bjarne Fidjestøl, ‘European and Native Tradition’, pp. 184–200. 14

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of his exile, in preparation for his sainthood that gradually manifests itself during the last two years of his life. Like Cnut in his final battle, Olaf fights at Stiklestad but then throws away his arms and lays down to meet death as a true martyr. However, the transition from warrior hero to Christian martyr is more developed in Snorri’s account than in Saxo’s. In his narrative of Olaf ’s reign, Snorri organizes his extensive material — the saga fills around 250 pages in modern editions — derived from oral as well as written sources into a coherent narrative, based on a strict chronology and a detailed account of Olaf ’s movements. Snorri then introduces an overall distinction between the first ten years of Olaf ’s rule, which were successful, and the last five, which were increasingly difficult and lead to his exile and, after his return, to his death in the Battle of Stiklestad (1030). From the point of view of writing patriotic national history, the two royal saints actually presented problems for both authors. Most early medieval saints were martyrs, which also applied to most royal saints — with the exception of King Edward of England, known as the Confessor. Being killed by pagans or by an evil rival, like Earl Torfinn of the Orkneys or Duke Wenceslas of Bohemia, presents no threat to one’s reputation or to the construction of a narrative of martyrdom, but how to deal with a king killed by a popular rebellion? Either the king or the people must have been at fault; in both cases, the nation’s reputation suffers. Here it must be pointed out that Saxo has no great respect for the common people; his pride in the nation rests on the deeds of the elite. However, even the elite seems to have failed Cnut; otherwise, his fall would seem difficult to explain. Saxo’s narrative therefore also needs some traitors who deceive the people as well as Cnut, by exaggerating the burdens to the former and by neglecting to inform Cnut of the popular resistance to his plans. Snorri’s St Olaf presents even greater problems. Although Snorri also represents an aristocratic attitude, he shows less contempt for the common people than Saxo. He also has a more reserved attitude towards conquest and military glory. He celebrates great warrior kings and shows pride in Norwegian military success, but he also expresses considerable sympathy for peaceful kings. He seems to be critical of Harald Sigurdsson’s (1046–1066) attempt to conquer England and praises his predecessor Magnus Olafsson for abstaining from pressing his claim to the English throne, based on his agreement with Cnut the Great’s son, against Edward the Confessor.16 An important reason for this atti16

Snorri, Heimskringla, ed. by Aðalbjarnarson, iii, pp. 65–67; Engl. trans. by Hollander, pp. 575–76.

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tude is Snorri’s argument that it is difficult to be accepted as king in a foreign country. A king rules by establishing alliances and friendship with the country’s leading men; therefore, the lack of such a network makes it difficult to be accepted as king in a country other than one’s own. The king’s network, of course, does not extend down into the mass of the people — there is a clear aristocratic emphasis — but Snorri nevertheless focuses less exclusively on the king and the top aristocracy than Saxo. In this sense, Snorri’s work might serve as a national monument for the Norwegians, as indeed it did — apparently to some extent already in the Middle Ages, but above all in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Snorri thus has a stronger idea of the nation than Saxo, although, in contrast to modern nationalism, this idea is concrete rather than abstract, consisting of personal links rather than institutions and ideology. In his account of Olaf, however, Snorri’s understanding of nation made it more difficult for him to explain why Olaf was deposed and killed by his own people. The explanation given by Snorri is Olaf ’s impersonal justice: the king judged every man according to his merit, regardless of social status. Olaf ’s severe punishment of crimes committed by members of the elite led them to rebel against him and thus to his fall. Snorri then discusses the conflicts between Olaf and the Norwegian magnates at great length, and in more detail than any of his predecessors’ works, to the extent that it becomes reasonable to believe that several of the episodes are Snorri’s inventions.17 However, even these serve only in part to confirm Snorri’s general explanation. Snorri is the only writer who also considers the conflict from the point of view of Olaf ’s enemies. By focusing on the rebelling aristocrats, even constructing stories explaining their motivations, he is able to present a more complex understanding of Olaf ’s fall than his predecessors. In describing the conflicts partly as the competition for power common between great men, and partly — and particularly regarding the men who killed Olaf — as a struggle for revenge, he is able to explain the actions of both parties. The rebels are mostly honourable men who seek revenge for relatives killed by Olaf. Snorri’s emphasis on individual motives weakens the two more general explanations for Olaf ’s death that he borrowed from his predecessors. The detailed accounts of Olaf ’s behaviour towards the men who later became his enemies hardly confirm the picture of a king acting out of concern for strict justice, neither from a modern nor from a thirteenth-century point of view. Although it is more than a conventional piece of religious rhetoric, it is not Snorri’s real explanation of Olaf ’s fall. In contrast to his predecessors, Snorri 17

Bagge, ‘Warrior, King and Saint’, pp. 305–12.

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not only narrates at length why Olaf ’s adversaries turned against him, he also describes their preparations for the Battle of Stiklestad without any word of condemnation. He even attributes a speech to the Danish bishop Sigurðr in which Olaf is depicted as a robber and evildoer.18 The fact that Snorri allows people to present their arguments in speeches does not necessarily mean that he agrees with them. However, his sympathy clearly lies with what later terminology would call a balanced constitution, the king ruling in cooperation with the people, represented by the aristocracy, and listening to the advice of the leading men in the country. To Snorri, the fact that so many Norwegian magnates turned against Olaf was a serious matter that required explanation, and he does his best to account for the actions of Olaf ’s adversaries, despite the negative implications this has for his portrayal of Olaf. In any case, Snorri gives both a more complex account of the rebellion against Olaf and shows greater understanding for his adversaries than preceding writers. Ultimately, however, he shows the rebels to have been wrong. Olaf ’s alleged tyranny was replaced by an even worse despotism exercised by the Danes, and Olaf ’s holiness — which for Snorri was beyond doubt — was used to throw off the Danish yoke and place Olaf ’s son on the throne.

Conclusion It might seem difficult to find a greater contrast between two medieval writers than the one between Saxo and Snorri: elaborate Latin rhetoric on the one hand, simple Old Norse narrative on the other; explicit praise and condemnation versus apparently neutral description, and a considerably stronger identification with warlike rulers in Saxo than in Snorri. Socially, Snorri differed from Saxo not only by being a layman but also by his far higher social status as an independent chieftain with no need to bow to any superiors in the preface. From a literary point of view, the difference between the two writers illustrates Denmark’s (not just geographically) closer connection with the learned clerical culture of medieval Europe. Although Snorri must mainly be understood against an Icelandic background, the popularity of his work in Norway, Iceland’s closer connection to Norway than to Denmark and Sweden, as well as the greater importance of the vernacular in Norway than in the latter two countries, makes him representative of Norway as well. Turning to the ideol18

Snorri, Heimskringla, ed. by Aðalbjarnarson, ii, pp. 371–72; Engl. trans. by Hollander, pp. 504–07.

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ogy of the two authors, however, we find greater similarity. Both focus on the secular aspects of their heroes’ lives. Both are strongly patriotic and both represent an early stage of state formation. They have no strong focus on the royal office; they have an aristocratic attitude and view rebellion against kings who lack the appropriate royal virtues and do not respect the rights of their subjects as justified. Most importantly, they are also strongly patriotic on behalf of their nations; Saxo’s negative characterizations of the Norwegians have a clear parallel in Snorri’s of the Danes.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Legendary Saga, ed. and Germ. trans. by Anne Heinrichs, Doris Janshen, Elke Radicke, and Hartmut Röhn, Óláfs saga hins Helga: Die ‘Legendarische Saga’ über Olaf den Heiligen (HS. Delagard. saml. nr. 8II), Germanische Bibliothek, 4th ser., Texte, n.s., 7 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1982) Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, ed.  by Karsten Friis-Jensen (Copenhagen: Gad, 2005); Engl. trans. by Peter Fisher and ed. by Karsten Friis-Jensen, Saxo Grammaticus: The History of the Danes, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 2015) Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 4th edn, 3 vols (Reykjavík: Hið Isleenzka fornritafélag, 2002); Engl. trans. by Lee M. Hollander, Snorri Sturluson: ‘Heimskringla’, History of the Kings of Norway (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1964)

Secondary Studies Amory, Frederic, ‘Saga Style in Some Kings’ Sagas, and Early Medieval Latin Narrative’, Acta Philologica Scandinavica, 32 (1978), 67–86 Andersson, Theodore M., ‘The Conversion of Norway According to Oddr Snorrason and Snorri Sturluson’, Medieval Scandinavia, 10 (1977), 83–95 Bagge, Sverre, Society and Politics in Snorri Sturluson’s ‘Heimskringla’ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991) —— , ‘The Making of a Missionary King — the Medieval Accounts of Olaf Tryggvason and the Conversion of Norway’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 105 (2006), 473–513 —— , ‘Warrior, King and Saint: The Medieval Histories about St Óláfr Haraldsson’, Jour­ nal of English and Germanic Philology, 109 (2010), 281–321 —— , ‘The Old Norse Kings’ Sagas and European Latin Historiography’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 115 (2016), 1–38 —— , ‘Skandinavische Chroniken 1100–1500’, in Handbuch Chroniken des Mittelalters, ed. by Gerhard Wolf and Norbert H. Ott (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), pp. 543–75 Fidjestøl, Bjarne, ‘European and Native Tradition in Óláfs saga helga’, in Bjarne Fidjestøl, Selected Papers, ed.  by Odd Einar Haugen and Else Mundal; trans. by Peter Foote (Odense: Odense University Press, 1997), pp. 184–200 Friis-Jensen, Karsten, ‘Saxo Grammaticus’s Study of the Roman Historiographers and his Vision of History’, in Saxo Grammaticus: Tra storiografia e letteratura, ed. by Carlo Santini, Convegni di Classiconorroena, 1 (Rome: Il Calamo, 1992), pp. 61–81 Kirn, Paul, Das Bild des Menschen in der Geschichtsschreibung von Polybios bis Ranke (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1955)

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Krag, Claus, Ynglingatal og Ynglingesaga: En studie i historiske kilder (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1991) Leo, Friedrich, Die griechisch­römische Biographie nach ihrer literarischen Form (Leipzig: Teubner, 1901) Lie, Hallvard, Studier in Heimskringlas stil: Dialogene og talene (Oslo: Dybwad, 1937)

Orkney, Óláfr Tryggvason, and the Conversion to Christianity Rosalind Bonté*

I

n ad 995, the Christianizing king Óláfr Tryggvason sailed from Dublin to Norway in a bid to claim the country’s crown. En route, he and his men chose to break their journey in the Orkney islands, an archipelago of some seventy islands and skerries off the north coast of Scotland. The five ships pulled in to anchor at Osmundwall, where by happenstance, the pagan ruler of Orkney, Jarl Sigurðr, was also encamped. Óláfr promptly summoned Sigurðr to him and issued the following ultimatum: ‘It is my will that you and all the people who serve you should be baptized. Otherwise you will die here at once and then I will ravage all the islands with fire and sword’.1 Faced with such a stark choice, Sigurðr immediately ‘put the entire matter into Óláfr’s hands; he then had him baptized’ and the islands accepted the Christian faith.2 This, at least, is the account of the Orcadian conversion as we have it today, preserved in a seventeenth-century copy of a sixteenth-century Danish transla*

I am most grateful to all those who have kindly read, commented upon, and improved this article through their invaluable feedback, with particular thanks due to Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, Judith Jesch, and Paul S. Johnson. All errors and infelicities that remain are my own. 1 ‘Det er min Vilje at du skalt lade dig døbe oc det gantske folck som dig tiener eller skalt du dø strax her, men ieg vil siden drage offuer alle Øerne met Ild oc brand’, Orkneyinga saga [hereafter OS], ed. by Nordal, ch. 12, p. 22. All references to OS are taken from the 1913–1916 edition by Sigurður Nordal unless otherwise stated. 2 ‘satte hand all denne sag i Oluffs Vold, lod hand da døbe hannem’, OS, ch. 12, p. 22. Rosalind Bonté received her PhD from the Dept of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, University of Cambridge. She is currently Publishing Manager at Brepols Publishers and is an Honorary Assistant Professor at the Centre for the Study of the Viking Age, University of Nottingham. Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000–1300, ed.  by Walter Pohl, Francesco Borri, and Veronika Wieser, celama 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp.  81–116 FHG 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.130255

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tion of Orkneyinga saga [hereafter OS]. This saga is our single most important medieval source for the history of Orkney from the time of the Norse settlement up to the early thirteenth century. It offers accounts of key events from the foundation of the Norse jarldom, through the various attempts on the parts of the Norwegian kings to increase their control of the islands and the creation of a cult around the first Orcadian saint, up to the disastrous attempts made by Haraldr Maddaðarson (jarl of Orkney 1139–1206) in 1195 to interfere in the Norwegian civil wars — an action that led to an effective loss of Orcadian autonomy as King Sverrir responded by separating Shetland from the Orcadian jarldom and appointing royal officials to Orkney for the first time.3 However, it is also an extremely difficult saga with which to work due to the fragmentary nature of its preservation across different manuscripts (a point discussed further below). This is particularly true for the transmission of the section dealing with the conversion narrative, which makes for complex historical study. In the late 1970s, just a few years shy of a millennium from Óláfr Tryggvason’s purported conversion efforts, a team led by Christopher Morris excavated a Christian chapel within a Viking Age settlement atop the Brough of Deerness (see Map  4.1).4 The investigation revealed two superimposed chapel sites, comprised of an earlier timber layer and an overlying stone phase. Both layers appeared to be stylistically consistent with a Norse milieu and both were also associated with a small number of burials in the surrounding enclosure, leading Morris to suggest that this chapel was perhaps used by an elite family for private worship.5 Most intriguingly, within the stratigraphical layers that separated the two chapels, the excavators recovered a coin of the AngloSaxon king Edgar, who ruled between 959 and 975. While the coin itself is somewhat worn, and could of course have already been old when deposited,6 its presence in the stratigraphic layers nonetheless raises the interesting possibility that at least the timber phase of the chapel might date from the tenth century, with the overlying stone structure having been constructed at a later date.7 It is, 3 Wærdahl, Incorporation, pp. 86–87. See also Thomson, New History, p. 121; Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Det Norrøne Samfunnet, pp. 102 and 105–07. 4 Early studies of this site suggested that the Brough of Deerness may have been home to an early Celtic monastery (cf. Radford, ‘Celtic Monastery’, pp. 1–24; Lamb, ‘Cathedral of Christchurch’) but this idea is now generally rejected. 5 Morris and Emery, ‘Chapel’, pp. 350–56, and p. 366. 6 Morris and Emery, ‘Chapel’, p. 356. 7 James Barrett and Adam Slater suggest that the stone phase was probably constructed during the eleventh or twelfth century, a postulation that finds support from the radiocarbon

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Map 4.1. Map of Orkney, showing places mentioned in the text. Map courtesy of Damien Bonté.

therefore, not impossible to imagine that the Brough was home to practising Christians before 995 and the events narrated in OS.8 Meanwhile, just three miles away across Orkney Mainland, at nearby Newark Bay, a separate and even earlier chapel site appears to have been identified, and here the evidence of coinage also might point to an early date. Beneath the flagstone floor of this small, east–west orientated stone building, two coins were discovered, one dating from the reign of the Anglo-Saxon king Eadred (946–955), and one from Anlaf Sihtricsson’s reign in York (942–944 and 948–952). The chapel overlaid an Iron Age souterrain; around it lay some 250 burials, the vast majority of which aligned with the church. Radiocarbon datings from the site, combined with the evidence of the coinage, indicate that Newark Bay may originally have been a Pictish burial site, with some graves dated as early as the seventh century. Thereafter, the site appears to have seen either continued or renewed interest up to the mid-tenth century, when the chapel was constructed.9

dating of a human bone, taken from a grave that postdated the construction of the chapel, to ad 1030–1249 (calibrated at a probability level of 95 per cent); see Barrett and Slater, ‘New Excavations’, p. 82. 8 Morris and Emery, ‘Chapel’, pp. 324–25 and 339; Barrett and Slater, ‘New Excavations’, p. 82. 9 Barrett and others, ‘What Was the Viking Age?’, p. 13.

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The early chapel sites on the Brough of Deerness and at Newark Bay are undoubtedly important finds. But crucially, they also appear to offer an alternative to our narrative account of a ‘top-down’ conversion effected by a ruler who was as comfortable wielding a sword as a Bible. What, then, are we to make of the apparent disparity between literary source and material finds? And how does an awareness of this disparity affect our understanding of both OS and the process of religious change in Orkney? This article engages with these key questions by exploring OS both as a text in its own right and against a broader multidisciplinary context. However, for reasons of space, the discussion will largely be focused on Orkney, rather than the wider jarldom of Shetland and Caithness, and upon the relationship between the jarlar and the kings of Norway, rather than the links between Orkney and Scotland. In doing so, the aim of this chapter is to offer a more nuanced understanding both of the conversion narrative as it appears in OS, and of the events of the Orcadian conversion itself.

Manuscript Traditions Any analysis of OS requires that we begin by exploring the rather vexed nature of its manuscript transmission and survival as a text. The notions of authorship and of dating the sagas have long been contentious, due both to the ways in which the sagas have been transmitted and preserved, and to the uncertainties inherent in dealing with narratives based at least in part on oral tradition.10 These difficulties are particularly true of OS, which is complex due to the nature of its transmission as well as the fact that the narrative — at least as it exists today — arguably represents more of an Icelandic than an Orcadian perspective. The ‘original’ OS, which will here be referred to as O1, is often assumed to have been composed c. 1190.11 An earlier date has, however, been postulated by both Finnbogi Guðmundsson and Else Mundal, with the latter suggesting that O1 may have been composed as early as 1171.12 This text was apparently 10

These issues are well established in scholarship. See Hermann, ‘Founding Narratives’, p.  72; Quinn, ‘Introduction’, pp.  13–14 and other articles in Quinn and Lethbridge, eds, Creating the Medieval Saga; Bagge, Society and Politics, pp. 30–31; Gísli Sigurðsson, Medieval Icelandic Saga, pp. 330–34. The difficulty in proving that a text is older than the manuscript in which it is preserved is similarly fraught; this is a point underlined in particular by contributors to Mundal, ed., Dating the Sagas. 11 Berman, ‘Political Sagas’, p. 118; Bibire, ‘Poetry’, p. 208; Jesch, ‘Orkneyinga saga’; Haki Antonsson, ‘Kings of Norway’, p. 81. 12 Finnbogi Guðmundsson, ‘Formáli’, pp. xc–cviii; Mundal, ‘Rognvald kali kolsson’, forthcoming.

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well known in the thirteenth century and a number of works, among them Heimskringla (generally considered to have been authored by the Icelandic chieftain Snorri Sturluson)13 and Vatnsdœla saga, make reference to something known variously as Jarla sǫgur, Jarla saga, or Orkneyinga jarla sǫgur.14 It is also unclear where O1 may have been composed. Else Mundal and Ian Beuermann have argued for an Orcadian origin for this work and Judith Jesch has noted more generally that Orkney at least appears to have been home to some kind of literary milieu.15 Certainly, it would seem that whoever produced O1 must have had a good knowledge of the islands and had probably spent time there.16 Even so, other scholars, among them Sigurður Nordal and Einar Ól. Sveinsson, have continued to see the text as an Icelandic work, with the latter arguing that the text was produced at the ecclesiastical centre of Oddi, possibly in the context of negotiations between Jarl Haraldr Maddaðarson and the Icelandic chieftain Sæmundr Jónsson for the hand of Sæmundr’s daughter.17 What O1 may have looked like and where it was produced will inevitably remain open to debate for the simple reason that this original form of the saga is no longer extant. While Heimskringla may make reference to the earliest version of OS, the work that we know today as OS refers in turn to the writings of Snorri Sturluson — a reference generally understood to refer to Heimskringla.18 This later form of the narrative, which clearly postdates Heimskringla, appears 13

Snorri’s authorship of Heimskringla has, however, been questioned: see Louis-Jensen, Kongesagastudier, pp. 49–51; Boulhosa, Icelanders, pp. 8–21. 14 See Óláfs saga helgi, in Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, ii, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, ch. 103, pp. 173–74; and Vatnsdœla saga, ed. by Einar Ól. Sveinsson, ch. 9, pp. 24–27. A more detailed overview of references can be found in Taylor, ‘Introduction’, pp. 21–32. See also Jesch, ‘Orkneyinga saga’, p. 169. 15 Mundal, ‘Orkneyinga saga’; Beuermann, ‘Jarla sǫgur’, p. 154; Jesch, ‘Orcadian Links’, pp. 154–58. Jesch points to the fact that skaldic verse was produced in Orkney — most notably the clavis metrica known as Háttalykill — and also identifies Orcadian variations of a number of mythological tales. See also Jesch, ‘Norse Historical Traditions’, ‘Literature in Medieval Orkney’, ‘Norse Myth’, and Viking Diaspora, pp. 146–50. 16 Berman, ‘Political Sagas’, pp. 118–19; Jesch, ‘Literature in Medieval Orkney’, p. 14. 17 Finnbogi Guðmundsson (‘On the Writing’, ‘Formáli’, pp. xcvi–ciii) even suggested that the author may have been Ingimundr the priest, who died on the coast of Greenland in 1189. Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Sagnaritun Oddaverja, pp. 16–39. 18 OS, ch. 42, p. 107 reads: ‘Erlingr, son of Jarl Erlendr, was said by some people to have been killed in the Straits of Anglesey [Menai Straits], but Snorri Sturluson says he was killed in Ulster with King Magnús’; emphasis mine (‘Erlingr, son Erlendz iarls, segia sumir menn at felli i Ǫngulsayjarsundi, enn Snorri Sturluson segir hann fellit hafa a Ulaztiri með Magnusi konungi’).

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to have been heavily redacted in Iceland at some point in the 1230s.19 This was a time of prolific saga production, and also a period during which the country was slipping into civil war, with this strife exacerbated by the interference of the Norwegian king, whose goal of adding Iceland to his North Atlantic empire was finally realized between 1262 and 1264.20 As noted above, study of OS is invariably rendered difficult by the question of manuscript transmission: the two earliest manuscripts, AM 325 III β 4to and AM 325 III α 4to, consist of a single leaf and two leaves respectively, and others, such as AM 332 4to, are also very incomplete.21 Two much longer versions of the text do survive, but they are by no means unproblematic. The first of these is extremely important in the context of this discussion as it contains the Orcadian conversion narrative. A seventeenth-century manuscript (Stockholm, Holm Papp 39 fol.) appears to have been copied from a sixteenthcentury Danish translation and may initially have been based on a more complete version of AM 325 III β 4to. However, it is difficult to use, since it either lacks or mishandles many of the verses, has one substantial lacuna, and crucially is only a translation and thus does not preserve the original text.22 A separate version of OS survives within the fourteenth-century manuscript GKS 1005 fol., better known as Flateyjarbók, where it has been interpolated, piecemeal, into the sagas of Óláfr Tryggvason and Óláfr Haraldsson. This manner of preservation suggests that in Icelandic cultural memory, Orcadian history was closely associated with Norwegian conversion history. Interestingly, even at this late stage of the saga’s transmission, Jesch has also demonstrated that changes were still being made to its style and content, suggesting that the saga 19 See Mundal, ‘Dating of the Oldest Sagas’, for the most recent overview of scholarship on this subject. 20 Iceland’s civil war, and the country’s submission to the Norwegian kings, are well documented in scholarship. See, for example, Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Age of the Sturlungs; Byock, ‘Age of the Sturlungs’; Gunnar Karlsson, Iceland’s 1100 Years, pp. 79–82; Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Det Norrøne Samfunnet, pp. 109–12; Andersson, ‘King’; Wærdahl, Incorporation. 21 The following manuscripts also exist: Uppsala, UB R 702 4to, which includes a collection of verses and relevant prose passages copied from AM 325 III α 4to; AM 762 4to, which is based on UB R 702 4to; and AM 325 I 4to, which appears to be derived from the same original text as the material in Flateyjarbók. Sigurður Nordal also includes the shorter and longer sagas about St Magnús in his stemma; see Sigurður Nordal, ‘Indledning’, p. liv. 22 Taylor, ‘Introduction’; Mundal, ‘Dating of the Oldest Sagas’; Jesch, ‘Orkneyinga saga’. Jesch (‘Orkneyinga saga’, p. 157), however, notes that AM 332 4to can be used to judge the value of Holm papp 39 fol., as it comprises thirty-four leaves of a seventeenth-century copy of the ‘Codex Academicus’, the lost codex from which Holm papp 39 fol. was translated.

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remained of sufficient interest to the Icelanders to merit further redaction and reworking.23 As a result, modern editions of the Old Norse text such as those prepared by Sigurður Nordal and Finnbogi Guðmundsson can very much be considered as ‘reconstituted’ texts. Inevitably, a key concern of scholars has been to try to tease apart the underlying original narrative of O1 from the material added later, much of which is apparently derived from Heimskringla. It is generally accepted that the first three chapters of the narrative, together with the final paragraph of Chapter 108 and Chapters 109–12, which include Haraldr Maddaðarson’s conflict with King Sverrir, did not form part of the original text and were probably added in the 1230s.24 Jesch has also suggested that the account of Haraldr hárfagri’s first expedition to the British Isles (Chapter 4) was modelled on Snorri’s account in Heimskringla.25 Similarly, it seems very likely that whatever the original conversion narrative in O1 may have been like, it was replaced in the thirteenth century by an account closely modelled on Snorri’s Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar (Chapter 12) in Heimskringla. In a further complication, this redacted account itself only survives in the copy of the sixteenth-century Danish translation noted above, and it is this Danish text that appears in modern editions of OS.26 It is also widely acknowledged that all of the chapters concerning Óláfr Haraldsson (Chapters 16–19) are derived directly from Snorri’s writings, and Taylor has additionally suggested that the chapters concerning the western voyages of Magnús berfœttr (Chapters 29–43) were redacted in the 1230s in line with Heimskringla, an argument given credence by the reference to Snorri within OS in this section. It seems, then, that in the 1230s, not long after Orkney’s wholesale submission to King Sverrir, and at a time when Icelandic autonomy was itself increasingly under threat from Norway, those sections of OS that were most subject to change were the narrative elements concerning the Norwegian kings.27

23 24

p. 56. 25

Jesch, ‘Orkneyinga saga’; see also Quinn, ‘Introduction’, p. 14. Finnbogi Guðmundsson, ‘Formáli’, pp. ix–xvi; Clunies Ross, ‘Snorri Sturluson’s Use’,

Jesch, ‘Norse Historical Traditions’, p. 146. Sigurður Nordal, ‘Om Orkneyingasaga’, p. 46. Taylor (‘Introduction’, pp. 52–53) has noted slight discrepancies between Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar and OS. These, however, are likely to be the work of the saga redactor. 27 This point is discussed further in Bonté, ‘Conversion and Coercion’, pp. 116–18. 26

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The Context for Conversion When the first Norsemen arrived in Orkney, it seems almost certain that the islands already had an established Christian population. Adomnán’s Vita Columbae (written c. 700), for example, recounts the presence of an Orcadian sub-king at the sixth-century court of the Pictish king Bridei,28 while a Pictish presence in Orkney is also clear in the archaeological record.29 More pertinently still in the context of conversion, the evidence of burials and church structures generally suggests that by the time the first Norsemen arrived in Orkney, the Picts formed a Christian presence on the islands. It is therefore quite probable that the first Norse settlers came into contact with a Christian population when they first arrived in Orkney. This is a point that I will return to in more detail below. Despite this, OS makes no mention of how the first Norsemen came to settle in Orkney. As the text stands now, the first three chapters of the saga, a section often referred to as Fundinn Noregr,30 are instead set in a long-ago, mythical past. The lineage of the Orcadian jarlar is traced from the legendary Fornjótr — here euhemerized as king of Finland and Kvenland, but listed elsewhere within certain manuscripts of Snorri Sturluson’s Edda as a giant — as well as Fornjótr’s sons, who feature such elemental names as Logi (‘flame’), Kari (‘wind’), Frosti (‘frost’), and Snær (‘snow’).31 Given this mythological detail, it is easy to understand why these chapters have on occasion been dismissed by editors — or even entirely omitted — and seen as little more than an aside to 28

See Adomnán, Life of St Columba, ed. and trans. by Anderson and Anderson, ii.42, pp. 440–47. See also Ritchie, ‘Orkney in the Pictish Kingdom’, pp. 185–86; Anderson, Kings and Kingship, p. 175. 29 Thomson, New History, pp. 22–23. 30 A variant form of this narrative, known as Hversu Noregr byggðist, appears in the introduction to the fourteenth-century Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta. It is generally agreed that Fundinn Noregr is the earlier depiction of the myth, but it clearly remained of sufficient interest in the fourteenth century to merit this later reworking. Perhaps tellingly, in this latter form, the legendary sons of Fornjótr are explicitly linked to the line of the Norwegian king Haraldr hárfagri — possibly because by this time Iceland had submitted to Norway and it was in the interests of the manuscript compilers to emphasize the superiority of the Norwegian kings. See Sigurður Nordal, ‘Indledning’, p. xlvii; Finnbogi Guðmundsson, ‘Formáli’, pp. ix–xi; Clunies Ross, ‘Snorri Sturluson’s Use’, p. 54; Rowe, ‘Absent Mothers’, pp. 139–42. 31 Meulengracht Sørensen, ‘The Sea, the Flame and the Wind’, p. 214; Beuermann, ‘Jarla sǫgur’; Renaud, ‘Rapports’, p.  543; Rowe, ‘Absent Mothers’, p.  139. Clunies Ross (‘Snorri Sturluson’s Use’, p. 49) has noted in this context that some manuscripts refer to Fornjótr as Fiorjótr, drawing on the Old Norse word fjǫr (‘life’).

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the main narrative.32 Yet to omit Fundinn Noregr from a study of OS is rather to miss the point: the tale of Fornjótr and his sons may not obviously relate to the settlement of Orkney, but it was nonetheless quite deliberately worked into the text in the 1230s in what appears to have been a ‘conscious political reformulation of older mythological material’,33 intended to connect the Orcadian jarlar to the wild, elemental forces of both the geographical and mythological north. This stood in direct contrast to the origin myth of the Norwegian kings themselves, which saw them descended from the euhemerized Norse gods, who had emigrated north from Troy. Such a tale, it has been suggested, was intended to make the jarlar more northern, and so ‘more Norwegian than the kings of Norway’ themselves, in what can be construed as an independence myth produced in response to the Snorra Edda and Heimskringla.34 Yet if we consider that this material was only incorporated into OS in the 1230s, sometime after King Sverrir’s subjugation of Orkney, one might potentially envisage that the redactor of the text, although making the jarlar more emphatically Norwegian than the Norwegian kings, also provided them with a less noble position. This descent ultimately reflected the greater superiority of the Norwegian kings and in so doing, rationalized the final submission of the jarlar at a time when Iceland’s chieftains retained their autonomy.35 The first time that Orkney itself is mentioned in the text appears in connection with the Norwegian king Haraldr hárfagri, when we are told that ‘one summer, Haraldr hárfagri went west overseas to punish some vikings’.36 In all likelihood, the audience would probably have been familiar enough with traditions about Haraldr to understand that those vikingar already present on the islands were the king’s enemies who had fled his reign in Norway, but what is also evident is that Orkney only appears to be of interest once the Norwegian king becomes involved. While both the extent and possible number of any

32

Thomson (New History, p. 24), for example, notes that ‘these chapters must have deterred many readers who made the natural mistake of attempting to read the saga from the beginning’ and that ‘the real action begins in Chapter 4’; they are missing entirely from Joseph Anderson’s 1873 edition of OS. 33 Steinsland, ‘Origin Myths’, pp. 59–60. 34 Meulengracht Sørensen, ‘The Sea, the Flame and the Wind’, p. 221; Beuermann, ‘Jarla sǫgur’, pp. 116–17. For a different viewpoint, however, see Jesch, Viking Diaspora, p. 73. 35 Beuermann, ‘Jarla sǫgur’, p. 117; Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, ‘Kings, Earls and Chieftains’, pp. 82–83. 36 ‘Haraldr hinn hárfagri fór á einu sumri vestr um haf at hegna vikingum’, OS, ch. 4, p. 6.

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expeditions led by Haraldr remain unclear,37 the ostensible Norwegian focus of the narrative also makes it difficult to draw conclusions about the date when the first Norsemen may have arrived in Orkney as well as how they interacted with Orkney’s pre-existing population. Suggestions have been made of a long period of Norse settlement in the Northern Isles that began with raids on Eigg and Tory Island in 617, although this is not widely accepted.38 The argument has also been made for an early Norse presence in Atlantic Scotland, with scholars arguing that Scotland, or indeed Orkney, may be the Lochlainn or Laithlinn referred to in entries in the Irish annals from the late ninth century onwards;39 however the lack of archaeological evidence pointing to a Norse presence in Orkney before ad 800 has somewhat undermined this argument.40 There are only two extant literary references that refer to contact between Norse and natives in Orkney and both are, in their way, quite problematic. The first of these, the Vita sancti Findani, is a hagiographical work dating from the late ninth or early tenth century. This text recounts how the eponymous Findan was seized by Norsemen in Ireland in the mid-ninth century and taken to Orkney, before fleeing his captors and finding succour in the home of the local bishop. As a work of hagiography that deals in miracles and wonders, it is hard to know precisely how much faith to place in this text. Nonetheless, it might be taken to indicate that there was a functioning ecclesiastical structure 37 Snorri, in Óláfs saga Helgi (see Heimskringla, ii, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson) only refers to one expedition west, but he records two expeditions in Haralds saga hárfagra (see Heimskringla, i, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson). Jesch (‘Norse Historical Traditions’, p. 146) suggests that the account of the first expedition in OS may be a thirteenth-century interpolation based on Haralds saga hárfagra. See also Shetelig, Viking Antiquities, pp. 24–25; Helle, ‘Position’, p. 19. 38 It seems more probable that this was in fact the work of Pictish or Irish raiders; certainly, if it were the work of Norsemen, it would stand very much in chronological isolation. Moreover, the Annals of Ulster (ed. and trans. by Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, ad 682.4, pp. 146–47) record that Orkney was attacked by the Pictish king Bridei in 682, suggesting that at this date the islands were still considered to fall within a Pictish sphere of influence. See Graham-Campbell and Batey, Vikings in Scotland, p. 24; Fraser, From Caledonia, p. 343; I. Crawford, ‘War or Peace’, p. 260. 39 In support of the so-called ‘Lochlainn-hypothesis’, see Ó Corráin, ‘Vikings in Ireland’, and Ireland before the Normans, p. 81; B. Crawford, Scandinavian Scotland, pp. 41 and 51–58; Thomson, New History, p. 26; for arguments against this theory, see Etchingham, ‘Location of Historical Laithlinn’; I. Crawford, ‘War or Peace’, pp. 259–61; Woolf, From Pictland, p. 293; Barrett, ‘Beyond War or Peace’; Barrett, ‘Viking Age and Medieval Orkney’, p. 17. 40 This conclusion however fails to take into account the often-ephemeral nature of small mobile trading sites and the exchange of perishable goods. See Gelling, ‘Norse Buildings’, p. 37; von Holstein and others, ‘Searching for Scandinavians’, pp. 1–6; Owen, ‘Scar Boat Burial’, pp. 24–25; Ritchie, ‘Pict and Norseman’.

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connected in some way with Orkney at a time when the first Norsemen may have settled in the islands.41 Our second reference appears in a twelfth-century Norwegian text, the Historia Norwegie. According to this account, In the days of Harald Fairhair, king of Norway, certain vikings, descended from the stock of that sturdiest of men, Rǫgnvaldr jarl, crossing the Solund Sea with a large fleet, totally destroyed these peoples after stripping them of their long-established dwellings, and made the islands subject to themselves.42

Haraldr’s role is effectively reduced to that of chronological marker, while the impetus for claiming the islands is placed firmly on Rǫgnvaldr Mœrajarl, and thus the later jarlar of Orkney, during the ninth century.43 The account given here is quite explicit that Rǫgnvaldr and his followers ‘totally destroyed’ (ex toto deleuerunt) the population of the islands, and indeed the question of what happened to the Picts has proved one of the more vexing scholarly questions of the last century. Proponents of the so-called ‘War Theory’, among them Iain Crawford and Brian Smith, have suggested that the Norse landnám of Orkney must have been preceded by a virtually complete Pictish depopulation of the islands, either through genocide or expulsion.44 To this end, they cite in particular the absence of any pre-Norse place names in Orkney as evidence that the Picts were ‘overwhelmed — politically, linguistically, culturally and socially’ by the Norse.45 On the other hand, supporters of the ‘Peace Theory’ have argued 41

Thomson, ‘Appendix B: St Findan’, though cf. Etchingham, ‘Uita Findani’, esp. pp. 58–61 and 70–77, which offers a detailed analysis of the text and argues that these events must have preceded the Norse settlement of Orkney. See also Morris, ‘From Birsay to Brattahlíð’, p. 184. 42 ‘Istas itaque naciones in diebus Haraldi Comati, regis uidelicet Norwegie, quidam pirate, prosapia robustissimi principis Rogwaldi progressi, cum magna classe Solundicum Mare transfretantes de diuturnis sedibus exutas ex toto deleuerunt ac insulas sibi subdiderunt’, Historia Norwegie, ed. by Ekrem and Mortensen, vi.8, p. 66, trans. by Fisher, p. 67. 43 B. Crawford, Scandinavian Scotland, pp. 93 and 99. This same text (Historia Norwegie, ed. by Ekrem and Mortensen and trans. by Fisher, vi.2–7, pp. 64 and 66) goes on to describe the presence of two different peoples in Orkney, the peti, presumed to be the Picts, and the pape or papar, who were acknowledged to follow a quite different faith to the Norse. Importantly, however, the traditions about these peoples contained within Historia Norwegie are deeply distorted — the Picts, for example, are said to lose all their strength at midday and hide beneath the ground — indicating that by the time this text was written, accurate knowledge of these peoples had largely passed out of memory. 44 I. Crawford, ‘War or Peace’; Smith, ‘The Picts and the Martyrs’. 45 Wainwright, ‘Scandinavian Settlement’, pp. 125–26. See also Woolf, From Pictland,

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that the Picts and incoming Norse must, at least to a degree, have coexisted. Excavations led by Anna Ritchie at the Orcadian site of Buckquoy have pointed to a continuity in the composition of artefact assemblages between the Pictish and Norse settlements, indicative of some kind of social interaction,46 and a similar site of overlap between Picts and Norse has been tentatively identified during ongoing excavations on the Brough of Deerness.47 Genetic analyses, although potentially influenced by later Gaelic and Scottish genetic input, demonstrate that just under one-third of the modern population can trace their descent from Scandinavian ancestry — a figure indicative of a significant but not overwhelming Norse presence in the islands.48 Moreover, it seems probable, given the ubiquity of the slave trade in Norse society, that the Norse were more likely to have captured and sold such a ready supply of slaves than to have butchered them. We should perhaps imagine, then, that in Orkney, the Norse found themselves establishing a society with at least a low-level and underlying Christian religion that was practised by an element of the population. The possible impact of this is discussed in further detail below.

Conversion: Literary Evidence Yet if there was an awareness of a pre-Norse, Christian population, why is no reference made to it at all in OS? If traditions of the Picts had reached twelfthcentury Norway, it seems improbable that they were unknown by somebody in Iceland who was familiar with other Orcadian traditions. Rather, it seems more likely that the omission of these early Christians from the saga was deliberate, and certainly the Orkney that is envisioned in OS between Haraldr hárfagri’s first expedition west and Óláfr Tryggvason’s unscheduled visit as he headed east towards Norway is a land that is emphatically pagan. We move seamlessly from the jarlar’s mythical ancestry, rooted in the cold and savage world of the north, to the creation of a jarldom in Orkney at the command of Haraldr hárfagri, and it is therefore understandable that the earliest jarlar, among them Rǫgnvaldr’s brother and Orkney’s first jarl, Sigurðr, as well as the later Hlǫðvir, were ‘interred p. 293; I. Crawford, ‘War or Peace’, p. 264; Nicolaisen, ‘Early Scandinavian Naming’, p. 110. 46 Ritchie, ‘Birsay’, p. 60. 47 These excavations, led by James Barrett, are still ongoing, but interim reports are available: see, for example, Gerrard, Barrett, and Saunders, Brough of Deerness; Canmore, ‘Brough of Deerness’. See also Barrett and Slater, ‘New Excavations’. 48 Goodacre and others, ‘Genetic Evidence’, pp. 1–7; Wilson and others, ‘Genetic Evidence’, pp. 5080–83.

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in a burial mound’ (heygðr) after death,49 while Einarr klíningr actively suffers as a consequence of rejecting the advice offered to him by a ‘seer’ (síðarr).50 It is with Rǫgnvaldr’s son, Torf-Einarr, that the depiction of paganism becomes particularly interesting. He is first introduced in a section of the narrative that appears to have formed part of O1 rather than the later thirteenth-century redaction. This whole section is typified by its extensive quotation of skaldic poetry, and while there is little in the verses themselves to offer any kind of date or geographical context,51 the association of these stanzas with Torf-Einarr may in some respects make them the closest thing that we have to contemporary evidence.52 The suggestion that the part of the saga dealing with Torf-Einarr might be early also provides an important contextual understanding: in many ways, it appears to be intended as a promotion of Orcadian independence, suggesting that it might predate Sverrir’s appointment of royal officials to the islands in 1195. Certainly, the presentation of paganism within this section of OS is quite overtly political. From the moment of his introduction in OS, Torf-Einarr is consciously equated with Óðinn, the god of battle, skaldic poetry, and a warrior elite.53 Like Óðinn, he is ‘one-eyed, but nonetheless the most sharp-sighted of men’,54 a keen-sightedness that manifests itself both physically and mentally. Even his name may contain an Odinic reference, with Einarr being the singular form of the ON einherjar, the name given to Óðinn’s warriors in Vallhǫll.55 49

OS, chs 5 and 11, pp. 8 and 20. OS, ch. 9, p. 17. 51 See Poole, Viking Poems, pp. 161–72. Jesch (Viking Diaspora, p. 177) does, however, note that reference is made to Eyjar (‘Islands’) in association with Torf Einarr’s killing of Hálfdan háleggr, and this term was commonly used in Old Norse to refer to the Northern Islands of Orkney and Shetland. 52 For further discussion of skaldic poetry and its use as an historical source, see Frank, ‘Skaldic Poetry’, esp. pp. 162, and 181–82; Fidjestøl, Norrøne fyrstediktet, pp. 45–60; Whaley, ‘Useful Past’, pp. 167–68; Whaley, ‘Skalds’; Jesch, ‘Skaldic Studies’; Bjarni Einarsson, ‘On the Rôle of Verse’; Clunies Ross, History of Old Norse Poetry, pp. 69–71 and 79–80. 53 B. Crawford, Scandinavian Scotland, p. 196. Gro Steinsland (‘Origin Myths’, p. 50) also notes that as the son of a ‘socially polarised sexual union’ between a jarl and a slave-born woman, Torf-Einarr echoes the same kind of tension exhibited in Old Norse myth where we regularly see Norse gods in union with female giantesses. It may therefore have been an awareness of this connection that helped to inspire the saga’s mythical opening; see Bonté, ‘Conversion and Coercion’, pp. 80–83, and contra, Mundal, ‘Orkney Earl and Scald’, p. 251. 54 ‘einsýnn, ok þó manna skygnstr’, OS, ch. 7, p. 10. 55 Beuermann, ‘Jarla sǫgur Orkneyja’, p. 135 and n. 77. See also the entry for ‘Einar’ in Hellquist, Svensk Etymologisk Ordbok, p. 115. 50

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Torf-Einarr’s belief in, and close connection with, Óðinn is brought out particularly sharply in OS through the jarl’s relationship with the kings of Norway. In a sense, the fact that Torf-Einarr appears to be actively chosen by Óðinn makes him equal — or even superior — to the Norwegian kings who traced their lineage from this particular Norse god. By worshipping Óðinn, he is therefore able to argue for his independence from the Norwegian kings.56 This representation is particularly evident in his dealings with Haraldr hárfagri and his son, Hálfdan háleggr. When Hálfdan arrives in Orkney, we are told, not only did he conquer the islands, but he also ‘made himself king over them’.57 Sometime later, however, Torf-Einarr exacts a cruelly ironic revenge: after defeating Hálfdan in battle in order to regain control of Orkney, he then hunts the fleeing Norwegian down and performs the hideous rite of the blood eagle upon Hálfdan, whom he then ‘gave to Óðinn [as a sacrifice] for victory’.58 Hálfdan, the son of a king and a would-be king himself, is sacrificed to his ancestor and to the god of warriors in a ritual that affirms Torf-Einarr’s dedication both to the god and to his own independence in Orkney.59 Moreover, in another neat Odinic touch, as the bloody sacrifice is performed, Torf-Einarr spontaneously spills forth in skaldic verse that emphasizes his disdain for his political rivals. As noted above, it is impossible to be certain of the time and date when these verses were set down; but if relating genuine events, they would certainly seem to indicate that there was considerable tension between the jarl of Orkney and the king of Norway at this point. Certainly, Torf-Einarr’s treatment of Hálfdan is particularly scathing,60 and the 56

Torf-Einarr is not the only figure in Icelandic literature to worship Óðinn and show animosity towards the Norwegian kings, with a similar theme clearly exemplified in Egils saga (ed. by Sigurður Nordal). It would be interesting to conduct further research in this area and see if additional examples can be identified. 57 ‘gerðisk konungr yfir’, OS, ch. 8, p. 11. 58 ‘gaf […] Óðni til sigrs sér’, OS, ch. 8, p. 12. The historical authenticity of the blood-eagle has been much debated, and seems most likely to be the stuff of legend rather than an actual ritual. See Frank, ‘Viking Atrocity’, which traces the development of the myth over time, both in primary sources and later scholarship. 59 Thomson (New History, p. 36) takes this argument one step further: he suggests that by making Torf-Einarr into a type of Óðinn, it is almost possible to perceive him as both the giver and receiver of the sacrifice, much like Óðinn himself in Hávamál. 60 Torf-Einarr, for example, twice equates Hálfdan with an animal, changing the more usual cognomen háleggr for the feminine form háfœta, a common name for a sheep or goat. I discuss this further in Bonté, ‘Conversion and Coercion’, pp. 96–99. For a detailed analysis of these five skaldic verses, see Olsen, ‘Hild Rolvsdatters vise’, pp. 40–44; Mundal, ‘Orkney Earl and Scald’, pp. 255–58; Beuermann, ‘Jarla sǫgur’, p. 136.

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overall impression given by Torf-Einarr in the wider saga context can hardly constitute anything other than a warning to Haraldr hárfagri against intervening in Orkney.61 While most applicable to Torf-Einarr, the connection between the Orcadian jarlar and a high-level warrior cult of Óðinn recurs with Sigurðr inn digri Hlǫðvisson, whose mother, we are told, was the daughter of an Irish king. According to OS, she was ‘skilled in magic’ (margkunnig), and to ensure victory for her son, she presents him with a banner featuring a raven and tells him, ‘victory will come to the one before whom it is carried, but death to the one who bears it’.62 This banner is carried before Sigurðr at Skitten Moor, where ‘three of the jarl’s standard-bearers fell, and he had the victory’.63 There seems little doubt that this banner was in some way connected to Óðinn: the raven is closely associated with Óðinn in Old Norse mythology, and Óðinn was the god who might award victory in battle. Even more interesting is the fact that whoever carried the banner was killed: the standard bearers appear to have been sacrifices to Óðinn and through their death, brought about victory.64 Given this apparent link between Sigurðr Hlǫðvisson and an Odinic cult, it is particularly striking that in OS, it is under his rule that Orkney is said to have converted to the Christian religion. As outlined above, Óláfr Tryggvason is said to have forced Sigurðr at sword point to accept both baptism and his authority as overlord. In order to ensure Sigurðr kept to his word, Óláfr also had Sigurðr’s son, Hvelpr, or Hundi, baptized; thereafter ‘all Orkney became Christian’,65 although we are given no further information as to how this was carried out or how long the process took. But for all the importance of this narrative, the account, at least as it is preserved within the seventeenth-century manuscript of OS, is also extremely brief: this whole depiction is recounted in less than a chapter, with the abrupt nature of events striking. There is no discussion, and Óláfr does not even take the time to explain the principles of Christianity to Sigurðr. The Orcadian jarl is simply offered a choice of baptism or death, and he is aware that the decision he takes will have clear repercussions for Orkney as a whole. In many ways, then, Sigurðr’s decision appears to be based on pure pragmatism: religion here is wholly inseparable from politics. Sigurðr’s conver61 62 63 64 65

Beuermann, ‘Jarla sǫgur’, p. 136. ‘sigursællt mun verda þeim er firi er borit, en banvent þeim er berr’, OS, ch. 11, p. 21. ‘III fellu merkismenn ialls, en hann hafde sigur’, OS, ch. 11, p. 21. Muir, Orkney in the Sagas, p. 27. ‘bleffue oc alle Øerne christnede’, OS, ch. 12, p. 22.

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sion and submission undoubtedly go hand-in-hand, and it is also telling that later on, according to the saga account, Óláfr chose to take Sigurðr’s son back with him to Norway. No explanation is given for this latter action in the text, but presumably he was taken as a hostage to ensure good behaviour on the part of a subject ruler.66 Interestingly, when we return from the redacted text to what appears to be the O1 version of the saga recorded in Flateyjarbók, the narrative resumes by noting that Sigurðr’s son ‘lived only a short time’ after being taken to Norway;67 tellingly, with no hostage in place to ensure good behaviour, ‘Jarl Sigurðr would no longer pay homage to King Óláfr’.68 Instead, he ‘married the daughter of Malcolm, King of the Scots’.69 The implication appears to be that Sigurðr quite deliberately chooses to align himself with a separate source of power in the region, directly rejecting Norwegian authority over the islands.70 Such a marriage must have been at least facilitated by Sigurðr’s nominally Christian state, and it is even possible, although nowhere stated, that Sigurðr took a Christian bride in order to demonstrate that he was rejecting Norwegian overlordship for political rather than religious reasons. Even so, in OS it is clearly implied — although the saga redactor is possibly being deliberately disingenuous here — that Sigurðr apostatized and once again took up the cult of Óðinn.71 According to the saga, he fought and was killed while carrying his own raven banner at the Battle of Clontarf. Sigurðr’s status as a pagan is elaborated in the later Brennu Njáls saga, where one of Sigurðr’s Icelandic retainers refers to the banner as a ‘devil’ (fjandi), and the outcome of the battle is foretold in a vision of Óðinn’s valkyries weaving the ‘fabric’ of the battle from human entrails.72 Returning to the worship of Óðinn may not have ended well for Sigurðr, but it does seem that the cult of Óðinn is again equated with independence from Norway, and that in picking up his raven banner once more, Sigurðr was very clearly rejecting Óláfr Tryggvason and all that Orcadian submission to Norway had entailed. If we follow the conversion process as put forward in OS, in which Sigurðr converted at the behest of Óláfr Tryggvason, we also have to wonder precisely 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

B. Crawford, Scandinavian Scotland, p. 70. ‘lifdi […] skamma stund’, OS, ch. 12, p. 22. ‘vætti Sigurdr iall Olafi konungi ǫngva lydskylldu’, OS, ch. 12, p. 22. ‘gek þa at æiga dottur Melkolfs Skotakonungs’, OS, ch. 12, p. 22. Brunsden, ‘Earls and Saints’, p. 66. Thomson, New History, p. 64. Brennu Njáls saga, ed. by Einar Ól. Sveinsson, ch. 157, pp. 450–51.

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what form this conversion may have taken, and how absolute it was. The very fact that Sigurðr himself became an apostate suggests that the conversion was not effective, especially given that he converted only because he had no other choice. Baptism seemed a better choice than death — but then, so do most things. It therefore seems understandable when the saga implies that he later apostatized in favour of the beliefs with which he had been raised, especially once the Norwegian king was at a relatively safe distance. It may be for this reason, too, that although OS states that all of Orkney had accepted Christianity by the time that Óláfr Tryggvason departed for Norway, it is depicted as being a rather imperfect Christianity. Later on in the narrative, for example, Hákon Pálsson is seen to consult with a Swedish ‘soothsayer’ (vísendamaðr),73 who points out the incongruity of a descendant of St Óláfr choosing to resort to such methods, while a magic garment proves responsible for the death of Haraldr Hákonsson,74 and a description of Sveinn brjóstreip records that he was ‘a great sorcerer, and he always sat out [at night with the spirits]’.75 Interestingly this depiction finds some confirmation in Snorri’s Óláfs saga Haraldssonar, in Heimskringla, which states that Óláfr Haraldsson, some twenty years after Orkney’s ostensible conversion, ‘asked how the Christian faith was kept both in the Orkneys, in the Shetland and the Faroe Islands, and his inquiries revealed that not everything was as it should be’.76

Conversion: Material Evidence The Christian conversion of Orkney, as presented in OS, is very much the case of a new religion being forcibly, and if needs be, violently, imposed by a king, leading to the rapid spread of the Christian faith across the entirety of Orkney in 995. But to what extent can we trust the historical accuracy of such a presentation — and moreover a presentation that has been worked and reworked over different periods and in different places — especially given that the evidence for the early chapel sites at Newark Bay and the Brough of Deerness seems to point to an earlier Christian presence in Orkney than that allowed for by the saga account? 73

OS, ch. 36, p. 95. See OS, ch. 55, pp. 126–28. 75 ‘forn mioc ok hafþi iafnan utti sætit’, OS, ch. 65, p. 161. 76 ‘leddi […] at spurningum um kristinn dóm, hvernug haldinn væri bæði í Orkneyjum ok á Hjaltlandi ok ór Færeyjum, ok spurðisk honum svá til sem víða myndi mikit á skorta, at vel væri’, Óláfs saga helgi, in Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, ii, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, ch. 58, p. 74. 74

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OS undoubtedly appears to be right when it indicates that the first Norsemen to come to the islands held pagan beliefs. Some Orcadian place names have been thought to contain references to the pagan gods,77 but this evidence has been dismissed as extremely tenuous by most scholars.78 Firmer evidence can be found in Sigurðr’s raven banner — or at least, in the fact that similar banners existed. The entry for 878 in the B, C, D, and E manuscripts of the Anglo­ Saxon Chronicle, which appears to have been written just over a decade later, for example, reports that during a battle in Wessex, a brother of the Danes Ivarr and Halfdan carried a raven banner.79 The eleventh-century Encomium Emmae reginae, meanwhile, records that even the established Christian king Knútr possessed a white silk banner upon which would appear a raven at times of war.80 Certainly then, when OS was written, there was an awareness of traditions concerning such banners, and it is not impossible that Sigurðr himself was inspired by others before him to have such a banner carried into battle.81 Despite the guts and gore routinely spilt in OS, when it comes to looking for traces of human sacrifice such as the blood eagle outside of the saga narrative, evidence is, unsurprisingly, rather more limited. The one potential instance of sacrifice that has been identified by archaeologists is from the site of Buckquoy, where the disarticulated bones of a newborn child were found beneath a large slab in House 1, interpreted with some caution as a foundation deposit for the house.82 The Scar boat burial from Sanday has likewise been linked to suggestions of human sacrifice, largely because the boat contained three individuals, an elderly woman, a relatively young man, and a child, although the excavator considered this interpretation unlikely.83 Evidence of more general cultic activity has also tentatively been identified at the site of Westness on Rousay, where a middle-aged woman was found to have a hole in her skull consistent with 77

Stylegar, ‘Central Places’, pp. 14 and 19. See, for example, Jesch, ‘Norse Gods’, p. 61; Jesch, Viking Diaspora, p. 136. 79 See the 878 entry in The Anglo­Saxon Chronicle, trans. by Whitelock and others, p. 49. According to the twelfth-century Annals of St Neots (ed. by Dumville and Lapidge, p. 78) this banner was woven by the three daughters of Ragnarr Loðbrók, and the banner would flutter as a portent of victory but droop before a defeat. 80 Encomium Emmae reginae, ed. and trans. by Campbell, ii.9, pp. 24–27. 81 Jesch (‘Norse Gods’, p.  54) also raises the possibility that Sigurðr was possibly confused in later tradition with Siward of Northumbria, said to have owned a banner named the Ravenlandeye. 82 Ritchie, ‘Excavation’, p. 188. 83 Owen, ‘Scar Boat Burial’, pp. 9–10. 78

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trepanation; however, it is hard to say if this hole was created for reasons of religion or health.84 While there is very little material to point to specific cult activity in Orkney, evidence of pre-Christian beliefs and practices can arguably be identified through funerary remains:85 Orkney has the largest concentration of pagan Norse graves in Scandinavian Scotland, most of which seem to date to the ninth century, many in large cemeteries such as those at Westness and Pierowall.86 Some thirty Norse graves have been found at Westness. Among them, two male boat burials have been found containing weapons and tools, while a woman interred together with a full-term infant — possibly indicating death in childbirth — was buried with a rich array of jewellery, including an eighth-century silver and gold filigree Irish brooch-pin inlaid with glass and amber.87 Around twenty pagan graves have also been found at Pierowall, the majority following a north–south orientation and containing crouched or flexed burials. Interestingly, grave offerings at this site appear to have included animals as well as material goods: three graves contained complete or partial horse skeletons, typically together with bridle bits, while one grave also contained an incomplete dog.88 The Scar boat burial is arguably the most famous Norse pagan burial in Orkney, largely due to the slightly unusual nature of the grave. In contrast to the boat burial at Westness, in which a single individual was buried in a four-oared boat, the Scar burial featured three individuals lying within a burial chamber in a five- or six-strake vessel. The elderly woman within the grave had reached her seventies, which is in itself quite remarkable for a grave from the late ninth century.89 Both she and the man were buried with a wealth of what at first glance appear 84

Sellevold, Picts and Vikings, p. 16; Sellevold, ‘Life and Death’, p. 375. The concept of what defines a ‘pagan’ grave — as well as, indeed, the extent to which funerary practices equate to religion — remains open to debate. A key article on the subject discussing burial patterns and the gradual shift from ‘pre-Christian’ to ‘Christian’ burials in a Swedish context is Gräslund, ‘Religionsskiftet’. For a more general overview of pre-Christian mortuary practices in the Viking Age, see also Price, ‘Dying and the Dead’; for discussion of the transition between religions as reflected in burial evidence in the Irish Sea region, see Griffiths, ‘Burial’, esp. pp. 98–99. 86 Graham-Campbell and Batey, Vikings in Scotland, p. 54; B. Crawford, Scandinavian Scotland, p. 121. 87 Kaland, ‘Settlement of Westness’, p. 314. 88 Graham-Campbell and Batey, Vikings in Scotland, pp. 133–34. 89 Graham-Campbell and Batey, Vikings in Scotland, pp. 138–40. 85

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to be high-status grave goods, a number of which seem to point to a northern Norwegian connection.90 However, Olwyn Owen, in her analysis of these grave goods, has argued that they in fact reflect a number of oddities: a sword, for example, was broken but placed in a flimsy scabbard to hide the break, suggesting the damage was accidental rather than ritualistic, while a weaving batten was similarly broken and a set of gaming pieces was incomplete.91 Owen concludes that the manner of burial, perhaps unusually, may have been of greater importance for those being buried than for those who were in charge of the burial. She interprets the assemblage as either ‘a late gesture to the old gods and customs of the Scandinavian homeland, perhaps because the woman still adhered to the old faith’ or else ‘a self-conscious flourishing of pagan belief and ritual in the face of encroaching acceptance of Christianity in the tenth century’.92 Owen’s suggestion that Scar exemplifies a late revival in pagan burial practice does find some support elsewhere, most notably at Birsay, a site linked closely in OS to the Orcadian jarlar. It is notable that two out of the three single graves that have been dated to the tenth century are found around the bay of Birsay, and one wonders if these burials were deliberately prominent, perhaps to make a point about ongoing pagan beliefs at the site. One of the graves at Buckquoy — the same site where the infant foundation deposit was excavated — is a crouched burial of a forty-year-old man that was cut into the crest of a mound built up over the remains of a Norse house.93 This grave included an iron spearhead — a find that again might be tentatively, although perhaps also tenuously, linked to an Odinic cult94 — together with possessions such as a finely wrought bronze ring, a whetstone, and a bone mount. Importantly, half of a silver Anglo-Saxon penny minted during the reign of Edmund (940–946) was also included in the grave. It appears to have been deliberately cut in half, the good state of the coin indicating that it may have been contemporary at the time of the burial, thus providing a terminus post quem for the entire site.95 While the emphatic paganism of burials such as Scar might, to a degree, point to some support for the OS narrative in which the islands were wholly pagan before the intervention of Óláfr Tryggvason, Owen’s acknowledgment of the ‘encroaching acceptance of Christianity’, combined with the potential evidence 90 91 92 93 94 95

Owen, ‘Scar Boat Burial’, p. 14. Owen, ‘Scar Boat Burial’, pp. 13–16. Owen, ‘Scar Boat Burial’, pp. 14–16; Jesch, ‘Norse Gods’, p. 61. Ritchie, ‘Birsay’, p. 61. This idea is touched on, albeit in a different context, in Gräslund, ‘Religionsskiftet’, p. 155. Graham-Campbell and Batey, Vikings in Scotland, pp. 126–27 and 152.

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for early chapels from the Brough of Deerness and Newark Bay, rather seem to belie this suggestion. An important element in our understanding of the conversion relates to the contentious question of what happened to the native Pictish population of the islands. As outlined above, if we can reasonably assume that a Pictish population is likely to have remained in Orkney, even if it was enslaved, it seems not improbable that the incoming Norse would have been exposed to some degree of Christian practice long before 995.96 As noted earlier, evidence from historical DNA studies based on modern populations appears to suggest an overall Scandinavian ancestry of approximately 30 per cent for Orkney,97 and while it seems likely that this genetic contribution came equally from male and female settlers who may have formed family units, it nonetheless seems likely that over time, there would have been intermixing between Norse and the larger native majority, and that references to marriages in OS between the Norse jarlar and women from the surrounding Christian communities of the west might have some degree of accuracy.98 Sigurðr’s father Hlǫðvir, for example, is said to have married Eðna, an Irish princess; although she is depicted as a sorceress within OS, she is most likely to have been a Christian from a Christian milieu, with her literary depiction deliberate on the part of the saga author, who wished to emphasize the pagan nature of the islands. It is in fact probable that Sigurðr himself was familiar with Christianity, and certainly he himself married into what we can assume was a Scottish Christian family. Given that women and slaves were primarily responsible for raising children and that they may well have taught the Christian faith to their charges, it seems plausible to posit a more ‘bottom-up’ process of Christianization than we find depicted in OS.99 96

Beuermann, ‘Jarla sǫgur’, p. 143. Goodacre and others, ‘Genetic Evidence’, pp.  4–6. See also Jesch, Viking Diaspora, pp. 33–35 and 56–58. 98 For further discussion of such marriage alliances, see Jesch, Viking Diaspora, pp. 2–3. 99 Quite what it might have entailed for these individuals to retain their Christian faith, despite living alongside pagans and without access to a priest, remains unclear. However, an intriguing possibility can be found from elsewhere in Scandinavia, in Rimbert’s description in the Vita Anskarii (ed. by Waitz, ch. 20, pp. 44–46) of the devotion of Frideburg, a Christian woman living in ninth-century Birka. In this account, we are told that Frideburg was able to maintain her faith even in the absence of a priest, to the extent that she kept wine in a vessel for some three years in anticipation of receiving the last rites, and she asked her daughter to travel to Dorestad after her death in order to distribute alms in a Christian community. While Frideburg was admittedly a wealthy woman of independent means and her life undoubtedly contrasted with that of a slave, this anecdote within the Vita Anskarii nonetheless points to one example of how Christian faith might have been maintained in a pagan environment. 97

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We can find further evidence from the material culture to point to the underlying and latent practice of Christianity in Orkney during the Norse settlement period. Although there is no evidence of Christian stonework in Orkney itself from this period, Christian sculpture appears to have continued in Shetland at sites such as Papil, while the fact that a hoard was buried under St Ninian’s Church around ad 800 would seem to suggest that the owner of the hoard, quite rightly, felt that it would be safe on ecclesiastical property.100 Harder to conclude is when the first Norse Christian graves may have appeared on the islands; interestingly, James Barrett has identified the most probable candidates as those in the cemetery of Westness, discussed above. A full exploration of the cemetery demonstrates that the site began to be used in the seventh century, initially for a series of extended, supine burials without grave goods, which have been interpreted as Pictish and Christian; these were followed by Norse burials including those described above. Nonetheless, Barrett has found what he terms ‘the earliest archaeological evidence for Christian–pagan relations’.101 He notes, for example, that the later Norse burials respected the underlying graves of the native population, raising the possibility that the Picts and Norse were using the site and burying their dead at around the same time,102 while only eight of the thirty Norse graves at the site contained burial goods.103 Although this low figure might conceivably reflect poverty or a lack of regard for the deceased on the part of those carrying out the burials, this seems unlikely, especially given that some graves were very richly furnished.104 Instead, it is tempting to postulate at the very least that Norse burial practices were already changing in the ninth century as a result of Christian influence within the islands, even if the early Christianization of the Norse themselves cannot actually be proven. Evidence for this latter point, however, might conceivably rest with the discoveries of the sites at Newark Bay and the Brough of Deerness mentioned above, and it is particularly striking to note that the chapel at Newark Bay must have been built only a few years after the pagan burial was inserted into the house at Buckquoy, and possibly even before some pagan burials in Orkney.105

100 101 102 103 104 105

B. Crawford, Scandinavian Scotland, p. 171. Barrett and others, ‘What Was the Viking Age?’, pp. 12–13. Kaland, ‘Settlement of Westness’, pp. 312–14. Owen, ‘Scar Boat Burial’, p. 19. Owen, ‘Scar Boat Burial’, p. 20. Barrett and others, ‘What Was the Viking Age?’, p. 13.

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Conclusion What seems evident from such findings it that there is something of a dichotomy between the narrative as presented in OS and the conclusions that we might draw from other sources of evidence. When the first Norse arrived in Orkney, it is probable that they came face to face with a pre-existing and established Christian population in the islands, and the Picts who remained on the islands must have had some kind of impact on the nascent Orcadian society that developed under the Norse. Nonetheless, such information has quite deliberately been omitted from OS, where the islands are depicted as pagan and where we might tentatively suggest the jarlar are portrayed as following a cult connected to Óðinn until the arrival of Óláfr Tryggvason and with him, the Christian religion. While it is true that we can identify some degree of paganism in Orkney, much of our material evidence appears to contradict the narrative account of OS, instead pointing to a conversion of Orkney that must have been much more gradual, peaceable, and ‘bottom-up’ than our saga account indicates. Nonetheless, the fact remains that there are examples of pagan practice well into the tenth century, even while other Norse speakers appear to have been building chapels. This might point to a prolonged period of coexistence between the two religions, with pagan and Christian beliefs practised side-byside and the dead buried together at sites such as Westness. Such a suggestion may explain why Óláfr Tryggvason did not recognize the islands as being in any way Christian, while Óláfr Haraldsson expressed concern at Christian practice in Orkney, and men such as Sveinn brjóstreip continued to engage in heathen magic and ritual until well into the twelfth century.106 At the same time, it seems that if there were long-term, dedicated followers of particular pagan cults, even in the face of Christian beliefs in Orkney, this practice was largely limited to the upper class and elite — men such as the jarl Sigurðr and his followers. In this case, it might be possible that they participated in a warrior cult based on Óðinn, as indicated by OS, as a way of reinforcing their secular power. Barrett has in fact taken this argument a step further, and put forward the suggestion that what we might in fact identify in tenthcentury Orkney is something of a power struggle between local leaders that was predicated on their differing ideologies and religious beliefs. In this scenario, we might envisage a strong Christian leader based in the Brough of Deerness for example, while at the site of Birsay — ostensibly one of the strongholds of the Orcadian jarlar — we continue to see late and elaborate burials with 106

Brunsden, ‘Earls and Saints’, p. 66.

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ornate grave goods. It would be unsurprising in this context if we saw a resurgence both in pagan burials in the mid-tenth century and in the more militant embracing of an Odinic cult identifiable in OS. It is certainly striking, based on the evidence of the coinage, that the Buckquoy burial seems to have occurred around the same time that the chapels at the Brough of Deerness and Newark Bay were built.107 If we accept the evidence of the Vita sancti Findani and add this to the mix, Barrett suggests, it is possible that what this saint’s Life actually reveals is ‘the existence of élite Christian patrons, without whom no early medieval bishop could function’ in Orkney.108 Yet if this is indeed the case, why, then, does OS not reflect this, instead offering a version of history in which the entire conversion of Orkney came down to an unscheduled stop and a streak of violence by Óláfr Tryggvason? Was the evidence of an early Christian presence in Orkney known but deliberately omitted by the saga author and later redactors, or was it that oral traditions concerning the Orcadian conversion were inaccurately transmitted or simply forgotten by the time the saga was first set down in manuscript form, leading instead to the fabrication of new material? Neither hypothesis can be proven, but it is worth looking more closely at the geographical and political contexts in which the saga was produced and then later redacted as a way of trying to understand why the conversion narrative might have taken the form it did. As outlined above, when exploring OS, we are inevitably dealing with different layers of text, and in terms of the conversion, this is especially true. The depiction of Torf-Einarr, for example, appears to derive from the O1 text that is presumed to predate events of 1195 and therefore had an interest in rejecting Norwegian interference and promoting Orcadian independence. In contrast, the events of the conversion itself seem likely to have been redacted into the saga in Iceland in the 1230s, a period when Orkney was wholly subjugated by Norway, and there was no longer any need to promote Orcadian independence. Iceland, however, still retained its independence at this time, arguably making it worthwhile for a redactor to revisit the material pertaining to Orkney during a period when questions were arising about Iceland’s own sense of national identity; and it would appear that this interest in Orkney continued into the fourteenth century as Iceland, newly part of the Norwegian kingdom, still continued to explore questions about its own position in the world.109 107

Barrett, ‘Christian and Pagan Practice’, p. 221. Barrett, ‘Christian and Pagan Practice’, p. 220. 109 Jesch (‘Literature in Medieval Orkney’) has noted that the thirteenth-century version of OS almost certainly continued to be worked and reworked into the fourteenth century, and 108

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Interestingly, the account of conversion given in OS, in which religious change takes place at sword point, stands in marked contrast to the narrative of the Icelandic conversion, which must undoubtedly have been well known to the OS redactor. In many ways, the depiction that appears in OS appears to directly play on, and even to reverse, the established narrative of Christianization in Iceland that we find in texts such as the early twelfthcentury Íslendingabók and the thirteenth-century Heimskringla. According to these accounts, between 995 and 1000, Óláfr Tryggvason sponsored missions to Iceland, but little headway was made in introducing the Christian religion. Óláfr, enraged at this failure, seized a number of Icelandic hostages in Norway, threatening to kill or maim them if their countrymen would not accept the new faith.110 These threats were averted only when two Icelanders, Gizurr hvíti and Hjalti skeggjason, volunteered to convert the Icelanders themselves by introducing the Christian religion at the Icelandic Alþingi, or assembly. Gizurr and Hjalti kept to their word upon their return to Iceland, but tension quickly mounted between the Christian and pagan parties at the Alþingi, culminating in the decision of both groups to declare themselves ýr lǫgum (literally, ‘out of law’) with one another. The situation was only resolved when the decision was passed on to the law speaker, Þorgeirr, who although pagan himself, called on everyone present to agree to abide by one national law, before announcing the change to the Christian religion. This pronouncement was accepted by all present, in a scenario that enabled the Icelanders to adopt Christianity peacefully and in line with the law, yet to do so quite explicitly on their own terms. For all that Óláfr Tryggvason may have initiated the process from overseas, in this account he is specifically excluded from the actual moment of conversion itself; both physically and psychologically he is remote from the decision-making process, with even his threats of violence remaining empty. This memory of the Icelandic conversion, combining as it does both respect for the law and Icelandic self-determination, is central to a number of Icelandic texts, and such is its prominence that Robert Avis has identified it as a crucial social myth upon which a nascent sense of Icelandic identity was constructed.111 In the narrative put forward in OS, however, events follow a rather different course. Where in Iceland, Óláfr is a remote presence overseas, and an acceptcertainly the saga-redactor of Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta created his own variation of the Orcadian conversion narrative during the fourteenth century. An excellent analysis of this text is available in Heans-Głogowska, ‘Re-writing History’, esp. pp. 78–80. 110 Íslendingabók, ed. by Jakob Benediktsson, ch. 7, pp. 14–18. 111 Avis, ‘Social Mythology’, pp. 112–54.

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ance of the Christian religion is achieved by working from within the country’s internal power structures and customs at the Alþingi, Christianity in Orkney is directly imposed through the physical presence of a foreign ruler who is unfamiliar with the needs of the Orcadians and who insists upon Norwegian domination as part of his message. While the conversion in Iceland became a way of crystallizing a national identity, in Orkney, Sigurðr is instead required to forfeit his own secular authority in the islands and ‘put the entire matter into Óláfr’s hands’. Moreover, it is also clear that Christianity is established far less effectively in Orkney than in Iceland. While the Icelanders famously allowed certain pagan practices for a limited period after conversion, there are no subsequent references to apostasy within any of our literary accounts and even these lingering practices were soon discontinued. In contrast, Sigurðr’s apparent reversion to Odinic worship before his death, as well as the somewhat unorthodox implementation of the Christian religion across Orkney as implied in OS, instead give the impression of a population that was forced to convert before it was ready. Such a narrative might disagree with the more gradual, ‘bottom-up’ conversion indicated by the findings of archaeology and genetics. But it nonetheless makes sense if viewed as a product of thirteenth-century Iceland. This section was consciously reworked by the saga redactor at a time when the status quo in Iceland was beginning to change, when power was becoming concentrated in the hands of just a few families, and chieftains looked to the Norwegian king as a way of gaining still more power. If, as seems likely, the Icelanders were already becoming concerned as to what greater contact with — or indeed submission to — the Norwegian king would mean for them, it is perhaps unsurprising that when the Icelanders began to produce sagas in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, they should have chosen to focus on these issues of sovereignty by looking at a neighbouring community such as Orkney, where independence had already been lost, and that they used the texts they produced as a way of emphasizing their own ongoing independence. The conversion, a social myth so crucial to the Icelandic sense of identity, was a perfect vehicle upon which to base this exploration, with Orkney providing an analogue to Iceland, a setting that was at once familiar and yet different. Arguably, however, the Orcadian conversion narrative did more than just emphasize Iceland’s unique nature: it also put forward an argument for the country maintaining its independence that was of crucial importance in the mid-thirteenth century. Gerd Wolfgang Weber and Elizabeth Ashman Rowe have both argued strongly that in thirteenth-century Iceland, the concept of the Freiheitsmythos must have been well known.112 This was a set of topoi that 112

Weber, ‘Intellegere historiam’, pp. 129–44. See also Rowe, ‘Historical Invasions’, p. 157.

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proffered an Icelandic myth of freedom through the lens of Christian tradition and thus provided an Icelandic answer to the medieval reading of Paul in ii Corinthians 3.1.113 This text, which in the Vulgate reads ‘where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty’ (ubi autem spiritus Domini, ibi libertas), was understood by the medieval Church to mean that freedom from sin was equated with secular freedom.114 In turn, this led to a general acceptance — and indeed a biblical justification — that if pagans would not accept Christianity willingly but must be converted by the sword, they should also forfeit their secular sovereignty.115 In the Orcadian conversion narrative as represented in OS, this is precisely what we see: Sigurðr was converted at sword point in the year 995, and while his reversion to the Odinic cult by the time of his death went hand in hand with his rejection of Norwegian authority, in a clever play on the Freiheitsmythos, some two centuries later Sverrir was nonetheless able to exercise his absolute authority in the islands in a move that was both religiously justified and inevitable. In this later material, then, Orkney can be seen as a point of contrast with Icelandic independence, with the interpolated material playing on the cultural memory of the Icelanders as a way of rationalizing the differing fates of these two communities in mid-thirteenth century.116 What is evident from the discussion put forward here is that, by the thirteenth century, when the account of the Orcadian conversion was redacted into OS, literary tradition had diverged from historical reality, and the cultural memory of the conversion was distorted accordingly.117 When we explore the account proffered within the saga in a broader and more multidisciplinary context, there is significant evidence that Orkney was home to a Christian population at the time that the first Norse speakers arrived in the islands, and it seems very likely that the conversion of the islands was an altogether more long-term, 113

Rowe, ‘Historical Invasions’, p. 157. See Rowe, ‘Historical Invasions’, p. 157 and p. 172 n. 22. 115 Weber, ‘Intellegere historiam’, p. 133. 116 Crucially, as Eleanor Heans-Głogowska (‘Re-writing History’, esp. pp. 151–53) has demonstrated, the Freiheitsmythos, as a political argument, continued to retain its importance into the fourteenth century long after Iceland’s submission to Norway, and this may well explain why a version of the Orcadian conversion narrative was worked into Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta. As Heans-Głogowska argues, the Freiheitsmythos continued to be used by the Icelanders, even after their submission to the Norwegian king in 1262–1264, as a way of emphasizing the special nature of the relationship between Iceland and Norway. In doing so, they attempted to assuage the deep anxiety felt by many of the Icelandic elite in the fourteenth century as they found themselves increasingly distanced from their king. 117 Rodríguez and Fortier, Cultural Memory, p. 12. 114

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gradual, and ‘bottom-up’ affair than that presented in OS. Such a conclusion fits with the evidence provided by burial sites and in particular the construction of early chapels that appear to have been in use in areas of Orkney long before Óláfr Tryggvason made his voyage to the islands, even if there was a resurgence in pagan belief in the tenth century. And within this new narrative, it is evident that the role played by women and slaves could have been of greater import than that played by the king, and that Christianity and pagan beliefs could have coexisted, overlapped, and been used as political tools between competing chieftains in a struggle that finds no mention in a Norwegian-orientated saga text. If there was indeed a potential struggle in Orkney, with a vying for power between Christian and pagan factions as suggested by Barrett, it does not appear in this way within the redacted OS narrative. Rather here, the political conflict represented by the two faiths is depicted on an altogether larger scale, with paganism and the independence of Orkney becoming virtually synonymous and treated as the equal and opposite to Christianity and the loss of Orcadian autonomy. Torf-Einarr aligns himself with the Norse god Oðinn in order to negate Norwegian encroachment in Orkney, while Sigurðr digri, in accepting baptism at the hands of Óláfr Tryggvason, not only changes his own personal faith but also fundamentally alters the power structure of his jarldom by submitting his authority to the king. Conversely, his decision to break his alliance with Óláfr Tryggvason goes hand in hand with his apostasy from the Christian faith, an action that culminates with his death at Clontarf under his own raven banner — perhaps the final sacrifice to be offered to Oðinn on the battlefield. A complex pattern of different reworkings, OS is a text that has evolved over time, and the account of the Christian conversion is central to this evolution, largely due to the way that both the saga author and the later redactor appear to have responded to and reworked the cultural memory of Iceland’s own Christianization. Although dating the different elements of the saga is undoubtedly hugely complex, it seems possible that O1, which may potentially have been Orcadian in origin, may have presented a theme of independence, the later thirteenth-century redaction, drawing on the Freiheitsmythos, instead examines how and why Orkney came to submit to the Norwegian kings when Iceland did not. In this later material, Orkney has become a point of contrast rather than an exemplar for Icelandic independence, with the interpolated material playing on the cultural memory of the Icelanders as a way of rationalizing the differing fates of these two communities. In this sense, it is crucial that Óláfr Tryggvason continues to stand at the heart of the Orcadian conversion narrative, whatever our material sources may indicate.

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Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Copenhagen, Den Arnamagnæanske Samling, AM 325 I 4to —— , AM 325 III α 4to —— , AM 325 III β 4to —— , AM 332 4to —— , AM 762 4to Reykjavík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í islenskum fræðum, GKS 1005 fol. = Flateyjarbók Stockholm, Kungliga biblioteket, Holm papp 39 fol. Uppsala, Universitetsbiblioteket, UB R 702 4to

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Jesch, Judith, ‘Norse Historical Traditions and the Historia Gruffad vab Kenan: Magnús berfœttr and Haraldr hárfagri’, in Gruffud ap Cynan: A Collaborative Biography, ed. by Kari Maund, Studies in Celtic History, 16 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1996), pp. 117–47 —— , ‘Skaldic Studies’, Collegium medievale, 11 (1998), 105–17 —— , ‘Literature in Medieval Orkney’, in The World of ‘Orkneyinga saga’: The Broad­Cloth Viking Trip, ed. by Olwyn Owen (Kirkwall: The Orcadian, 2005), pp. 11–24 —— , ‘Norse Myth in Medieval Orkney’, in The Fantastic in Old Norse Icelandic Literature: Preprint Papers of the Thirteenth International Saga Conference, Durham and York, 6–12 August 2006, i, ed.  by John McKinnell, David Ashurst, and Donata Kick (Durham: The Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006), pp. 425–44 ——  , ‘The Norse Gods in Scotland’, in Scandinavian Scotland — Twenty Years After: The Proceedings of a Day Conference Held on 19 February 2007, ed.  by Alex Woolf, St John’s House Papers, 12 (St Andrews: University of St Andrews, 2009), pp. 49–73 —— , ‘The Orcadian Links of Snorra Edda’, in Snorres Edda i europeisk og islandsk kultur, ed. by Jon Gunnar Jørgensen (Reykholt: Snorrastofa, 2009), pp. 145–72 ——  , ‘Orkneyinga saga: A  Work in Progress?’, in Creating the Medieval Saga: Versions, Variability and Editorial Interpretations of Old Norse Saga Literature, ed.  by Judy Quinn and Emily Lethbridge, Viking Collection, 18 (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2010), pp. 153–73 —— , The Viking Diaspora, Medieval World (London: Routledge, 2015) Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Det Norrøne Samfunne: vikingen, kongen, erkebiskopen og bonden (Oslo: Pax, 2008) —— , ‘Kings, Earls and Chieftains: Rulers in Norway, Orkney and Iceland c. 900–1300’, in Ideology and Power in the Viking and Middle Ages: Scandinavia, Iceland, Ireland, Orkney and the Faeroes, ed. by Gro Steinsland, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Jan Erik Rekdal, and Ian B. Beuermann, Northern World, 52 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 69–108 Kaland, Sigrid, ‘The Settlement of Westness, Rousay’, in The Viking Age in Caithness, Orkney and the North Atlantic: Select Papers from the Proceedings of the Eleventh Viking Congress, Thurso and Kirkwall, 22 August–1 September 1989, ed. by Colleen Batey, Judith Jesch, and Christopher Morris (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993), pp. 308–17 Karlsson, Gunnar, Iceland’s 1100 Years: The History of a Marginal Society (London: Hurst, 2000) Lamb, Raymond G., ‘The Cathedral of Christchurch and the Monastery of Birsay’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquarians of Scotland, 105 (1974), 200–05 Louis-Jensen, Jonna, Kongesagastudier: kompilationen Hulda­Hrokkinskinna, Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana, 32 (Copenhagen: Reitzel, 1977) Meulengracht Sørensen, Preben, ‘The Sea, the Flame and the Wind: The Legendary Ancestors of the Earls of Orkney’, in The Viking Age in Caithness, Orkney and the North Atlantic: Select Papers from the Proceedings of the Eleventh Viking Congress, Thurso and Kirkwall, 22 August–1 September 1989, ed. by Colleen Batey, Judith Jesch, and Christopher Morris (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993), pp. 212–21 Morris, Christopher, ‘From Birsay to Brattahlíð: Recent Perspectives on Norse Christianity in Orkney, Shetland, and the North Atlantic Region’, in Scandinavia and Europe 800–1350: Contact, Conflict and Coexistence, ed.  by Jonathan Adams and

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Katherine Holman, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 177–95 Morris, Christopher, with Norman Emery, ‘The Chapel and Enclosure on the Brough of Deerness, Orkney: Survey and Excavations, 1975–1977’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 116 (1986), 301–74 Muir, Tom, Orkney in the Sagas: The Story of the Earldom of Orkney as Told in the Icelandic Sagas (Kirkwall: Orkney Islands Council, 2005) Mundal, Else, ‘The Orkney Earl and Scald Torf-Einarr and his Poetry’, in The Viking Age in Caithness, Orkney and the North Atlantic: Select Papers from the Proceedings of the Eleventh Viking Congress, Thurso and Kirkwall, 22 August–1 September 1989, ed. by Colleen Batey, Judith Jesch, and Christopher Morris (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993), pp. 248–59 —— , ‘The Dating of the Oldest Sagas about Early Icelanders’, in Dating the Sagas: Reviews and Revisions, ed. by Else Mundal (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2013), pp. 31–54 —— , ed., Dating the Sagas: Reviews and Revisions (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2013) ——  , ‘Orkneyinga saga: Its Literary Form, Content and Origin’, paper delivered at the ‘Vikings and Scotland: Impact and Influence’ conference held in Edinburgh, 20–22 September 2006 —— , ‘Rognvald Kali Kolsson: Orkneyinga saga’s Portrait of a Good Ruler’, forthcoming Nicolaisen, William, ‘Early Scandinavian Naming in the Western and Northern Isles’, Northern Scotland, 3 (1979–1980), 105–21 Olsen, Magnus, ‘Hild Rolvsdatters vise om Gange-Rolv og Harald Hårfagre’, Maal og Minne [n. v] (1942), 1–70 Ó Corráin, Donnchadh, Ireland before the Normans, The Gill History of Ireland, 2 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1972) —— , ‘The Vikings in Ireland and Scotland in the Ninth Century’, Peritia, 12 (1998), 296–339 Owen, Olwyn, ‘The Scar Boat Burial — and the Missing Decades of the Early Viking Age in Orkney and Shetland’, in Scandinavia and Europe 800–1350: Contact, Conflict and Coexistence, ed. by Jonathan Adams and Katherine Holman, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 3–33 Poole, Russell, Viking Poems on War and Peace: A Study in Skaldic Narrative (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991) Price, Neil, ‘Dying and the Dead: Viking Age Mortuary Behaviour’, in The Viking World, ed. by Stefan Brink with Neil Price (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 257–73 Quinn, Judy, ‘Introduction’, in Creating the Medieval Saga: Versions, Variability and Editorial Interpretations of Old Norse Saga Literature, ed. by Judy Quinn and Emily Lethbridge, The Viking Collection, 18 (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2010), pp. 13–37 Quinn, Judy, and Emily Lethbridge, eds, Creating the Medieval Saga: Versions, Variability and Editorial Interpretations of Old Norse Saga Literature, The Viking Collection, 18 (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2010)

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Radford, C.  A.  R., ‘The Celtic Monastery in Britain’, Archaeologica Cambrensis, 111 (1962), 1–24 Renaud, Jean, ‘Les rapports entre les jarls orcadiens et les rois norvégiens, à la lumière de l’Orkneyinga saga’, in Sagas and the Norwegian Experience: Preprints from the Tenth International Conference, August 3–9, 1997 (Trondheim: Norges tekniske universitetsbibliote, 1997), pp. 543–50 Ritchie, Anna, ‘Pict and Norseman in Northern Scotland’, Scottish Archaeological Forum, 6 (1974), 23–36 —— , ‘Excavation of Pictish and Viking-Age Farmsteads at Buckquoy, Orkney’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 108 (1976–1977), 174–227 ——  , ‘Birsay around ad  800’, in Orkney Heritage, ii: Birsay: A  Centre of Political and Ecclesiastical Power, ed.  by William Thomson (Kirkwall: Orkney Heritage Society, 1983), pp. 46–66 —— , ‘Orkney in the Pictish Kingdom’, in The Prehistory of Orkney, ed. by Colin Renfrew (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1985), pp. 183–204 Rodríguez, Jeanette, and Ted Fortier, Cultural Identity: Resistance, Faith and Identity (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007) Rowe, Elizabeth Ashman, ‘Historical Invasions/Historiographical Interventions: Snorri Sturluson and the Battle of Stamford Bridge’, Mediaevalia, 17 (1994), 149–76 ——  , ‘Absent Mothers and the Sons of Fornjótr: Late-Thirteenth-Century Monarchist Ideology in Þorsteins saga Víkingssonar’, Mediaeval Scandinavia, 14 (2004), 133–60 Sellevold, Berit, Picts and Vikings at Westness: Anthropological Investigations of the Skeletal Material from the Cemetery at Westness, NIKU Scientific Report, 10 (Oslo: NIKU, 1999) —— , ‘Life and Death among the Picts and Vikings at Westness’, in The Viking Age: Ireland and the West: Papers from the Proceedings of the Fifteenth Viking Congress, Cork, 18–27 August 2005, ed. by John Sheehan and Donnchadh Ó Corráin (Dublin: Four Courts, 2010), pp. 369–79 Shetelig, Haakon, Viking Antiquities in Great Britain and Ireland, i: An Introduction to the Viking History of Western Europe (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1940) Sigurður Nordal, ‘Indledning’, in Orkneyinga saga: udgivet for Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur, ed. by Sigurður Nordal (Copenhagen: Møller, 1913–1916), pp. v–lv ——  , ‘Om Orkneyingasaga’, Aarbøger for Nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie, 3  (1913), 31–50 Smith, Brian, ‘The Picts and the Martyrs, or, Did Vikings Kill the Native Population of Orkney and Shetland?’, Northern Studies, 36 (2001), 7–32 Steinsland, Gro, ‘Origin Myths and Rulership: From the Viking Age Ruler to the Ruler of Medieval Historiography; Continuity, Transformations and Innovations’, in Ideology and Power in the Viking and Middle Ages: Scandinavia, Iceland, Ireland, Orkney and the Faeroes, ed. by Gro Steinsland and others, Northern World, 52 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 15–67 Stylegar, Frans-Arne, ‘“Central Places” in Viking-Age Orkney’, Northern Studies, 38 (2004), 5–30 Taylor, Alexander Burt, ‘Introduction’, in The Orkneyinga saga: A New Translation with Introduction and Notes, ed. and trans. by Alexander Burt Taylor (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1938), pp. 1–131

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Thomson, William, ‘Appendix B: St  Findan and the Pictish-Norse Transition’, in The People of Orkney, ed.  by Robert Berry and Howie Firth (Kirkwall: Orkney Press, 1986), pp. 279–87 —— , The New History of Orkney, 3rd edn (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2008) Wainwright, Frederick T., ‘The Scandinavian Settlement’, in The Northern Isles, ed.  by Frederick T. Wainwright (Edinburgh: Nelson, 1962), pp. 117–62 Weber, Gerd Wolfgang, ‘Intellegere historiam: Typological Perspectives of Nordic Prehistory (in Snorri, Saxo, Widukind and Others)’, in Gerd Wolfgang Weber, Mythos und Geschicht: Essays zur Geschichtsmythologie Skandinaviens in Mittelalter und Neuzeit, Hesperides, 11 (Trieste: Parnaso, 2001), pp. 99–146 Whaley, Diana, ‘Skalds and Situational Verses in Heimskringla’, in Snorri Sturluson: Kolloquium anlässlich der 750. Wiederkehr seines Todestages, ed.  by Alois Wolf, ScriptOralia, 51 (Tübingen: Narr, 1993), pp. 245–66 —— , ‘A Useful Past: Historical Writing in Medieval Iceland’, in Old Icelandic Literature and Society, ed. by Margaret Clunies Ross, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, 42 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 161–202 Wilson, James, and others, ‘Genetic Evidence for Different Male and Female Roles during Cultural Transitions in the British Isles’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 98.9 (2001), 5078–83 Woolf, Alex, From Pictland to Alba: 789–1070, New Edinburgh History of Scotland, 2 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007) Wærdahl, Randi Bjørshol, The Incorporation and Integration of the King’s Tributary Lands into the Norwegian Realm, c. 1195–1397, trans. by Alan Crozier, Northern World, 53 (Leiden: Brill, 2011)

Biblical Motifs and the Shaping of Ethnic Categories in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia* Stefan Donecker and Peter Fraundorfer

I

n 1205, seven years into the Livonian Crusades1 and merely four years after the city’s foundation, an extraordinary performance2 took place in the streets of Riga:

That same winter a very elaborate play of the prophets was performed in the middle of Riga in order that the pagans might learn the rudiments of the Christian faith by an ocular demonstration. The subject of this play was most diligently explained to both converts and pagans through an interpreter. When, however, the army of *

Research for this paper was conducted in the framework of and with financial support from SFB (Spezialforschungsbereich) ‘Visions of Community: Comparative Approaches to Ethnicity, Region and Empire in Christianity, Islam and Buddhism (400–1600 ce) (VISCOM)’, funded by the Austrian Research Fund (FWF): F42-G18. We would like to express our gratitude to Clemens Gantner, Roland Steinacher, and Veronika Wieser for their advice and kind support. While finishing this volume, we learned that our dear friend and colleague Stefan Donecker sadly passed away. We will always remember him as a brilliant scholar, but most of all as a cheerful, generous, and warm-hearted person. 1

On the broader context see Christiansen, The Northern Crusades. Petersen, ‘The Notion of a Missionary Theatre’; Schneider, ‘Straßentheater im Missionseinsatz’; Kaljundi, ‘Expanding Communities’. 2

Stefan Donecker was a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Medieval Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences Peter Fraundorfer is a member of the Institute of Austrian Historical Research and a PhD student at Trinity College Dublin within the SFI-IRC Pathway Programme project ‘Early Irish Hands’. Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000–1300, ed. by Walter Pohl, Veronika Wieser, and Francesco Borri, celama 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp.  117–140 FHG 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.130256

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Gideon fought the Philistines, the pagans began to take flight, fearing lest they be killed, but they were quietly called back.3

The report on the memorable ludus prophetarum and its unexpected consequences was put to parchment roughly twenty years after the event4 by the missionary priest Henricus de Lettis, Henry of Livonia, and incorporated into the ninth chapter of his Chronicon Livoniae. Henry most likely witnessed the performance himself, and there are reasons to identify him with the unfortunate interpreter whose explanatory efforts failed to prevent the audience from panicking.5 The episode, particularly the spectators’ inability to comprehend the nature of theatre and to distinguish between performed violence and an actual threat, has gained considerable attention from scholars of medieval drama.6 In this paper, however, we intend to use the tumultuous performance as a point of departure for an inquiry into the importance of Old Testament motifs for the envisioning of ethnic categories in the Chronicon Livoniae. To Henry himself, the ludus prophetarum was not just an unsuccessful performance thoroughly misunderstood by its audience. It was a portent of things to come: ‘This play was like a prelude and prophecy of the future; for in the same play there were wars, namely those of David, Gideon and Herod. […] Certainly, through the many wars that followed, the pagans were to be converted’.7 Thus, a missionary play with biblical motifs prefigured the conquest and conversion8 of Livonia. Detached from the singular event of the 1205 performance, an interpretation along these lines could be applied to the chronicle as a whole: scholars have argued that Henry perceived and described events of the Livonian Crusades as a recurrence of biblical history.9 According to his chronicle, the Old Testament 3

Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, ix.14, p. 32; trans. by Brundage, p. 53. Schneider, ‘Straßentheater im Missionseinsatz’, p. 113. 5 Schneider, ‘Straßentheater im Missionseinsatz’, p. 120; Murray, ‘Henry the Interpreter’, pp. 108–09. 6 See, for example, Schneider, ‘Straßentheater im Missionseinsatz’, pp. 108–11 and Evitt, ‘Undoing the Dramatic History’. 7 Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, ix.14, p. 32; trans. by Brundage, p. 53. 8 On the facets of the term ‘conversion’ in the history of pre-modern Christianity, see James Muldoon’s somewhat outdated, but still useful introduction to his 1997 Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages, esp. pp. 2–3. Ghosh, ‘Conquest’, discusses the importance of the conversion aspect in Henry’s Chronicon Livoniae in comparison to other contemporary texts such as the late thirteenth-century Livländische Reimchronik. 9 See, in particular, Undusk, ‘Sacred History’ and Nielsen, ‘Providential History’. On bibli4

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was re-enacted in the early thirteenth century, not only in the streets of Riga, but on a far grander scale, with the entirety of Livonia being the stage. But who were the actors in this epic performance envisioned by Henry? The Chronicon Livoniae does contain a cast of memorable individuals, some of whom were clearly modelled on biblical examples. Yet we must not discount the collective agents, namely the ethnic entities featured so prominently in the narrative of Henry’s chronicle. In the following, we intend to highlight the role of biblical language and biblical topoi in Henry’s historiographical composition and categorization of ethnic groups.

The Author and his Work Spanning more than forty years, from the onset of the Livonian mission in 1184 to the subjugation of Ösel (Saaremaa) that concluded the Estonian Crusade in 1227, and covering the tenures of the first three bishops of the Livonian diocese, Meinhard (1186–1196), Berthold (1196–1198), and Albert (1199–1229), the Chronicon Livoniae is a source of unrivalled importance for the medieval history of the eastern Baltic littoral.10 Its significance is not only due to its wealth of information for an otherwise poorly documented period in the history of North-Eastern Europe, but, even more importantly, to the author’s close proximity to the developments described. Numerous passages in the chronicle amount to an eyewitness account, compiled by a missionary priest on site who watches events unfold around him. If we were to search for a modern analogy, ‘embedded journalism’ would come to mind. Although the text itself never identifies its author, there has been a consensus among scholars since the first editions of the eighteenth century11 that the chronicle was written by one Henricus de Lettis, ‘Henry of the Letts’, mentioned repeatedly as sacerdos and interpres.12 Despite some attempts to portray cal typologies and the use of classical texts as well as hagiography in the chronicles of the Baltic Crusades, see also Kaljundi, ‘The Baltic Crusades’, pp. 53–72, and Kaljundi, ‘(Re)Performing’, pp. 301–05. 10 The state of research on Henry of Livonia has been compiled in a 2011 compendium, see Brundage, ‘Introduction: Henry of Livonia’, for a general overview of his life and writing. Undusk, ‘Sacred History’, and Kivimäe, ‘Henricus the Ethnographer’, are the most relevant chapters in the compendium for the topic of this paper. Cf. also Ghosh, ‘Conquest’; Jensen, ‘How to Convert a Landscape?’; Nielsen, ‘Providential History’, esp. pp. 361–64; Šnē, ‘Image of the Other’. 11 Cf. Kala, ‘Henry’s Chronicle’, p. 392. 12 Kivimäe, ‘Henricus the Ethnographer’, pp. 79–80.

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him as an indigenous Lett who had been sent to Germany as a hostage and later returned to his native land as a missionary, Henry was most certainly from the north of the Holy Roman Empire, probably from Saxony. Born in the 1180s and educated at the Augustinian monastery of Segeberg, the spiritual and organizational hub of the Baltic mission, he came to Livonia in 1205 as part of Bishop Albert’s retinue. Being fluent in Latvian and having at least a basic command of the other languages of the region, he served as an interpreter and later as a parish priest among the Letts at the Ymera River. By the mid-1220s, he had completed the twenty-nine chapters of his chronicle, but added a final chapter on the campaign against Ösel in the late 1220s. It seems plausible that the Chronicon Livoniae was intended as a report for the papal Curia, to be conveyed by the legate William of Modena, who had been dispatched to Livonia to mediate between the different Christian factions and who also oversaw the final attack on the Osilians.13 Henry lived to an old age, and was reportedly still residing among his parishioners in 1259.14 One of the most characteristic features of the Chronicon Livoniae is the strong reliance on biblical language.15 Henry’s vocabulary, literary style, and presentation techniques depended almost entirely on the Vulgate and, to a lesser extent, on the Breviary and the available missals. Latvian scholar Vilis Biļķins, who documented these influences in his 1928 dissertation, counted 775 quotations from the Vulgate;16 present-day scholars put their estimate at over 1100.17 Other literary references, for example to ancient Latin writers, appear only very rarely and are completely overshadowed by the copious number of biblical quotations. Biļķins’s teacher, the influential Baltic German medievalist Leonid Arbusow Jr, interpreted Henry’s dependence on the Bible as an indication for his modest erudition and his limitations as a historiographer. According to this line of argumentation, the Bible provided him with ready-made phrases that he used more or less unintentionally, because he was familiar with them though their use in liturgy and they came to his mind easily.18 Other scholars, such as Sergei Anninski in the foreword to the 1938 Russian translation and Jan Uundusk in 13

Tyerman, ‘Henry of Livonia’, pp. 23–24. On the chronicler’s biography, see Johansen, ‘Die Chronik als Biographie’. 15 Undusk, ‘Sacred History’; Nielsen, ‘Providential History’, esp. p. 368. 16 Biļķins, Spuren, p. 70. 17 Kaljundi, ‘The Baltic Crusades’, p. 101; Undusk, ‘Sacred History’, p. 50. 18 Arbusow, ‘Das entlehnte Sprachgut’, pp.  109–11 and 152; Arbusow, Liturgie und Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 80 and 87–88. 14

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a 2011 compendium to Henry of Livonia, have credited him with consciously — and indeed skilfully — creating biblical allusions.19 They argued that Henry intentionally used biblical language to create parallels between the crusaders in Livonia and the protagonists of the Old Testament, in an effort to stress the significance of the events he witnessed. In a somewhat similar vein, Linda Kaljundi recently argued that the quotations from Scripture serve the deliberate purpose of recalling the sanctity of the past as an inspiration for the present.20

Ethnic Identities in the Chronicon Livoniae In contrast to most other parts of medieval Europe, the ethnic entities of the eastern Baltic littoral had not been defined and categorized by ancient Greek and Roman ethnography. Lacking universally accepted scholarly and literary authorities, Henry had to come up with ethnonyms21 that both reflected the political realities of his time and met the requirements of medieval historiography. A connection to the classical and/or biblical world was highly desirable. Other authors of roughly the same period22 faced the same challenge: in his Gesta Danorum, the erudite Saxo Grammaticus introduced ethnonyms for the inhabitants of the eastern Baltic that were reminiscent of Graeco-Roman antiquity, for example Hellespontici for the inhabitants of the Düna estuary.23 Scholars have put forward several explanations for this puzzling designation,24 but Saxo’s terminology does, regardless of the actual motivation for his wording, establish a connection between the clearly defined ethnography of the Mediterranean and the largely nondescript Baltic area. 19

Undusk, ‘Sacred History’, pp. 49, 53–60. Kaljundi, ‘The Baltic Crusades’, p. 104. In an unpublished paper at the 2015 International Medieval Congress in Leeds, Alan V. Murray revisited the debate and discussed the question of the intentionality of Henry’s Vulgate quotations in detail, highlighting cases where deliberate references seem unlikely. An example for the latter is the puzzling episode in Chapter xiii.4, when Vsevolod of Gerzike, a staunch opponent of the crusaders, bemoans the destruction of his city with words taken from the lament of Mattathias in the First Book of the Maccabees. Here, Henry seems to subvert his own message by having a villain speak in words that have a strong positive connotation and are associated with piety. See on this case p. xx, below. 21 Kivimäe, ‘Henricus the Ethnographer’; Gebel, ‘Christliche Mission’. 22 Cf. Wood, ‘The Ends of the Earth’. 23 Saxo, Gesta Danorum, ed. by Friis-Jensen, i.6.10, viii.10.7–viii.10.13, ix.4.20–ix.4.21, i, pp. 112, 548–52, 598. 24 Baranauskas, ‘Saxo Grammaticus’, pp. 67–68; Johansen, ‘Saxo Grammaticus’, pp. 631–36. 20

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A somewhat similar case is to be found in Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hamma­ burgensis ecclesiae pontificum,25 written roughly 150 years before Henry and Saxo. The ethnic distinctiveness of the people of Courland is, according to Adam, comprised of their cruelty, their idolatry, and their exceptional ability as soothsayers, necromancers, and diviners. Therefore, they are regularly visited by people from all over the world eager to learn their future, particularly from Spain and Greece.26 The latter detail has been attributed to an erroneous manuscript transmission: Greci was probably meant as a generic term for schismatics, designating the Russians. But if a copyist read it in the literal sense, he might have been prompted — intentionally or by mistake — to write ab Hispanis instead of the conjectural original wording, ab his paganis. Thus, the ‘pagans and schismatics’ of the Baltic were turned into ‘Spaniards and Greeks’.27 In this case, the author cannot be held responsible for the unexpected connection to the Mediterranean world, but Adam’s copyists and readers were probably influenced by such notions that linked a peripheral space to familiar territory. The eastern Baltic littoral was only of marginal importance to Saxo and Adam; to Henry, on the other hand, it was the primary and almost exclusive setting for his chronicle. Accordingly, Henry undertook much greater efforts to categorize the area’s indigenous inhabitants and to create ethnic labels for them.28 Although he saw himself as a missionary and a historiographer, he had no choice but to fulfil the duties of an ethnographer as well. His efforts amounted to an ‘“encyclopaedic database” of medieval Baltic and Finno-Ugric tribes’, to quote the Estonian historian Jüri Kivimäe.29 It is, however, difficult to discern a clear system behind the numerous ethnonyms in the Livonian Chronicle.30 Some refer to large-scale entities, usually defined by language31 and associated with particular stereotypical attributes: the Finno-Ugric-speaking Livs 32 along the coast are depicted as fickle and untrustworthy, quite willing to accept Christianity but even more willing to 25

Wood, ‘The Ends of the Earth’, esp. pp. 205–10. Adam, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificium, ed. by Schmeidler, iv.16, p. 244. 27 Baranauskas, ‘Saxo Grammaticus’, p. 74. 28 Kivimäe, ‘Henricus the Ethnographer’; Gebel, ‘Christliche Mission’. 29 Kivimäe, ‘Henricus the Ethnographer’, p. 86. 30 Kivimäe, ‘Henricus the Ethnographer’, pp. 82–86. 31 As mentioned above, Henry was fluent in several languages spoken in the area and therefore fully aware of the linguistic divisions within Livonia. 32 Kivimäe, ‘Henricus the Ethnographer’, pp.  86–89; Gebel, ‘Christliche Mission’, pp. 164–66; Fraundorfer, ‘How do the “Livs” Fit into Sacred History?’. 26

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relapse into paganism at the first opportunity (although they are redeemed somewhat by the saintly figure of Caupo, a Liv chieftain and one of the major heroes of the Chronicon Livoniae).33 Their neighbours in the county’s interior, the Baltic-speaking Letts,34 are portrayed in a far more positive light, as keen converts and, once baptized, as reliable fighters for the Christian cause. Since Henry spent most of his life among his Lett parishioners, his sympathy for them is hardly surprising. The Estonians35 to the north rank among the major antagonists: unlike their linguistic kinsmen, the deceitful Livs, they are rather straightforward in their opposition to the crusaders’ cause, and Henry shows some grudging respect for their military prowess. To the south, the Balticspeaking Lithuanians36 are probably the most formidable enemies encountered by the crusaders, vividly portrayed by Henry as ravenous wolves und relentless hunters in the forests who prey on the other inhabitants of the land.37 One level below these large-scale groups, Henry mentions numerous smaller entities, whose ethnonyms are generally deduced from their main settlement or the area (terra, provincia, or kiligunda, the latter a loanword from Estonian)38 they inhabit (e.g. Ugaunenses, the men of Ugaunia, Tarbatenses, the men of Tarbata (Tartu), Osiliensis or Osiliani, the men of Osilia (Saaremaa)).39 Subdivisions of this kind are particularly common among the Estonians in the north — that is, in a part of Livonia that was close to Henry’s own parish and that he knew particularly well. It is worth noting that in this area, where Henry could rely on personal observation and his own expertise, such smaller groups often appear as political actors who pursue their own agenda. To the south, where he had to rely on second-hand accounts, he seems less willing — or simply unable — to differentiate within the larger ethnic groups and tends to assume a larger collective agency. Thus, the difficulties of reaching a political 33

On Caupo, see Šnē, ‘Image of the Other’, esp. pp. 255–58. Kivimäe, ‘Henricus the Ethnographer’, pp. 89–91; Gebel, ‘Christliche Mission’, p. 167. 35 Kivimäe, ‘Henricus the Ethnographer’, pp.  94–99; Gebel, ‘Christliche Mission’, pp. 166–67. 36 Kivimäe, ‘Henricus the Ethnographer’, pp. 102–03; Gebel, ‘Christliche Mission’, p. 168; Donecker, ‘Wolves in the Wilderness’. 37 The remaining larger groups, the Courlanders and the Semigallians, lack a distinctive stereotypical image: in their most notable appearances, the Courlanders are vicious pirates similar to the Estonians (with whom they are also allied), while the Semigallians are depicted as cowardly and utterly useless allies of the Germans. See Gebel, ‘Christliche Mission’, pp. 167–68. 38 Kivimäe, ‘Henricus the Ethnographer’, pp. 94–98. 39 For a full list, see Kivimäe, ‘Henricus the Ethnographer’, p. 97. 34

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consensus among the Estonian tribes become apparent, while Henry never discusses any similar factionalism among the Lithuanians. To make matters even more complicated, the relationship between the different layers of ethnic identity is often uncertain. A modern reader who has contemporary nations in mind would assume that the Osiliensis, the inhabitants of Ösel that is Saaremaa, belong to the Estonum nationes. There are indeed passages that seem to indicate that Henry also considered them part of a superordinate Estonian collective.40 But at other instances, he seems to distinguish between Estonians and Osilians and treats them as two different ethnic groups on the same level.41 Likewise, the usage of the terms gens, natio, and populus is inconsistent throughout the chronicle. Like most medieval authors, Henry associated gentes with paganism and barbarity and populi with Christianity and civilization, but such a distinction is not implemented consistently throughout the text.42 In a single passage, for example, the pagan Estonians and Lithuanians are described as populi and gentes in two consecutive sentences.43

References to the Bible in Henry’s Ethnography Bearing in mind how strongly Henry of Livonia depended on biblical language and biblical topoi, it seems only consistent that the ethnic categories he created and employed were also modelled after biblical patterns.44 The first passage of the Chronicon Livoniae already establishes the connection between the events witnessed by Henry and biblical precedence: Divine Providence, by the fire of His love, and mindful of Raab and Babylonia, that is, of the confusion of paganism, aroused in our modern times the idolatrous Livonians from the sleep of idolatry and of sin in the following way.45

40

Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed.  by Arbusow and Bauer, xxiii.10, p.  167; trans. by Brundage, p. 186. 41 Kivimäe, ‘Henricus the Ethnographer’, p. 95. 42 Kivimäe, ‘Henricus the Ethnographer’, pp. 84–85. 43 Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed.  by Arbusow and Bauer, ix.4, p.  28. See Kivimäe, ‘Henricus the Ethnographer’, p. 85. 44 Cf. Donecker, ‘Wolves in the Wilderness’, on the Lithuanians and Fraundorfer, ‘How do the “Livs” Fit into Sacred History?’, on the Livs. 45 Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, i.1, pp. 1–2; trans. by Brundage, p. 25.

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The reference to Egypt, under the emblematic name Rahab, and to Babylon echoes Psalm 86: ‘I will be mindful of Rahab and of Babylon knowing me’.46 Thus, the very first words of the text root it firmly in salvific history. Broadly speaking, the references to the Bible can be categorized into allusions with respect to nomenclature, where Henry uses the Old Testament for epithets and attributes and, in one case, appropriates a toponym, and allusions with respect to agency, where he models behaviour and speech acts on biblical precedence. Biblical Names and Epithets The most straightforward appropriation of biblical terminology in the Chroni­ con Livoniae is the case of Ydumea. Throughout the chronicle, there are repeated references to a territory of this name — vaguely located in central Livonia north of the Gauja River47 — and to its inhabitants, the Ydumei.48 The word itself is clearly a biblical loanword. In the Vulgate, Idumea refers to a land south of the Dead Sea, often used roughly synonymously with the cognate term Edom.49 The Idumeans were said to descend from Esau, the brother of Jacob,50 and Moses appealed to their shared ancestry when he tried to convince the king of Edom to grant the Israelites passage through his land.51 Throughout the Old Testament, the Idumeans usually appear as enemies of Israel,52 although they are far from formidable and are even treated with noticeable disdain.53 In pro-

46

Psalm 87.4: ‘Memor ero Rahab et Babylonis, scientium me’. This and other translations are taken from the Douay-Rheims translation of the Vulgate in the revised Challoner edition (1750/52), with modernized spelling. 47 Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, x.15, p. 46; trans. by Brundage, p. 67, mentions a church ‘super Ropam’ in the territory of the Idumeans, that served as the spiritual centre of their conversion. Ropa is the Latin designation for a tributary of the Gauja, nowadays known as Brasla. 48 Kivimäe, ‘Henricus the Ethnographer’, p. 89. 49 On the complex relationship between the two toponyms, see Bartlett, ‘Edomites and Idumeans’. 50 Genesis 36.43; Obadiah 1.8–10; i Maccabees 5.3. 51 Numbers 20.14. 52 Psalm 82.7; ii Samuel 8.13–14 and i Chronicles 18.12–13; i Kings 11.14–16; i Maccabees 4.61; i Maccabees 5.3; ii Maccabees 12.32. ii Kings 3.9, where the king of Edom joins Israel and Judah in a campaign against the Moabites, is an exception. 53 Psalm 59.11 and Psalm 107.11.

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phetic literature, God’s vengeance against the Idumeans is a recurring motif,54 possibly prompted by their cooperation with the Babylonians during the fall of Jerusalem in 587 bc.55 Their namesakes in Henry’s chronicle belong to the more elusive quasiethnic groups mentioned in the text. They appear for the first time in 1206, when they are baptized and converted by a priest named Daniel.56 Occasional references to their territory are scattered throughout the text, but they only return to the spotlight once more, in 1218, when they bear the brunt of a Russian invasion that lays waste to their land.57 The Ydumei are rarely mentioned alone, usually they appear alongside the Letts,58 the Livs,59 or both.60 This has led Baltic German scholar Heinrich Laakmann to speculate that Ydumea might have been a linguistically mixed area of Baltic Letts and Finno-Ugric Livs.61 The conformity of biblical Idumea and the chronicle’s Ydumea could be explained by simple Latinization of a local Finno-Ugric toponym Idumaa, translated roughly as ‘the north-eastern land’ (seen from the major Liv settlement areas in the vicinity of Riga).62 However, the connection between the biblical term and the local derivation extends beyond mere phonetic similarity: the main narrative role of the Ydumei in the Livonian Chronicle is that of victims during the Russian raid of 1218: the men of Novgorod ‘burned all the churches round about, both those of the Livonians and those of the Idumeans’ and ‘pillaged all the provinces and villages’.63 Shortly afterwards, a second invading army ‘laid waste the land of the Letts, Idumeans, and Livonians, doing all 54

See n. 64 below. Dykehouse, ‘Biblical Evidence’, pp. 121–23. 56 Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, x.15, p. 46; trans. by Brundage, p. 67. 57 Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, xxii.4, pp. 150–51; trans. by Brundage, pp. 169–70. 58 Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, x.15, xv.7, xvi.5, xvii.4, pp. 46, 95, 111, 113. 59 Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, xxii.4, p. 150. 60 Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, xxii.4, p. 151. 61 Laakmann, ‘Estland und Lettland’, p. 207. 62 Bielenstein, Grenzen, pp. 70, 467. 63 Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed.  by Arbusow and Bauer, xxii.4, p.  150; trans. by Brundage, p. 169: ‘ecclesias omnes in circuitu, tam Lyvonum quam Ydumeorum, incenderunt et provincias et villas omnes depredantes’. 55

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the harm that they could’,64 before all the suffering in Ydumea finally provokes a response from the crusaders at Riga.65 Throughout the Old Testament, the devastation and abandonment of Idumea is a recurring motif: Edom shall be desolate: every one that shall pass by it, shall be astonished, and shall hiss at all its plagues. As Sodom was overthrown and Gomorrha, and the neighbours thereof, saith the Lord: there shall not a man dwell there, and there shall no son of man inhabit it.66

The short Book of Obadiah is entirely dedicated to divine judgement over Edom, that is Idumea, and its subsequent downfall, and similarly dire premonitions abound in prophetic literature.67 The firmly entrenched biblical image of Idumea as desertum perditionis, ‘a wilderness destroyed’68 might have prompted Henry to adopt the toponym for a territory that has been thoroughly devastated by the Russian raid of 1218. When he wrote his chronicle in the mid1220s, these events would have been rather fresh in his mind. It is not implausible that he associated the lands north of the Gauja primarily with the destruction they had suffered several years earlier. Idumea’s pitiful reputation in the 64

Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed.  by Arbusow and Bauer, xxii.4, p.  151; trans. by Brundage, p. 170: ‘et terram Lettorum et Ydumeorum et Lyvonum […] vastavit, inferendo mala, que potuit’. 65 Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, xxii.4, p. 151; trans. by Brundage, p. 170: ‘Et audientes Rigenses omnia mala, que Rutheni faciebant in Ydumea, surrexerunt’. 66 Jeremiah 49.17–18: ‘Et erit Idumea deserta omnis qui transibit per eam stupebit et sibilabit super omnes plagas eius, sicuti subversa est Sodoma et Gomorra et vicinae eius ait Dominus non habitabit ibi vir et non incolet eam filius hominis’. 67 See, for example, Ezekiel 25.13: ‘Haec dicit Dominus Deus extendam manum meam super Idumeam et auferam de ea hominem et iumentum et faciam eam desertum’; Ezekiel 32.29: ‘Ibi Idumea et reges eius omnes duces eius qui dati sunt cum exercitu suo cum interfectis gladio’; Ezekiel 35.15: ‘sic faciam tibi dissipatus eris mons Seir et Idumea omnis’; Joel 3.19: ‘Aegyptus in desolatione erit et Idumea in desertum perditionis pro eo quod inique egerint in filios Iuda et effuderint sanguinem innocentem in terra sua’; Obadiah 1.8–9: ‘Numquid non in die illa dicit Dominus perdam sapientes de Idumea et prudentiam de monte Esau et timebunt fortes tui a meridie ut intereat vir de monte Esau’; Malachi 1.4: ‘Si dixerit Idumea destructi sumus sed revertentes aedificabimus quae deserta sunt haec dicit Dominus exercituum isti aedificabunt et ego destruam’. Cf. also the account of David’s and Ioab’s campaign against the Idumeans in i Kings 11.15–16: ‘Cum enim esset David in Idumea et ascendisset Ioab princeps militiae ad sepeliendos eos qui fuerant interfecti et occidisset omne masculinum in Idumea. Sex enim mensibus ibi moratus est Ioab et omnis Israhel donec interimerent omne masculinum in Idumea’. 68 Joel 3.19.

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Old Testament, coupled with the coincidence that the name of the territory in question sounded very similar in one of the local languages, provided ample reason for a biblical allusion. Inimici nominis Christi, ‘enemies of the name of Christ’, is a common epithet for adversaries in Henry’s chronicle, applied primarily to Estonians and Lithuanians, but on occasion also to the Livs and other opponents. 69 The phrase itself is not biblical, but regularly found in the writings of St Augustine and the church fathers, and was famously used by Bernard of Clairvaux70 in his 1147 epistle in support of the Second Crusade.71 Henry, however, links the Estonians’ ‘enmity to the name of Christ’ directly to the anti-Israelite stance of the Seleucids in the First Book of the Maccabees,72 using a wording that matches the biblical example: ‘Plures eciam de Estonibus captivis, cum et ipsi essent inimicicias exercentes omni tempore contra christiani nominis cultores, in gladio occiderunt’,73 echoing i Maccabees 7.26 (‘et misit rex Nicanorem […] qui erat inimicitias exercens contra Israhel’) and 9.51 (‘et posuit custodiam in eis ut inimicitias exercerent in Israhel’). The Lithuanians, arguably the most determined adversaries of the crusaders, are also characterized by the epithet lupi rapaces, ‘ravenous wolves’.74 Their lupine ferocity is first manifested, somewhat surprisingly, in a rather innocuous small-scale encounter, as two fishermen are robbed of their clothing by retreating Lithuanians: Before entering the country, however, they [the Lithuanians] heard that the king of Polozk was entering Lithuania with an army. Leaving the Semgalls, they returned 69

e.g. Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, vii.2, xi.6, xiii.4, xix.8, and phrased more loosely in viii.1, xiv.8, xvi.3, xxiii.4. 70 On Bernard’s relevance for the Wendish Crusade, see Fonnsberger-Schmidt, The Popes, pp. 29–36. 71 Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Epistola CDLVII’, ed. by Leclercq and Rochais, p. 432: ‘ad faciendam vindictam in nationibus et exstirpandos de terra christiani nominis inimicos’. See Kahl, Heidenfrage, p. 643. Unlike other parts of the epistle that refer to the so-called Wendish Crusade in the Baltic area, this passage relates to the campaigns in Palestine. 72 On the importance of the Maccabees for Henry’s typology, see Undusk, ‘Sacred History’, pp. 53–56; Nielsen, ‘Providential History’, pp. 371–73; Tyerman, ‘Henry of Livonia’, p. 29; Kaljundi, ‘The Baltic Crusades’, pp. 67–69. 73 Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, ix.4, p. 28. Brundage’s somewhat loose translation (pp. 49–50) reads: ‘They killed a great many of the Esthonian captives, since they too were enemies, working at all times against the cultivators of the Christian name’. 74 See Donecker, ‘Wolves in the Wilderness’, pp. 210–14.

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in haste and, finding as they went up country two fishermen of the bishop’s by the Rummel, like ravening wolves they raged against them and took away the clothes they were wearing. And thereupon the naked fishermen fled to Riga and exposed the injury they had suffered. The pilgrims then learned the truth of the matter, seized certain Lithuanians who were living in Riga at that time, and detained them in chains until the things stolen from the fishermen were returned.75

The phrase lupi rapaces is taken from Jesus’s well-known warning in the Gospel according to Matthew: ‘Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves’.76 Such harsh words seem strangely at odds with the inconsequential event described by Henry. After all, no one is seriously hurt and the victims even get their clothes back in the end. Considering the violence and frequent bloodshed in so many other passages of the Livonian Chronicle, it is difficult to understand why the Lithuanians’ behaviour just in this scene merits such a harsh description. One might even be tempted to suspect Henry of sarcasm. At another occasion, however, the Lithuanians live up to their epithet and display their wolf-like ferocity without restraint: The Russians also fled through the forests and villages from the face of the Lithuanians, however few, as rabbits flee before hunters, and the Livonians and Letts were food and provender for the Lithuanians and like sheep in the jaws of wolves, since they were without a shepherd.77

Here, too, Henry uses a language modelled on the Vulgate, in this case Ezekiel Chapter 34: 75

Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, v.3, p. 16, trans. by Brundage, p. 39: ‘Sed ante ingressum terre audientes regem de Plosceke cum exercitu Leththoniam intrare Semigallis relictis cum festinatione redeunt et in ascensu iuxta Rumbulam duos piscatores episcopi invenientes quasi lupi rapaces in ipsos seviunt et vestes, quibus tegebantur, auferunt. Quo facto piscatores denudati Rigam fugiunt et iniuriam illatam exponunt. Peregrini autem rei veritatem intelligentes quosdam Leththones adhuc in Riga existentes capiunt et eo usque in vinculis detinent, donec piscatoribus ablata restituuntur’. 76 Matthew 7.15: ‘Adtendite a falsis prophetis qui veniunt ad vos in vestimentis ovium intrinsecus autem sunt lupi rapaces’. Other biblical analogies are the ‘lupi rapientes praedam ad effundendum sanguinem et perdendas animas’ (wolves ravening the prey to shed blood, and to destroy souls) in Ezekiel 22.27 and the ‘lupi graves […] non parcentes gregi’ (ravening wolves, […] not sparing the flock) of Acts 20.29. 77 Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, xiii.4, p. 69, trans. by Brundage, p. 91: ‘Et fugerunt Rutheni per silvas et villas a facie Letonum licet paucorum, sicut fugiunt lepores ante faciem venatorum, et erant Lyvones et Lethti cibus et esca Lethonum et quasi oves in fauce luporum, cum sint sine pastore’.

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And my sheep were scattered, because there was no shepherd and they became the prey of all the beasts of the field, and were scattered. […] As I live, saith the Lord God, forasmuch as my flocks have been made a spoil, and my sheep are become a prey to all the beasts of the field, because there was no shepherd: for my shepherds did not seek after my flock, but the shepherds fed themselves, and fed not my flocks.78

Biblical Actions and Speech Acts References to the Old Testament become even more frequent in Henry’s narrative of the conversion itself. All stages of Christianization — initial resistance, eventual acceptance of the faith, as well as a possible relapse into paganism — are described with biblical vocabulary. Henry uses these references in his own authorial account, but he also has his protagonists speak in quotations from the Bible on several occasions. The notoriously fickle Livs provide plenty of examples for all three stages: at one occasion, Henry puts the Philistines’ rallying cry79 into the mouth of a pagan Liv leader: ‘Dobrel, their elder, comforted and encouraged them, saying, as the Philistines once did: “Take courage and fight, ye Philistines, lest you come to be servants to the Hebrews”’.80 The straightforward and open assertion that he, Henry, is quoting from the Bible does not correspond to his usual procedure. In almost all other cases, Henry did not denote his biblical references (and modern scholars have to rely on Vilis Biļķins’s meticulous study to trace them). He reuses the same quotation later in his chronicle in an account of a campaign against Liv apostates, this time without explaining its origin.81 But in the Chronicon Livoniae, not only pagan Livs like to quote the Bible: the converted chieftain Caupo, a rare paragon of virtue among his disreputa78

Ezekiel 34.5–8: ‘Et dispersae sunt oves meae eo quod non esset pastor et factae sunt in devorationem omnium bestiarum agri et dispersae sunt. […] Vivo ego dicit Dominus Deus quia pro eo quod facti sunt greges mei in rapinam et oves meae in devorationem omnium bestiarum agri eo quod non esset pastor neque enim quaesierunt pastores gregem meum sed pascebant pastores semet ipsos et greges meos non pascebant’. 79 i Kings 4.9: ‘Confortamini et estote viri Philisthim ne serviatis Hebraeis’. Cf. Undusk, ‘Sacred History’, pp. 57–59; Kaljundi, ‘The Baltic Crusades’, pp. 66–67; Fraundorfer, ‘How do the “Livs” Fit into Sacred History?’, pp. 192–94. 80 Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, x.10, p. 40, trans. by Brundage, p. 61: ‘Confortabat enim eos Dabrelus, senior ipsorum, et animabat, quemadmodum Philistei quondam dicentes: “Confortamini, Philistiim et pugnate, ne serviatis Hebreis”’. 81 Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, xvi.4, p. 108, trans. by Brundage, p. 127.

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ble kinsmen, advises his fellow Livs to wait for German reinforcements before engaging an Estonian host, using words inspired by Job and the First Book of the Maccabees: ‘Let us await our Brothers, and then we will be able to fight, and, having put on our wings, to fly on high’.82 His countrymen, however, do not heed his advice, and in the subsequent battle on the banks of the Ymera, two of Caupo’s relatives are slain before the Livs flee and abandon their German and Lett allies. These events roughly follow the same sequence as the Battle of Elasa in the Book of the Maccabees:83 disagreement among the protagonists’ army necessitates an exhortation by their leaders ( Judas Maccabaeus and Caupo, respectively); the ensuing battle causes notable fatalities ( Judas Maccabaeus himself and Caupo’s son and son-in-law) and results in the protagonists’ defeat, which is linked to moral debasement (the rise of wicked men in Israel and the dishonourable flight of the Livs). As mentioned previously, Liv neophytes had a reputation for being disloyal and faithless.84 Through the mouth of Bishop Berthold, Henry uses the image of dogs devouring their own vomit to reprimand them for their repeated apostasy: the Livs ‘sent a messenger to the bishop, asking why he had brought an army against them. The Bishop replied that as dogs return to their vomit, so they had returned too often from the faith to paganism’.85 The metaphor is taken from the Second Letter of Peter,86 which, in turn, references the Book of Proverbs: ‘As a dog that returneth to his vomit, so is the fool that repeateth his folly’.87 A particularly serious betrayal occurred in 1210, when both pagan and baptized Livs, ‘filled with the gall of their treachery’,88 gathered a powerful coalition of indigenous armies with the aim of razing Riga once and for all: 82

Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, xiv.8, p. 79, trans. by Brundage, p. 101: ‘Exspectemus […] fratres nostros, et tunc poterimus pugnare et assumptis alis nostris in altum volare’. Cf. Job 39.18: ‘cum tempus fuerit in altum alas erigit’ and i Maccabees 9.8: ‘[…] surgamus et eamus ad adversarios nostros si poterimus pugnare adversus eos’. 83 i Maccabees 9.5–23. See Nielsen, ‘Providential History’, pp. 372–73; Undusk, ‘Sacred History’, pp. 55–57. 84 Cf. Kaljundi, ‘Neophytes as Actors’. 85 Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, ii.5, p. 9, trans. by Brundage, p. 32: ‘Dirigunt tamen episcopo nuncium, causam exercitus superducti requirentes. Respondet episcopus causam, quod tamquam canes ad vomitum, sic a fide sepius ad paganismum redierint’. 86 ii Peter 2.22: ‘Contigit enim eis illud veri proverbii canis reversus ad suum vomitum’. 87 Proverbs 26.11: ‘Sicut canis qui revertitur ad vomitum suum sic inprudens qui iterat stultitiam suam’. 88 Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, xiv.5, p. 75, trans. by Brundage, p. 97: ‘perfidie sue felle repleti’.

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All the pagans round about […] sent ambassadors to one another, first the Livonians to the Kurs, then the Kurs to the Esthonians, and also to the Lithuanians, Semgalls, and Russians. They sought from each other every counsel as to how they might destroy Riga, take all the Germans by trickery, and kill them.89

Here, Henry refers to a most prominent plot that is described, in the very same words, in the Gospels of both Mark and Matthew: the high priests and the scribes’ scheme to apprehend Jesus by deceit and to kill him (‘dolo tenerent et occiderent’).90 Associating the conspiracy against Riga with nothing less than the onset of Christ’s Passion, Henry effectively — and possibly somewhat audaciously — emphasizes the importance of this critical moment that decided the fate of the Livonian mission. In all previous examples, Henry’s usage of biblical vocabulary paralleled the intention conveyed in the Old and New Testament contexts. The actions and utterances of Livonian pagans are usually borrowed from the enemies of Israel, while the Christians in the Chronicon Livoniae mirror the biblical Israelites. There are, however, several examples where this pattern is inverted: after their defeat, the pagan Rotalienses ‘were confounded and did much weeping and wailing. Esthonia, too, wept for her sons and could not be comforted’.91 The very same words are used in the Gospel of Matthew to describe the Massacre of the Innocents: ‘A voice in Rama was heard, lamentation and great mourning; Rachel bewailing her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not’.92 A similar inversion, also in the context of grief, occurs when Russian Prince Vsevolod of Gerzike, a staunch enemy of the crusaders, witnesses the destruction of his city: ‘O Gerzika beloved city! O inheritance of my fathers! O unexpected downfall of my people! O woe is me! Why was I born to see the burning 89

Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, xiv.5, p. 75, trans. by Brundage, p. 96: ‘gentes omnes in circuitu […] miserunt in invicem nuncios, Lyvones primo ad Curones, Curones ad Estones nec non ad Lethones, Semigallos et Ruthenos, querentes omne consilium, qualiter Rigam delerent et Theuthonicos omnes dolo tenerent et occiderent’. 90 Mark 14.1: ‘Erat autem pascha et azyma post biduum et quaerebant summi sacerdotes et scribae quomodo eum dolo tenerent et occiderent’; Matthew 26.3–4: ‘Tunc congregati sunt principes sacerdotum et seniores populi in atrium principis sacerdotum qui dicebatur Caiaphas et consilium fecerunt ut Iesum dolo tenerent et occiderent’. 91 Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed.  by Arbusow and Bauer, xviii.5, p.  119, trans. by Brundage, p. 138: ‘Et confuse sunt gentes et fecerunt ploratum et ululatum magnum. Estonia quoque plorans filios suos consolari non potuit’. 92 Matthew 2.18: ‘Vox in Rama audita est ploratus et ululatus multus Rachel plorans filios suos et noluit consolari quia non sunt’. The verse is, in itself, a partial quotation from Jeremiah 31.15. Cf. Undusk, ‘Sacred History’, p. 60.

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of my city and the sorrow of my people!’93 This strongly resembles the lament of Mattathias after the desecration of Jerusalem, again a reference to the Books of the Maccabees.94 Both cases seem equally contradictory. Vsevolod and the inhabitants of Rotalia are clearly identified as adversaries, but their sorrow is expressed by words associated with positive biblical characters. Scholars have referred to these passages as an indication that Henry employed ready-made phrases from the Bible without considering whether they are appropriate or not, reinforcing the argument that the chronicler used the Vulgate as an easily accessible source of formulaic language regardless of its significance.95 James A. Brundage, on the other hand, suggested that Henry was motivated by compassion for the prince of Gerzike and used the ostensible contradiction intentionally.96 This, however, seems unlikely, since Vsevolod is harshly condemned as ‘christiani nominis semper inimicus’ and as a collaborator with the nefarious Lithuanians.97 Pity on Henry’s part seems more likely — and appropriate — in the case of the Rotalians: here, he harshly reproaches the Germans’ allies, the Livs and even his otherwise well-liked Letts, for showing no mercy to the opponents. In addition, he sombrely notes that the victims, being pagans, are lost both in this and in the future world.98 A Christian author would not take eternal damnation lightly, especially since the missionaries who failed to convert them in time might be held as co-responsible. Thus, we might assume that sincere commiseration could have prompted Henry to disregard the Rotalians’ enmity and provide them with a touching biblical obituary. Prince Vsevolod, on the other hand, has far less reason to lament, since the inhabitants of Gerzike were mostly spared by the victorious Germans. 99 Yet 93

Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, xiii.4, p. 70, trans. by Brundage, p. 92: ‘O Gercike civitas dilecta! o hereditas patrum meorum! o inopinatum excidium gentis mee! Ve michi! Ut quid natus sum videre incendium civitatis mee, videre contritionem populi mei!’. 94 i Maccabees 2.7: ‘Et dixit Matthathias vae mihi ut quid natus sum videre contritionem populi mei et contritionem civitatis sanctae et sedere illic cum datur in manibus inimicorum’. 95 The examination of this passage formed a key part in Murray’s previously mentioned paper at the 2015 IMC (see n. 20). 96 Brundage, ‘Introduction to the 2003 Edition’, p. xxix. Cf. Undusk, ‘Sacred History’, p. 59. 97 Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, xiii.4, pp. 69–70, trans. by Brundage, pp. 90–91. 98 Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed.  by Arbusow and Bauer, xviii.5, p.  119, trans. by Brundage, p. 139. 99 Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, xiii.4, p. 70, trans. by Brundage, p. 91.

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there is another interesting biblical parallel that might shed further light on Henry’s intention: the city of Gerzike is described as ‘a trap’ and ‘an evil devil’ that taints and corrupts the surrounding people.100 In i Maccabees, the same words refer to Jerusalem after it had been profaned and turned into a pagan fortress.101 Furthermore, both texts follow what is essentially the same structure, with the diabolus malus characterization placed shortly before the lament of Matthathias and, likewise, of Vsevolod. It could be a mere coincidence — but it is equally possible to assume deliberate sarcasm on Henry’s part. He was quite capable of irony, even in serious matters,102 though he rarely allowed it to surface. And the acerbic image of the humiliated warmonger Vsevolod, who wallows in self-pity with exaggerated, Bible-inspired lamentations as his stronghold is being razed, seems almost perfectly composed. Too skilful, perhaps, to be the result of an unintentional random assortment of Old Testament phrases.

Conclusion There is no doubt that Henry of Livonia’s ethnography, as documented in the Chronicon Livoniae, is deeply indebted to Scripture. The Old Testament was not only re-enacted in the extraordinary 1205 ludus prophetarum at Riga, it was, according to the chronicler, performed again and again throughout the land in the military campaigns and conversion efforts of the Baltic Crusades. As the previous paragraphs have shown, the protagonists and antagonists of Henry’s chronicle resemble their Old Testament counterparts in speech and deed, as well as in their collective characteristics and — in the case of the Ydumeans — even in their name. Scholarly discussions of Henry’s use of Bible quotations and scriptural topoi have mostly focused on his authorial intentions 100

Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, xiii.4, pp. 69–70, trans. by Brundage, p. 91: ‘Et cum esset Gercike semper in laqueum et quasi in dyabolum magnum omnibus in ipsa parte Dune habitantibus’. 101 i Maccabees 1.37–38: ‘et facti sunt in laqueum magnum et factum est hoc ad insidias sanctificationi et in diabolum malum in Israhel’. 102 See, for example, Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, x.3, p. 34, trans. by Brundage, p. 55, when he explains that a Russian envoy to Riga, a certain deacon named Stephanus, is not the same person as the Protomartyr. Another notable case is Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. by Arbusow and Bauer, x.17, p. 47, trans. by Brundage, p. 68, where Henry sums up Bishop Albert’s attempts to gain support from German king Philip of Swabia with the exasperated comment ‘If only one could be rich through promises!’.

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(or lack thereof ): Did the chronicler masterfully weave a tapestry of biblical allusions, or was the language of the Old Testament his only means of expression, due to his limited skill and education? The importance of this question notwithstanding, we would like to shift the focus to another angle: given its topic,103 Henry’s chronicle needed to focus on the collective and communal aspects of Christianization. Medieval literature does contain several genres that focus on personal, individual conversion, with saints’ vitae being the most prominent example. But a crusading chronicle not only requires individual paragons of Christianity and stubborn pagans — Caupo and Lembit, respectively, being the foremost examples in Henry’s chronicle104 — but also ethnic entities105 that enact the drama of conversion in all its stages: obduracy, eventual acceptance of Christianity, possible apostasy and the subsequent punishment, and ultimately the final incorporation into the orbis Christianus.106 For his narrative to fulfil its purpose, Henry required these collective agents.107 He was in need of gentes, and in an area not covered by Graeco103 Textual tradition dating back to the Carolingian era asserted that political governance — including religiously justified sovereignty — was primarily exercised over peoples (as opposed to territories). Cf. Rembold, Conquest and Christianization, esp. p. 6. This necessitates the narrative focus on gentes in any account of interlinked conquest and conversion. On the impact of Christianization on the conceptual history of the term gens, especially with regard to political legitimacy, see Pohl, ‘Regnum und gens’, pp. 447–49. 104 Tamm, ‘Martyrs and Miracles’, pp. 137–38, 142. 105 The interdependency of individual and collective conversion was addressed at the 1997 International Medieval Congress; key papers were published three years later. In her contribution, Marie-Luise Favreau-Lilie, ‘Mission to the Heathen’, p. 148, discussed the specific situation during the Baltic Crusades: ‘Neither in Livonia nor in Prussia was it deemed sufficient to baptize the clan and tribal leaders in order to win over the entire population. It was necessary to indoctrinate even after mass baptism as many Livs and Prussians as possible, so that the uninitiated would voluntarily adopt Christianity and ask for baptism’. Thus, in this case, the practical necessities of the missionary efforts ‘in the field’ were consistent with the literary conventions of the crusade chronicle. König, Bekehrungsmotive, esp. pp. 43–99, 455–61, 539–45, provides an in-depth analysis of the political, social, and spiritual motives and incentives subsumed under the term conversio gentium in the early Middle Ages. Cohen, ‘Ethnographic Dimensions’, discusses the importance of ethnographic knowledge and topoi in medieval conversion narratives, focusing on Northern Europe. Cf. also the basic considerations by Addison, ‘Group Conversion’. 106 Cf. Kaljundi, ‘(Re)Performing the Past’, pp. 312–17. 107 The Baltic Crusades were but one setting where medieval Christian authors postulated ethnic cohesion and a unified political agenda among their adversaries, and assigned ethnic attributes to them. See, for example, Gantner, ‘New Visions’, pp. 412–13, who deals primarily

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Roman ethnography, he had to create them from scratch. He achieved this goal by observing local conditions, noting the events of his lifetime, and eventually expressing them through biblical language. The aforementioned question of whether the latter aspect was intentional or not is not only difficult to answer, but perhaps circumstantial in the context of Henry’s ethnic categorization efforts. The Bible did contain the very motifs he required; its dual nature — in the eyes of Henry and his contemporaries — as a factual historical account and as timetranscending universal truth provided the perfect template for the Livonian Chronicle’s ethnography of conversion. Intentionally or not, Henry of Livonia relied on the Vulgate as the quintessential manual for ethnic categorization.

with the early medieval perception of the ‘Saracens’ in southern Italy, but includes references to similar instances when Latin historiographers struggled to fit the religious Other into their ethnic terminology. On the classical precedents in Graeco-Roman ethnography, see Hall, Inventing the Barbarian, and Woolf, Tales of the Barbarians.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificium, ed. by Bernhard Schmeidler, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 2, 3rd edn (Hanover: Hahn, 1917) Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Epistola CDLVII: Ad universos fideles’, ed. by Jean Leclercq and Henri Rochais, in S. Bernardi opera, viii.2: Epistolae extra Corpus 311–547 (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1977), pp. 432–33 Henrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed.  by Leonid Arbusow and Albert Bauer, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 31, 2nd edn (Hanover: Hahn, 1955); trans. by James A. Brundage, The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, 2nd edn (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003) Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, ed. by Karsten Friis-Jensen, 2 vols (Copenhagen: Det Danske Sprog- og Litteraturselskab, 2005); ed. by Karsten Friis-Jensen, trans. by Peter Fisher, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 2015)

Secondary Studies Addison, James Thayer, ‘Group Conversion in Medieval Europe’, The International Review of Missions, 24 (1935), 153–61 Arbusow, Leonid, ‘Das entlehnte Sprachgut in Heinrichs “Chronicon Livoniae”: Ein Beitrag zur Sprache mittelalterlicher Chronistik’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 8 (1951), 100–53 ——  , Liturgie und Geschichtsschreibung im Mittelalter: In ihren Beziehungen erläutert an den Schriften Ottos von Freising (†  1158), Heinrichs Livlandchronik (1227) und den anderen Missionsgeschichten des Bremischen Erzsprengels: Rimberts, Adams von Bremen, Helmolds, Aus dem Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 21 (Bonn: Röhrscheid, 1951) Baranauskas, Tomas, ‘Saxo Grammaticus on the Balts’, in Saxo and the Baltic Region: A Symposium, ed. by Tore Nyberg (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2004), pp. 63–79 Bartlett, John R., ‘Edomites and Idumeans’, Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 131 (1999), 102–14 Bielenstein, August, Die Grenzen des lettischen Volksstammes und der lettischen Sprache in der Gegenwart und im 13. Jahrhundert: Ein Beitrag zur ethnologischen Geographie und Geschichte Rußlands (St Petersburg: Eggers, 1892) Biļķins, V[ilis], Die Spuren von Vulgata, Brevier und Missale in der Sprache von Heinrichs Chronicon Livoniae (Riga: Walters & Rapa, 1928) Brundage, James A., ‘Introduction to the 2003 Edition’, in The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, trans. by James  A. Brundage, 2nd  edn (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), pp. xi–xxxiv

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—— , ‘Introduction: Henry of Livonia, The Writer and his Chronicle’, in Crusading and Chronicle Writing on the Medieval Baltic Frontier: A  Companion to the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, ed.  by Marek Tamm, Carsten Selch Jensen, and Linda Kaljundi (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 1–22 Christiansen, Eric, The Northern Crusades: The Baltic and Catholic Frontier, 1100–1525 (London: Macmillan, 1980) Cohen, Marc Stuart, ‘The Ethnographic Dimensions of Conversion: A  Study of Conversion Narratives in Northern Europe in the Middle Ages’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Toronto, 1995) Donecker, Stefan, ‘Wolves in the Wilderness: Biblical Typology and the Envisioning of Lithuanian Pagans in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’, in Transcultural Approaches to the Bible: Exegesis and Historical Writing in the Medieval Worlds, ed. by Matthias  M. Tischler and Patrick  S. Marschner, Transcultural Medieval Studies, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 201–32. Dykehouse, Jason, ‘Biblical Evidence from Obadiah and Psalm 137 for an Edomite Treaty Betrayal of Judah in the Sixth Century b.c.e.’, Antiguo Oriente, 11 (2013), 75–128 Evitt, Regula Meyer, ‘Undoing the Dramatic History of the Riga “Ludus Prophetarum”’, Comparative Drama, 25.3 (1991), 242–256 Favreau-Lilie, Marie-Luise, ‘Mission to the Heathen in Prussia and Livonia: The Attitudes of the Religious Military Orders toward Christianization’, in Christianizing Peoples and Converting Individuals, ed. by Guyda Armstrong and Ian N. Wood, International Medieval Research, 7 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), pp. 147–54 Fonnsberger-Schmidt, Iben, The Popes and the Baltic Crusades, 1147–1254, The Northern World, 26 (Leiden: Brill, 2007) Fraundorfer, Peter, ‘How do the “Livs” Fit into Sacred History? Identifying the Cultural “Other” in the Earliest Latin Sources Depicting the Livonian Crusade’, in Transcultural Approaches to the Bible: Exegesis and Historical Writing in the Medieval Worlds, ed. by Matthias  M. Tischler and Patrick  S. Marschner, Transcultural Medieval Studies, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 173–99 Gantner, Clemens, ‘New Visions of Community in Ninth-Century Rome: The Impact of the Saracen Threat on the Papal World View’, in Visions of Community in the Post­ Roman World: The West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, 300–1100, ed. by Walter Pohl, Clemens Gantner, and Richard Payne (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 403–21 Gebel, Alexander, ‘Christliche Mission und indigene Bevölkerung bei Heinrich von Lettland: Selbst- und Fremdwahrnehmungen im mittelalterlichen Alt-Livland’, in Stereotype des Ostseeraumes: Interdisziplinäre Beiträge aus Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. by Imbi Sooman and Stefan Donecker (Vienna: Abteilung für Skandinavistik, 2012), pp. 159–72 Ghosh, Shami, ‘Conquest, Conversion, and Heathen Customs in Henry of Livonia’s Chronicon Livoniae and the Livländische Reimchronik’, Crusades, 11 (2012), 87–108 Hall, Edith, Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self­Definition through Tragedy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989) Jensen, Carsten Selch, ‘How to Convert a Landscape: Henry of Livonia and the Chronicon Livoniae’, in The Clash of Cultures on the Medieval Baltic Frontier, ed.  by Alan  V. Murray (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 151–68

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Johansen, Paul, ‘Die Chronik als Biographie: Heinrich von Lettlands Lebensgang und Weltanschauung’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, n.s., 1 (1953), 1–24 —— , ‘Saxo Grammaticus und das Ostbaltikum’, Zeitschrift für Ostforschung, 23 (1974), 623–39 Kahl, Hans-Dietrich, Heidenfrage und Slawenfrage im deutschen Mittelalter: Ausgewählte Studien 1953–2008, East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450, 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2011) Kala, Tiina, ‘Henry’s Chronicle in the Service of Historical Thought. Editors and Editions’, in Crusading and Chronicle Writing on the Medieval Baltic Frontier: A Companion to the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, ed.  by Marek Tamm, Carsten Selch Jensen, and Linda Kaljundi (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 385–407 Kaljundi, Linda, ‘(Re)Performing the Past: Crusading, History Writing, and Rituals in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia’, in The Performance of Christian and Pagan Storyworlds: Non­Canonical Chapters of the History of Nordic Medieval Literature, ed. by Lars Boje Mortensen and Tuomas M. S. Lehtonen, Medieval Identities: SocioCultural Spaces, 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 295–338 —— , ‘The Baltic Crusades and the Culture of Memory: Studies on Historical Representation, Rituals, and Recollection of the Past’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Helsinki, 2016) —— , ‘Expanding Communities: Henry of Livonia on the Making of a Christian Colony, Early Thirteenth Century’, in Imagined Communities on the Baltic Rim: From the Eleventh to Fifteenth Centuries, ed. by Wojtek Jezierski and Lars Hermanson, Crossing Boundaries, 4 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016), pp. 191–222 ——  , ‘Neophytes as Actors in the Livonian Crusades’, in Making Livonia, Actors and Networks in the Medieval and Early Modern Baltic Sea Region, ed. by Anu Mänd and Marek Tamm (Abington: Routledge, 2020), pp. 93–112 Kivimäe, Jüri, ‘Henricus the Ethnographer: Reflections on Ethnicity in the Chronicle of Livonia’, in Crusading and Chronicle Writing on the Medieval Baltic Frontier: A Companion to the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, ed. by Marek Tamm, Carsten Selch Jensen, and Linda Kaljundi (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 77–106 König, Daniel, Bekehrungsmotive: Untersuchungen zum Christianisierungsprozess im römis­ chen Westreich und seinen romanisch­germanischen Nachfolgern (4.–8. Jahrhundert), Historische Studien, 493 (Husum: Matthiesen, 2008) Laakmann, Heinrich, ‘Estland und Livland in frühgeschichtlicher Zeit’, in Ostbaltische Frühzeit, ed. by Carl Engel, Baltische Lande, 1 (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1939), pp. 204–62 Muldoon, James, ‘Introduction: The Conversion of Europe’, in Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages, ed. by James Muldoon (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997), pp. 1–10 Murray, Alan V., ‘Henry the Interpreter: Language, Orality and Communication in the Thirteenth-Century Livonian Mission’, in Crusading and Chronicle Writing on the Medieval Baltic Frontier: A Companion to the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, ed. by Marek Tamm, Carsten Selch Jensen, and Linda Kaljundi (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 107–34 Nielsen, Torben Kjersgaard, ‘Providential History in the Chronicles of the Baltic Crusades’, in The Uses of the Bible in Crusader Sources, ed.  by Elizabeth Lapina and Nicholas Morton, Commentaria, 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 361–402

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Petersen, Nils Holger, ‘The Notion of a Missionary Theatre: The ludus magnus of Henry of Livonia’s Chronicle’, in Crusading and Chronicle Writing on the Medieval Baltic Frontier: A  Companion to the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, ed.  by Marek Tamm, Carsten Selch Jensen, and Linda Kaljundi (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 229–43 Pohl, Walter, ‘Regnum und gens’, in Der frühmittelalterliche Staat: Europäische Perspektiven, ed. by Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 16 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2009), pp. 435–50 Rembold, Ingrid, Conquest and Christianization: Saxony and the Carolingian World, 772–888, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, 4th ser., 104 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) Schneider, Reinhard, ‘Straßentheater im Missionseinsatz: Zu Heinrichs von Lettland Bericht über ein großes Spiel in Riga 1205’, in Studien über die Anfänge der Mission in Livland, ed.  by Manfred Hellmann, Konstanzer Arbeitskreis für mittelalterliche Geschichte, Vorträge und Forschungen, Sonderband, 37 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1989), pp. 107–21 Šnē, Andris, ‘The Image of the Other or the Own: Representation of Local Societies in Heinrici Chronicon’, The Medieval Chronicle, 6 (2009), 247–60 Tamm, Marek, ‘Martyrs and Miracles: Depicting Death in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia’, in Crusading and Chronicle Writing on the Medieval Baltic Frontier: A Companion to the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, ed. by Marek Tamm, Carsten Selch Jensen, and Linda Kaljundi (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 135–56 —— , ‘How to Justify a Crusade? The Conquest of Livonia and New Crusade Rhetoric in the Early Thirteenth Century’, Journal of Medieval History, 39 (2013), 431–55 Tyerman, Christopher, ‘Henry of Livonia and the Ideology of Crusading’, in Crusading and Chronicle Writing on the Medieval Baltic Frontier: A Companion to the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, ed. by Marek Tamm, Carsten Selch Jensen, and Linda Kaljundi (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 23–44 Undusk, Jaan, ‘Sacred History, Profane History: Uses of the Bible in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia’, in Crusading and Chronicle Writing on the Medieval Baltic Frontier: A Companion to the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, ed. by Marek Tamm, Carsten Selch Jensen, and Linda Kaljundi (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 45–75 Wood, Ian, ‘“The Ends of the Earth”: The Bible, Bibles and the Other in Early Medieval Europe’, in The Calling of the Nations: Exegesis, Ethnography, and Empire in a Biblical­ Historic Present, ed.  by Mark Vessey, Sharon  V. Betcher, Robert  A. Daum, and Harry O. Maier (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), pp. 200–16 Woolf, Greg, Tales of the Barbarians: Ethnography and Empire in the Roman West (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011)

Cosmas of Prague, the Gesta principum Polonorum, and their Western Contexts

The Legenda Christiani, the Chronica Bohemorum, and the Bohemian Slavs Pavlína Rychterová Sometimes the truth isn’t good enough. Sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded. Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight (2008) Profecto nemo nisi gravi ac suavi commotus oratione, cum viribus plurimum posset, ad ius voluisset sine vi descendere, ut inter quos posset excellere, cum iis se pateretur aequari et sua voluntate a iucundissima consuetudine recederet, quae praesertim iam naturae vim optineret propter vetustatem. (Undoubtedly no one, if it had not been that he was influenced by dignified and sweet eloquence, would ever have chosen to condescend to appeal to law without violence, when he was the most powerful party of the two as far as strength went; so as to allow himself now to be put on a level with those men among whom he might have been preeminent, and of his own free will to abandon a custom most pleasant to him, and one which by reason of its antiquity had almost the force of nature.) Cicero, De inventione i.2

T

he Chronicle of Cosmas of Prague is the most important source for the history of medieval Bohemia in the period of the formation of the medieval Bohemian duchy, between the tenth and twelfth centuries. Generations of scholars have worked with and on the text, beginning with the first modern editions printed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and Pavlína Rychterová is vice-head of the department of Historical Identity Research, Institute for Medieval Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences. Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000–1300, ed. by Walter Pohl, Veronika Wieser, and Francesco Borri, celama 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp.  143–177 FHG 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.130257

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followed by numerous translations into several modern languages1 as well as historical, philological, and linguistic analyses.2 Since the formation of modern historiography, Cosmas’s Chronicle has served as the main source for the political history of early and high medieval Bohemia, although the factual information contained in the narrative was never regarded as being completely reliable. With the emergence of nationalist romanticism the Chronicle, especially its opening chapters narrating the origin story of the Bohemi, moved into focus as the oldest expression of the people’s everlasting soul, and as such these narratives became cornerstones of modern Czech national identity.3 The narratives on the patriarch Bohemus, who in the subsequent, vernacular medieval reception was called Czech, the soothsaying princess Libuše, the ploughman ruler Přemysl, and the Maidens’ War became the most discussed topics in Czech historiography and literary studies in the course of the nineteenth century. Since the 1820s the importance of these stories was enhanced by the forged medieval epics in the so-called manuscripts of Zelená Hora/Grünberg and Dvůr Králové/Königinhof, whereas the importance of the Chronicle as a source was eclipsed by them.4 Only after the exposure of the forgeries in the last third of the nineteenth century did the Chronicle move once more into the focus of historians as well as lay readers. With or without the help of the forged manuscripts, Cosmas’s accounts of ‘Czech’ origins (as his Chronicle was regarded in the Czech historiographic discourse of the time), regarded by him as myths, came to be considered as the core of the early history of the (modern) Czech state in the context of the struggle for the status of the Czech nation within the multinational Habsburg monarchy. The first generations of Czech historians were active as politicians, prominent among them František Palacký, who used authentic source material to write the first comprehensive history of medieval Bohemia — which he and his contemporaries regarded as being identical with the modern Czech nation of their own time.

1

Prominent among these are the translations into Czech, the first of which was made by Václav Vladivoj Tomek for the second volume of the series Fontes rerum Bohemicarum, the display window of Czech positivistic philology and historiography concentrating on the edition and popularization (through translation) of key narrative sources for the history of the Czech nation, as defined at the beginning of the nineteenth century. See Kosmův letopis český s pokračovateli, ed. and trans. by Tomek, pp. 1–198. 2 On the more recent research concerning Cosmas Hasil, ‘Introduction’, pp. xv–lv. 3 Rychterová, ‘Die Anfänge’, pp. 241–52. 4 Rychterová, ‘The Manuscripts’, pp. 3–30.

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Imperishable Identities The prominent position of Cosmas’s narrative in Czech historiography and culture heavily influenced the treatment of the Chronicle in Czech and German Medieval Studies in the twentieth century. French, British, and American medievalists were only rarely interested in the topics related to the medieval history of eastern Central Europe.5 For decades, the language barrier, the high complexity of the Czech–German discourse, as well as the obstinate focus on fine details in numerous attempts to reconstruct events related by Cosmas in Czech Medieval Studies, prevented an internationalization of research into Cosmas and related themes. Only in the last two decades have the Chronicle and previous research become an integral part of Euro-American Medieval Studies, due to the work of a young generation of medievalists who have not hesitated to summarize the most important discussions of Czech Medieval Studies for the international scholarly public and to subject it to critical scrutiny.6 Despite this effort, it is still not easy to properly assess the value of the previous research on Cosmas. Its character was multidisciplinary long before the term ‘interdisciplinarity’ became one of the most prominent in the study of the human past, whereas the most important historiographic interpretations, contextualization, and hypotheses of the Chronicle were mainly supported by arguments delivered by Latin Philology, Linguistics, and Literary Studies. Historians, very often unable to scrutinize philological and linguistic arguments (caused by a too-specialized education in historiography which for a long time ignored the specific needs of Medieval Studies), were only too often inclined to accept those arguments and interpretations which fitted their own views and ignore those which did not, without properly questioning any of them. Until quite recently, scholars involved in the debate have not approached the question of identity as a methodological and/or theoretical problem, even 5

The almost total disinterest of English-speaking historiography in Czech High Middle Ages, at least before the new millennium, may be illustrated by the words of Lisa Wolverton who wrote in the preface to her dissertation, published 2001, that ‘very few readers outside the Czech Republic are familiar with events in Bohemia and Moravia during the Middle Ages and the efforts of nearly two centuries of Czech- and German-speaking historians to explain and interpret them’ (Wolverton, Hastening, p. 10). Her PhD thesis was indeed the first English written monograph to approach this topic. 6 See especially the publications in the valuable Brill Series ‘East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450’ edited by Florin Curta. Key monographs on the topic published in English are the following ones: Wolverton, Hastening; Kalhous, Legenda Christiani; Betti, The Making of Christian Moravia; Kalhous, Bohemi; Kalhous, Anatomy; Wolverton, Narrative; Petráček, Power and Exploitation. See also Rychterová, ‘Review Article: Holes in the Tapestry’, pp. 91–105.

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though it was the search for and question of identity which had actually driven the whole debate from its beginnings.7 The lack of methodological and theoretical reflection makes it virtually impossible to sum up the achievements of previous research on the emergence of Czech identity here. The identity concepts which the individual participants in the debate implicitly applied as essential preconditions of their approaches and interpretations would require individual assessments that cannot be offered in this chapter.8 It is nevertheless important to know: previous research has been very valuable in many respects, but it is difficult to tie it into this analysis if we ask which particular strategies of identification Cosmas formulated in his texts and in which ways they may have been received by his readers. Although Cosmas’s work may certainly be regarded as the first chronicle in the realm of the Bohemian dukes (there is no sound base for the older hypotheses about ‘lost’ chronicles preceding the Chronica Bohemorum), it is not its first extant historiographical narrative. We must also take the hagiographic material concerning Sts Wenceslas and Ludmila into account, especially the so-called Legenda Christiani, extant in the manuscript Prague, Knihovna Metropolitní kapituly, MS G5 from the 1340s, and reportedly written by a certain ‘Christianus’ (which may either be a personal name or a religious denomination) at the time when St Adalbert held the bishopric of Prague, i.e. at the very end of the tenth century. The narrative opens with a lengthy passage on the baptism of Bořivoj, the first Christian ruler of Bohemia. Cosmas closes the mythical part of his Chronicle with the same baptism and opens the ‘historical part’ as he announces: ‘Gostivit [mythical prince] begat Bořivoj, who was the 7

Wolverton, Narrative, p. 216, departs from the traditional understanding of ethnic identity according to which the set of characteristics, i.e. language, biological descent, religion, customs, shared historical memory, and law, constitute the identity of a group. Wolverton, surprisingly, does not quote any secondary literature, and it would seem ignores the broad methodological discussion concerning this very complicated problem. She states that Cosmas ‘rejects all these categories as unsuitable for his purposes’, although the intent of this statement is not quite clear given that the set of categories represent a modern hypothesis departing from an idea of primordial, static identity. More differentiated with focus on the source debate in Czech historiography Kalhous, Anatomy, pp. 171–262. For the definition and discussion of medieval (ethnic) identities, see Pohl, ‘Introduction’, pp. 1–64. 8 This is also true of the research outputs of Dušan Třeštík, a prominent Czech historian who devoted much of his research to the ideologies of identity in the early medieval Bohemian duchy. Usually following and pushing further the groundbreaking ideas of František Graus, Třeštík based his approach on the supposition of a basically primordial shared identity of a Czech tribe, i.e. its politically active strata, which he called ‘political Czech nation’. See especially here Třeštík, Mýty.

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first duke to be baptized. He was baptized by the venerable bishop Methodius in Moravia, at the time of Emperor Arnulf and Svatopluk, king of Moravia’.9 The Legenda Christiani gives more details when describing the same event (the passage on the pagans who are not allowed to dine with Christians matches the narrative of the Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum) and, unlike Cosmas, it narrates the history of the mission of Constantine and Methodius to Moravia as well as giving a further history of Bořivoj’s rule. Its short rendering of the origin myth of the Přemyslid ruling family as well as the depiction of the preChristian society in the Bohemian Basin also match overall with Cosmas’s narrative. A superficial reading of the legend already reveals that the formulation of identity concepts in both texts is identical in many respects. However, they differ in many other respects. When discussing the identity concepts contained in Cosmas’s text, the identifications which the Legend offers must be taken into consideration as they put Cosmas’s narrative into perspective. This, of course, makes sense only if the Legend itself is actually several decades older than Cosmas’s Chronicle. The dating of the Legenda Christiani has posed one of the major problems of Czech historiography since its beginnings.10 The complete text is now extant in only one copy, in a parchment manuscript commissioned by Prague bishop Jan IV of Dražice in the 1340s and containing a collection of hagiographic texts on St Wenceslas, Ludmila, and Adalbert; the Cosmas Chronicle; historiographic texts written by the so-called continuatores of Cosmas; the Chronicle of Franciscus of Prague; and two lists of Prague bishops. Each of these texts concerns the earliest history of Bohemia and its gens. They were actually crucial for shaping the identity of late medieval society in Bohemia, as the deliberate rewriting of identification narratives of the past took place during the rule of the Luxembourg dynasty from 1318 and reached its peak in the historical works commissioned by Emperor Charles IV.11 In the Legenda Christiani the lives of Wenceslas and Ludmila are preceded by a lengthy account (Chapter 1) of the Byzantine missionary Quirillus (Constantine/Cyril) who, reportedly in St Augustine’s time, first invented the Slavonic script and translated the Old and New Testaments into Slavonic, then Christianized Moravia, regio Sclavorum, and introduced the Slavonic liturgy. His brother Metudius (Methodius) then became the (arch)bishop of Moravia, with seven subordinate bishops. But Zuentepulc (Zventibald, Svatopluk), the 9

Cosmas of Prague, Chronicle, ed. by Bak and Rychterová, pp. 42–43 and 60–61. Jasiński, ‘Legenda Krystiana’. 11 For a useful survey see recently Bláhová, ‘Soudobé kroniky’, pp. 31–64. 10

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heir of a Moravian prince who is not named in the Legend,12 apostatized, whereafter the (arch)bishop cursed the land, which, as the chronicler concludes, ‘suffers under the curse till today’.13 In the subsequent chapter, Bohemia is introduced as a subordinate realm to Moravia; Svatopluk, the king of Moravia, invites Bořivoj, the prince of pagan Bohemia, to a feast during which the meal is served on the floor for the pagan prince and his entourage.14 After Methodius’s promise that his realm will grow and that he will become dominus suorum dominorum, Bořivoj accepts baptism which causes a mutiny among the people of the Bohemi (populum Bohemorum). This leads to the short rule of a certain Duke Strojmír (Ztroymir), also a member of the populus Bohemorum, recalled from his exile ‘at the Germans’ (qui aput Theutonicos profugus), who nevertheless, in the long term, does not manage to gain the loyalty of his subordinates. The second chapter ends with the reinstallation of Bořivoj as the ruler of Bohemia.15 Only then does the narrative on St Ludmila and Wenceslas start, opening with a short piece of information on Ludmila’s pedigree, disconnected from the previous narrative about the Christianization of Moravia, the baptism of Bořivoj (her husband, after all), and its political consequences. Interpretations of the first two chapters of the Legenda Christiani, as well as of Cosmas’s Chronicle, have always been problematic, because both texts were the only historiographic narratives from and about a period that is otherwise poor in textual sources. Scholars have often resorted to the archaeological evidence, which was difficult to contextualize, and therefore brought the risk of circular arguments. From the beginning of the twentieth century, the Legenda Christiani became loaded as Josef Pekař aggressively and offensively opened the fight to prove its authenticity. His analysis challenged the previous, prevailing opinion of Josef Dobrovský who at the beginning of the nineteenth century 12

Nor is Rostislav’s invitation of the missionaries to Moravia mentioned either, with which the First Pannonian Legend (Žitije Konstantina Filosofa) begins the narrative of the Christianization of Moravia, see Žitije Konstantina Filosofa, ed. by Večerka, pp. 112–15. 13 Legenda Christiani, ed. by Ludvíkovský, p. 16: ‘Dehinc Zuentepulc tyrannide suscepta, fastu arrogancie inflammatus, cum sibi militantibus sodalibus pontificis Metudii predicacionem mellifluam quasi respuit monitaque sacratissima non pleniter recepit, verum membra sua, scilicet plebem populumque suum, partim Christo, partim dyabolo servire exhibuit. Quapropter a pontifice beate memorie, supra notato pagus eius cum habitantibus incolis anathemate percussa cum sulcis suis et fructibus diversis cladibus attrita usque in hodiernum diem deflet’. 14 The passage indicates that the author knew the Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum. See Conversio, ed. by Wolfram, pp. 68–69. 15 Legenda Christiani, ed. by Ludvíkovský, pp. 16–24.

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had already declared the legend to be a fourteenth-century forgery. The text did not play any role in the subsequent nationalist-romantic historiographic reconstruction of the past, partly because of Dobrovský’s authority, but more importantly because the narrative was dispensable: the texts contained in the forged manuscripts of Königinhof and Grünberg (1818, 1823) delivered narratives that were more detailed and fit better into the political discourse of the past as formulated by the nationalist Czech elites. Only at the end of the nineteenth century, after the forgeries were definitively exposed, did the lack of written sources from tenth- to eleventh-century Bohemia pose an increasing problem for historians who were accustomed to freely conceiving their hypotheses on the Bohemian early Middle Ages with the help of the forged epics. Pekař was remarkably open about his motivations which led him to defend the authenticity of the Legenda Christiani — he explicitly characterized his work as an effort to give the Czech people back their history, i.e. their identification narratives, as the stories from the forged epics were no longer available for the purpose.16 This declared intention to use the Legenda Christiani and the Chronicle of Cosmas as a basis for exploring the origins of the Czech nation and as a genuine depiction of the earliest Czech society has overshadowed the debates about these texts ever since. The authenticity of their accounts was often overestimated, their relevance for Czech identity defined as primordial and unchanging was taken for granted, and extensive speculative constructs were built on them. On the other hand, insisting that the Legenda Christiani was a fourteenth-century forgery was predominantly linked with broader and/or contradictory concepts of Bohemian-Czech identity.17 Even when these ideological contexts gradually receded into the background, the debate remained locked in a set of ultimately unproductive questions. That has often stood in the way of a more balanced critique of the two sources. Even if we regard the Legenda Christiani as a genuine tenth/eleventh-century text, which is almost surely the case, that does not mean that we have to regard it as an authentic depiction of early Bohemian society. One of the arguments made by the older research against the authenticity of the Legenda Christiani was that there are no traces of an early reception of the text. The silence of Cosmas was particularly telling in this respect, as well as the non-existence of a cult of St Ludmila in the eleventh century. Thus, it was practically impossible to contextualize the legend. Given the importance of the identification narrative in the first two chapters for modern historians, it 16 17

Rychterová, ‘Die Anfänge’, p. 249 n. 48. See on the debate Kalhous, Legenda Christiani.

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seemed impossible that it would not have had a great impact immediately after its creation — hence the idea that it must have been a forgery. On the other side, proponents for the authenticity of the legend used the text to reconstruct the shape of the ‘Czech state’ in the tenth century, with the more or less explicit goal of proving its advanced economic and political organization, comparable with societies to the west of Bohemia. This effort not only further fuelled, and continues to fuel, the debate on the authenticity of the legend but — more importantly — maintains the research focus on the level of civilization and the political maturity of the medieval ‘Czech state’ in the given period.18

Keeping up with the West Leaving aside the vexed question of the extension and level of organization of the early Přemyslid state, we may ask which strategies of identification both the Legenda Christiani and Cosmas’s Chronicle offer to their intended readers (whoever that may be). At first sight we can detect discrepancies which may only be partly explained by Cosmas’s ignorance of the Legenda Christiani. It is immediately obvious that the author of the Legenda Christiani constructed a close relationship between Moravia, the realm of Zwentibald/Svatopluk (without knowing or taking into account the previous history of this realm, i.e. the rule of Rostislav and Mojmír), and Bohemia, the polity ruled by Bořivoj. The report on Bořivoj’s baptism is introduced with a depiction of a society which was dramatically changed by the acceptance of Christianity, a depiction which shows several similarities with Cosmas’s origo gentis story: But the Slavs from Bohemia (Sclavi Bohemi) located under the Arcturus were devoted to idolatry and like an unbridled horse without law, without prince or ruler or city, they lived in the open country, wandering around like brute animals. Tormented by pestilence they approached as the word is a certain prophetess, seeking spiritual advice and a prophecy. Accepting those they founded a city naming it Prague. Then they found a most prudent and reasonable man, who maintained the fields, called Premizl (Přemysl), and made him prince or ruler following the advice of the prophetess, and marrying him to the aforementioned virgin prophetess. Rescued from the calamity and various pestilences they have further chosen their 18 For the most elaborated depiction of Bohemia in the tenth century, called here the ‘Empire of Czech Boleslavs’, the rise and fall of which dominates the narrative, see Třeštík, ‘Od příchodu Slovanů’, pp. 61–96. Cf. Sommer and others, ‘Bohemia and Moravia’, pp. 214–62. Critical discussion on this concept is found in Kalhous, Anatomy, pp. 11–45. Cf. also Rychterová, ‘Aufstieg und Fall’, pp. 629–47, and recently Štefan, ‘Great Moravia’, pp. 151–87.

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rulers or dukes from among the progeny of the mentioned prince, serving idols of demons and performing heathen sacrifices according to the Bacchanalia rite till the rule in the realm (regnum) came to one of the descendants of the mentioned prince, named Bořivoj.19

The brief story in the Legenda Christiani is practically identical to the incomparably more embellished version that we find in Cosmas’s Chronicle. Without the Legenda Christiani, interpreting Cosmas’s narrative would be considerably easier. Cosmas based his narrative on the Bible, especially the Books of Kings from the Old Testament, as well as on Livy’s Ab urbe condita. The story of the ploughman king Přemysl (a word-for-word Slavic/Czech translation of the Greek name Prometheus), would then represent a rather straightforward combination of the story of the vocation of Elisha and the story of the rescuer of Rome, Cincinnatus. But Cosmas did not invent the story in its entirety. The Legenda Christiani may be seen as proof that the story of the humble origins of the family ruling Bohemia originated several decades before Cosmas set pen to paper. Nevertheless, this does not necessarily mean that the legend narrates a genuine, collectively shared ‘Czech’ myth.20 What it does mean, however, is that the author of the Legenda Christiani was either not acquainted with or did not use ancient literary tradition in the same way that Cosmas did. Much of what seems to be the main difference between the two can also be interpreted as their main similarity: neither author tried to connect the ruling family in Bohemia to any biblical and/or ancient figure and/ or event in order to define its place in the grand narratives of Christian Latin society.21 By not drawing this connection, it gives the impression that there was 19

Legenda Christiani, ed.  by Ludvíkovský, pp.  16–18: ‘At vero Sclavi Boemi, ipso sub Arcturo positi, cultibus ydolatrie dediti, velut equus infrenis sine lege, sine ullo principe vel rectore vel urbe, uti bruta animalia sparsim vagantes, terram solam incolebant. Tandem pestilencie cladibus attriti, quandam phitonissam, ut fama fertur, adeunt, postulantes spiritum consilii responsumque divinacionis. Quo accepto civitatem statuunt, nomenque inponunt Pragam. Post hinc invento quodam sagacissimo atque prudentissimo viro, cui tantum agriculture officium erat, responsione phitonisse principem seu gubernatorem sibi statuunt, vocitatum cognomine Premizl, iuncta ei in matrimonio supramemorata phitonissa virgine. Sicque a clade et multiplici peste tandem eruti, dehinc a supra memorato principe ex sobole eius rectores seu duces preposuere sibi, servientes demoniorum simulacris et prophanis sacrificiorum ritibus bachantes, donec ad extremum dominatus eiusdem regni pervenit ad unum ex eisdem principibus ortum, vocitatum Borivoi’. English translations of the passages quoted from the legend are my own. 20 Dušan Třeštík conceived his analysis of both the extant versions of the story, based on this supposition. See the chapter ‘Počátky vlády’ in Třeštík, Mýty, pp. 99–167. 21 Connections of the Přemyslid family to the biblical stories and those of Classical

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no place for this family (and its people) in the history of the Christian world and that it had instead emerged from the fogs of oblivion that rested heavily on the forests of Bohemia — the description with which Cosmas opens his narrative.22 Not only Cosmas, whose Latin literacy is very well known, but also the author of the Legenda Christiani obviously had enjoyed a good or even very good Latin education — Christian knew about the importance of a city (urbs) as the basic organizational unit of any polity to be taken seriously, which surely depends on his knowledge of Roman history, whether Virgil, Sallust, or Cicero, whose works comprised the textbooks of Latin training in cathedral schools in the empire at that time. He maybe knew some works of Gregory of Tours23 and he surely was able to compare the (poor) literary, i.e. hagiographic tradition in Bohemia with that in the West. He talks about the lands of Carolingians and Lotharingians, who by the way are defined as a gentes here in the sense of people, meaning that the ruler was regarded by the author of the Legenda Christiani as being identical with the people and vice versa: At first it is necessary to say, that if the remains of such and so distinguished saints and dignified witnesses of Christ, thriving with honour of miracles of virtues, were contained in the lands of the Lotharingians or Carolingians and other Christian peoples (gentes), these stories (gesta) would be already long ago depicted in gold letters so to say, adorned with Responds, with Antiphons and exhortative sermons, with many built cloisters, although they [these gentes] may rejoice in the possession of sacred pledges of many similar martyrs, confessors, virgins and other saints.24

The author of the Legenda Christiani announces in this passage that his text will attempt to emulate what in his eyes was a more advanced literary culture. This he indeed tried very hard, especially by the means of quite peculiar, elabAntiquity were only added by the chroniclers of the fourteenth century, especially the so-called Dalimil. See Rychterová, ‘The Chronicle’, pp. 171–206. 22 Wolverton, Narrative, p. 217 correctly highlights the importance of the land as a strategy of identification in Cosmas’s narrative. However, contrary to the approach taken by Wolverton, it was not the only strategy of identification (see below). 23 Ryba, ‘Kronika Kristiánova’, pp. 112–21, 237–45. 24 Legenda Christiani, ed. by Ludvíkovský, p. 10: ‘Sed in primis hoc dicendum, quomodo si talium tamque precipuorum sanctorum atque ydoneorum testium Christi gleba in partibus Lutheringorum seu Carlingorum ceterarum vel Christianorum gencium contineretur, insignium miraculorum virtutibus vernans, olim gesta hec aureis, ut ita dixerim, apicibus depinxissent, responsoriorum cantilenam cum antifonis, adiectis sermonum exortacionibus, decorassent, cum plurimorum menibus cenobiorum, quamvis ipsi horum similium [sanctorum] martyrum, confessorum, virginum reliquorumque sanctorum exultent possidere venerabilia pignora’.

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orated Latin.25 The reason, therefore, why he refrained from any attempt to embed the Přemyslid realm more closely in the history of the Roman world or the early medieval West may rest upon his conflicting loyalty towards the ruling family, i.e. that he had to balance several contradictory loyalties and that his text was not (only) written pro domo. It was also intended for readers outside of Bohemia and/or for readers who did not primarily perceive their identities as based on a sense of belonging to an ethnically or geographically or politically defined group, but as an affiliation to or even membership in a ‘republic of letters’ crossing all the other boundaries. The complaints Christianus formulates quite obviously target precisely these people — at that time necessarily a very small group of cultural brokers who were able to perform a competent comparison of various cultural achievements.26 Who exactly would define themselves like that in the tenth/eleventh century in Bohemia is not quite clear; they were churchmen for sure, maybe born in Bohemia or maybe not. As it seems, they felt a sort of loyalty to the church and/or bishopric they represented. The legend after all had the explicit purpose to provide this church (i.e. the Bishopric of Prague) with (hagiographic) literature not to be ashamed of. The author of the Legenda Christiani was aware that Bohemia was not an integral part of the Roman and/or Carolingian Empire — and that it was not a part of Latin and/or Greek culture and literacy. Two passages in the Legend are especially telling in this respect: the story of the introduction of the Slavonic liturgy by Constantine and the short rule of Duke Strojmír. With regard to the mission of St Constantine/Cyril to Moravia it is impossible to say if the author of the Legenda Christiani knew more details from this saint’s life, i.e. from his legends, than those which he reveals.27 Yet the story of Quirill’s dispu25

Martínková, ‘Sémantické poznámky’, pp. 72–75; Martínková, ‘Příspěvek’, pp. 83–87. Precisely this circumstance makes the historiographic comparison extremely tricky. Our perception of the past results basically from synchronic and diachronic comparisons — beginning with the comparison of extant sources and ending with the comparison of whole societies and cultures. We have to consider the fact that just this comparison on all levels we usually employ was constantly performed also by the subjects of our study. See on the problem of comparison Kocka and Haupt, ‘Comparison and Beyond’, p. 16: ‘It also makes sense to ask whether the comparison undertaken today by the historians already has been practiced by contemporaries in the past. Very often societies are defining themselves in relation to or against other societies. Social movements, towns or social groups do the same. It is useful to look comparatively at the categories at stake and the historical development of stereotypes, metaphors, and symbols. A comparative cultural history of comparisons as used by different historical actors is promising’. Cf. Kocka, ‘Comparison and Beyond’, pp. 39–44. 27 Dušan Třeštík formulated the quite plausible hypothesis that knowledge of the mission 26

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tation in Rome (Žitije Konstantina, the First Pannonian Legend, speaks about Venice) is rather specific, so the author of the Legenda Christiani may have chosen it deliberately. It discusses the problem of the vernacular language of liturgy, an issue which around the year 1000 had not yet been strictly regulated; it was only in the second half of the eleventh century that Pope Gregory VII entirely banned vernaculars from the liturgy.28 This means that the passage in the Legenda Christiani cannot have had a serious apologetic purpose — apologies for one’s ‘own liturgy’ in one’s ‘own language’ as a strategy of identification in the Latin Church are of much later date.29 More than anything else, a certain scepticism creeps into the narrative: And when the named Cyril came to Rome to pray, he was admonished by the pope as well as by other scholars and rectors, that against canon law he dared to introduce chant in Slavonic language during (Choral) High Mass. He answered humbly, and as he could not sooth them, he took the Psalter and read publicly the verse of the Psalmist, in which it is said: ‘Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!’ [Psalm 150.6] And referring to this verse he said: If everything that has breath has to praise the Lord, why do you, elect fathers, hinder me from singing Mass in Slavonic, and from translating other [texts] from Latin or Greek into their language? If I would be able to do any good to this people — as to other nationes — with Latin or Greek I would refrain from it. But seeing that this people is stubborn, utterly illiterate and ignorant of the paths of Lord, I have got this only idea, inspired by God Almighty in my heart, with the help of which I got a hold of many. Therefore, forgive me, Fathers and Lords, the blessed Apostle Paul, teacher of the people (doctor gencium) says in the Epistle to the Corinthians: ‘Do not forbid speaking in tongues’. [i Corinthians 14.39]. They, hearing this and admiring the faith of this brave man, established and confirmed with their authority that in those lands Mass and other canonical hours may be chanted in this language.30 of Constantine and Methodius in tenth/eleventh-century Bohemia (knowledge which the author of the Legenda Christiani shows) was not owed to the hypothetical autochthonous tradition of Slavonic liturgy in Bohemia (a hypothesis championed by the specialists in Slavonic Studies), but to the contacts with the Bulgarian Slavonic Church, especially with some of its centres in Ohrid positioned on the pilgrim route to Palestine. See Třeštík, ‘Slawische Liturgie’, pp. 205–36. 28 Geary, Language and Power, pp. 52–54. 29 Rychterová, ‘Preaching’, pp. 297–303. Dušan Třeštík in the above-quoted article read the same passage in the legend as clear apology of Slavonic liturgy serving the purpose to argue for the restoration of Methodius’s Moravian archbishopric in Bohemia which according to Třeštík already Boleslav I (935–972) attempted to reinstate. The source base for this hypothesis is nevertheless very slight, and the interpretation far-fetched. See also Třeštík, ‘Die Gründung’, pp. 407–10. 30 Legenda Christiani, ed. by Ludvíkovský, pp. 13–14: ‘Cumque quodam tempore memoratus Quirillus Romam causa oracionis adisset, a summo pontifice vel a reliquis sapientibus et

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The Moravian Slavs are depicted here, then, as ‘populus dure cervicis et omnino ydiotae et ignari viarum Dei’.  Bruno of Querfurt uses the same expression, ‘populus dure cervicis’, in his Vita S. Adalberti characterizing the Bohemian flock of St Adalbert immediately before he left his diocese for good.31 Bruno as well as the author of the Legenda Christiani quotes Exodus 32.9, i.e. the verdict of God on the people of Israel who apostatized in the desert worshipping the golden calf. It is important to know that God decides to destroy the people, and only the plea of Moses moves Him to refrain from it. We may assume that Moses serves in both texts as a model of an ideal bishop, and the chosen people of Israel prefigures the flock of the respective bishop (Constantine in the Legenda Christiani, St Adalbert in Bruno’s Vita). To what degree the idea of the people in an ethnic sense and the idea of the people as the flock of a particular bishop merged in the eyes of our authors cannot be determined for certain. But we should bear in mind that they conceived of the populus first of all as an ecclesiastical community. There are other similarities between Legenda Christiani and Vita Sancti Adalberti which are also difficult to interpret. On the one side it indeed could mean, as Martínková suggests,32 that Adalbert’s Vita served as a model for Legenda Christiani, which in consequence would mean that it is younger than it declares to be, i.e. written (soon) after Adalbert’s death and not during his life (a hypothesis which generates other problems, equally difficult to solve). On the other side, it could also mean that the so-called Christianus was a member of the same network of learned men who shared their literary interests, ideas, as well as language patterns. rectoribus ecclesie redarguitur, ut quid contra statuta canonum ausus fuerit missarum sollempnia instituere canere Sclavonica lingua. Illo humiliter satisfaciente illis nec omnino mitigare eos valente, arrepto psalterio versum psalmigraphi in medium recitavit, quo dicitur: Omnis spiritus laudet Dominum. Et ipse versui alludens: Si, inquit, omnis spiritus laudet Dominum, cur me, patres electi, prohibetis missarum celebritatem modulare Sclavonice seu alia queque de Latino vel Greco verbo eorum vertere in sermonem? Si enim quivissem ullomodo subvenire populo illi, ut ceteris nacionibus, lingua Latina vel Greca, omnimodo id non presumpsissem. Sed cernens populum dure cervicis fore et omnino ydiotas et ignaros viarum Dei, solum hoc ingenium Omnipotente cordi meo inspirante comperi, per quod eciam multos illi acquisivi. Quapropter ignoscite mihi, patres et domini, siquidem et beatus Paulus apostolus, doctor gencium, in epistola ad Corinthios inquit: Loqui linguis nolite prohibere. At illi hec audientes et admirantes tanti viri fidem, auctoritate sua statuunt et firmant suprascripto sermone partibus in illis missarum sollempnia ceterasve canonicas horas ymnizari’. 31 See Sancti Adalberti episcopi et martyris Vita, ed. by Karwasińska, p. 12: ‘Populus autem durae cervicis […] dies festos confuse religione observant’. 32 Martínková, ‘Příspěvek’, p. 75.

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Republic of Letters The illiterate and stubborn Slavs in the Legenda Christiani are confronted with naciones of Greek or Latin literacy and true Christian faith, depicted as a consequence of their Latin literacy, which the author of the Legenda Christiani shared with these naciones. We have to take very seriously the Latinitas of our witnesses, of the so-called Christianus as well as of Cosmas of Prague, and ask how it shaped their loyalties, their position in their (hypothetical) social networks, as well as their self-perception as members of those networks, and how this particular experience reflects in their narratives. All these questions may only be partially answered, especially in the case of the author of the Legenda Christiani, about whom we possess no reliable information beyond the introductory paragraph of the Legend in which he describes himself as a relative (kinsman) of Adalbert, bishop of Prague.33 At the time when Christianus was writing, Slavic literacy among the Bohemian clergy in Bohemia was probably not exceptional — not only among those clergy trained in and using Old (Church) Slavonic but also among those belonging to and/or trained by Frankish clergy who used the language for missionary purposes and in pastoral care. The so-called Freising manuscripts attest to the use of Slavic language by Bavarian clerics in the tenth century.34 Some eighty years later this was no longer the case, following the offensive of the Latin papacy and the disintegration of the Reichskirche in the course of the Investiture Controversy. Latinitas became a very strong feature of the shared identity of members of the clergy, not only in the empire but also to the east of it: Cosmas of Prague, who may have been Czech (however we define that), was raised in the empire, educated at one of the best cathedral schools there, and then sent (back) to Bohemia to enter one of the most distinguished ecclesiastical offices there, that of a canon, and later dean of St Vitus Cathedral.35 We may assume that this career was not due either to his hypothetical ‘Czechness’, or to any affiliation to the Přemyslids or another noble family. In contrast to Christianus, Cosmas gives no indication that would suggest such a relationship. Rather, his exceptional Latin education was the most important element for establishing his remarkable career. Like most of the others with comparable literacy he had been able to get high rewards for his competence. And he knew perfectly well the value of it — in his eyes good Latin literacy, which seemingly meant first and foremost very good command of Latin rhetoric as well as self-confident knowl33

Legenda Christiani, ed. by Ludvíkovský, p. 10: ‘Nunc vos deprecor, pontifex inclite et nepos carissime’ (I beg you now, illustrious bishop and a dearest relative). 34 Rychterová, ‘Old Church Slavonic’, pp. 165–84. 35 See on this, Hasil, ‘Introduction’, p. xix.

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edge of classical literature, was the most important social capital predestining a person for higher ecclesiastical dignity regardless of ethnic affiliation. We may see this for example in the passage on the provost of Prague Cathedral, Mark: He was by descent the scion of an old German noble family, foremost in wisdom among all who then lived in the Czech land. In all liberal arts he was a truly fine scholar, who could be called and was indeed the teacher of many a master, a wonderful exegete of Holy Scripture, and an excellent instructor of the Catholic faith and canon law. Everything that concerned religion, rule and honour in this church was taught and ordered by his wisdom. For previously, they were without rule and only canons in name, unlearned and uncouth, serving in lay habit in the choir, and they lived like leaderless or beastly Centaurs.36

Although Cosmas characterizes Mark also by the means of his (noble) pedigree and ethnic background, his membership in the ‘republic of letters’ is the most important feature of his personality. There is in general a certain ambivalence in Cosmas’s dealing with the social capital necessary for the ecclesiastical career of his time and place. One particular story in the Chronicle is very interesting in this respect, which for a long time stood at the focus of the Czech historiography where a large amount of energy was spent in trying to identify Christianus. According to the influential hypothesis of Dušan Třeštík, who followed in this respect Josef Pekař and Gelasius Dobner, Christianus was a son of Boleslav I, baptized on the night of the murder of St Wenceslas, and therefore named Strachkvas (Dreadful Banquet), as Cosmas writes in his Chronicle (no independent information on Strachkvas is available). ‘Dreadful Banquet’ plays the main role in the subsequent narrative about Bishop Adalbert of Prague, who fled his bishopric as he was unable to guide his ‘rebellious’ flock. Strachkvas, who was then a monk, was to be appointed bishop of Prague, but the ritual of episcopal consecration performed in Mainz by the archbishop turned into a weird blasphemy in which Strachkvas was possessed by a demon during the ceremony.37 Cosmas’s message is quite clear here: if a candidate for a bishopric 36

Cosmas of Prague, Chronicle, ed. by Bak and Rychterová, pp. 220–21: ‘qui [Marcus] secundum hominis genituram nobili ortus erat attavorum prosapia ducens originem de gente Teutonica, pollens sapientia pre cunctis, quos tunc habuit terra Boemica. Nam in omnibus liberalibus artibus valde fuit bonus scolasticus, qui potuit dici et esse multorum magistrorum didascalus, in divina vero pagina interpres mirificus, in fide catholica et in lege ecclesiastica doctor magnificus. Quicquid enim religionis, quicquid regularis institutionis, quicquid honoris hac est in ecclesia, hic sua erudivit et ordinavit prudentia. Prius enim erant inregulares et nomine tantum canonici, inculti, indocti et in habitu laicali in choro servientes, velut acephali aut bestiales centauri viventes’. 37 For a (partial) literary contextualization of the story of Strachkvas, see Hasil, ‘Introduction’, pp. xxxv–xxxvi.

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is appointed during the life of the actual holder of the respective see, he cannot rightfully receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.38 Strachkvas should therefore be regarded as a fictive figure,39 by which the chronicler highlights the consequences of a breach of canonical rules in the consecration of a bishop. But there is more: Cosmas states that Strachkvas is a member of the ducal family, a second son of the ruler who would therefore represent a ‘natural’ candidate for the second most important office in the realm, the see of a bishop. While this practice was quite common in Cosmas’s time, it seems that he did not sympathize with it — in Cosmas’s narrative, Bishop Jaromír/Gebhard, another member of the ducal family, misuses his office in a fit of rage as a consequence of which the whole realm becomes destabilized.40 Concluding Strachkvas’s story with the consecration scandal Cosmas proceeds further: as Adalbert’s successor in the office which ‘Dreadful Banquet’ failed to assume, a certain Thegdag is chosen by the emperor (Otto III) and his council, after the martyrdom of the absent Adalbert and on the request of the Bohemian duke.41 The emperor then commands the bishop of Mainz to ordain the chosen candidate, which turns out to be a veritable triumph: 38

Cosmas of Prague, Chronicle, ed. by Bak and Rychterová, pp. 102–03: ‘Plura referre puder Ztrahquaz de presule pseudo. Sufficiunt pro multis pauca. Ventum erat Magontine sedis ad archipresulem, ubi peractis omnibus, que agenda errant, per ordinem, sicut fieri solet, post examinationem episcopalem choro letaniam modulante, dum procumbit super tapecia archipresul infulatus ante altare et post eum inter duos suffraganeos, qui ordinandus erat Ztrahquaz, dum prosternitur in medio, heu dira condicio, arripitur atroci demonio; et quod servus Dei [Adalbert] olim sibi predixerat clanculo, palam fit coram clero et omni populo. Hactenus hec inseruisse sufficiat’ (I am ashamed to write more about this pseudo-bishop Strachkvas; a little should suffice for much. They went to the archbishop’s seat in Mainz where all that was to be done was done in usual order. After the episcopal examination, when the choir was singing the litany and as the mitred archbishop prostrated himself on the carpet before the altar, Strachkvas, who was behind him between two suffragans and about to be ordained, also prostrated himself and in the same moment was possessed — what a terrible thing! — by an abominable demon. And so what God’s servant [Adalbert] had predicted to him before in private, happened publicly in front of the clergy and all people. May this insertion suffice for now). 39 Likewise, Hasil, ‘Introduction’, pp. xxxv–xxxvi. The hypothesis of Strachkvas being Chris­ tianus is shared by Kalhous, Anatomy, p. 192. 40 Cosmas of Prague, Chronicle, ed.  by Bak and Rychterová, pp.  224–35. On Bishop Gebhard/Jaromír and the events concerning the fight for the Bishopric of Olomouc see Kalhous, ‘Jaromír-Gebhard’, pp. 27–45. 41 Cosmas of Prague, Chronicle, ed.  by Bak and Rychterová, pp.  104–05: ‘Anno vero dominice incarnationis DCCCCLXXXXVII. Sepe memoratus dux Bolezlaus videns Pragensem ecclesiam suo pastore viduatam dirigit legatos suos ad imperatorem tercium

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In the year of the Lord’s incarnation 998, on July 7, Thegdag was ordained bishop and respectfully received by the clergy and people of Prague, and he was enthroned with great joy at the corner of the altar of St  Vitus. The duke was very satisfied because a good shepherd smiled at his flock and the happy flock frolicked with a new shepherd.42

Sclavi and Bohemi This success is secured through the direct involvement of Emperor Otto who is actually presented as possessing the gift of the Holy Spirit, as the choice of a bishop requires inspiration by the Holy Spirit. The Roman emperor is in Cosmas’s eyes the only authority with the right of episcopal investiture. In the story of the failed attempt of Duke Vratislav II to force through his own candidate for the episcopal see of Prague, ignoring his brother Jaromír/Gebhard, this argument is used by the nobles supporting Jaromír.43 The sometimes-abysOttonem rogans, ut Boemiensi ecclesie sponsum meritis dignum daret, ne grex Christo noviter mancipatus redeat ad pristinos vanitatis ritus et ad iniquos actus; quippe profitetur non haberi in tota Boemia tunc temporis clericum episcopatu dignum. Mox cesar augustus Otto, sicut erat in divinis humanisque rebus prudentissimus, annuens peticioni eorum cepit curiosius cogitare, quem de suis potissimum in hoc tam arduum opus dirigeret clericum. Forte aderat in regali curia Capellanus nominee Thegdagus, actibus probis et moribus decorates, liberalibus studiis adprime eruditus, genere de Saxonia, lindua perfecte imbutus Sclavonica. Hunc quia sors obtulerat, omnis regie aule senatus et ipse cesar valde letificatus in pontificem Pragensis ecclesie eligit et collaudat et mittens ad Magontium archipresulem, quo eum celeriter in episcopum consecret, mandat’ (In the year of the Lord’s incarnation 997. The oft-mentioned Duke Boleslav, seeing that the church of Prague was widowed of its shepherd, sent his legates to Emperor Otto III, and requested him to give a worthy husband to the Bohemian church so that the flock recently won for Christ would not relapse into the old foolish rites and misdeeds, because he declared that at the time there was no cleric in the whole of Bohemia suitable for the episcopate. The august Emperor Otto, since he was most prudent in both spiritual and secular matters, consented to their petition and began zealously to ponder which of his clerics he could best assign to such an arduous task. By chance, there was at the royal court a chaplain by the name of Thegdag, honored by virtuous deeds and conduct, excellently learned in the liberal arts, of Saxon descent, perfectly versant in the Slavic language. When chance thus suggested him, the entire council of the royal court and the emperor himself very gladly chose and approved him to be the bishop of the Prague church. Then he sent him to the archbishop of Mainz and commanded that he be ordained bishop right away). 42

Cosmas of Prague, Chronicle, ed. by Bak and Rychterová, pp. 104–05: ‘Anno dominice incarnationis DCCCCLXXXXVIII. Non. Iulii consecrates est Thegdagus honeste a clero et populo Pragensis ecclesie recipitur atque cum magno gaudio ad cornu altaris sancti Viti intronizatur. Dux valde congratulatur, quia pastor bonus suo gregi arridet et grex letus pastori novo alludit’. 43 See Cosmas of Prague, Chronicle, ed. by Bak and Rychterová, pp. 216–17: ‘Vivit adhuc

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mal splendor imperii exercised great charm on Cosmas. Roman emperors of his time are depicted in the Chronicle as bearers of great power and dignity.44 Papal and ecclesiastical power in general assumes the subordinate position, which is already present in the solemn concluding sentence of the introduction to the Chronicle: This chronicle was composed during the reign of Henry the fourth, Roman emperor, when Pope Callixtus governed our Lord’s Holy Church, at the time of Vladislav, duke of the Czechs, and Hermann, bishop of the Prague Church, as will be explained in the following to all who wish to know in which years of Christ or in which indictions things happened.45

Even if we do not take this formalized ranking of offices very seriously, we only have to remember that Cosmas’s depiction of the appointment of Prague bishop Thegdag with its idealization of imperial charisma of Otto III originates in the time of the culmination of the Investiture Controversy, in which the papal side Romanus Imperator Heinricus et vivat; quem tu temetipsum facis, cum eius potestatem usurpans das baculum et anulum episcopalem famelico cani’ (The Roman Emperor Henry still lives and should live; what are you making of yourself when you usurp his power and grant the episcopal ring and staff to a hungry dog?). 44 The dignity of the imperial office may even be detached from the actual bearer to some degree as may be seen in the passage in which Cosmas describes the dealings of Emperor Henry II during Bolesław Chrobry’s occupation of Prague in the years 1002–1004 (Cosmas of Prague, Chronicle, ed. by Bak and Rychterová, pp. 116–17): ‘Sed Wissegrad urbs, duci suo fidelis, mansit imperterrita et inexpugnabilis. Isdem vero diebus idem dux Mesco mittit legatos ad imperatorem dans ei et promittens infinitam pecuniam, quo filium ducis Bolezlai, nomine Odalricum, qui erat eius in obsequio, catenatum mitteret in custodiam. O invictissima fames auri, ubi est potentissimum ius Romani imperii? Ecce possessor auri pressus ponderibus auri ducis obtemperat iussis et fit tortor ac carceris mancipator auro corruptus imperator!’ (But the castle of Vyšehrad, loyal to its duke, remained undaunted and unassailable. In the same days, the same Duke Mieszko [Bolesław Chrobry] sent emissaries to the emperor giving and promising him endless sums of money to chain and jail Ulrich, the son of [Bohemian] Duke Boleslav [III], who was in his retinue. O, invincible lust for gold, where is the most powerful law of the Roman Empire? Behold, the possessor of gold, pressed by weights of gold, obeys the commands of the duke and the emperor bribed by gold becomes a torturer and a jail keeper!’). Wolverton, Narrative, pp. 178–81, interprets the passage from a different point of view, as evidence for Cosmas’s concept of a decadent political culture. Which indeed is one of important messages of the Chronicle. 45 Cosmas of Prague, Chronicle, ed. by Bak and Rychterová, pp. 8–9: ‘Est autem hec chronica composita regnante quarto Heinrico Romano imperatore et gubernante sanctam ecclesiam Dei papa Kalisto, sub temporibus ducis Boemorum Wladizlai, simul et presulis Pragensis ecclesie Hermanni, ut in sequentibus datur omnibus scire volentibus, quibus sint acta annis Christi vel indictionibus’.

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was winning.46 In addition, we may identify a formative personal experience Cosmas made and immortalized in his Chronicle. In the year 1086 he reportedly attended a synod in Mainz, during which Bohemian Duke Vratislav II was honoured with a royal diadem by Emperor Henry IV and placed in command not only of Bohemia but also of Poland. At the same synod, the emperor confirmed the privileges of the Bishopric of Prague issued by Otto I and signed the charter with his monogram.47 The excitement of a less important cleric who happened to ‘be there’ witnessing a highly symbolical act — watching Roman emperor in full regalia sign a charter for his own bishopric — is clearly detectable in the narrative. At the end of the respective chapter in the Chronicle Cosmas drew the imperial monogram and commented it simply: ‘Quod ego vidi ipsum cesarem suis manibus annotantem in privilegio Pragensis episcopatus’ (I myself saw how the emperor drew the sign by hand on the privilege of the Bishopric of Prague).48 There is a similar story in the medieval sources: Sidonius Apollinaris (another member of the ideal ‘republic of letters’) describing the Gallic assembly in 449 in Lyon he attended as a young man accompanying his father, the praetorian prefect of Gaul. Hearing the glittering speech of Flavius Nicetius he thought ‘That’s all I want to be’.49 The candidate Thegdag’s excellent Latin education (‘liberalibus studiis adprime eruditus’), and his perfect knowledge of Slavic language, ‘lingua perfecte imbutus Slavonica’, qualify him for the office. His Saxon origin does not represent any obstacle to his unconditional acceptance by his Slavic-speaking flock 46

Wolverton, Narrative, p. 9 briefly discusses the issue: ‘Curiously […] Cosmas systematically excludes any mention of the reform program, the argument over investiture, or the war in Germany — in spite of the fact that the Bohemian duke and bishop were both actively involved in the latter […] While we cannot be certain if he simply disapproved of the reform and did not dare say so, or felt the issues were irrelevant in his homeland […] his reticence to engage these issues and events surely also resulted from his personal status as married priest’. Although this ‘private life’ argument cannot be ruled out, Cosmas’s understanding of the Roman Empire as the measure of all things is formulated very clearly in his Chronicle. 47 See on this Cosmas of Prague, Chronicle, ed.  by Bak and Rychterová, pp.  249–55. Research has always been interested in this particular passage for two reasons — the problem of the royal title of Vratislav I is one of the great enigmas of Czech Medieval Studies till today. The precise wording of the charter with the privileges of the Prague bishopric is also an issue. Besides, there are doubts if Cosmas had actually been present in Mainz as according to some hypotheses he stayed at the cathedral school in Liège at the time. The report sounds authentic — not because of the details, which may or not be correct, but because of its overall tenor. 48 Cosmas of Prague, Chronicle, ed. by Bak and Rychterová, p. 255. 49 Pohl, ‘The Identities of Sidonius Apollinaris’, forthcoming.

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in Bohemia. Cosmas narrates an almost identical story about the first bishop of Prague, Thietmar, man of ‘mire eloquentie et literalis scientie’ (astonishing eloquence and erudition), and also of Saxon origin.50 His acceptance in Bohemia again is conditioned by his excellent knowledge of the Slavic language: And because he spoke the Slavic language perfectly, the duke sends his emissaries for him and convokes the clergy, the dignitaries of the land, and the people, and by his appeals and exhortations achieves Thietmar’s election as bishop with their common consent.51

In addition to Latin erudition, knowledge of the language of the people is, in Cosmas’s eyes, one of the crucial conditions for the acceptance of a candidate for high church office (and maybe also secular office) by the people. On the other side, his ethnic affiliation does not matter, whereas blood relationship with the ruler may even lead to grave difficulties (possession by a demon, for example). Christianus sends a very similar message to his readers in a passage on the (also fictitious?) Duke Strojmír, the ruler chosen by the Bohemian Slavs who were unhappy about the baptism of Bořivoj: But the afore-said populace (plebs) persisting in its worthlessness sent envoys to a certain duke Strojmír whose name means ‘restore peace’ in Latin and who had fled from his people (gens) into exile with the Germans (Theutonicos). They brought him home and made him their prince. But the truth cannot be fooled as it is said in the Gospel: Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots [Matthew 15.13]. With the assistance of the truth the intent of the wrongdoers was thwarted. Because this duke, chosen by them, although he was by birth from them, during long exile had been deprived of the eloquence of his lips (labii eloquio). His electors rejected him therefore and blamed only themselves that

50

Cosmas of Prague, Chronicle, ed. by Bak and Rychterová, pp. 84–87. Cosmas of Prague, Chronicle, ed.  by Bak and Rychterová, pp.  84–85: ‘Et quoniam Sclavonicam perfecte linguam sciebat, hunc per suos legatos dux advocat, clerum, primates terre et populum convocat atque suis precibus et monitis efficit, ut eum sibi in episcopum omnes communi assensu eligant’. The choice of the Bohemian duke and his people nevertheless does not make Thietmar a bishop. The consent of Emperor Otto III is required, only he may, according Cosmas, command the archbishop of Mainz to ordain the new bishop and to create a new diocese (ibid.): ‘Tunc imperator, sicut erat divine legis amator, consilio ducum et principum, sed precipue presulum, consulens saluti et novitati Christiane plebis iussit Magontinum archiepiscopum, qui tunc preerat curti, ut eum ordinaret in episcopum’ (And since he [Emperor Otto] cared for the salvation of the newly converted Christian people, he ordered the archbishop of Mainz, who was then the leading member of the court, to ordain Thietmar bishop). 51

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they had chosen one whose words or speech they were unable to understand, and whose ears could not be penetrated by their cries.52

Both Christianus and Cosmas clearly differentiate between affiliation to a particular gens (populus, nacio) and the knowledge of the language necessary to communicate successfully with a particular gens/populus/nacio, and eventually make a career in their midst. The corollary of this is that neither author regards language as being a necessary feature of ethnic affiliation, i.e. as something only a person sharing ancestry with its communication partners may plausibly perform, but as something a person may learn so well that they gain the loyalty of the particular gens and are not only able to gain acceptance as a peer, but even as a leader. Language is a condition sine qua non, and this also regards those who are kin through common ancestry. In contrast to the obviously uneducated Bohemus Strojmír, the excellent Latin/Greek erudition of Constantine/Quirillus and Thegdag enables each to master the Slavic language so well that they were accepted by the native speakers. Christianus writes explicitly that Constantine/Quirillus, Greek by origin, was well versed in Greek as well as Latin literacy (‘Quirillus quidam, nacione Grecus, tam Latinis quam ipsis Grecorum apicibus instructus’), invented Slavic script (‘apices vel caracteres novas’), and translated the Old and New Testament into Slavic, as well as many other Greek or Latin books. God’s direct intervention or inspiration is omitted from Christianus’s narrative, although in the Church Slavonic Žitije Konstantina Filosofa (First Pannonian Legend)53 it was only through divine inspiration that Constantine was able to invent the Slavic script (the legend is considered to be a work of the ninth century, although it is 52 Legenda Christiani, ed. by Ludvíkovský, p. 23: ‘At vero plebs prefata in nequicia sua permanens, quendam ducem Ztroymir, nomen cuius in Latinum vertitur sermonem: rege pacem, qui aput Theutonicos profugus exulabat gente ex sua, missis legatis, ad propria eum reducunt sibique principem statuunt. Verum quoniam Veritas minime fallitur, que ait in ewangelio: Omnis plantacio, quam non plantavit pater meus celestis, eradicabitur, ipsa cooperante dissipatum est consilium pravorum velociter. Nam isdem eorum electus dux licet ex eisdem genitus foret, diuturna tamen exulacio eum proprii privaverat labii eloquio. Quapropter a suis electoribus reicitur, se ipsos primum accusantibus, videlicet quod talem sibi elegissent, cuius neque vocem neque sermonem nossent haurire, quorumque clamores aures eius, ignaras lingue sue, penetrare non valerent’. See also the interpretation of this passage by Albrecht, ‘Der Mauerbau’, pp. 19–20 53 Žitije Konstantina Filosofa, ed. by Večerka, pp. 57–115. The short Latin excerpt from Žitije Konstantina Filosofa called Vita Constantini cum translation S.  Clemementis (ed.  by Večerka) does not contain any information on the invention of the Slavonic script. See on this Betti, Making of Christian Moravia, p. 102.

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now only extant in much later manuscripts). Žitije Konstantina is quite precise about this issue: Constantine receives the Slavic script in a vision following a night spent in prayer. The (Byzantine) emperor learning of this then writes to the Moravian prince, defining the miracle as a special favour of God rewarding the prince’s zealous effort to be taught the Christian creed.54 If we accept the early dating of Žitije Konstantina, we may assume that Christianus was acquainted with some version of it (he knows the details of Constantine’s disputation in Venice/Rome, and is familiar with the story of the invention of the script). If the First Pannonian Legend really was his source, he would have deliberately reinterpreted the information on the origin of the Slavic script, omitting its divine origin. For Christianus, there was a very practical purpose for the invention, to convert the stubborn Moravian Slavs, illiterate in Latin (and/or Greek). If they had been literate in Latin, then there would have been no problem in converting them. Both Christianus and Cosmas may well have been ‘ethnic’ Czechs, as postulated by Czech historiography after decades of manifold and detailed scrutiny of the (very rudimentary) extant material.55 However, it is not clear how exactly individual researchers in the debate have actually defined early and high medieval ‘Czechness’. The sources do not give us much information concerning this problem. Only from the fourteenth century onwards was this issue explicitly addressed by various authors. At the beginning of the fifteenth century the leaders of the religious reform movement at the University of Prague (later called the Hussite Reformation and/or heresy) defined Czechs as persons with a Czech (speaking) father and Czech (speaking) mother and of ‘true’, i.e. Wycliffite/Hussite, faith.56 But the question is, did ‘Czechness’, however defined (including concepts of Slavic identities and the identities connected to a more or less clearly delineated gens Bohemorum), matter in Bohemia in the tenth and eleventh centuries? That is to say, if Cosmas’s and Christianus’s hypothetical ethnic affiliations were defined somehow like this, would it have provided them with any advantages and/or privileges in the sphere in which they operated? Would it have mattered to them? It certainly seems that Christianus cared for his blood relationship with Bishop Adalbert. But rather, because he was a saintly bishop, not because he was a noble Czech. Yet their relatively com54

Žitije Konstantina Filosofa, ed. by Večerka, pp. 98–100. Třeštík, ‘Přemyslovec Kristián’, pp. 602–13; Cosmas’s ‘Czechness’ is not problematized even by Wolverton who otherwise critically scrutinizes the approaches of modern Czech historiography. See Wolverton, Narrative, p. 5. 56 Rychterová, ‘Gens, nacio, communitas’, pp. 75–110. 55

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plicated attitudes to group affiliation both through birth and through language allow us to assume that the matter was by no means an easy one. That they both wrote about a people (gens, nacio, populus, or even plebs) inhabiting the Bohemian Basin cannot be regarded as a self-explanatory proof. Christianus calls the people about whom he writes Sclavi Bohemi, while Cosmas calls them only Bohemi. The difference between these denominations is, very probably, significant. Comparing Christianus’s and Cosmas’s remarkably similar origo gentis narratives, we can plainly see that the story of the patriarch Bohemus is missing from Christianus’s narrative. Previous research has more or less ignored this ‘omission’, under the simple assumption that no two narratives resemble each other (which is true) and that Christianus’s text is, after all, a piece of hagiography rather than being focused on the history of the gens — which is also somewhat true. However, it is not entirely convincing, as Christianus’s hagiography is one of two saints who belonged to this particular gens, the Sclavi Bohemi. These saints represent their gens, and are equal to (if not better than) numerous other saints connected with other gentes, among which he enumerates Carolingians and Lotharingians. That means that Christianus does focus on a particular gens — only, this gens are not Bohemi but the Sclavi Bohemi. These particular Bohemian Slavs, therefore, do not need their ‘own’ origo gentis story. What matters is the story of the Slavs and of their Christianization — reaching back to the time of St Augustine and even further: ‘Moravia, the realm of Slavs, accepted Christian faith in old times, as we know and believe, in the time of the greatest teacher Augustine as it is said. But the Bulgri or Bulgarians gained this grace long before that’.57 That is to say, the Moravian Slavs already understood the message of the Christ during the lifetime of the most important church father — and the Slavs in Bulgaria even in the time of the apostolic church, i.e. long before many of the other gentes, especially the Carolingians and Lotharingians. The Legend does not directly draw this conclusion, but we may assume that Christianus, well educated and well versed in Latin hagiography as he was, roughly knew when St Augustine had lived and when the Franks had converted to Christianity. And it is likely that he knew some version of Žitije Konstantina, perhaps even in some detail (see above). Czech research analysing the Legenda Christiani has held that his dating of the Christianization of Slavs arose from simple confusion, caused by him having only a fragmentary knowledge of Christian history. Such an explanation may be too simple. 57

Legenda Christiani, ed. by Ludvíkovský, p. 12: ‘Moravia, regio Sclavorum, antiquis temporibus fama memorante creditur et noscitur Christi fidem percepisse, Augustini, magnifici doctoris, ut aiunt, temporibus. Bulgri vel Bulgarii attamen longe ante eadem potiti referuntur gracia’.

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Gens without origo Cosmas, on the other hand, seems to fade out the Slavs from Czech history. He starts his Chronicle with the story of the Tower of Babel, a story which would offer a fitting origin narrative for the Bohemian Slavs — and he knew that the Bohemians were Slavs. He was aware that they used a Slavic language and insisted on its use — approaching them in a foreign language or even with notso-good Slavic entailed serious consequences. He also knew Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies, which again offered enough space to contextualize a gens within the double genealogy of the languages divided at the Tower of Babylon, and of the gentes sprung from the sons of Noah.58 However, rather than seizing any of these possibilities, Cosmas relied on the non-affirmative aspects of the Babylon story — on divine retribution for the sin of pride, on the division and dispersion of the peoples, and on the divergence of the seventy-two languages. He emphasized the aspects of alienation and decay, rather than the biblical origin of the Slavic language (as for example the Nestor Chronicle did) and of the Czech people. This was not a narrative of identification, but one of primordial confusion: After the inundation of the Flood, and after the confusion of the men who with a wicked mind built a tower, humankind, which then consisted of some seventytwo men, was divided by divine retribution for such wrong and rash ventures into as many different language groups as there were heads. And as we have learned from the historical record, each of them a fugitive and a vagabond, scattered far and wide, strayed through various parts of the earth, and, though decaying daily in body, they grew in number from generation to generation.59

Nor does civilization return with the introduction of a distinguished patriarch called Bohemus, which actually is the Latin name of the region that was already used in the texts of Classical Antiquity; the people who lived in the region as it came into view of the Carolingian Empire were called Bohemi. The patriarch 58 On Cosmas’s use of Isidore’s Etymologies, see, Verkholantsev, ‘Et nata ex etymo fabula’, pp. 33–64. 59 Cosmas of Prague, Chronicle, ed. by Bak and Rychterová, pp. 8–9: ‘Post diluvia effusionem, post virorum maligna mente turrim edificantium confusionem humanum genus, quod tum fere constabat in LXX duobus viris, pro tam illicitis et temerariis ausis cum divina ultione, quot capita virorum, tot in diversa linguarum genera dividerentur, sicut hystorica relatione didicimus, unusquisque eorum vagus et profugus longe lateque disperse per diversa spacia terrarium errabant ac de die in diem corpore decrescentes in generationes et generationes multipliciter crescebant’.

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fashioned according to Moses, Abraham, and Aeneas60 arrives in the Bohemian Basin with his nameless people. The equally nameless region is then named after him and the people after the region. The use of ‘people’ here, however, is nothing more than my conjecture, because Cosmas carefully chose expressions which allowed him to avoid drawing any such associations: ‘Whoever that one of mankind was — and it is uncertain how many there were — after having entered the wilderness, searching for a suitable place to live’.61 Through this very carefully choreographed move, Cosmas discarded the Slavic denomination of the people that he had begun to write about, as well as its ‘Frankish’ past.62 Instead he made room to depict, with relative freedom, the new history of his ‘Latin’ Bohemi, starting with the origin story of its princes, which we have already encountered more briefly in the Legenda Christiani. And he did this deliberately. Maybe he did not know the Legenda Christiani with its concept of Sclavi Bohemi — but he knew well one of the Frankish narratives also touching the Bohemian past, the Chronicle written by Regino of Prüm. Regino knew Sclavi Bohemi as well as their pre-Christian history, much more eventful than described by Cosmas himself. For the year 805, for example, Regino writes: ‘In the same time [Charlemagne] sent his troops together with his son Charles against the Slavs who are called Behemi, and [these troops] destroyed the whole land and killed their duke, named Lecho’. 63 On the division of Charlemagne’s empire among his sons the chronicler writes: ‘Carloman got 60

For a slightly exaggerated but nevertheless precise analysis of the Virgilian fashioning of Patriarch Bohemus, see Wolverton, Narrative, pp. 223–25. Wolverton does not take the problem of Slavic identities into account in her analysis of the concept of Bohemian identity in the first chapters of Cosmas’s Chronicle (see Wolverton, Narative, pp. 222–25). 61 Cosmas of Prague, Chronicle, ed. by Bak and Rychterová, pp. 12–13: ‘Has solitudines quisquis fuit ille hominum — incertum est quot in animabus — postquam intravit, querens loca humanis habitationibus oportuna’. 62 Wolverton, Narrative, pp.  232–35 explains Cosmas’s ‘determination to isolate the Bohemi from outsiders’ with his desire ‘to avoid any connection between the Boemi and the pagan beliefs and practices of other, contemporary Slavs’. Considering the rich Christian history of Bulgarian, Russian, as well as Polish Slavs, known well in Bohemia at that time, this explanation does not sound convincing. Furthermore, Cosmas did not only write the Slavs out of the history of Bohemia. On the basis of new archaeological findings we may assume the existence of stable communities of Northmen in Prague and its surroundings. These communities were not mentioned by Cosmas at all. See Klápště, Klír, Štefan (eds.), Krajina středověké Prahy. 63 Regino of Prüm, Chronicon, ed. by Kurze, s.a. 805, p. 65: ‘Eodem tempore [Charlemagne] misit exercitum cum filio suo Carolo super Sclavos, qui vocantur Behemi, qui omnem terram eorum depopulantes ducem eorum, qui appelabatur Lecho, occiderunt’; the translations of the passages quoted from the Chronicle are mine.

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Bavaria, Pannonia and Carnutum, called wrongly Carantanum, and also the realms of the Moravian and Bohemian Slavs’.64 Regino nevertheless does not use the denomination Sclavi Bohemi consistently, he oscillates between Sclavi, Sclavi Bohemi, and Bohemi, and thus opens the door for interpretation. All the identity concepts we meet in the sources have to be regarded as concepts for a given context, not essential because essentially unstable. They are not evidence of firmly established group identities but first and foremost evidence of individual and collective human efforts to understand the world and the people in it by giving them a name. The fact that Cosmas ignored everything connected to the Slavs is usually interpreted — especially in Czech Slavonic Studies — as being due to his aversion to the Slavonic Church. In this field of research, there is usually no distinction made between the Slavonic Church/literacy/liturgy as a strategy of identification and other (hypothetical) constructs of Slavic identities. In Slavonic Studies, the Slavonic Church, and the first written Slavic texts it produced, are implicitly regarded as the ideal core of Slavic identity. One of the strong interpretative hypotheses concerning the Chronica Bohemorum formulated in previous Czech research regards Cosmas’s efforts to fight the Church Slavonic liturgy in the Bohemia of his time (and especially the influence of the Benedictine monastery in Sázava).65 Nevertheless, the question is whether there was actually anything in this respect for Cosmas to fight against, i.e. whether there was indeed a Slavonic Church identity in Bohemia that was strong enough to be afraid of.66 As we have seen in the case of the Legenda Christiani, its author already regarded the Slavonic Church as a matter of the past, something he neither argued for or against, but something which was actually over and could be rewritten and instrumentalized for individual purposes. A hundred years later, this was even more plausible. The Vita of St Procopius, the legendary founder 64 Regino of Prüm, Chronicon, ed. by Kurze, s.a. 877, p. 112: ‘Carlomannus sortitus est Baioariam, Pannoniam et Carnutum, quod corrupte Carantanum dicitur, nec non et regna Sclavorum Behemensium et Marahensium’. 65 The idea of the struggle of Latin and Church Slavonic clergy for dominance is kept up especially by the hypotheses concerning an allegedly rich tradition of Church Slavonic literacy in Bohemia of the tenth–eleventh centuries. Based solely on linguistical analysis of the (very modest) extant material, very complicated narratives on the authorship of individual texts were formulated within Slavonic Studies, which then made it possible to defend the idea of an uninterrupted functioning of a (hypothetical) Moravian Slavonic Church in Bohemia. On the ‘continuity’ hypothesis from the point of view of Slavonic Studies see Bláhová, ‘Literarische Beziehungen’, pp. 237–53. 66 See on this problem Rychterová, ‘Old Church Slavonic’, pp. 165–84.

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of the Sázava monastery, is especially telling in this respect (it was probably written at roughly the same time that Cosmas wrote his Chronicle). The author, drawing heavily on the legend of Benedict of Nursia, described the holy man as a hermit who was versed in Slavonic script and had been living on his own for years (that is, there was no Slavonic community of believers, no church remembering the saints Constantine and Methodius, just one hermit in a cave). He is then recovered from the forest by Prince Břetislav, on account of his virtuous life, and endowed with the means to establish a monastic community. The whole legendary narrative about Sázava represents a story of discontinuity on more than one level. We find it in the so-called Procopian legends as well as in the so-called Chronicle of the Monk of Sázava (the first continuator of Cosmas), which comprises a copy of the Chronicle of Cosmas complemented with information concerning Sázava Abbey and with a continuation of Cosmas’s narrative for the years from 1125 to c. 1173. At first it is striking that the chronicler, according to previous research a ‘Czech’ monk writing in Latin but allegedly sympathizing with Church Slavonic literacy (whatever that may have been in that time and place), did not feel the urge to add any more detailed information on the Slavonic Church as being involved in the baptism of Bořivoj, mentioned very briefly by Cosmas. His history of the abbey, especially the two cases when Slavonic monks were expelled from the monastery, may indeed be interpreted as indication of a severe struggle of Latin clergy with the Slavonic one for the souls of believers (or at least for the patronage of the ruling prince). But more than anything else, it attests to the precarious life of a handful of Slavonic churchmen and monks in Bohemia, who very probably from time to time came from abroad (especially from Bulgaria after the disintegration of the so-called First Bulgarian Empire) to stay for some time among Slavic-speaking people, always dependent on the mood of the ruling prince and the sometimes more, sometimes less tolerant Latin clergy who held the reins.67

Longing for Respect Cosmas did not write his Chronicle to consciously shape new identities for the people of Bohemia in order to contest previous Church Slavonic identities because, simply put, such identities were hardly worth mentioning — even 67

Although Procopius is explicitly characterized as person of Bohemian origin, it is very probable that he was one of those wandering Slavonic priests who appeared from time to time in Bohemia as fugitives from the south. His Bulgarian origin is assumed, for example by Sláma, ‘Der heilige Prokop’, pp. 103–08.

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though some local and temporary interest in Church Slavonic literacy is plausible. Cosmas’s reticence to contextualize the Bohemians within the Slavic gens very probably has another reason. It may indicate that Cosmas refused to act as a proper Christian chronicler of his time — to collect available sources and to record diligently information found in them according to a default model. He actually did not write the history of a gens, but he chose the gens, wrested from its historical context, as the frame of his narrative. The answer to the question of what, then, he wrote exactly, if not a history of the people, must respect the complexity of the Chronicle. We must accommodate the possibility of various answers, all true and false at the same time — there is more than one explanation just as more than one motivation led Cosmas to write the text we know; likewise, the Chronicle sent more than one message to posterity. It is tempting for a modern historian to approach highly complex texts from the past like brain-teaser, waiting to be cracked and where the fastest and most successful puzzler gets the reward — acclaim and admiration in the scholarly community. This attitude, nevertheless, may hinder our understanding of the many meanings of our sources, their subtle shifts and the coexistence of various, sometimes even contradictory concepts, positions, and views. The answer to the question of what exactly Cosmas’s Chronicle is, may then be that it simultaneously is and is not a history of the gens Bohemorum. It is also a history of the land called Bohemia, a history of noble families, a history of the Bishopric of Prague, as well as a history of the empire, both real and, as Cosmas understood it, idealized. Which of these appears as the dominant history in a particular moment, as the true interpretation of the enigma of text lay, and still lies, in the eye of the beholder (reader) — both medieval as well as modern. Cosmas concentrated sometimes on the gens but more often on the ruling family, and wrote among other things a history of the many faces of rulership. Lisa Wolverton in her monograph approached this very aspect of the Chronicle, reading the text as a ‘pessimistic theory of power’.68 Her analysis is very refreshing, especially when contrasted against the discourse of older Czech historiography and its obsessive use of Cosmas for the (basically impossible) detailed 68

Wolverton, Cosmas, p. 119: ‘Cosmas […] told […] deeply pessimistic story that resonated with, and drew deeply upon, the “school authors” of antiquity. Conscious of an audience educated in these Latin classics and imbued with the Bible, Cosmas made a case against coercive political power, both per se and as wielded by the dukes of Bohemia. He and his contemporaries, it demonstrates, lived in an “iron age” characterized by men’s greed and bloodshed. Rather than as an antidote to or necessary check on such evil, as a Christian theory of lordship might argue, Cosmas showed lordship to be fundamentally predatory, a source not of justice or protection but of fear and oppression’.

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reconstruction of the early and high medieval history of the Bohemian duchy, in the sense of Leopold Ranke. It nevertheless exaggerates the socio-critical standpoint of Cosmas, and unnecessarily narrows the scope of the Chronicle, the great variety of its approaches as well as its potential for identification. That does not mean that Wolverton’s interpretation would be wrong. All the aspects that she has pointed out are important, and without doubt they were dear to Cosmas, especially the strong emphasis on the union of the land and the people, designated in the first chapters of the Chronicle in order to present the Bohemians as disconnected from their surroundings. This also regards the concept of an ‘iron age’, i.e. an inherently predatory character of lordship formulated in the story on Libuše’s judgement; a concept which Cosmas repeatedly takes up. But the sole emphasis on Cosmas’s political scepticism may obfuscate the lavish generosity of his narrative, a generosity which makes it simply irresistible. The Chronicle was an overwhelming success. It served in the Bohemian duchy (a hereditary kingdom since 1212) as THE identification narrative until the beginning of the fourteenth century — actually up until the extinction of the Přemyslids, the family which was the main actor of the Chronicle. Even then the narrative was not abandoned but only reworked: in 1318, the so-called Dalimil embellished individual motifs, reinterpreted them, and gave the narrative new twists using especially chivalric romance as a stylistic model.69 Přibík Pulkava, court historiographer of Charles IV, rewrote the Chronicle in the 1360s and enlarged the story of the Moravian kingdom, matching the intentions of his sponsor (Emperor Charles IV) to formulate an idea of a Slavic empire, an idea targeting in the Chronicle also the German-speaking inhabitants of the realm.70 Cosmas’s scepticism and heavy critique of the ‘iron age’ rulership did not impede the popularity of his work even among members of the family whose scandalous behaviour was pilloried in the text. Cosmas does write about many of the morally reprehensible deeds of Bohemian dukes and the members of their family. He accompanies them with laments on the doom of the egalitarian res publica in which the ideal ruler, pri­ mus inter pares, serves the common good — all in the best manner of a sophisticated well-to-do Roman intellectual who could afford to criticize his caesar amid loud and general acclaim of a large crowd of like-minded well-to-do men of letters. They were all profiteers of the cornucopia of the ‘iron’ empire, but 69 On strategies of identification in the Chronicle of the so-called Dalimil see Rychterová, ‘The Chronicle’. 70 On the Chronicle of Přibík of Pulkava, its transmission, and vernacular Czech and German translations see Žůrek and Rychterová, ‘Slavonic and Czech Identity’, pp. 225–56.

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their life nevertheless was precarious because dependent on the decisions of an increasingly centralized and militarized power personified by the caesar. The concentration of classical Roman historiography on the fates of a very narrow group of senatorial aristocracy, idealized in its best and demonized in its worst members, influenced Cosmas in a way which very probably has to be taken more seriously than is usually the case in research. Especially telling in this respect is the story of the Vršovci, a noble family which in Cosmas’s concept personifies the basically independent, rogue, and potentially rebellious ‘senatorial’ aristocracy. Used repeatedly by Cosmas as the driving force of various dramatic events, the story of this family culminates in the narrative of the eradication of all its members, beginning with its head, a certain Mutina, and ending with the chilling depiction of the public execution of two children, sons of Mutina.71 The narrative employs the concept of ira regis, of an omnipotent raging ruler, repeatedly elaborated by Cosmas,72 contrasting with the dignified, senatorial stoicism of totally helpless Vršovci in the face of the imminent death.73 We may read the whole drama as a variation on Sallust’s Catilina story (for example), whom Cosmas abundantly quoted, and/or as a severe criticism of tyranny. On the other hand it shows the Bohemian ruler as being extremely powerful, surrounded by a sort of Praetorian Guard (his retinue) carrying out without hesitation his zero tolerance policy. The fear the ruler is able to rouse among his noblemen as well as among the rest of the people is formidable, and they subordinate themselves unconditionally to him. Cosmas uses his most effective rhetorical skills to depict just these situations, situations in which the power of the 71 Cosmas of Prague, Chronicle, ed. by Bak and Rychterová, pp. 343–51; for the depiction of the execution of the children see pp. 350–51: ‘Quid autem referam de morte natorum Mutine, quorum mors visa est omni crudelior morte? Erant enim bone indolis pueruli, vultu spectabiles, visu amabiles, quales nec sagas Artifex in albo ebore nec pictor in pariete valet exprimere. Vidimus enim eos miserabiliter in forum trahi et sepius clamantes “Mater mi! Mater mi!”, cum cruentus carnifex ambos ceu porcellos sub sacella interficeret cultello. Diffugiunt omnes sua pectora percutientes, ne viderent carnificem tam crudele facinus operantem’ (What should I say of the death of Mutina’s children, whose death seemed crueler than any other death? They were boys of good character, of noteworthy looks, lovable faces, such as no skilled craftsman could reproduce in white ivory or a painter on a wall. We saw them being dragged miserably to the marketplace, crying incessantly ‘Mother! Mother!’ as a bloodthirsty butcher killed them both in his embrace with a knife as if they were piglets. All ran away beating their breasts, so as not to have to see the butcher committing such a cruel atrocity). 72 Wolverton, Narrative, pp. 109–15. 73 Another example of a raging ruler in the Chronicle is the story on Boleslav I and his plan to build a city wall ‘in the Roman style’. See the analysis of this story in Wolverton, Narrative, pp. 102–09. Rulers’ rage as a driving force of political action appears repeatedly in the Chronicle.

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ruler appears as absolute — there is no other power like that of the Bohemian duke discussed in these particular narratives, although otherwise especially the power of Roman kings/emperors is strongly present in the Chronicle. In these stories the concept of an autochthonous, strictly hierarchical Bohemian society, formulated at the beginning of the Chronicle, shows to advantage. How much this picture may have matched the reality of the tenth–twelfth centuries in Bohemia is an open question. A hypothesis on the so-called ‘state of Central-European type’ influential till today in Czech historiography presumes an (almost) absolutist Přemyslid rulership, with Přemyslid dukes as ‘owners of the state’ which was allegedly ‘privatized’ by the nobility only in the thirteenth century.74 Such strong rulership is actually quite improbable, compared to the forms of rulership attested in the given period in Western, Central, and eastern Central Europe.75 But we may assume that this feature made Cosmas’s narrative attractive to the ruling family regardless of the critical tenor of individual stories. For the readers, the Chronicle offered a template for the interpretation of their own, basically contingent experience of human beings living in a rough and unstable society with a limited flow of information. Cosmas managed to address and to elevate a wide range of experience in his lustrous stories, also because he emphasized emotions as the driving force of governance. He thus made rulership generally understandable: not only rage and fear but also love, grief, and humiliation play the main roles in the far-reaching political decisions of the actors of his Chronicle. Cosmas could have framed the deeds of Bohemian dukes in the overall plan of Christian salvation, but this was something he avoided almost entirely. His narrative does not discuss a divine plan but shows a very human ‘sentimental drama’ evoking almost exclusively an emotional response, and as such it is basically within reach for everybody despite its elaborate Latin language. On the contrary: with the help of Latin models Cosmas transferred the most sophisticated strategies of evoking emotions formulated by Roman poets, rhetors, and historians to Bohemia, to Prague, and to the court of rather provincial dukes. They could indeed feel flattered — maybe not immediately, but later when they understood the power of Latin culture for the representation of their own power. Bad or good, coward or brave — they commanded respect. And that was something the subordinates of Bohemian dukes may have appreciated as well — at least the educated and perambulated ones who constantly compared themselves, their own land, their own society 74 On the emergence of this particular hypothesis see Kalhous, ‘Model státu’, pp. 159–73. Cf. Kalhous, Anatomy, pp. 11–45. 75 See the revealing analysis by Štefan, ‘Great Moravia’, pp. 162–72.

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with those of the empire. The craving for respect may be the most important driving force in the persistent human search for identity. Maybe this craving is the main reason why identities change constantly — the only strategies of identification which matter are those promising to generate respect.

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Secondary Studies Albrecht, Stefan, ‘Der Mauerbau von Stará Boleslav oder “Von der Anarchie zum Staat.” Einige Überlegungen zu Cosmas von Prag’, Medieval and Early Modern Studies for Central and Eastern Europe 2 (2010), pp. 5–39 Betti, Maddalena, The Making of Christian Moravia (858–82): Papal Power and Political Reality (Leiden: Brill, 2014) Bláhová, Emilie, ‘Literarische Beziehungen zwischen dem Sázava-Kloster und der Kiever Rus’’, in Der heilige Prokop, Böhmen und Mitteleuropa, ed. by Petr Sommer, Colloquia mediaevalia Pragensia, 4 (Prague: Filosofia, 2005), pp. 237–53 Bláhová, Marie, ‘Soudobé kroniky o Karlovi IV.’, in Karel IV: V soudobých kronikách, ed. by Marie Bláhová, Zuzana Lukšová, and Martin Nodl (Prague: Argo, 2015), pp. 31–64 Geary, Patrick, Language & Power in the Early Middle Ages (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2013) Hasil, Jan, and others, ‘Introduction’, in Cosmas of Prague, The Chronicle of the Czechs, ed. by János M. Bak and Pavlína Rychterová, Central European Medieval Texts, 10 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2020), pp. xv–lv Jasiński, Wojciech, ‘Legenda Krystiana — autentyk czy mistyfikacja? Żywot i męczeństwo św. Wacława i św. Ludmiły w świetle analizy historycznej i filologicznej’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Adam Mickiewicz University, 2018) [accessed 15 September 2021] Kalhous, David, ‘Jaromír-Gebhard, pražský biskup a říšský kancléř (1038–1090). Několik poznámek k jeho životu’, Mediaevalia historica Bohemica, 9 (2003), 27–45 —— , Anatomy of the Duchy: The Political and Ecclesiastical Structures of Early Přemyslid Bohemia (Leiden: Brill, 2012) —— , ‘Model státu’, Forum historiae, 8 (2014), 159–73 —— , ‘Legenda Christiani’ and Modern Historiography, East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450, 34 (Leiden: Brill, 2015) —— , Bohemi: Prozesse der Identitätsbildung in frühpřemyslidischen Ländern (bis 1200), Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 24 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2018) Klápště, Jan, Tomáš Klír, and Ivo Štefan (eds.), Krajina středověké Prahy (Prague: Academia, in print)  Kocka, Jürgen, ‘Comparison and Beyond’, History and Theory, 42 (2003), 29–44 Kocka, Jürgen, and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, ‘Comparison and Beyond: Traditions, Scope, and Perspectives of Comparative History’, in Comparative and Transnational History: Central European Approaches and New Perspectives, ed. by Jürgen Kocka and HeinzGerhard Haupt (New York: Berghahn, 2009), pp. 2–30 Martínková, Dana, ‘Sémantické poznámky ke Kristiánově legendě’, Listy filologické, 109 (1986), 72–75 —— , ‘Příspěvek k poznání slovní zásoby Kritiánovy legendy’, Listy filologické, 111 (1988), 83–87 Petráček, Tomáš, Power and Exploitation in the Czech Lands in the 10th–12th Centuries: A Central European Perspective, East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450, 40 (Leiden: Brill, 2017)

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Pohl, Walter, ‘Introduction: Strategies of Identification. A  Methodological Profile’, in Strategies of Identification. Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe, ed.  by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 1–64 —— , ‘The Identities of Sidonius Apollinaris’, in Transforming the Early Medieval World: Studies in Honour of Ian  N. Wood, ed. by N.  Kıvılcım Yavuz and Richard Broome (Leeds: Kısmet Press, forthcoming) Ryba, Bohumil, ‘Kronika Kristiánova z hlediska textové kritiky’, Listy filologické, 59 (1932), 112–21, 237–45 Rychterová, Pavlína, ‘“Aufstieg und Fall” des Přemyslidenreiches: Erforschung des böhmischen Früh- und Hochmittelalters in der gegenwärtigen tschechischen Mediävistik’, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung, 34 (2007), 629–47; Czech trans. ‘Vzpon i propad premyslidske države. Raziskovamnje ceškega zgodnjega in wisokega srednjega veka v sodobni ceški medievistiki’, Zgodovinski casopis, 62 (2008), 301–13 —— , ‘Die Anfänge des tschechischen Mittelalters und ihre Rolle beim Aufbau der nationaltschechischen Identität im 19. Jahrhundert’, in Vergangenheit und Vergegenwärtigung: Frühes Mittelalter und europäische Erinnerungskultur, ed.  by Helmut Reimitz and Bernhard Zeller, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 14 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2009), pp. 241–52 ——  , ‘Review Article: Holes in the Tapestry — Eastern and Northern European Conversion Stories’, Early Medieval Europe, 19 (2011), 91–105 ——  , ‘Gens, nacio, communitas — lingua, sanguis, fides: Idea národa v  českém díle Jana Husa’, in Heresis seminaria: Pojmy a koncepty v bádání o husitství, ed. by Pavlína Rychterová and Pavel Soukup (Prague: Filosofia, 2013), pp. 75–110 —— , ‘The Manuscripts of Grünberg and Königinhof: Romantic Lies about the Glorious Past of the Czech Nation’, in Manufacturing a Past for the Present: Forgery and Authenticity in Medievalist Texts and Objects in Nineteenth­Century Europe, ed. by János M. Bak, Patrick Joseph Geary, and Gábor Klaniczay (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 3–30 ——  , ‘Old Church Slavonic in Great Moravia and Bohemia: Origins, Traditions, Interpretations’, in Anfangsgeschichten: Der Beginn volksprachiger Schriftlichkeit in komparatistischer Perspektive  / Origin Stories: The Rise of Vernacular Literacy in a Comparative Perspective, ed. by Norbert Kössinger, Elke Krotz, Stephan Müller, and Pavlína Rychterová (Paderborn: Fink, 2018), pp. 165–84 ——  , ‘The Chronicle of the So-Called Dalimil and its Concept of Czech Identity’, in Historiographies of Identity, vi: Competing Narratives of the Past in Eastern Central Europe, c. 1200–c. 1600, ed. by Pavlína Rychterová and David Kalhous (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 171–206 ——  , ‘Preaching, the Vernacular and the Laity’, in A Companion to the Hussites, ed.  by Michael Van Dussen and Pavel Soukup, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 90 (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 297–330 Sláma, Jiří, ‘Der heilige Prokop: Sein Leben in Legende und Wirklichkeit’, in Der heilige Prokop, Böhmen und Mitteleuropa, ed.  by Petr Sommer, Colloquia mediaevalia Pragensia, 4 (Prague: Filosofia, 2005), pp. 103–08 Sommer, Petr, Dušan Třeštík, Josef Žemlička, and Zoë Opačić, ‘Bohemia and Moravia’, in Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe

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and Rus’, c. 900–1200, ed. by Nora Berend (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 214–62 Štefan, Ivo, ‘Great Moravia, the Beginnings of Přemyslid Bohemia and the Problem of Cultural Change’, in The Fall of Great Moravia: Who Was Buried in Grave H153 at Pohansko near Břeclav?, ed. by Jiří Macháček and Martin Wihoda, East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450, 54 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 151–86 Třeštík, Dušan, ‘Přemyslovec Kristián’, Archeologické rozhledy, 51 (1999), 602–13 —— , ‘Die Gründung des Prager und des mährischen Bistums’, in Europas Mitte um 1000: Beiträge zur Geschichte, Kunst und Archäologie, i, ed. by Alfred Wieczorek and HansMartin Hinz (Stuttgart: Theiss, 2000), pp. 407–10 —— , Mýty kmene Čechů (7.–10. století): Tři studie ke ‘starým pověstem českým’ (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2003) ——  , ‘Slawische Liturgie und Schrifttum im Böhmen des 10. Jahrhundert: Vorstellung und Wirklichkeit’, in Der heilige Prokop, Böhmen und Mitteleuropa: Internationales Symposium Benešov — Sázava 24. September 2003, Colloquia mediaevalia Pragensia, 4 (Prague: Filosofia, 2005), pp. 205–36 —— , ‘Od příchodu Slovanů k “říši” českých Boleslavů’, in Přemyslovci: Budování českého státu, ed. by Petr Sommer, Dušan Třeštík, and Josef Žemlička (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2009), pp. 61–96 Verkholantsev, Julia, ‘Et nata ex etymo fabula: Cosmas of Prague, the Medieval Practice of Etymologia, and the Writing of History’, Interfaces, 6 (2019), 33–64 Wolverton, Lisa, Hastening toward Prague: Power and Society in the Medieval Czech Lands (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001) —— , Cosmas of Prague: Narrative, Classicism, Politics (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2015) Žůrek, Václav, and Pavlína Rychterová, ‘Slavonic and Czech Identity in the Chronicon Bohemiae by Přibík Pulkava of Radenín’, in Historiographies of Identity, vi: Competing Narratives of the Past in Eastern Central Europe, c. 1200–c. 1600 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 225–56

Space and Identity in the Chronica Bohemorum of Cosmas of Prague Jan Hasil Spatial Structures in the Chronica Bohemorum The Chronica Bohemorum (Chronicle of the Bohemians/Czechs), written by the dean of the Prague cathedral Cosmas (c. 1050–21 October 1125)1 in the final years of his life (after 1118), is not only one of the most important medieval literary sources to have been produced in the eastern part of Central Europe. It is the first and only narrative source covering the first two centuries of the existence of the Bohemian duchy, and thus provides many scholarly disciplines with unique evidence. Therefore, it could serve as a basis for the modern narrative of the origins and early development of the Bohemian duchy from the eighteenth century to the present day. It has not only been used and reused by historians and philologists, but also in historical geography and archaeology. The aim of this chapter is to trace how it has been or can be used to study the interactions between humans and the landscape, in other words, the spatial behaviour of past societies. 1 An outline of Cosmas’s life story is part of all editions of his work referred to in this text. See now Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Bohemorum: The Chronicle of the Czechs, ed. by Bak and Rychterová, with the introduction by Jan Hasil with the cooperation by Irene van Renswoude, pp. xv–lix. The seminal work is the study by Třeštík, Kosmas; the question of Cosmas’s date of birth and hence real age is discussed on pp. 39–40. Třeštík’s interpretation is not incontestable, but nonetheless it is broadly accepted in current Czech Medieval Studies.

Jan Hasil is an archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague. Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000–1300, ed. by Walter Pohl, Veronika Wieser, and Francesco Borri, celama 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp.  179–202 FHG 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.130258

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The landscape that surrounds us can be perceived in many ways, and studied using a wide range of theoretical concepts. Disciplines studying past cultural landscapes prefer concepts that conceptualize landscapes as a complex artefact bearing the traces of their past use.2 These traces are relics of diverse functional, social, and symbolic structures to which past societies have imparted specific meaning and purpose within the surrounding space. Relics of these structures are preserved through various media and can be studied in various ways, as for example, through the study of ancient cartographic works and written sources, landscape descriptions, or the collection of artefacts. They can be identified in data gathered by the means of remote sensing of landscapes, aerial photography, or the scanning of geo-reliefs. They may also be reflected in texts that had not been written with the intention to describe the spatial structures of a past society. Since the evolution of human society regularly proceeds within a geographical framework, narratives capturing these historical processes invariably contain information on sites in the landscape. Studying these narrative clues is of value for historical geography, archaeology, and related disciplines, particularly because they convey reliable information about the specific meaning or purpose of individual elements in a landscape. Without such documents, the past meaning of structures today considered ‘mute’ archaeological sources must be reconstructed per analogiam or modelled. On the other hand, using historical narratives brings a risk of misinterpretation, since they may include descriptions of structures that have been modified by the narrator due to intent, indifference, or ignorance. One even comes across fictitious structures that were part of a narrator’s mental map but never part of their physical world. In such cases, written sources can be evaluated and hypotheses proven through comparison with structures known on the basis of other autonomous evidence. As shown in the following, the general social impact of medieval narratives can be so strong in modern societies that it can affect long-term research strategies. Especially the collection and interpretation of archaeological and historical-cum-geographical data may be influenced by the written evidence to such an extent that we cannot speak of a comparison of independently documented structures. Given this risk, it is always necessary to verify all data and exclude them from the analysis if needed; at the very least, distortions of this sort must be pointed out. Comparisons with research data generated by scientific disciplines have to be conducted very carefully especially because of the different methodologies employed in the humanities and sciences. 2

Thus Kuna and others, Archeologický atlas Čech, p. 368.

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For example, natural proxy data characterize the environment in physical, geographical, and (paleo)environmental terms. Such data are influenced by the availability of natural resources, whereby it is essential to avoid undesirable interference between the individual datasets being compared. Restraint should be exercised in extrapolating causal conclusions, as will be demonstrated below. In all cases, the availability of sources of information, the structure of the data, and their quality as well as the individual choices of scholars involved should be assessed. The scholar’s experience, the adequacy of the methods employed, and the choice of structures to be studied all matter. To analyse spatial structures in Cosmas’s text, several passages involving the territory of Bohemia were chosen for the purpose of this chapter. Here the geographical data presented by Cosmas attain the necessary quantity, and we have sufficient scientific data at our disposal for comparison. As a first step, all the landscape entities situated in the territory of Bohemia were identified in the Chronicle’s text (settlements, watercourses, or regions). These were then divided into various groups. The first comprises those that can be reasonably characterized by a single geographical point mentioned by the chronicler (as a rule, human settlements or specific objects in them). Another group comprises landscape elements of a linear or surface character (in particular, rivers and more extensive tracts of land) that are mentioned in the Chronicle as integral wholes. In purely geographical terms, it is not possible to determine which of their parts or sections are involved without further interpretation.3 The spatial data in the text were thus divided between the nodal points in the narration and its wider geographical landscape. In a subsequent step, individual geographical entities were defined according to their placement in the text.4 The criterion 3 In the case of contestable localizations, the analysis followed the critical edition of Cosmas’s text made by Berthold Bretholz as well as the last available Czech translation and commentary of the Chronicle from 2011 (Cosmas of Prague, Kronika Čechů, trans. by Hrdina, Bláhová, and Moravová), which may be regarded as the youngest contribution to the research on Cosmas’s toponyms. The analysis excludes passages not written by Cosmas. In particular, these are an insertion of a document of Henry IV from 1086 (Die Urkunden Heinrichs IV., ed. by von Gladiss, no.  390, pp.  515–18), which poses a knotty interpretation problem (cf. Krzemieńská  and Třeštík, ‘O dokumencie praskim z roku 1086’, esp. pp. 85–90; Třeštík, Počátky Přemyslovců, pp. 67–73), and the so-called Sázava addendum produced as part of one of the redactions of the Chronicle (Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Boemorum, ed.  by Bretholz, pp.  242–61). 4 The question of whether Cosmas’s work represents a concept that was thought out from the beginning, or whether it came into existence segment by segment and layer by layer, was reopened most recently by Martin Wihoda (Cosmas of Prague, Kronika Čechů, trans. by Hrdina, Bláhová, and Moravová, pp. 10–12); major previous opinions on this matter are found in B. Bretholz

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was the context of the particular passages in Cosmas’s narration: (1) landscape entities mentioned in the context of Czech mythology, (2) landscape elements from the older legends about Duke St Wenceslaus and his grandmother St Ludmila, (3) a group of landscape elements evidently mentioned in the written source materials and/or oral narrations used by Cosmas, and finally (4) a stratum of the places mentioned in the passages of the Chronicle referring to his own biography. The advantage of this structuring is that in Cosmas’s literary work, geographical spaces are divided according to their objective credibility as well as in chronological terms. Finally, the data were quantitatively normalized and spatially homogenized by converting them to a standard square raster with each side 5 km in length. The goal was to eliminate those express mentions of individual landscape entities that cannot be meaningfully grasped from the perspective of archaeology or historical geography, and to unite heterogeneous descriptions that fall into the same part of the geographical space. This grid also eliminated isolated geographical components that are inorganic or unsystematic in the text. It generated homogeneous and effectively visualized data within the four geographical landscapes, as listed above, in which Cosmas’s story of the Bohemians gradually unfolds.

Bohemia as a Mythical and Legendary Landscape The first of Cosmas’s landscapes is found in his treatment of the mythical origins of the Bohemian (Czech)5 gens in the first to fourteenth chapters of the first book.6 Here he describes the coming of the Bohemians to Bohemia under the leadership of Patriarch Bohemus, the era of the so-called ‘mythical princes’,7 and the epic of the Lucko War,8 a confrontation between Bohemians led by (Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Boemorum, ed. by Bretholz, pp. xx–xxv); Hrubý, ‘Na okraj nového vydání Kosmovy kroniky’, pp. 373–76; Novotný, ‘Die Chronik der Böhmen’; and Třeštík, Kosmas, pp. 69–77. The geographical analysis represents an argument for the latter possibility. 5 Note by the editors: the author followed current Czech practice in consequently translating Cosmas’s Bohemi by ‘Czechs’, and the name of Patriarch Bohemus by ‘Czech’. This may well have been the vernacular understanding even at the time when he wrote, but this translation is only documented from the fourteenth century onwards, and is never used by Cosmas. We have therefore decided to prefer the name used in the source. 6 Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Boemorum, ed. by Bretholz, i.1–14, pp. 1–34. 7 See also Plassmann, Origo gentis, pp. 324–29. 8 See Karbusický, Anfänge der historischen Überlieferung in Böhmen, pp.  136–62. The inclusion of the epic of the confrontation between the ‘Přemyslid’ Czechs and ‘other’ Czechs

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Figure 7.1. Říp Mountain. Photo courtesy of Martin Gojda.

Map 7.1. Cosmas’s geography of mythical Bohemia and the visibility range from Říp Mountain. The visibility analysis was created by David Novák, Institute of Archaeology of the CAS, Prague.

Přemysl’s descendants and ‘other Bohemians’, the people of Lucko, led by the mythical Vlastislav. According to Cosmas, the scene of the oldest history of the Bohemians was a relatively narrow strip of land whose natural centre is Říp Mountain (Fig. 7.1; Map 7.1),9 from which Patriarch Bohemus was supposed to have shown his people their promised land.10 Further stories of the Bohemians unfold at the bottom of Říp, as a visibility analysis shows, and all main spatial components are located within sight of Říp or immediately beyond. This is Cosmas’s attempt at a literary coming to terms with the pre-Přemyslid era of Czech history. Cosmas’s description is very different from the image presented by the Frankish texts dating to the end of the eighth and the ninth centuries (cf. Hasil, ‘Les élites franques’). 9 For the symbolic role of this site in the Czech national memory, see Nováček, ‘Říp a jeho kostel’. 10 Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Boemorum, ed. by Bretholz, i.2, pp. 5–7.

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applies to both power bases of Přemysl’s ancestry, Vyšehrad and the newly founded Prague (more precisely, Prague Castle), as well as to Přemysl’s birthplace in the north Bohemian town of Stadice, the Lucko castle of Vlastislav, the region Lůka in the vicinity of earlier Žatec, and finally, the alleged battleground of Tursko (Map 7.1), the site of the decisive confrontation between the Bohemians and the Lucko warriors. A viewer standing on the top of Říp can see a substantial part of the central and middle Eger River valley and the Elbe Valley. In contrast, the mythical geography of Bohemia does not include much of central Bohemia, and a number of traditional settlement enclaves, largely in eastern and western Bohemia, are not mentioned at all. Naturally enough, a question arises here regarding the origin of this group of sites and how they correlate with their visibility from Říp Mountain. In principle, it cannot be ruled out that the group is random, although at first glance this solution appears fairly unlikely. It is more likely a reflection of what Cosmas knew about the region combined with specific narratives by Cosmas’s presumed predecessors and contemporaries. It should be noted however that the only presumably earlier record of the Bohemian ethno-genetic myth, contained in the so-called Legenda Christiani transmitted in the fourteenth century but perhaps dating to the close of the tenth century,11 only mentions Prague.12 Cosmas (as well as so-called Christian if we take the hypothesis of the early dating of the legend seriously) certainly do not reflect the actual settlement network of the period,13 which from as early as the seventh century went beyond the framework defined in the Chronica Bohemorum, as has been documented by archaeological evidence of settlement in Bohemia (see Map 7.2).14 But Cosmas’s narrative designed the boundaries of the territorial identity of Bohemian gens for centuries to come.

11 Christian, Vita et passio sancti Wenceslai et sancte Ludmile ave eis, ed. and trans. by Ludvíkovský; cf. Kalhous, Legenda Christiani. 12 For the symbolic significance of Prague and is foundation, see the extensive essay by Dušan Třeštík (Třeštík, Mýty kmene Čechů, pp. 111–67). 13 Cf. the misinterpretation of archaeological data as presented by D. Třeštík, which clearly leans on the narrative sources (Třeštík, Pořátky Přemyslovců, esp. the figure on p. 52). 14 Current archaeological data on the Czech Republic stored in the information system ‘Archaeological Map of the Czech Republic’; see also Kuna and others, ‘Archaeological Map of the Czech Republic’. For the methodology of using these data for research on extensive tracts of land, see Kuna, ‘Past Settlement of Bohemia’.

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Map 7.2. Evolution of the early medieval settlement of Bohemia. A: 601–800; B: 801–950; C: after 951; D: isoline 500 m above sea level, traditionally perceived as the limit of the early medieval settlement activities of Bohemia (until c. 1200). According to ‘Archaeological Map of the Czech Republic’, simplified.

Another section of Cosmas’s geography of Bohemia is referred to in a single chapter, the fifteenth chapter of the first book.15 Here, the narrative about the mythical origins of the Bohemians shifts to a description of the events recorded in the texts of the Wenceslaus and Ludmila hagiography as were known to Cosmas and his contemporaries: In what way Duke Bořivoj, who was always preceded and everywhere followed by the grace of God, attained the sacrament of baptism, or just how the holy religion of the Catholic faith was spread by his successors in these regions day by day, or exactly which devout duke for the first time built how many or which churches for the praise of God — all these things we would rather omit than bore the reader, since we can now read works by others: some of it in Privilege of the Moravian Church, some of it in Epilogue of the same land and Bohemia, and some of it in Life or Passion of our holiest patron and martyr, Wenceslaus. For truly the food that is eaten too often becomes loathsome.16 15

Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Boemorum, ed. by Bretholz, i.15, pp. 34–35. Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Boemorum, ed.  by Bretholz, i.15, p.  35. Cited according to Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Bohemorum: The Chronicle of the Czechs, ed. by Bak and Rychterová, p. 65. 16

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Identifying the above-named texts poses a thorny scholarly problem.17 If we wish, however, to reconstruct a model of the geographical landscape into which the learned Prague Dean situated the events taking place in the reign of the first three generations of the historically documented Přemyslids, we probably will not go wrong if we start from the convolute of literary documents representing an older level in the filiation of the lost Wenceslaus‒Ludmila Legend X as has been extrapolated by Dušan Třeštík.18 Specifically, these texts are the Crescente fide, the legends of Gumpold, Christian, and Lawrence, and finally, the first and second Old Church Slavonic Legend (see Map 7.3).19 It is evident at first glance that the oldest stratum of the Wenceslaus‒Ludmila legends shifts to the region of central Bohemia and differs markedly from the landscape of the mythical origins. The geographical centre of the second act in the story of the Bohemians ceases to be the nebulous Říp surrounded by myths, but moves to the Prague Basin in the lower reaches of the Vltava/Moldau (see Map 7.3). At this time, the population of this area was concentrated on Prague’s left bank, with its centre on the promontory of Prague Castle,20 complemented by the fortified suburb of the Lesser Town.21 The geography of the scene in which the story of the two Přemyslid ancestral saints unfolds consists of a group of very specific sites in central Bohemia forming an arch that spans, metaphorically speaking, from the east to the west of Prague, as well as to the north. This group includes the major fortified settlements of the time.22 From

17

The identity of these texts has been long debated. D. Třeštík (Třeštík, Kosmova kronika, pp. 54–57) has offered the following solution: the privilegium clearly refers to a charter, perhaps the papal bull Industriae Tuae. The Epilogus signifies a specific literary genre, but nothing of that kind has survived for Bohemia and Moravia. The Vita Sancti Wenzeslai may be any of the saint’s early lives, but there is no consensus about which. The argument that Cosmas (at least) knew the so-called Legenda Christiani rests on the fact that he refers to Podiven as a companion of St Wenceslaus (Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Boemorum, ed. by Bretholz, iii.15, p. 228), whose name appears nowhere else. 18 Třeštík, Počátky Přemyslovců, pp. 138–75; cf. Kalhous, Legenda Christiani, pp. 102–03 and Stemma 8. 19 See Vitae sanctorum et aliorum quondam pietate insignium, ed. and trans. by Emler and others; Christian, Vita et passio sancti Wenceslai et sancte Ludmile ave eis, ed. and trans. by Ludvíkovský. 20 Boháčová, ‘Pražský hrad a Malá Strana v raném středověku’. 21 Čiháková, ‘Malá Strana v raném středověku’. 22 For an overview, Boháčová, ‘90 let systematického archeologického studia historického jádra Prahy’.

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Map 7.3. Geographical limits of the oldest Wenceslaus‒Ludmila legends © Jan Hasil.

the west to the east, these are Tetín,23 Budeč,24 Levý Hradec,25 Mělník,26 Stará Boleslav,27 and Kouřim.28 Further geographic entities that can be found in the older filiation of Legend X are the Vltava River (the only long river to leave the region of central Bohemia, though this does not play an important role in the legend’s narrative) and its tributary Rokytka, which in the early Middle Ages evidently represented the north-west and east border of the inner Prague region.29 No other specific geographical points are found in the oldest Czech hagiography, and Cosmas, the first historiographer of Bohemia, saw no need 23

Lutovský, ‘K počátkům Tetína’. Today’s cadastral area Kováry, district Kladno. Bartošková, Budeč; Bartošková, ‘Budeč: ein bedeutendes Machtzentrum’. 25 Today’s cadastral area Žalov, district Roztoky u Prahy, district Praha-západ. Tomková, Levý Hradec v zrcadle archeologických výzkumů. 26 Meduna, ‘Nejstarší raně středověké opevnění v areálu Mělníka’. 27 Today’s cadastral area Brandýs – Stará Boleslav, district Praha-východ. Boháčová, Stará Boleslav. 28 It is only mentioned in Legenda Christiani, evidently meaning the site of Stará Kouřim, today’s district Kouřim, district Kolín. Šolle, Stará Kouřim; Šolle, ‘Kouřim seit der Burgwallzeit bis zur Stadtgründung’. 29 Štefan and Hasil, ‘Raně středověké hradiště v Praze-Královicích’, p. 459, here with references to sources. 24

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to widen its horizon. This has to be regarded as an important observation if we consider the crucial role Cosmas’s text played in the formation of BohemianCzech medieval ethno-political and cultural identities: around symbolically loaded places important strategies of identification were configurated which had a strong impact on the further political and economic importance of these places and on their further perception by the community. In contrast to the progressive colonization of Bohemia as documented for the first half of the tenth century by archaeological research (cf. Map 7.2), the oldest Wenceslaus‒Ludmila legends delineate a rather narrow sphere of activity. It should be noted, however, that their content is a patchy and schematic story of fewer than ten interrelated individuals. They say nothing about other anthropological and geographical territorial units in Bohemia of that period. Cosmas made up for this lack of sources with the elegance of a man of letters. The picture he painted appears in new light if compared to the findings of the archaeologists. A crucial question here is the territorial extent of the population of Bohemia in the period under review (Map 7.2). Although archaeological exploration in Bohemia over the last two centuries has naturally been affected by various positive and negative factors (changes in focus, research methods, and accents, as well as changes in fieldwork strategies and recording),30 nonetheless, after normalization and homogenization the available data offer the possibility of meaningful comparison. Notably, there is evidence of settlement also in regions situated beyond the areas found in the written records. These are some scattered settlements in south-west Bohemia and a number of settlement units in east Bohemia. Isolated settlement niches can also be found in the upper Eger region31 and around Domažlice.32 It should be noted, however, that archaeologists have registered a wide range of human activity sites (typically residential and funerary grounds, complex multifunctional central settlements, deposits of artefacts, etc.), whereas the texts of the legends as well as Cosmas’s Chronicle are dominated by a single type of physical entity, castra or urbes, defined as the seats of the ruling family, the Přemyslids.

30

Kuna and Klápště, ‘Poznámky ke koncepci terénní archeologické práce’; Procházka, ‘Záchrana archeologických památek na prahu 3. tisíciletí’. 31 See on these settlements Hasil, ‘Raně středověké osídlení Chebska’; Hasil, Chebsko v raném středověku. 32 Břicháček, ‘Domažlická sídelní aglomerace v raném středověku’.

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Landscapes of Historical Bohemia The third thematic—and therefore geographical—perspective in Cosmas’s Chronicle is the period framed by the reign of Boleslav II and the founding of the Prague bishopric (after 970) on one side and by Cosmas’s return to Bohemia after his studies in Liège (before 1086) on the other side. In the text of the Chronicle, this period is found between Book i, Chapter 16 and Book ii, Chapter 33. Presumably, in practical terms, Cosmas’s initial intent was a history of the Prague princely and episcopal sees.33 Cosmas worked here with information presumably contained in older historiographic texts as well as, at least in one case, in diplomatic documents.34 He probably also relied on oral traditions. Unlike the geographic clusters described above, it can be assumed that this section of the Chronica Bohemorum no longer involves mythical or legend­ ary ‘mental’ landscapes. Presumably, these historical passages of the Cosmas Chronicle reflect the ‘real’ landscape of Přemyslid Bohemia after the year 1000 (see Map 7.4). This seems a plausible hypothesis, since the Cosmas Chronicle clearly delimits an area within Bohemia as the arena for the princely and episcopal activities in the period under review, an area that includes north-west, central, and eastern Bohemia. In comparison, western and southern Bohemia and the Vysočina region (the highlands on the border between Bohemia and Moravia) are referred to only very rarely by Cosmas, and when mentioned, the information is, as it seems, inaccurate.35 This rather limited extent of the territory relevant to Cosmas’s narrative stands in stark contrast to modern Czech historical research, which has emphasized the unification of Bohemia under the ‘Czech Boleslavs’ around the middle of the tenth century.36 To explain this contradiction from the viewpoint of archaeology or historical geography, the archaeological record of settlement of Bohemia in the period in question must be examined, and then it must be determined whether it correlates positively or negatively with the landscape featured in the Cosmas Chronicle. Can the current archaeological records can offer a plausible answer to these questions?

33

See Hasil, ‘Introduction’, p. xxviii; Třeštík, Počátky Přemyslovců, pp. 102–05. See n. 3 on p. 181. 35 See, e.g., Cosmas’s localization of the Slavník realm in southern Bohemia: Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Boemorum, ed. by Bretholz, i.27, pp. 49–50. 36 Lutovský, ‘Vzestup a pád “říše českých Boleslavů”’. 34

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Map 7.4. Cosmas’s geography of Bohemia in about 970–1086. © Jan Hasil.

Map 7.5. Variations in intensity of archaeological fieldworks of early medieval sites in modern-day self-governing regions. Mean value of 0.25 of fieldwork event per 1 km2 of the territory in question. According to ‘Archaeological Map of the Czech Republic’.

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Map 7.6. Spatial distribution of the archaeological evidence connected to the institutions of the early Přemyslid state before 1000. Monitored types: fortifications; residences within them; churches and monasteries; mints; deposits in fortified localities; graves with militaria or coins. Created based on the ‘Archaeological Map of the Czech Republic’, using research data from K. Tomková and N. Profantová.

As a point of departure for testing the validity of our archaeological data, we can use the modern-day division of the Czech Republic into regional units, since this is generally in line with the regional structure set out in the Cosmas Chronicle. The territory of the Ústí nad Labem, Central Bohemia, Hradec Králové, and Pardubice regions, as well as the capital Prague, can be generally regarded as the territory to which Cosmas pays attention in his chronicle, whereas the Karlovy Vary, Plzeň, south Bohemian, and Liberec regions lie beyond its horizon. The Vysočina region has to be excluded from this reflection because no comparable archaeological data are available (it can be observed, however, that in the tenth and eleventh centuries, settlement in this region was very sparse). As Map 7.5 shows, the density of archaeological excavations focusing on the period under review fluctuates rather widely between the individual regions. Cosmas’s division of Bohemia is still clearly visible in the map. Of course, the modern use of particular areas plays a major role in archaeological exploration (for example, the south-west part of Bohemia is much more densely forested than the Elbe Valley). Extremes are represented here by Prague, where the extraordinarily intensive exploration of this inhabited area has not spread to the wide rural hinterland, and conversely, by the Karlovy Vary region, which was hardly populated in the early Middle Ages and in the period

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in question, and obviously not part of Bohemian duchy.37 The role played by Cosmas’s Chronicle in the decisions in which territories should be excavations should take place has not been a negligible one.38 Nonetheless, archaeological data do exist which establish the approximate extent of settlement in the tenth and eleventh centuries for regions outside the geographical limits of the Cosmas Chronicle (Map 7.6). Archaeological records do present a structure evidently in keeping with Cosmas’s landscape. Fortified sites in existence around the year 1000 to which archaeologists have ascribed an important role on the basis of their data largely correspond to those mentioned in the written record. In principle, this applies to the entire territory of Bohemia, although as a recent analysis by K. Tomková and N. Profantová has shown, archaeological evidence that such sites possessed a central function in the medieval Přemyslid duchy is only available only for north-west, central, and eastern Bohemia (see Map 7.8).39 In tenth- and eleventh-century Bohemia there were clear features of regionalization corresponding to a rapid process of étatisation. Unlike in the Carolingian era,40 neither domestic documentary sources nor those of the Holy Roman Empire mention leaders in Bohemia other than the princes of the Přemysl family. Nonetheless, we cannot speak of Bohemia having had a homogeneous social system in this period. This is evidenced by both archaeological and historic-topographical records and by the landscapes depicted in Cosmas’s Chronicle.

Bohemia in Cosmas’s Eyes The last section of Cosmas’s Chronicle that can be treated separately based on the criteria set out above. It represents the period after Cosmas’s return to Bohemia and the last years of his life, in principle from Book ii, Chapter 34, till the end of the third and last book (the chronicle ends in the middle of the sentence). To understand this final personal view of the Bohemian landscape in Cosmas’s work (Map 7.7), it is necessary to consider the nature of the offices he held at the peak of his ecclesiastical career. Cosmas’s return from Liège can be dated with high 37

Hasil, ‘Raně středověké osídlení Chebska’, pp. 62–65. On this, see pp. 195–97 and esp. Map 7.8. 39 I am obliged to both scholars for frequently discussing these questions with me, and for making their results available for my further analysis. From a methodological perspective, see Gringmuth-Dallmer, ‘Methodische Überlegungen’. 40 Cf. Hasil, ‘Les élites franques’. 38

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probability to before 1086, the year he attended, in his own words on 29 April, the Synod of Mainz, at which the deed recognizing the borders of the Bishopric of Prague was issued.41 On this occasion, Cosmas relates that he witnessed the confirmation of the deed by the emperor’s own hand. Thus, he apparently participated in the official proceedings, which has led some historians to conclude that Cosmas must have been engaged in diplomatic matters of the Bohemian duchy. However, the numerous inaccuracies when it comes to factual circumstances outside Bohemia as well as the general thematic structure of Cosmas’s narrative rather suggest that most of his official duties involved managing the bishop’s practical affairs (as results from the highest office Cosmas attained during his ecclesiastical career: that of a dean of the chapter of Prague). In 1091, Cosmas was one of the travel companions of the Prague bishop on a trip abroad, accompanying him to Mantua alongside his namesake, the Prague bishop-elect Cosmas, and the Olomouc bishop-elect Ondřej (Andrew).42 There are no sources that reveal the actual position or office then held by Cosmas (who likely was dean at the time). He again travelled beyond the borders of the Duchy of Bohemia as a member of the Prague bishop’s entourage in 1094, when Bishop Cosmas was consecrated in Mainz.43 Another trip abroad involved what must have been the most significant day in Cosmas’s life, 11 October 1099, when he was ordained a priest by Archbishop Seraphim of Esztergom.44 With increasing intensity, the later passages of the Chronicle take on almost the character of a memoir and, correspondingly, more and more incidental notes appear in the text. These give us an idea of peripheral issues in connection with the operation of the Prague chapter. In 1110, Cosmas mentions his immediate involvement in property matters of the Prague chapter.45 It is this year that is usually (and quite justifiably) considered the ante quem of his assuming the office of dean,46 the person in charge of the chapter’s day-to-day operations, which also meant having to look after the chapter’s assets and landholdings. It thus involved frequent travel. In this part of Cosmas’s Chronicle, particular journey routes and even entire itineraries are mentioned, whereby the landscape unsurprisingly seems to reflect 41

Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Boemorum, ed. by Bretholz, ii.37, pp. 134–40. Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Boemorum, ed. by Bretholz, ii.49, pp. 155–56. 43 Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Boemorum, ed. by Bretholz, iii.2, pp. 162–63. 44 Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Boemorum, ed. by Bretholz, iii.9, pp. 169–70. 45 e.g. Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Boemorum, ed.  by Bretholz, ii.26, iii.33, iii.57, pp. 118–20, 203–04, 231–33. 46 Cosmas mentions himself as dean only in 1120, in the first introduction to the first book: Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Boemorum, ed. by Bretholz, Praefatio, p. 1. 42

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Map 7.7. The geography of Bohemia during Cosmas’s lifetime (c. 1086–1125), outlining the basic communication lines in medieval Bohemia. According to the ‘Archaeological Map of the Czech Republic’ and Semotanová, Historická geografie českých zemí.

the radial network of major land routes in what was then Bohemia (see Map 7.7). We can note the absence of routes that gained in importance only later—the Nuremberg, ‘Golden’, and Zittau routes.47 The question arises whether Cosmas’s interest was limited to events and places linked to those routes he personally knew, but that might be too simplistic. Rather, we should probably understand the text as evidence of expansion from the centre to wider parts of Bohemia along trunk roads that gradually became axes of political, social, economic, and spiritual life. The land described in the biographical sections of the last part of his Chronicle was the land that Cosmas actively helped to shape.

Narratives, Identities, and Research Thanks to the efforts of generations of writers and historians, Cosmas’s narrative has become one of the main pillars of the modern Czech identity and of the narrative of the past of the Czech people and nation. Despite this, it is undoubtedly the case that most of the Czech population and even a large segment of its intellectual elite does not know Cosmas’s work in the original, 47

See Semotanová, Historická geografie českých zemí, pp. 163–70.

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and that they have learned about his description of the historic beginnings of Bohemia and Moravia only from second-hand (scholarly) publications or even third-hand popular historical books. This is telling with regard to the timeless nature of Cosmas’s text. We can certainly admire the ingenuity of the original narration and the long history of its reception: both enable one to trace the roots of ‘civic’ identity in the Czech Republic of today. Research on the Bohemian early and high Middle Ages may be described as constantly producing unsystematically expanding knowledge about an arbitrarily chosen body of narrative, but also diplomatic and other types of textual material. Of course, this research brought many valuable results. But one must admit that at the analytical level, no major new results can be expected from historiography if it refrains from generating usable standardized data that can be used in interdisciplinary fora. The unique position of Cosmas’s Chronicle in the research on the medieval Bohemia is particularly challenging here. The central sites of the early Přemyslid realm mentioned in the text of the chronicle as well as in the legends were the object of attention of archaeologists in the nineteenth century. By systematically gathering materials from these sites, L. Šnajdr proved, for example, the importance of ceramic artefacts for dating individual settlements.48 During the inter-war period, the national monument sites of Prague Castle and the Vyšehrad saw the start of long-term systematic research combining scholarly and conservationist interests, research that still continues today. The post-war period, which generally supported so-called Slavonic archaeology, then enabled extensive and costly research that focused inter alia on Budeč, Levý Hradec, and certain fortified sites in the Kouřim region. A major turning point in research on ancient settlements in central Bohemia ensued at the turn of the 1970s. At this time, a bifurcation between academic and preservationist archaeology occurred, if we apply the differentiation developed by E. Neustupný.49 From the perspective of academic archaeology and historical geography, in the 1970s J. Sláma50 in discussions with Z. Váňa defined the so-called Přemyslid Domain, a group of landscape elements or sites of ancient settlements mentioned 48

Filip, ‘Ludvík Šnajdr’, pp. 648–52. Neustupný, ‘Dvě archeologie’. 50 Regarding the development of how historians write about the earliest Czech history, it should be noted that the basic outline of these concepts emerged already in the first half of the 1970s in polemical texts by J. Sláma (Sláma, ‘K historickému významu budečského hradiště’, pp. 34–50; Sláma, ‘Poznámky k problému historického’, pp. 60–79; cf. Váňa, ‘Výzkum Libušína v letech 1970 a 1971’, pp. 52–71), i.e. before the important historical studies published at the beginning of the 1980s exercised their influence. Cf. the original version of Třeštík’s Počátky Přemyslovců, published in 1981, and Graus, Die Nationenbildung der Westslawen, of 1980. 49

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Map 7.8. Location of medieval fortifications in the first half of the tenth century. A: central sites mentioned in the oldest Wenceslaus‒Ludmila legends; B: central sites classified by J. Sláma as the Přemyslid Domain; C: other early medieval fortifications. According to Sláma, Střední Čechy v raném středověku.

in written sources, as part of the domains of the first Přemyslids. Possessing similar attributes, in particular the presence of church buildings, these settlements were constructed in the same period on a perimeter of approximately 25–30 km around Prague (see Map 7.8).51 Sláma’s collaborators and pupils have devoted much attention to these sites in terms of fieldwork and academic research. While the concept of the Přemyslid Domain has often been discussed over the last decade and has been relativized and modified in recent studies,52 its purely literary and non-archaeological basis has not been pointed out explicitly. Only very slowly and with limited resources has the focus turned to less explored early medieval fortified sites in central Bohemia.53 In contrast, since the 1970s preser­ vationist archaeology has focused on early medieval centres situated in existing 51

Of the mentioned central places Kouřim was excluded because of a direct mention of nonPřemyslid Radim in Legenda Christiani and archaeological specifics of the Kouřim and Kolín regions in the ninth century — see Šolle, Stará Kouřim; Šolle, ‘Kouřim seit der Burgwallzeit bis zur Stadtgründung’; Košta and Lutovský, Raně středověký knížecí hrob z Kolína. 52 Esp. Varadzin, ‘K vývoji hradišť v jádru Čech’; Varadzin, ‘The Development of Přemyslid Domain Strongholds’; Neustupný, ‘Frühmittelalterliche Burgwälle im Prager Becken’; Boháčová, ‘Prague, Budeč and Boleslav’. 53 Štefan and Hasil, ‘Raně středověké hradiště v Praze-Královicích’, p. 454.

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settlements, specifically in the metropolitan area of Prague, as well as in Stará Boleslav, Mělník, and marginally also Tetín. The intensity of such excavation work increased significantly during the construction boom that occurred after the fall of the Wall in 1989, although what was needed exceeded the discipline’s capacities with regard to even basic processing of excavation findings.54 As was evident from the outset,55 here the strategies for collecting terrain data could not provide any systematic research source base. Paradoxically, the outcome of the archaeological research concentrating on the Bohemian-Czech Middle Ages in most recent decades can be characterized as follows. It received substantial investments (also in terms of personnel), drawing on an unprecedented amount of funding, and was considered a high-prestige research area.56 However, no methods were developed for a systematic gathering of research data on hillforts in early medieval (central) Bohemia. There is no conceptual framework available for addressing polycentric structures or their different functions and hierarchies. We lack an analysis of the territorial distribution of ancient settlement sites, and above all, the reference group is still directly (academic) or indirectly (preservationist archaeology) attached to the narrative of Cosmas’s Chronicle and the modern historical narratives constructed on its basis. On the one hand, great amounts of terrain information are being gathered, but they often remain at the level of primary documentation, which can hardly be used for further research. On the other hand, for many nodal points we lack raw data such as detailed chronological information about settlement structures. One per cent of all prehistoric and early medieval fortified sites in the territory of Bohemia, that is, the sites of the settlements mentioned in the oldest Wenceslaus‒Ludmila legends, have consumed 10 per cent of all research activities (see Map 7.2). Moreover, this quantification of research does not reflect its intensity (duration, extent, cost, and assessment) which would highlight the imbalance even more. Thus, only with reservations can the present body of archaeological knowledge be regarded as an alternative record to the information found in the oldest literary documents about the territory of Bohemia and vice versa. If archaeology has offered an understanding of the settlement structures in Bohemia it has done so largely steered unconsciously by a given medieval and modern his54

Boháčová, Podliska, and Hasil, ‘Down to the Trenches’; for a general overview, see also Procházka, ‘Záchrana archeologických památek na prahu 3. tisíciletí’. 55 Cf. Kuna and Klápště, ‘Poznámky ke koncepci terénní archeologické práce’; Neustupný, ‘Kam česká archeologie?’. 56 See Klápště, ‘Wege und Kreuzwege der Burgwallforschung in Böhmen’.

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Figure 7.2. Diagram of fieldwork on prehistoric and early medieval hillforts in Bohemia. According to ‘Archaeological Map of the Czech Republic’.

toriographic narrative, despite the fact that by doing so it has negated its own disciplinary identity. The observations presented above regarding the Chronicle of Cosmas are therefore preliminary, being fully dependent on the limited data currently available. Recently, scholars in several fields of Medieval Studies have sought to apply methods of the Digital Humanities, building corpora of digitized sources, documentary materials, and metadata bases, as well as developing methods for analysing data content. Currently, the situation in eastern Central Europe is less than satisfactory with regard to general geographical or geological data being published by government agencies. Such data could offer new possibilities for examining extant sources, whose analysis is apparently still incomplete. The various disciplines in the Humanities should thus work at finding synergies, but also at finding their own conceptual methods and identities.

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Works Cited* Digital Resources ‘Archaeological Map of the Czech Republic’ [accessed 29 January 2021]

Primary Sources Christian, Vita et passio sancti Wenceslai et sancte Ludmile ave eis, ed. and trans. by Jaroslav Ludvíkovský (Prague: Vyšehrad, 2012) Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Boemorum, ed.  by Bertold Bretholz, Die Chronik der Böhmen des Cosmas von Prag, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, n.s., 2 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1923) ——  , The Chronicle of the Czechs, ed. and trans. by Lisa Wolverton (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009) —— , Kronika Čechů, trans. by Karel Hrdina, Marie Bláhová, and Magdalena Moravová, ed. by Magdalena Moravová and Martin Wihoda (Prague: Argo, 2011) ——  , Chronica Bohemorum: The Chronicle of the Czechs, ed.  by János Bak and Pavlína Rychterová, trans. by Petra Mutlová and Martyn Rady with Libor Švanda, introduced and annotated by Jan Hasil with Irene van Renswoude (Budapest: CEU Press, 2020) Die Urkunden Heinrichs IV., pt 2, ed. by Dietrich von Gladiss, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Diplomata regum et imperatorum Germaniae, 4 (Hanover: Hahn, 1959) Vitae sanctorum et aliorum quondam pietate insignium, ed. and trans. by Josef Emler and others, Fontes rerum Bohemicarum, 1 (Prague: Museum Království Českého, 1873)

Secondary Studies Bartošková, Andrea, ‘Budeč: Ein bedeutendes Machtzentrum des frühen böhmischen Staates’, Zeitschrift für Archäologie des Mittelalters, 38 (2010), 85–159 ——  , Budeč: Významné mocenské centrum prvních Přemyslovců (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2014) Boháčová, Ivana, Stará Boleslav: Přemyslovský hrad v  raném středověku, Mediaevalia archaeologica, 5 (Prague: Archeologický ústav AV ČR, 2003) ——  , ‘Pražský hrad a Malá Strana v raném středověku a problém synchronizace jejich vývoje’, in Stare and nowe w średniowieczu: Pomiędzy innowacją a tradycją, ed.  by Sławomir Moździoch, Spotkania Bytomskie, 6 (Wrocław: Polska Akademia Nauk, 2009), pp. 71–98

* All relevant literature has been included until 2021.

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——  , ‘Prague, Budeč and Boleslav: The Reflection of State Formation in Early Medieval Archaeological Sources’, in Praktische Funktion, gesellschaftliche Bedeutung und symbolischer Sinn der frühgeschichtlichen Zentralorte in Mitteleuropa, ed. by Jiři Macháček and Šimon Ungerman, Studien zur Archäologie Europas, 14 (Bonn: Habelt, 2011), pp. 371–95 —— , ‘90 let systematického archeologického studia historického jádra Prahy a 50. výročí založení specializovaného pracoviště pražské archeologické památkové péče v kontextu stavu a možností poznání počátků Prahy’, Staletá Praha, 31 (2015), 95–111 Boháčová, Ivana, Jaroslav Podliska, and Jan Hasil, ‘Down to the Trenches: The Integrated Information System of Archaeological Sources of Prague, an Adjustment to the AMCR for Urban Archaeology’, in Martin Kuna and others, Structuring Archaeological Evidence: The Archaeological Map of the Czech Republic and Related Information Systems (Prague: Archeologický ústav AV ČR, 2015), pp. 99–113 Břicháček, Metlička, ‘Domažlická sídelní aglomerace v raném středověku’, Archeologie ve středních Čechách, 3 (1999), 259–82 Čiháková, Havrda, ‘Malá Strana v raném středověku: Stav výzkumu a rekapitulace poznání’, Archeologické rozhledy, 60 (2008), 187–228 Filip, Jan, ‘Ludvík Šnajdr — průkopník české vědy archeologické’, in Zdeňku Nejedlému Československá akademie věd: Sborník prací k 75. narozeninám (Prague: Československá akademie věd, 1953), pp. 643–55 Graus, František, Die Nationenbildung der Westslawen im Mittelalter (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1980) Gringmuth-Dallmer, Eike, ‘Methodische Überlegungen zur Erforschung zentraler Orte in ur- und frühgeschichtlicher Zeit’, in Centrum and zaplecze we wczesnośredniowiecznej Europie środkowej, ed. by Sławomir Moździoch, Spotkania Bytomskie, 3 (Wrocław: Polska Akademia Nauk, 1999), pp. 9–20 Hasil, Jan, ‘Raně středověké osídlení Chebska’, Studia mediaevalia Pragensia, 9 (2010), 7–73 —— , ‘Les élites franques de l’ouest comme des chefs de clans dans l’environnement slave?’, Études médiévales Université de Picardie, Amiens, 50 (2011), 50–61 ——  , Chebsko v raném středověku: Archeologie středoevropského region v 7.­12. století (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2018) Hasil, Jan, with Irene van Renswoude, ‘Introduction’, in Cosmas of Prague, The Chronicle of the Czechs: Chronica Bohemorum, ed. by János Bak and Pavlína Rychterová, trans. by Petra Mutlová and Martyn Rady with Libor Švanda, introduced and annotated by Jan Hasil with Irene van Renswoude (Budapest: CEU Press, 2020), pp. xv–lix Hrubý, Václav, ‘Na okraj nového vydání Kosmovy kroniky’, Časopis Matice moravské, 49 (1925), 371–84 Kalhous, David, ‘Legenda Christiani’ and Modern Historiography (Leiden: Brill, 2016) Karbusický, Vladimír, Anfänge der historischen Überlieferung in Böhmen: Ein Beitrag zum vergleichenden Studium der mittelalterlichen Sängerepen (Cologne: Böhlau, 1980) Klápště, Jan, ‘Wege und Kreuzwege der Burgwallforschung in Böhmen’, in Burgwallforschung im akademischen und öffentlichen Diskurs des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Sabine Rieckhoff, Susanne Grunwald, and Karin Reichbach, Leipziger Forschungen zur Ur- und Frühgeschichtlichen Archäologie, 5 (Leipzig: Universität Leipzig, 2009), pp. 125–38

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Košta, Jiří, and Michal Lutovský, Raně středověký knížecí hrob z Kolína (Prague: Národní muzeum, 2014) Kuna, Martin, ‘Past Settlement of Bohemia According to Archaeology: A Critical View’, in Martin Kuna and others, Structuring Archaeological Evidence: The Archaeological Map of the Czech Republic and Related Information Systems (Prague: Archeologický ústav AV ČR, 2015), pp. 163–93 Kuna, Martin, and Jan Klápště, ‘Poznámky ke koncepci terénní archeologické práce’, Archeologické rozhledy, 42 (1990), 435–45 Kuna, Martin, and others, Archeologický atlas Čech: Vybrané památky od pravěku do 20. století (Prague: Academia, 2011) Kuna, Martin, and others, Structuring Archaeological Evidence: The Archaeological Map of the Czech Republic and Related Information Systems (Prague: Archeologický ústav AV ČR, 2015) Krzemieńská, Barbara, and Dušan Třeštík, ‘O dokumencie praskim z roku 1086’, Studie źródloznawcze: Commentationes, 5 (1960), 79–102 Lutovský, Michal, ‘K počátkům Tetína’, Archeologie ve středních Čechách, 10 (2006), 845–52 —— , ‘Vzestup a pád “říše českých Boleslavů”: O krizi dynastie a počátku státu’, in Kolaps a regenerace: Cesty civilizací a kultur; Minulost, současnost a budoucnost komplexních společností, ed.  by Miroslav Bárta and Martin Kovář (Prague: Academia, 2011), pp. 297–318 Meduna, Petr, ‘Nejstarší raně středověké opevnění v areálu Mělníka’, Archeologické rozhledy, 55 (2003), 378–85 Neustupný, Evžen, ‘Kam česká archeologie?’, Archeologické rozhledy, 43 (1991), 361–70 —— , ‘Dvě archeologie’, Acta historica et museologica Universitatis Silesianae Opaviensis, 5 (2001), 52–56 Neustupný, Zdeněk, ‘Frühmittelalterliche Burgwälle im Prager Becken in Bezug auf die Entwicklung und Struktur der Besiedlung’, in Das wirtschaftliche Hinterland der frühmittelalterlichen Zentren, ed. by Lumír Poláček, Internationale Tagungen in Mikulčice, 6 (Brno: Archeologický ústav AV ČR, 2007), pp. 153–64 Nováček, Karel, ‘Říp a jeho kostel: k vývoji a kontextu rotundy svatého Jiří’, in Archeologie krajiny pod Řípem, ed. by Martin Gojda and Martin Trefný (Plzeň: KAR ZČU, 2011), pp. 127–42 Novotný, Václav, ‘Die Chronik der Böhmen des Cosmas von Prag: Unter Mitarbeit von W.  Weinberger herausgegeben von Bertold Bretholz’, Časopis Matice moravské, 48 (1924), 128–29 Plassmann, Alheydis, Origo gentis: Identitäts­ und Legitimitätsstiftung in früh­ und hoch­ mittelalterlichen Herkunftserzählungen, Orbis mediaevalis: Vorstellungswelten des Mittelalters, 7 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2006) Procházka, Rudolf, ‘Záchrana archeologických památek na prahu 3. tisíciletí: věda, etika, obživa?’, in Veřejná archeologie, iii: Příspěvky z konferencí Archeologie a veřejnost 2006 a 2008, ed. by Michal Bureš and Miroslava Šmolíková (Prague: Veřejná archeologie, 2013), pp. 35–55 Profantová, Naďa, Klecany: Raně středověká pohřebiště (Prague: Epocha, 2010)

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Semotanová, Eva, Historická geografie českých zemí (Prague: Historický ústav AV ČR, 2002) Sláma, Jiří, ‘K  historickému významu budečského hradiště’, Archeologické rozhledy, 26 (1974), 34–50 —— , ‘Poznámky k problému historického významu některých raně středověkých hradišť ve středních Čechách’, Archeologické rozhledy, 29 (1977), 60–79 —— , Střední Čechy v raném středověku, iii: Archeologie o počátcích přemyslovského státu, Praehistorica, 14 (Prague: Univerzita Karlova, 1988) Šolle, Miloš, Stará Kouřim a projevy velkomoravské hmotné kultury v Čechách (Prague: Academia, 1966) ——  , ‘Kouřim seit der Burgwallzeit bis zur Stadtgründung’, in Actes du XIIe Congres international des sciences préhistoriques et protohistoriques, iv (Bratislava: Institut archéologique de l’Académie slovaque des sciences, 1993), pp. 109–13 Štefan, Ivo, and Jan Hasil, ‘Raně středověké hradiště v Praze-Královicích’, Archeologické rozhledy Roč, 66.3 (2014), 453–92 Tomková, Kateřina, Levý Hradec v zrcadle archeologických výzkumů, i: Pohřebiště (Prague: Archeologický ústav AV ČR, 2001) Třeštík, Dušan, Kosmova kronika: Studie k  počátkům českého dějepisectví a politického myšlení (Prague: Academia, 1968) —— , Kosmas (Prague: Melantrich, 1972) ——  , Počátky Přemyslovců: Vstup Čechů do dějin (530–935) (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 1997) —— , Mýty kmene Čechů (7.–10. století): Tři studie ke ´Starým pověstem českým´ (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2003) Váňa, Zdeněk, ‘Výzkum Libušína v letech 1970 a 1971: Doplňující poznámky k postavení hradiště ve středočeské oblasti’, Archeologické rozhledy, 27 (1975), 52–71 Varadzin, Ladislav, ‘K vývoji hradišť v jádru Čech se zřetelem k přemyslovské doméně: Příspěvek do diskuse’, Archeologické rozhledy, 62 (2010), 535–54 —— , ‘The Development of Přemyslid Domain Strongholds in the Heart of Bohemia (A Contribution to the Discussion)’, in Praktische Funktion, gesellschaftliche Bedeutung und symbolischer Sinn der frühgeschichtlichen Zentralorte in Mitteleuropa, ed.  by Jiři Macháček and Šimon Ungerman, Studien zur Archäologie Europas, 14 (Bonn: Habelt, 2011), pp. 405–10 Wolverton, Lisa, Cosmas of Prague: Narrative, Classicism, Politics (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2015)

Helmold of Bosau and our Reading of his Chronica Slavorum Jan Klápště Dedicated to Torsten Kempke

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everal paradoxes should be emphasized at the start. The first, an absolutely essential paradox concerns the identity of the Polabian Slavs, our main topic seen through Helmold’s Chronica Slavorum. Identity is a subjective and subjectively constructed category. When for example Cosmas (d.  1125), a dean of the cathedral church in Prague, wrote his Chronica Boemorum, he created one of the pillars of identity of the Czech medieval nation. He lived in Czech society, within which he held a significant intellectual position.1 Helmold of Bosau’s (d.  after 1177) role and position were completely different. Helmold was a priest on the edge of the Christian world who participated in the protracted conversion of the Polabian Slavs to Christianity. For many decades, two conflicting identities struggled for dominance amongst his Slavic neighbours. Traditional society relied on the laws and faith of the ancestors that is usually — because of the absence of a more suitable and generally comprehensible term — referred to as ‘pagan’ by scholars. The second identity was brought by Christianization, though at the time when Helmold was writing, this had not expanded beyond the narrow framework of missionary activity.

1 Most recently, Wolverton, Cosmas of Prague. See also the chapters about Cosmas in the present volume.

Jan Klápště is Professor of Medieval Archaeology at Charles University in Prague. Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000–1300, ed. by Walter Pohl, Veronika Wieser, and Francesco Borri, celama 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp.  203–229 FHG 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.130259

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Ecclesiastical institutions were fragile and, moreover, tied to the empire, which increasingly sought to intrude into the lives of the Polabian Slavs.2 Helmold knew the Slavic milieu from close up, but he found it strange and entirely unacceptable. He was separated from it by religious, ethnic, and political barriers.3 When trying to gain insight into the world of Helmold’s neighbours based on his text, we face two levels of interpretation. When Helmold described and made sense of the world of Slavic pagans, he used the categories and literary devices familiar to him as a Christian priest educated in Latin culture. Eight centuries later, we in turn try to interpret Helmold’s interpretations from our current perspective. One more paradox is worth mentioning, the paradox created by modern nationalism. The Slavic history narrated by Helmold is a history without direct heirs. The independence of his Slavic neighbours came to an end in the midtwelfth century, during Helmold’s lifetime. In the nineteenth century, however, two very different groups identified themselves as indirect heirs of the history narrated by Helmold. One group interpreted it as a record of a ‘Großtat des deutschen Volkes’ (great achievement of the German people), while the other ‘heirs’ considered themselves to be the ‘last Polabian Slavs’. The issue for both groups was identity — but their own, modern identities, which were quite distant from the time of Helmold, when the decisive antithesis was between Christians and ‘pagans’. But there is no doubt that this modern ‘secondary identity’, developed in the nineteenth century, has lost its political strength. As a topic, it has been moved to where it belongs — to the history of modern nationalism.

Helmold’s Life The information on Helmold himself is scarce. His authorship of the Chronica Slavorum was recorded by a continuator of his.4 The current title of the work only began to be used after Helmold’s death. Some information on the chronicler was provided by Helmold himself in his work, a little more derives from various other documents. Helmold was probably born somewhere near the Harz Mountains around 1120 and he died after 1177. He began his educa2

For a synoptic explanation, Fritze, ‘Probleme der abodritischen Stammes- und Reichsverfassung’; Stieldorf, Marken und Markgrafen, pp. 565–68; Ruchhöft, Vom slawischen Stammesgebiet. 3 See Fraesdorff, Der barbarische Norden, pp. 318–54. 4 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob. The preface to the edition (pp. 1–23) summarizes the information on Helmold and his chronicle.

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tion at the Augustinian monastery in Segeberg (Holstein), where he first met Vicelinus, the future bishop of Starigard/Oldenburg (1149–1154). He then went on to Brunswick (1139–1143), where he found his mentor and protector Gerold. After his studies, Helmold became involved in missionary activities. He initially worked with Vicelinus on the re-establishment of the Bishopric of Starigard/Oldenburg after some intervening ‘pagan’ decades. He continued his work under Vicelinus’s successor, Bishop Gerold, whom he had previously accompanied on a journey to the Slavic Wagrians in January 1156. Soon afterwards, he became the parish priest of Bosau on the Great Plön Lake (Großer Plöner See). Bosau was a place of some importance: a functioning parish, missionary centre, and the economic hinterland of the Bishopric of Starigard. Bosau was safer than the actual bishop’s seat in Starigard, which was located in an area controlled by still pagan Slavs. Bosau therefore served as the residence of both Bishop Vicelinus and his successor Gerold. The latter, however, later moved the episcopal residence to the more populous Lübeck.

Helmold’s Chronicle The main theme of the Chronica Slavorum is the complicated and protracted beginnings of Christianity in the Bishopric of Starigard/Oldenburg and later Lübeck. Helmold himself defines his task at the very beginning of the work as the description of the ‘conversio Slavicae gentis’ (conversion of the Slavic people).5 He also mentions that he wrote it at the instigation of Bishop Gerold for the ‘domini ac patres sanctae Lubecensis ecclesiae canonici’.6 Helmold began his account with Charlemagne’s wars against the Saxons. These wars changed the map of Central Europe and brought the Carolingian Empire into direct contact with the Polabian Slavs. The first book of Helmold’s Chronicle has ninety-five chapters and ends with the death of Bishop Gerold in 1163. After a short interval, Helmold added a second book to his chronicle, which ends with the year 1171. Its fifteen chapters represent the epilogue not only to the Chronica Slavorum, but also to the independent existence of Helmold’s Slavic neighbours. In terms of the author’s approach to information, the Chronica Slavorum can be divided into three parts. Helmold’s model and main guide for the period up to 5

Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, Praefatio, p. 26. Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, Praefatio, p. 26 — Engl. trans. ‘to the reverend masters and fathers, canons of the holy church of Lübeck’. 6

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the 1060s (Chapters 1–25) was the Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum written by Adam of Bremen a hundred years earlier.7 For the following period (1066–c. 1115), Helmold could not draw on any written sources and thus must have relied on oral tradition. For his account of the twelfth century, the availability of information gradually improved — and in many cases Helmold could rely on his own memory. His narrative ambitions become clear if we compare his work with that of Adam of Bremen. The information provided by Adam and Helmold on Hermann Billung, dux Saxoniae, is essentially the same; however, although Helmold’s text is secondary, it is the more developed.8 The story of the fierce, uneducated duke of the Abodrites’ desire for the charming sister of Wago, bishop of Oldenburg, is told only by Helmold, although it supposedly took place at the end of the tenth century.9 The ability of the parish priest of Bosau to describe events dramatically is also particularly apparent in the chapters recounting the battles that Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria, fought against the Polabian Slavs. The chronicler’s ambitions were also reflected in the interpretation of the events recorded, in which he combined reality and fiction. An example of this is the so-called Corvey Legend, according to which missionaries from the Benedictine Abbey of Corvey brought the cult of St Vitus to Rügen Island. However, the Rugiani later abandoned the Christian faith and began to worship St Vitus as their only god.10 This made them not only pagans but apostates, deserving of special condemnation. Helmold associated the worship of Zuantevith with St Vitus and saw its origin in the interpretatio slavica of the Christian cult. Current historiography unanimously rejects Helmold’s explanation and regards Zuantevith as a traditional Slavic deity, because etymologically Zuantevith means ‘holy lord’ or ‘strong lord’.11 This takes us to the gravitational field between interpretatio slavica and interpretatio christiana. Another legend substantially developed by Helmold was that associated with the civitas Vineta.12 Vineta (Iumneta) was allegedly the biggest civitas in Europe and inhabited by pagans who were, however, extremely honest and kind-hearted. 7

Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae, ed. by Schmeidler. Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae, ed. by Schmeidler, ii.9, p. 67; Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.10, pp. 64, 66. 9 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.13, p. 72. 10 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.108, pp. 372 and 374. Cf. Rosik, Interpretacja chrześcijańska, pp. 238–48. 11 e.g. Gieysztor, Mitologia Słowian, pp. 90–105. 12 Rosik, ‘Wineta — utopia szlachetnych pogan’. 8

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Helmold’s intellectual horizon is reflected in the quotations that he included in his text. The most significant ones come, of course, from the Vulgate; but he also frequently quoted Adam of Bremen, whose Gesta was most likely available at Bosau. For his references to further ancient and medieval literature, Helmold probably relied on knowledge acquired during his studies. He makes explicit mention of only a single medieval literary work — the World Chronicle of Ekkehard of Aura (d. 1125).13 In any case, the Chronica Slavorum was not written in a place with easy access to literary collections, nor therefore also to literary borrowings. The fact that Helmold wrote his work on the edge of the Christian world makes his wide geographical horizon all the more interesting. It included the lands along the North Sea and the western Baltic, but his attention focused on his diocese of Starigard/Oldenburg, on his Slavania.14 He lived in contact with the Wagiri, but ‘his’ diocese included the Obotriti, Kicini, and Polabi as well.15 In modern terminology, these groups were ‘sub-tribes’ of the Abodrites. Regarding the broader context, Helmold monitored events in the empire and those connected with the papacy. He repeatedly mentions crusades to Jerusalem, as well as to Constantinople, Lisbon, and Santiago de Compostela. He knew that the area inhabited by Slavs (among whom he also included Hungarians, based on the purported similarity of their customs and languages) was large beyond imagination. The Chronica Slavorum contains eight references to Bosau, which in and of themselves do not prove Helmold’s emotional relationship with the place to which he forever remained tied.

A Society of Two Identities At the beginning of the ninth century, after the Saxon Wars, the limes Saxoniae between Saxons and Abodrites stabilized. Slavania was now in direct contact with the empire, a powerful neighbour whose further expansion northand eastwards began roughly one century later. In the 930s, it subjugated the Abodrites, whose ruler underwent baptism. The subjected tribe had to pay church tithes and tribute to the empire. One generation later, new bishoprics began to emerge. In 968–972, one was founded at Starigard, the main centre of the Wagrians (Wagiri). Whilst the sovereignty of the Abodrites was limited 13

Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.40, p. 166. Helmold’s focus on the relatively narrow regional framework was emphasized by the analysis Scior, Das Eigene und das Fremde. 15 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.18, p. 94. 14

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from the 930s onwards because they were subject to the power of the empire, their internal organization remained in the control of local rulers. From the middle of the tenth century onwards they were governed by rulers from the Nakonid dynasty, to whom Helmold refers as princeps, regulus, or even rex. A turning point in the history of the Abodrites was the so-called first ‘pagan reaction’. Until recently, its beginning was generally associated with the Liutizian revolt in 983, but subsequent analysis now dates it to the 1010s.16 The Abodrites returned to Christianity during the reign of Gottschalk (Godescalcus) in 1043–1066, but after his murder, the pendulum of power swung back to the ‘pagan side’. Rule was assumed by the pagan princeps Cruto, who most likely came from the Wagiri sub-tribe. Another change came after the death of Cruto in 1093, when the Abodrites began to be governed by Christian descendants of Gottschalk. Nevertheless, the restoration of the bishopric at Starigard/ Oldenburg took until the mid-twelfth century. This was followed by further missionary efforts, and it was in these that Helmold participated. Nakonid rule faced constant pressure from both domestic and external forces. Domestically, the dynasty was unable to suppress traditional society and its institutions. Assemblies of free men retained their power and pagan priests maintained their influence.17 When, for example, Gottschalk’s son Henry assumed government in the 1090s, he encountered the opposition of ‘universi Slavorum populi’. Traditional society had two related reasons for resistance — Henry’s support of Christianity and his alliance with the Saxons, which the Abodrites associated with their former tributary dependence.18 The power of traditional society is also shown by the situation in Oldenburg around 1150 during the episcopate of Vicelinus. The bishop’s seat lay in the territory which Rochel, a member of Cruto’s family, ruled as princeps terrae. According to Helmold, Rochel was a pagan and pirata maximus. The locals worshipped the god Prove; the rituals connected with his cult were conducted by the flamen Mike.19 The main external powers influencing the Abodrites’ affairs were their western neighbours, the dukes of Saxony and the emperors. In 1128, Emperor 16

Ruchhöft, ‘Sieben christliche Jahrzehnte?’. Frequently quoted reports on the decisive position of pagan priests concern the Rani (or Rugiani) tribe, but even there their position tends to be overestimated, cf. Wichert, ‘Die politische Rolle der heidnischen Priester’. For general characteristics of the position of a priest of the Rani tribe in the secular sphere, see Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, ii.108, p. 374, for more on the diplomatic role of the priest, i.38, p. 156. 18 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.34, pp. 142 and 144. 19 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.69, p. 246. 17

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Lothar III took the opportunity to sell the vacant throne of the Abodrites to the son of the king of Denmark, Kanutus Lawardus, who ruled the Abodrites from 1128 to 1131.20 After that, however, the Abodrite area was divided: Wagiri and Polabi were governed by Pribizlaus, the land of the Obodriti by Niclotus. Helmold characterizes both of these rulers as ‘duo truculentae bestiae’ (savage beasts) and enemies of Christians, stating that their rule led to a flourishing of pagan beliefs.21 The repeated shifts between pagan and Christian rulers imply a long-term stalemate between various factions in Helmold’s Slavania. It has already been emphasized above that the intricate history of the Polabian Slavs is evaluated here solely from the outside perspective, through our interpretations of the interpretations contained in such literary work as that of Helmold. In the following, three passages from Helmold’s Chronica that bear the imprint of the identity of the Polabian Slavs shall be discussed. — (1) At the end of the tenth century, there was allegedly a dispute in the family of Billug, regulus Obotritorum. When his daughter entered a convent, his son was worried that ‘this example might introduce a custom alien to those lands’. He accused his father of ‘not being afraid of violating the laws of their ancestors’.22 — (2) When Godescalcus was murdered in 1066, power was assumed by his son Buthue. The gens, however, rejected him, accusing him ‘as the son of a Christian father who was a friend of (Saxon) dukes, to be a traitor to liberty’.23 Helmold also added a reflection on the causes of this crisis. He blamed the greedy Saxons for having burdened Slavorum gentes with such taxes that ‘bitter deprivation made the Slavs defy Divine Laws and the subjugation by the dukes’.24 The same reason, the avarice of secular authorities, was given by Helmold for the Slavs’ apostasy as well.25 — (3) The speech that Pribizlaus, son of Niklot, supposedly gave in 1164, Helmold began with the following sentences: ‘Great violence, o 20

Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.49, p. 188. Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.52, p. 196. 22 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.13, p. 72: ‘timens etiam, ne hoc exemplo peregrinus mos illis in partibus inolesceret. Patrem autem frequenter coarguit, quasi qui mente alienatus supervacuas diligeret adinventiones nec timeret patriis derogare legibus’. 23 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.25, p. 110: ‘At tamen status Buthue semper erat infirmus nec ad plenum roborari potuit, eo quod Christiano parente natus et amicus principum apud gentem suam ut proditor libertatis haberetur’. 24 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.25, p. 112: ‘tantis vectigalium pensionibus gravaverunt ut divinis legibus et principum servituti refragari amara necessitate cogerentur’. 25 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.16, p. 84, i.18, pp. 92 and 94, i.21, pp. 102 and 104. 21

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you men, has been committed both against me and my people. We have been driven out of our homeland and deprived of the inheritance of our fathers’.26 These passages emphasize values typical of tribal societies — the laws of the ancestors, (gentile) freedom, and the close connection to one’s homeland and the heritage of one’s forefathers. At the time when Pribizlaus allegedly uttered this fictitious speech, however, the situation of the Abodrites was radically changing. A turning point in their history occurred in the second third of the twelfth century when Segeberg, the first imperial castle on Wagrian territory, was built on the order of Emperor Lothar III in 1134.27 In 1147, the so-called Wendish Crusade was directed against the Polabian Slavs (‘Wends’).28 Exhausted Abodrite society began to disappear under the influx of colonists — Helmold mentions ‘Flamingos et Hollandros, Saxones et Westfalos’.29 The former Slavania gradually lost its identity and its former territory became a part of the Holy Roman Empire.

Helmold’s Pagans The parish priest of Bosau paid considerable attention to the paganism of the Polabian Slavs.30 He describes them as pagans who repeatedly fell away from the faith and fiercely resisted missionary efforts. He wrote, for instance: ‘By nature, the Slavs are treacherous and prone to evil; therefore, one must beware of them’.31 At the same time, the pagans — generally speaking — awaited the lumen fidei, baptism, which would bring them salvation. Their characterization therefore also included positive aspects. Thus, Helmold wrote about the pagan Pruci that they were ‘people naturally endowed with many good qualities’.32 His 26

Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, ii.98, p. 340: ‘Magna, o viri, tam michi quam genti meae illata est violentia, qui expulsi sumus de terra nativitatis nostrae et privati sumus hereditate patrum nostrorum’. 27 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.53, pp. 198 and 200. 28 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.62, pp. 220 and 222. 29 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, ii.98, p. 342. 30 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, first of all in the Chapters i.52, pp. 196 and 198, i.84, pp. 288–98, ii.108, pp. 370–74, The label ‘Polabian Slavs’ or ‘Polabians’ is a modern creation by researchers, see e.g. Lübke, ‘Die Elbslawen — Polens Nachbarn im Westen’. 31 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.14, p. 76: ‘Slavorum animi naturaliter sint infidi et ad malum proni ideoque cavendi’. 32 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.1, p. 36: ‘Pruci (sunt) homines multis naturalibus bonis prediti’.

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Christian mission was fulfilled in the dramatically changing reality of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. An example is provided by the fate of Gottschalk as described by Helmold, who at this point is basing his account on Adam of Bremen. Gottschalk was raised in a monastery, but when his father was murdered in 1028, he renounced Christianity and cruelly killed Christians. He was captured and imprisoned as a ‘princeps latronum’ (prince of thieves). He then reconverted to Christianity, assumed government over the Abodrites and, according to Helmold, eagerly returned the gift of faith and the grace of Christianity to his people in Slavia. Since he had atoned for his previous deeds, he remained in the chronicler’s memory as ‘dignissimus Godescalcus’ (honourable Gottschalk).33 Helmold’s Chronicle is one of the few narrative sources for early Slavic mythology and religion, along with the works of Thietmar of Merseburg, Adam of Bremen, and Saxo Grammaticus. Research into Slavic paganism tends to follow one of two approaches. The first is comparative and focuses on the identification of common features found in the various sources with the aim of establishing a functional overall picture of Slavic mythology and religion. This research also draws on comparative studies on myth in general and is often heavily influenced by the work of G. Dumézil and his trifunctional hypothesis. Studies following this approach propose a comprehensive picture of a system that remained inaccessible to earlier scholars.34 The second approach taken by researchers of Slavic mythology proceeds in the opposite direction: instead of removing the particular historical context of the phenomena studied, it stresses its importance. This is the direction relevant for our analysis, because it outlines particular and therefore determining parts of the identity of individual segments of tribal society. In the following, we shall explore Helmold’s text from 1163–1172 in its specific context, that of a unique historical situation for the last European pagans. Tribal identity — like any historical category — underwent changes; even paganism itself was altered and differentiated. The repeated shifts from paganism to Christianity and back within a few generations cannot be ignored when exploring whether and to what degree the paganism of the Abodrites was influenced or stimulated by Christianity.35 It is also difficult to determine how the actual ‘pagan’ reality in Helmold’s area was affected by long-term missionary efforts. In addition, Helmold observed what was going on around him with the eyes of a Christian priest, interpreting and rendering it within a Christian discourse. 33

Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.19–21, pp. 96–104. The essential book with further mediating influence for this approach was Gieysztor, Mitologia Słowian, inspired by the work of G. Dumézil. 35 Lübke, ‘Christianity and Paganism’. 34

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Helmold writes that the life of his Slavic neighbours included ‘lucos atque penates’ (groves and household deities); at other times, he mentions ‘penates et ydola’ (household deities and idols). According to Helmold, oaths, necessary for the social system, were made at trees, fountains, and stones (‘iurare in arboribus, fontibus et lapidibus’).36 In medieval literature such cultic practices are connected not only with Slavs but also many other groups. Helmold himself claims that groves and springs were also worshipped by the pagan Pruci as well as the Saxon Nordalbingi; in the parish priest of Bosau’s opinion, the latter remained Christians only in name even three centuries after conversion.37 The cult sites, like the household deities, were among the usual characteristics of paganism, linking the reality with literary clichés. Helmold’s information essentially agrees, for instance, with what was claimed about ‘many villagers’ in Bohemia by Cosmas in his Chronica Boemorum: ‘some worship springs or fire, others idolize groves, trees or stones, still others make offerings to hills or mounds, others pray to deaf and dumb idols made by themselves and ask them to protect their houses as well as themselves’.38 One difference is probably indisputable. Whereas Cosmas wrote about ‘many villages’, Helmold’s information concerned not only the countryside but also central sites, such as strongholds. The phenomena mentioned were certainly much more widespread among Helmold’s Slavs than in Bohemia. Stopping the worship of natural sites and household idols was one of the main goals of Christianization from its beginnings, but most missionaries’ solution to this obstacle to conversion lay in a kind of long-term compromise. Sooner or later, many of these phenomena were eradicated, while others, in various modified forms, continued to form a part of everyday medieval, or even modern, life. Either way, this part of the cult was not connected with the existence of ‘pagan priests’ and did not form a serious obstacle to the Christianization process. In Helmold’s hierarchy, the sphere of penates et ydola ranked beneath a Slavic pantheon containing the ‘primi et precipui’ (first and foremost) gods worshipped by individual segments of tribal society: ‘Prove was the god of the land of Oldenburg, the goddess Siwa was worshipped by the Polabi, Radigast was the god of the land of the Obotriti, and Zuantevith the god of the land 36

Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.52, p. 196, i.84, pp. 288 and 296. Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.1, p. 36 and i.47, p. 182. 38 Cosmas, Chronica Boemorum, ed. by Bretholz, i.4, p. 10: ‘multi villani velut pagani, hic latices seu ignes colit, iste lucos et arbores aut lapides adorat, ille montibus sive collibus litat, alius, quae ipse fecit, idola surda et muta rogat et orat, ut domum suam et se ipsum regant’. 37

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of the Rugiani’.39 The deities had priests consecrated to them who performed sacrificial offerings. It may be inferred from the connection between particular gods and individual areas that the identity of each local group relied on its specific form of pagan belief. Helmold went into some detail regarding this differentiation of deities and cults: The Slavs have different methods of idolatry, because they cannot agree on one way of superstitions. Some of them exhibit statues of fabulous shapes in their temples, such as the idol in Plön, which is called Podaga, while other deities, like Prove, the god of Oldenburg, live in forests and groves and are not depicted. Numerous deities are carved with two or three or even more heads.40

Such differences were truly essential, because the issue of depicting or not depicting deities is related to the idea of their very existence. Other narrative sources also report the depiction of deities with multiple heads, and a number of polycephalic or polyfacial figures found at several archaeological sites would seem also to confirm Helmold’s account.41 According to Helmold, his Slavic neighbours did not deny that there was one God in Heaven: this was the God of gods, deus deorum, who supervised everything. He was in command over all other gods, but he only took care of unearthly things. He fundamentally differed from the Christian God by not intervening in earthly matters. The Slavic pantheon, in which individual tribal gods existed alongside the deus deorum, can be considered a henotheistic system. Nevertheless, not even all individual tribal deities were equal. A special position among them was held by ‘Zuantevith, deus terrae Rugianorum’. He was also worshipped by other tribes, who paid an annual tribute to his sanctuary. The alleged reason for this was the effectiveness of the prophecies given 39

Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.52, pp. 196 and 198: ‘Prove deus Aldenburgensis terrae, Siwa dea Polaborum, Radigast deus terrae Obotritorum; Zuantevith deus terrae Rugianorum’. 40 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.84, p. 288: ‘Est autem Slavis multiplex ydolatriae modus, non enim omnes in eandem supersticionis consuetudinem consentiunt. Hii enim simulachrorum ymaginarias formas pretendunt de templis, veluti Plunense ydolum, cui nomen Podaga, alii silvas vel lucos inhabitant, ut est Prove deus Aldenburg, quibus nullae sunt effigies expressae. Multos etiam duobus vel tribus vel eo amplius capitibus exsculpunt’. 41 The unique wooden statue reaching 178 cm, which represents a double male bust with two heads, dated to the eleventh–twelfth centuries, was found in Fischerinsel near Neubrandenburg, i.e. about 200 km from Bosau, in the area that then belonged to the Luticians. GringmuthDallmer and Hollnagel, ‘Jungslawische Siedlung mit Kultfiguren’, pp. 122–29; cf. Słupecki, Slavonic Pagan Sanctuaries, p. 205.

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at Zuantevith’s sanctuary. It is, however, also indisputable that the exceptional position of Zuantevith corresponded to the significant position held among the pagan Polabians by the Rugiani, Zuantevith’s ‘home tribe’. It has already been mentioned that, according to Helmold, the  land of Starigard/Oldenburg, inhabited by Wagrians, worshipped Prove deus. The centre of his cult was a sacred grove (nemus), of which Helmold left a unique, eyewitness account. In January 1156, he came there as a member of the retinue of Gerold, who, as a newly appointed bishop, was touring his diocese. According to Helmold’s account, when the bishop and his people entered a forest, they saw among the oldest trees ‘the sacred oaks devoted to the god of that land, called Prove. The oaks were encircled by a yard and a carefully built wooden fence with two gates’.42 The latter were heavily decorated. Bishop Gerold and his retinue had come to destroy this sanctuary. They broke the fence (according to Helmold, the bishop himself destroyed the gates), piled up the wood around the sacred trees, and set it on fire. Helmold admits that they were afraid, but no one disturbed them. It thus appears that the forest sanctuary was at some distance from the nearest settlement. Helmold also described the cult at the sacred grove of Prove deus. It had its own ‘priest’ (flamen)43 and was a site of festivities and rituals of offering. Once a month, courts were held in the grove at a meeting of ‘populus terre cum regulo et flamine’.44 Great importance has been attributed to Helmold’s account of the rules for accessing rituals in the nemus. According to Helmold, they were attended by only a sacerdos and those who wanted to offer a sacrifice, or were in mortal danger. Since this principle differs from the Christian liturgy, it is usually considered as a manifestation of the independence of Slavic pagan belief. The right to access for people in mortal danger was connected with the right to asylum, which they could seek there. The sacred grove was thus a site of religious, judicial, and political activity. Its two-part layout, suggested by Helmold’s mention of two gates, might have been a reflection of this: one gate 42

Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.84, pp. 288 and 290: ‘Illic inter vetustissimas arbores vidimus sacras quercus, quae dicatae fuerant deo terrae illius Proven, quas ambiebat atrium et sepes accuratior lignis constructa, continens duas portas’. See Słupecki, Slavonic Pagan Sanctuaries, pp. 160–61. 43 In another context, related to 1150, Helmold mentions the priest (flamen) Mike, who managed the cult of the god Prove, see Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.69, p. 246. 44 On the reinterpretation of Helmold’s information on frequency, see Modzelewski, ‘Omni secunda feria’.

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might have provided access to the atrium used for judicial and other gatherings, with the other leading to a closed area reserved for the sacerdos.45 For Bishop Gerold, the destruction of the sanctuary was a necessary prerequisite to Christianization; such interventions were usually among the first acts of missionaries anywhere. Nevertheless, the specific context of Gerold’s action deserves our attention. The forest sanctuary destroyed in 1156 was situated near Starigard/Oldenburg, the area’s main castle, which from around 970 onwards was the bishop’s seat, if for most of the time only nominally. However, despite Christianization efforts that had begun roughly 180 years earlier, in Helmold’s time life in the area around Starigard/Oldenburg continued to be influenced by the significant pagan institution of the sacred grove. The pagan sanctuaries of individual groups of Polabian Slavs differed in form. Although Helmold’s account of Bishop Gerold’s journey to the sacred grove suggests the existence of a simple cult yard, other regions had more elaborate wooden buildings for their cults. Helmold mentions a ‘templum magnum’ (great temple) in Rethre, where the Winuli tribe worshipped the god Redegast. Part of this cult was apparently a golden effigy of this deity. 46 The most detailed information in chronicles concerns the temple of the Rugiani tribe, which stood in Arkona, at the northern tip of Rügen Island. This temple, containing an immense treasure, was destroyed in 1168. This meant the end of Slavic paganism as a developed system.47 Research into pagan sanctuaries also draws heavily on archaeology, though the interpretation of many finds is still being debated.48 A unique archaeological example is the building excavated in Gross Raden, most recently dated to the 960s. However, this case, too, is much debated, with some scholars even rejecting the building’s identification as a sanctuary.49 45

Cf. Słupecki, ‘Sanctuaria w świecie natury’, p. 42. Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.2, p. 40. 47 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, ii.108, pp. 372 and 374. Based on the account provided by Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, ed. by Friis-Jensen, xiv.39, ii, pp. 1298 and 1300, the interior of this temple contained the sculpture of Svantevit, taller than a man, with four heads. 48 Schuldt, Gross Raden; see Słupecki, ‘Archaeological Sources and Written Sources’, pp. 343–46; Herrmann, ‘Ein Versuch zu Arkona’. 49 Kahl, ‘War Gross Raden wirklich ein slawischer Tempelort?’; Ruchhöft, Vom slawischen Stammesgebiet zur deutschen Vogtei, p. 125. The interpretation of the building in Gross Raden has become an important starting point for further interpretative steps, cf. e.g. the interpretation of excavations in Wrocław, Moździoch, ‘Oriens ex alto regnum Poloniae visitavit?’, pp. 433–37. 46

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The mosaic of information provided by Helmold’s Chronica Slavorum and other (Christian) narrative sources strongly implies that the pagan belief of his Slavic neighbours did not necessarily form a tightly closed system. In another important passage in his Chronicle, Helmold reports that in 1160 Niklot, regu­ lus Obodritorum, refused baptism. According to Helmold, Niklot instead made the following offer to Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria: ‘Let the God who is in heaven be your God, become our god and that will be enough for us. Worship Him and we will worship you’.50 It may be summarized that part of individual Slavic groups’ identity was to have their own distinct religious practices and deities. This is the reason why various forms of ‘paganism’ existed alongside one another. From the perspective of Helmold’s Slavs, Christianity could have formed part of this pluralism; it seems that they were easily able to include one more god in their henotheistic religion.51 This meant, however, that they did not perceive the Christian God as a universal God, but as a sort of tribal German deity. This idea inevitably collided with the missionaries’ beliefs due to Christianity’s inherent universality. In this crucial respect, it was fundamentally incompatible with Slavic paganism, though this might not have been comprehensible to Helmold’s Slavs. If one may ask a heretical question: Is it possible that contemporary attempts to reconstruct a unified early Slavic religious system (with a pantheon of deities, etc.) in a way represent the inversion of the Slavs’ failure to comprehend monotheism by failing to understand the plurality of pagan cultic practices?52 Concerning Helmold, our reading of his Chronica Slavorum definitely does not imply that the religion of the early Slavs was, or claimed to be, universal. Our question is not trying to deny that certain general principles might have been common to different Slavic areas, but it is intended to emphasize the importance of the differentiation in these principles’ application in different places or groups.

Visiting Barbarians Let us turn to a story that Helmold tells about Bishop Gerold’s journey to the Wagrians in January 1156. The bishop’s first service, held during a period of frost and snow, was attended by very few Slavs. After this failure, the bishop 50

Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.84, p. 292: ‘Sit Deus, qui in celis est, deus tuus, esto tu deus noster, et sufficit nobis. Excole tu illum, porro nos te excolemus’. 51 See Zaroff, ‘Perception of Christianity’, p. 83. 52 For example, Słupecki, Slavonic Pagan Sanctuaries, p. 229.

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and his retinue were invited to the house of Pribizlaus, one of the rulers who still remained unbaptized. The long journey was worth it; the host welcomed everyone with a table full of food. Here Helmold experienced for himself the hospitality of the Slavs of which he had previously only heard. His description is reminiscent of a modern handbook of anthropology: They are all very hospitable towards guests, so that no one needs to ask for hospitality. They generously distribute all that they obtain from the cultivation of the land or by fishing and hunting. They claim that the more wasteful they are, the more courageous they are as well. This desire for ostentation drives many of them to theft and looting. Yet crimes of this type are completely forgiven there, because they are excused by hospitality. If you follow the laws of the Slavs, you divide among your guests whatever you stole that night. Nevertheless, if it is discovered that someone — which is very rare — has not welcomed a stranger, it is permissible to burn his house and estates.53

This passage can be explained neither by the hospitable treatment Helmold received, nor by missionary clichés about good, unspoilt pagans. Helmold himself recorded the striking hospitality of the ‘pagans’ several times, and not only among members of the Slavic elites. He wrote that one of the already baptized Saxon tribes still followed traditional law and made a show of both their theft and their generosity.54 This tribe, particularly renowned for many outstanding good qualities, including hospitality and respect for their parents, were the Rani, who were also characterized by their stiff opposition to Christianity.55 Can the core of Helmold’s information be considered credible? Evidence of the hospitality of ‘pagans’ or ‘barbarians’ exists on an astonishing scale, geographically as well as chronologically. The spatial-temporal range of reports on the failure to exhibit hospitality leading to severe punishments, such as the burning of a house, is similarly surprising. The bibliography on this phenomenon would 53

Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.83, p. 286: ‘In colligendis enim hospitibus omnes quasi ex sententia alacres sunt, ut nec hospicium quenquam postulare necesse sit. Quidquid enim in agricultura, piscacionibus seu venacione conquirunt, totum in largitatis opus conferunt, eo fortiorem quemquam quo profusiorem iactitantes. Cuius ostentacionis affectacio multos eorum ad furta vel latrocinia propellit. Quae utique viciorum (genera) apud eos quidem venialia sunt, excusantur enim hospitalitatis palliacione. Slavorum enim legibus accendens, quo nocte furatus fueris, crastina hospitibus disperties. Si quis vero, quo rarissimum est, peregrinum hospicio removisse deprehensus fuerit, huius domum vel facultates incendio consumere licitum est’. 54 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.47, p. 182. 55 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, ii.108, p. 374.

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be extremely extensive. Along with Helmold, it would include Caesar, Tacitus, but also the story of James Cook, as well as Marcel Mauss’s Essai sur le don.56 Undoubtedly, this was one of the key aspects of the identity of Helmold’s Slavs, too, even bearing in mind the Chronica Slavorum’s literary characteristics.

A Long Way to Christianity We should return to the main topic of the Chronica Slavorum, the account of the Christianization efforts of the two bishops, Vicelinus and Gerold. Vicelinus came in Slaviam shortly after his ordination to the priesthood in 1126. The ruler of the Abodrites was then Henry, rex Slavorum (1093–1127), who had succeeded the pagan ruler Cruto. According to Helmold, at this time there stood only one church in the lands of the Luticians, Abodrites, and Wagrians, in the stronghold Alt Lübeck, where Henry and his court (familia) frequently stayed.57 In order to support and secure the Christian mission, Henry handed his church in Alt Lübeck over to Vicelinus and the two priests accompanying him.58 This suggests that the Christian faith remained a private issue of the ruler and his relatives. Helmold adds that there was a second church in Alt Lübeck by the 1120s, used by a settlement of Christian merchants.59 In 1148, Vicelinus began to administer the bishopric with its nominal seat in Starigard/ Oldenburg. The office had been vacant for sixty years and the bishop’s church had been destroyed.60 During Vicelinus’s episcopate (1148–1154) a ‘sanctuarium parvulum’ (small sanctuary) was built in Starigard/Oldenburg.61 This was clearly a wooden building, because we know that Vicelinus paid woodcutters for the construction.62 Bishop Gerold’s unsuccessful Mass followed by the audience with the local ruler recorded by Helmold in his description of Slavic hos56 After all, this phenomenon became one of the key pillars of the concept of barbarian Europe, in which Modzelewski, Barbarzyńska Europa, combined the Germanic and Slavic early medieval milieu. Synoptically on the hospitality of early Slavs, see Lübke, Fremde im östlichen Europa, mainly pp. 123–26. 57 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.35, p. 146, i.41, p. 168. 58 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.46, p. 180. 59 This church was also the dwelling of the two priests, see Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.48, p. 186. 60 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.18, p. 92. 61 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.83, p. 286. 62 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.69, p. 246.

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pitality was held here on 6 January 1156. Vicelinus finally established the base for his missionary activities neither in Starigard/Oldenburg nor Alt Lübeck, but in Bosau. He initially lived there ‘under a beech tree’; gradual building of dwellings and finally a church followed over time.63 The advent of Bishop Gerold (1156–1163) brought substantial changes, as Helmold reports: ‘A very dignified church was growing in Oldenburg. It was richly equipped with books, bells, and necessary items’. At Gerold’s instigation Saxons, whose ‘customs and language’ he knew, settled in Oldenburg. These radical changes to the population’s structure became a major force in the transformation of local conditions and essentially contributed to the end of the ‘Slavic’ stage of the area’s history.64 The Chronica Slavorum again and again reports only very modest results of the Christianization amongst those Slavs living in Helmold’s vicinity. Despite having been engaged in missionary work for a number of generations, the Church’s efforts failed to move beyond the initial changes of conversion. Helmold attributed this ‘frozen Christianization’ to ‘the hearts of the rulers […] not [being] inclined yet to tame the hearts of the rebels’.65 The faith in Christ remained a more or less private issue of some members of the elite. Henry, rex Slavorum, had his church in Alt Lübeck. Starigard/Oldenburg was the bishop’s seat, but the cult of Prove deus, related to the social mechanisms determining the life of the local Slavs, survived in the nearby sacred grove. For Christianization to develop from the inside of Slavic society, it would have had to be associated with early state formation. The universal principles of Christianity would have provided essential support for this process, but the latter had stalled just like Christianization. The ‘missionary church’ therefore could not develop into a ‘state church’. Helmold is an important reliable witness, but nevertheless our interpretations of his interpretations need to be verified. Archaeological evidence can provide a counterpart to the image of the Polabian Slavs’ Christianization as derived from the Chronica Slavorum. It relies on research into sacred buildings and burial practices. The number and appearance of sacred buildings were linked to the institutional development of the Church. Archaeological evidence comes above all from two central sites, Starigard/Oldenburg and Alt Lübeck. The first of these was described by Adam of Bremen as ‘civitas magna Sclavorum, qui Waigri dicuntur’ 63

Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.71, p. 252. Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.84, p. 296: ‘ecclesia honestissima in Aldenburg, libris et signis et ceteris utensilibus copiose adornata’. 65 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.69, p. 246: ‘languor fortissimus esset, et necdum inclinata essent corda principum ad edoomanda corda rebellium’. 64

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(a big castle of the Slavs who are called Waigri),66 and was at certain points also the seat of the ruler over all the Abodrites. Between the ninth and the early tenth centuries, large hall buildings stood there; their interpretation relies on comparisons with similar buildings at imperial palaces. Halls of this type were associated with rulers’ residences and used for important meetings, such as assemblies of leading warriors, and for the ruler’s reception of guests or supplicants in a majestic setting. The buildings from Starigard thus prove the rulers’ need to represent their power and to perform rituals that helped to stabilize it. One way in which they did so was imitatio imperii, the imitation of the imperial milieu. Finds at Starigard include equipment for mounted warriors, as well as luxurious glass and ceramic tableware imported from the empire. The demand for prestigious goods also necessitated their local imitation. We should emphasize that all of this happened in the ‘pagan period’ of Starigard, during which its society clearly began an acculturation process, accepting and incorporating new items into its own cultural system.67 The baptism of the ruler of the Abodrites in the early 930s signalled the beginning of Starigard’s Christian period, during which the bishopric was founded in 968–972. Fieldwork has identified an unusual wooden castle church, whose two stages of construction were identical to earlier princely halls. Both stages of the church’s construction have been dated to the tenth century; the earlier building measured 18 m × 6.5 m, the later 16 m × 6.2 m. Scholars tend to assume that the later building was the bishop’s church, though this is not certain. Nevertheless, the structure forms an important part of the central site at Starigard. As mentioned above, Helmold reports that a ‘tiny sanctuary’ was built in Starigard/Oldenburg during Vicelinus’s episcopate (1148–1154), but nothing is known about its appearance. At Alt Lübeck, too, excavations uncovered a church with two distinct stages of construction.68 The earlier stage was represented by a wooden cruciform building, 22 m long, which is usually dated to between 1060 and 1110. This church is likely to have belonged to the residence of Henry, rex Slavorum (1093–1127), who, according to Helmold, gave it to Vicelinus. At some point in the first half of the twelfth century, the wooden structure was replaced by an oblong stone building with a nave 12.1 m long and 7.5 m wide and an apse. Whilst the exact dating and identifications of the sacred buildings in Starigard/Oldenburg and Alt Lübeck remain subject to discussion, these were clearly simple structures — much more modest than the buildings 66 67 68

Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae, ed. by Schmeidler, ii.21, p. 76. From the already extensive literature, see at least the initial study Gabriel, ‘Imitatio imperii’. Müller-Wille, ‘Mittelalterliche Grabfunde’; Gläser, ‘Die Kirchen von Alt Lübeck’.

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known from the leading Přemyslid and Piast centres.69 This difference mirrors the differences in the regions’ respective social and economic potential. Both buildings in Starigard/Oldenburg are associated with inhumations, which concentrated south of the earlier building, but in the second stage also appeared in the interior. The graves contained members of the Abodrite elite. Two burials included ostentatious objects, one a sword, the other a spear.70 Burials with similar grave goods have also been found at Alt Lübeck in the church associated with Henry, rex Slavorum (1093–1127). These inhumations probably imply the efforts of the Wagrarian elite to secure their exceptional position by burying their dead relatives with spectacular ritual performed in front of the whole community. Similar practices are known from numerous places throughout early Europe, often dating to periods of transition, when elites felt the need to demonstrate and affirm their exclusive position in a newly developing social structure. Burials inside churches, which became a particularly distinctive part of this broader trend, confirm the close connection between these stabilizing efforts and Christianity.71 Particular attention should be paid to the chronology of the richly furnished inhumations at Starigard and Alt Lübeck — compared to such burials in those West Slavic regions that underwent a successful state formation process, they date to a relatively broad time span from the tenth to the eleventh or even twelfth centuries.72 An important phenomenon spreading throughout early medieval Europe was the abandonment of cremation in favour of inhumation. Most researchers now agree that in the areas immediately east of the Frankish and Ottonian Empires, including those of Helmold’s Slavs, the practice of inhumation was associated with Christianity. The key question therefore concerns the character of this connection, which might have been either direct or indirect. The starting point for discussions are elite burials, in our case in Starigard/Oldenburg — the early elite determined the identity of the respective social segments and the behaviour of the elite also influenced their burial practices. There are two possible explanations for early inhumations located outside the context of sacred buildings. Some researchers interpret even the earliest 69

Synoptically Biermann, ‘Slawenzeitliche Kirchen’. Gabriel and Kempke, Starigard/Oldenburg. 71 We should at least mention the inhumation burials of a very high status that come from eastern Mecklenburg and Pomerania and are dated to the late eleventh–twelfth centuries, see Biermann, ‘Medieval Élite Burials’. 72 Compare e.g. Schulze-Dörrlamm, ‘Bestattungen in den Kirchen Grossmährens und Böhmens’. 70

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of them as proof of Christian conversion. Others, however, propose that the initial spread of inhumation depended on the behaviour of the elite and that therefore this change in burial custom could also have been introduced into a still ‘pagan’ cultural context. If the latter is true, then the connection with Christianity would have been entirely indirect.73 Recent archaeological finds of large assemblages and the resulting improvements in their relative dating have substantially expanded the evidence base for addressing these questions.74 The archaeological evidence reveals two distinct areas in the coastal region between the Elbe and Oder Rivers in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Whereas all known burials from this period in the western (Abodrite) area are inhumations, cremation continued in the eastern (Veletian) region. This phenomenon has been interpreted in two ways, depending on scholars’ interpretations of the available written sources. Those who regard eleventh- and twelfth-century inhumations as evidence of an early Christianization of the Abodrites rely on information provided by Adam of Bremen in the second half of the eleventh century. According to Adam, in the times of the first bishops in Oldenburg (i.e. in the 970s and 980s), ‘all over Slavania, churches were built, even numerous monasteries and convents full of servants of God were established’. Supposedly only three of the eighteen regions into which Slavania was divided had not been converted to Christianity.75 An important indicator of more substantial changes should also be seen in the extension of the first stage of the Abodrites’ Christianization from five to seven decades.76 However, this line of argument is not convincing, because Adam of Bremen’s account of the beginnings of Christianization in the area is highly generalized and idealized, and nothing arises from the mere extension of the initial Christianization stage either. The available archaeological and documentary data paint a picture of long-term ‘frozen Christianization’. It seems more likely that the initial spread of inhumation was the result of the elite’s imitation of prestigious imperial practices, which became important for collective identity as well. Therefore, inhumations could have become a part of the still ‘pagan’ 73

ences. 74

For a synoptic explanation, see Štefan, ‘Změna pohřebního ritu’, including further refer-

See mainly Pollex, Glaubensvorstellungen im Wandel. Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae, ed.  by Schmeidler, ii.26, p.  86: ‘Ecclesiae in Sclavania ubique erectae sunt; monasteria etiam virorum ac mulierum Deo servientium constructa sunt plurima’. The same information is repeated by Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.14, p. 78, also i.20, p. 100. 76 Ruchhöft, ‘Sieben christliche Jahrzehnte?’. 75

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culture. Such an interpretation of burial practices depending on social status and prestige rather than religious factors also seems supported by the fact that there is no indication that the Abodrites returned to cremating their dead in times of ‘pagan reaction’. It therefore seems that, within a relatively short time, inhumations became a religiously neutral component of the Abodrites’ cultural system. The spread of inhumations among the Abodrites in principle did not differ from what has been observed among Western Slavs. In each area, the custom of inhumation was adopted within a relatively short time, and its spread beyond the elites seems unrelated to any influence of the Christian Church. The efforts to distinguish between ‘pagan’ and ‘Christian’ inhumations have again and again encountered insurmountable difficulties. The decisive criterion for a grave’s identification as Christian is not the burial custom, but its location in consecrated ground, which, however, cannot be deduced from the archaeological evidence.77

The Social Structure of Helmold’s Slavs and its Collapse Based on Helmold, the Oldenburg diocese included the Obotriti, Kicini, Polabi, Wagiri.78 At another point, he writes that ‘Henry, who was referred to as the king’ (c. 1093–1127), conquered the Rani, Wagiri, Polabi, Obodriti, Kycini, Cyrcipani, Lutici, and Pomerani.79 According to modern terminology, these were ‘sub-tribes’, whose integration resulted in ‘large tribes’. For example, the Wagiri, Polabi, and Obodriti formed a ‘large tribe’ called the Abodrites, whereas the ‘large tribe’ Wilzi sive Lutici (Veletians or Luticians) included four subtribes, comprising i.a. the Kycini and Circipani.80 Slavic society as described by Helmold therefore seems to have been highly fragmented, divided into more or less equal parts and with individual segments (i.e. sub-tribes) having their own rulers. As already mentioned above, when the ‘large tribe’ of the Abodrites was divided into two parts in the 1130s, the areas of the Wagiri and Polabi were governed by Pribizlaus, the territory of the actual Abodrites by Niclotus. Until the twelfth century, the ‘sub-tribes’ were thus preserved as units that did not 77 e.g. Pollex, ‘Der Übergang zur Körperbestattung bei den Nordwestslawen’; Dulinicz, ‘Pagane und christliche Körpergräber’. Relevant criteria definitely do not include the presence or absence of grave furnishings; cf. already Graus, Volk, Herrscher und Heiliger, pp. 177–78. 78 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.18, p. 94, also i.88, p. 312. 79 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.36, p. 150. 80 Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.2, pp. 40 and 42.

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lose their identity even after their long-term incorporation into the ‘large tribe’ despite the fact that the destruction of tribal systems was one of the essential steps already at the beginnings of the state formation process. Helmold’s Chronicle contains much information on Slavic rulers, but hardly anything on other members of the elite. An exception is the mention of a powerful man named Thessemar, who in 1156 invited and spectacularly hosted Bishop Gerold and his retinue after they destroyed the sacred grove of Prove deus as mentioned above. We may add that Thessemar’s guests noticed that their host held Christian captives brought from Denmark, including a priest, in his entourage. Helmold admits that ‘neither the bishop’s power nor his pleas could help them’.81 The visit to Thessemar is thus one of the numerous examples showing that Christianization in the Oldenburg diocese had stagnated. The way out of such a fragmented system of various ‘sub-tribes’ would have lain in the expansion of some of the segments in order to gain control over others and subjugate them. Historians and anthropologists have repeatedly shown that the development from such a segmented arrangement to a more centralized polity often involved the expansion of one subgroup, which establishes its hegemony by force. This expansion was, however, the essential precursor to the initial formation of an early state. Helmold’s text mentions bigger tribes, or unions of tribes in which stronger groups exerted power over weaker ones. According to Helmold’s text, rulers represented these units externally, and their role increased significantly in wartime. A substantial part of power, however, was still retained by assemblies of free men. The key question of early state formation was whether it was possible to break the tribal system and establish the central institutions of an early state with centralized power, relying on fortified centres. In the European context, such early states only appear in connection with Christianity. Let us end with a brief comparison of the situation described in Helmold’s Chronica Slavorum with that in the Bohemian Basin in order to bring the developments in both areas into sharper relief; the stagnation of the processes of early state formation and Christianization amongst the Abodrites allows us to identify key aspects of the same processes in Bohemia. The starting point is the characterization of tribal society. Since the 1980s, Czech Medieval Studies have been dominated by the theory of Dušan Třeštík, according to 81

Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. by Stoob, i.84, p. 290: ‘Aspeximus illic sacerdotes Domini captivitatis diutina detentione maceratos, quibus episcopus nec vi nec prece subvenire poterat’.

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which the land of Bohemia in the ninth century was inhabited by a single gens Boemanorum,82 which, however, was divided into separate groups controlled by duces. Competition between these groups was an important stimulus for the development of social complexity. Whereas the situations in Bohemia and in the area of the Abodrites were thus rather similar in the ninth century, in the tenth century the two regions’ paths diverged sharply.83 In Bohemia, the tribal system disappeared and was replaced by the power structure of an early state. By contrast, among the Abodrites the differentiation into separate groups stabilized, and these ‘sub-tribal’ units retained their importance until the twelfth century. Their pagan religion was part of their identity and for that reason underwent substantial developments in the final period of the Polabian Slavs’ independent existence. Whilst the beginnings of the Christianization of the Abodrites and of the population of the Bohemian Basin did not differ much, essential differences had nevertheless appeared already before the end of the tenth century, because the Abodrites were not able to create a relatively independent religious organization. It can be inferred from Helmold’s text that one of the causes of the new religion’s collapse was the lack of elites (both secular and ecclesiastical) who would have actively identified with the early process of state formation. One of the underlying causes of this situation was definitely the proximity of the empire, which intervened in the history of the Abodrites and, with varying success, prevented conflicts in its immediate neighbourhood. The interaction between several interrelated factors led to an inevitable social collapse. Already before the end of the tenth century, Abodrite society found itself in a situation of ‘frozen’ early state formation and Christianization, from which it could not escape. Helmold, the parish priest of Bosau, provides a unique testimony to the end of frozen state formation.84

82

Třeštík, ‘České kmeny’. Synoptically Graus, Die Nationenbildung, pp. 192–200; the theory of Třeštík is discussed for example by Kalhous, ‘Mittelpunkte der Herrschaft und Cosmas von Prag’. 83 On the Abodrites’ history of the tenth century see Friedmann, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des abodritischen Fürstentums. 84 Translated by Kateřina Millerová.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, ed. by Bernhard Schmeidler, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1917) Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Boemorum, ed. by Bertold Bretholz, Die Chronik der Böhmen des Cosmas von Prag, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, Nova series II (Berlin: Weidmann, 1923) Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed.  by Heinz Stoob, Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters, 19 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973) Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, ed. by Karsten Friis-Jensen and trans. by Peter Fisher, The History of the Danes, ii (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)

Secondary Studies85 Biermann, Felix, ‘Medieval Élite Burials in Eastern Mecklenburg and Pomerania’, Antiquity, 82 (2008), 87–98 ——  , ‘Slawenzeitliche Kirchen im nordostdeutschen Gebiet’, in Frühmittelalterliche Kirchen als archäologische und historische Quelle, ed.  by Lumír Poláček and Jana Maříková-Kubková, Internationale Tagungen in Mikulčice, 8 (Brno: Archäologisches Institut AV ČR Brno, 2010), pp. 331–43 Dulinicz, Marek, ‘Pagane und christliche Körpergräber — ein Vergleich in ausgewählten westslawischen Siedlungsgebieten’, in Der Wandel um 1000, ed.  by Felix Biermann, Thomas Kersting, and Anne Klammt, Beiträge zur Ur- und Frühgeschichte Mitteleuropas, 60 (Langenweissbach: Beier & Beran, 2011), pp. 249–55 Fraesdorff, David, Der barbarische Norden: Vorstellungen und Fremdkategorien bei Rimbert, Thietmar von Merseburg, Adam von Bremen und Helmold von Bosau (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2005) Friedmann, Bernhard, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des abodritischen Fürstentums bis zum Ende des 10. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1986) Fritze, Wolfgang H., ‘Probleme der abodritischen Stammes- und Reichsverfassung und ihre Entwicklung vom Stammesstaat zum Herrschaftsstaat’, in Siedlung und Verfassung der Slaven zwischen Elbe, Saale und Oder, ed. by Herbert Ludat (Giessen: Schmitz, 1960), pp. 141–219 Gabriel, Ingo, ‘“Imitatio imperii” am slawischen Fürstenhof zu Starigard/Oldenburg (Holstein): Zur Bedeutung karolingischer Königspfalzen für den Aufstieg einer “civitas magna Slavorum”’, Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt, 16 (1986), 357–67 85

All relevant secondary studies have been included until 2021.

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Gabriel, Ingo, and Torsten Kempke, Starigard/Oldenburg: Hauptburg der Slawen in Wagrien, vi: Die Grabfunde: Einführung und archäologisches Material, Offa-Bücher, 85 (Neumünster: Wachholtz, 2011) Gieysztor, Alexander, Mitologia Słowian (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa artystyczne i filmowe, 1982) Gläser, Manfred, ‘Die Kirchen von Alt Lübeck’, in Pfarrkirchen in den Städten des Hanseraums, ed.  by Felix Biermann, Manfred Schneider, and Thomas Terberger, Archäologie und Geschichte im Ostseeraum, 1 (Rahden: Leidorf, 2006), pp. 13–19 Graus, František, Volk, Herrscher und Heiliger im Reich der Merowinger: Studien zur Hagiographie der Merowingerzeit (Prague: Nakladatelství Československé akademie věd, 1965) —— , Die Nationenbildung der Westslawen im Mittelalter (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1980) Gringmuth-Dallmer, Eike, and Adolf Hollnagel, ‘Jungslawische Siedlung mit Kultfiguren auf der Fischerinsel bei Neubrandenburg’, Zeitschrift für Archäologie, 5  (1971), 102–33 Herrmann, Joachim, ‘Ein Versuch zu Arkona: Tempel und Tempelrekonstruktionen nach schriftlicher Überlieferung und nach Ausgrabungsbefunden im nordwestslawischen Gebiet’, Ausgrabungen und Funde, 38 (1993), 136–44 Kahl, Hans-Dietrich, ‘War Gross Raden wirklich ein “slawischer Tempelort”?’, in HansDietrich Kahl, Heidenfrage und Slawenfrage im deutschen Mittelalter: Ausgewählte Studien 1953–2008 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 167–80 Kalhous, David, ‘Mittelpunkte der Herrschaft und Cosmas von Prag: Zum Charakter der Macht des frühmittelalterlichen Fürsten’, in Frühgeschichtliche Zentralorte in Mitteleuropa, ed. by Jiří Macháček and Šimon Ungermann, Studien zur Archäologie Europas, 14 (Bonn: Habelt, 2011), pp. 669–89 Klápště, Jan, Tomáš Klír, and Ivo Štefan (eds.), Krajina středověké Prahy (Prague: Academia, in print) Lübke, Christian, ‘Die Elbslawen — Polens Nachbarn im Westen’, in The Neighbours of Poland in the 10th Century, ed. by Przemysław Urbańczyk (Warsaw: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences, 2000), pp. 61–77 ——  , Fremde im östlichen Europa: Von Gesellschaften ohne Staat zu verstaatlichen Gesellschaften (9.–11. Jahrhundert) (Cologne: Böhlau, 2001) —— , ‘Christianity and Paganism as Elements of Gentile Identities to the East of the Elbe and Saale Rivers’, in Franks, Northmen, and Slavs: Identities and State Formation in Early Medieval Europe, ed.  by Ildar  H. Garipzanov, Patrick Geary, and Przemysław Urbańczyk, Cursor mundi, 5 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), pp. 189–203 Modzelewski, Karol, ‘Omni secunda feria: Księżycowe roki i nieporozumienia wokół Helmolda’, in Słowiańszczyzna w Europie średniowiecznej, i, ed. by Zofia Kurnatowska (Wrocław: Instytut Archeologii i Etnologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1996), pp. 83–88 —— , Barbarzyńska Europa (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo ISKRY, 2004) Moździoch, Sławomir, ‘Oriens ex alto regnum Poloniae visitavit? Christianisierung Polens unter den ersten Piasten im Lichte archäologischer Quellen’, in Středověká Evropa v  pohybu, ed.  by Ivana Boháčová and Petr Sommer (Prague: Archeologický ústav AV ČR, 2014), pp. 419–47

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Müller-Wille, Michael, ‘Mittelalterliche Grabfunde aus der Kirche des slawischen Burg walles von Alt Lübeck: Zu dynastischen Grablegen in polnischen und abodritischen Herrschaftsgebieten’, in Michael Müller-Wille, Zwischen Starigard/Oldenburg und Novgorod: Beiträge zur Archäologie west­ und ostslawischer Gebiete im frühen Mittelalter, Studien zur Siedlungsgeschichte und Archäologie der Ostseegebiete, 10 (Neumünster: Wachholtz, 2011) Pollex, Axel, ‘Der Übergang zur Körperbestattung bei den Nordwestslawen: Überlegungen zu Form und Verlauf der Christianisierung zwischen Elbe, Oder und Havelseenplatte’, Zeitschrift für Archäologie des Mittelalters, 32 (2004), 97–118 ——  , Glaubensvorstellungen im Wandel: Eine archäologische Analyse der Körpergräber des 10. bis 13. Jahrhunderts im nordwestslawischen Raum, Berliner archäologische Forschungen, 6 (Rahden: Leidorf, 2010) Rosik, Stanisław, Interpretacja chrześcijańska religii pogańskich Słowian w świetle kronik niemieckich XI–XII wieku (Thietmar, Adam z Bremy, Helmold) (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2000) —— , ‘Wineta — utopia szlachetnych pogan (znaczenie legendy w Helmolda “Kronice Slowian”)’, Slavia antiqua, 42 (2001), 113–22 Ruchhöft, Fred, Vom slawischen Stammesgebiet zur deutschen Vogtei: Die Entwicklung der Territorien in Ostholstein, Lauenburg, Mecklenburg und Vorpommern im Mittelalter, Archäologie und Geschichte im Ostseeraum, 4 (Berlin: Leidorf, 2008) —— , ‘Sieben christliche Jahrzehnte? Spuren christlicher Kultur bei den nordwestlichen Slawen im 10. und 11. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift für Archäologie des Mittelalters, 39 (2011), 173–87 Schuldt, Ewald, Gross Raden: Ein slawischer Tempelort des 9./10. Jahrhunderts in Mecklenburg (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1985) Schulze-Dörrlamm, Mechthild, ‘Bestattungen in den Kirchen Grossmährens und Böhmens während des 9. und 10. Jahrhunderts’, Jahrbuch des Römisch­Germanisches Zentralmuseums Mainz, 40 (1993/95), 557–620 Scior, Volker, Das Eigene und das Fremde: Identität und Fremdheit in den Chroniken Adams von Bremen, Helmolds von Bosau und Arnolds von Lübeck, Orbis mediaevalis: Vorstellungswelten des Mittelalters, 4 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002) Słupecki, Leszek P., Slavonic Pagan Sanctuaries (Warsaw: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology Polish Academy of Sciences, 1994) ——  , ‘Archaeological Sources and Written Sources in Studying Symbolic Culture (Exemplified by Research on the Pre-Christian Religion of the Slavs)’, in Dialogue with the Data: The Archaeology of Complex Societies and its Context in the ‘90s; Theory and Practice of Archaeological Research, iii, ed. by Stanisław Tabaczyński (Warsaw: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences, 1998), pp. 337–66 ——  , ‘Sanctuaria w świecie natury u Słowian i Germanów: Święte gaje i ich bogowie’, in Człowiek, sacrum, środowisko: Miejsca kultu we wczesnym średniowieczu; Spotkania Bytomskie IV, ed. by Sławomir Moździoch (Wrocław: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences, 2000), pp. 39–47 Štefan, Ivo, ‘Změna pohřebního ritu v  raném středověku jako archeologický a kulturněantropologický problém’ (The Change in Burial Rites in the Early Middle Ages as an Issue for Archaeology and Cultural Anthropology), Archeologické rozhledy, 59 (2007), 805–36

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Stieldorf, Andrea, Marken und Markgrafen: Studien zur Grenzsicherung durch die fränkisch­deutschen Herrscher (Hanover: Hahn, 2012) Třeštík, Dušan, ‘České kmeny: Historie a skutečnost jedné koncepce’, Studia mediaevalia Pragensia, 1 (1988), 129–43 Wichert, Sven, ‘Die politische Rolle der heidnischen Priester bei den Westslawen’, Studia mythologica slavica, 13 (2010), 33–42 Wolverton, Lisa, Cosmas of Prague: Narrative, Classicism, Politics (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2014) Zaroff, Roman, ‘Perception of Christianity by the Pagan Polabian Slavs’, Studia mytho­ logica Slavica, 4 (2001), 81–96

Creating Dynastic Identity: Gallus Anonymus’s Chronicle Zbigniew Dalewski

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rince Bolesław III Wrymouth of Poland in probably 1111 treacherously recalled his older stepbrother Zbigniew from exile and then blinded him. This brutal action, taken by the prince against his brother, was the final act of a long succession dispute between them that had commenced in the early twelfth century after the death of their father, Prince Władysław Herman, in 1102. According to a decision made by Władysław Herman before his death, his sons were to divide the country between themselves and together wield rule over Poland. However, from the very beginning their relations were full of tensions and very soon open war broke out. Bolesław defeated Zbigniew, probably in 1106, depriving him of part of his possessions and forced him to accept his suzerainty. Yet, this state of affairs did not last long. A few years later, Bolesław decided to expel Zbigniew from the country and took all power for himself. In 1109 Zbigniew made an attempt to regain power with the help of Emperor Henry  V, but this action met with no success. As mentioned above, in 1111 Bolesław decided to solve the problem of his brother’s pretensions once and for all and blinded him.1 Almost everything that we know about the events which took place in Poland after Władysław Herman’s death comes from a narrative written by an 1

See e.g. Maleczyński, Bolesław III Krzywousty, pp. 32–58; Rosik, Bolesław Krzywousty, pp. 87–153. Zbigniew Dalewski is professor at the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000–1300, ed. by Walter Pohl, Veronika Wieser, and Francesco Borri, celama 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp.  231–249 FHG 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.130260

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anonymous author.2 He is commonly referred to as Gallus, following a tradition grounded in the sixteenth century.3 However, we are not able to say who this anonymous author was, other than that he was not a Pole and that he was probably a monk. In the dedicatory letter addressed to the Polish clergy at the beginning of Book iii of Gallus’s Chronicle, its author described himself as an exile and a sojourner who was writing his work in order to express his gratitude to Poland, whose bread he had eaten, and he expressed the hope that, after the completion of his work, he would be able to return to the place of his profession.4 However, the various attempts made by historians to identify where he had come from have not yet led to conclusive findings and remain more or less strongly grounded hypotheses.5 An argument linking the anonymous author with Provence, and especially with the monastery of Saint-Gilles, has long enjoyed the greatest recognition and still seems to be the most accepted.6 However, there is also no lack of arguments in favour of his possible connections with Flanders,7 while other opinions seem in turn to point to his possible links with Venice.8 Based on stylistic similarities and on the approach to structuring the narration, attempts have recently been made to attribute to Gallus — in addition to the above-mentioned chronicle — authorship of the anonymous translatio of St Nicholas, compiled at the monastery of Saint-Nicholas on the Lido, and to connect the author of both texts with Dalmatia, and especially with Zadar.9 On the other hand, in view of the resemblance between the rhythmical prose used by Gallus and the contemporary writing style used in central France in the region of Tours and Orléans, it is also 2

Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński. He was first identified by this name by the sixteenth-century Polish historian Marcin Kromer, who placed on one of the manuscripts of the Chronicle the following short annotation: ‘Gallus hanc historiam scripsit, monachus, opinor, aliquis, ut ex proemiis coniicere licet, qui Boleslai tercii tempore vixit’ (Gallus wrote this history, probably a monk, who lived in the days of Bolesław III, as one may conclude from the forewords): Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, p. 1; Eng. trans. by Knoll and Schaer, p. xxv; see also David, Les Sources de l’histoire de Pologne, p. 49; Plezia, Kronika Galla na tle historiografii XII wieku, p. 13. 4 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, iii. Ep., p. 120. 5 See recently Mühle, ‘Cronicae et gesta ducum sive principum Polonorum’, pp. 464–75. 6 David, Les Sources de l’histoire de Pologne, p. 47; Plezia, Kronika Galla na tle historiografii XII wieku, p. 180. 7 Maleczyński, ‘Wstęp’, in Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, p. lxxxix; see also Fried, ‘Gnesen — Aachen — Rom’, pp. 267–69. 8 Borawska, ‘Gallus Anonim czy Italus Anonim’, pp. 111–19. 9 Jasiński, O pochodzeniu Galla Anonima. 3

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possible that he was educated there.10 Moreover, the information concerning the Hungarian affairs included in Gallus’s work and his presumed knowledge of contemporary Hungarian sources, seem to indicate that the anonymous author may also have spent some time in Hungary, probably at the Benedictine monastery in Somogyvár, a daughter house of Saint-Gilles Abbey.11 There are also assumptions linking Gallus with Germany12 and even identifying him with Bishop Otto of Bamberg.13 Likewise, we are not able to say with certainty when Gallus came to Poland. As a result, we do not know whether he was in Poland at the time of the dramatic events associated with the dispute between the sons of Władysław Herman described in the Chronicle. Quite possibly, however, he arrived in Poland only after Bolesław Wrymouth’s final quashing of his older brother. It seems very likely that Gallus came to Poland in Bolesław’s entourage during the latter’s return from his penitential pilgrimage to Hungary, made after his bloody crackdown on Zbigniew, probably in 1112. However, one cannot, of course, exclude the possibility of Gallus’s earlier arrival in Poland.14 Regardless of the ambiguities concerning the identity of Gallus, the problems with specifying the milieu from which he may have originated, and the difficulties in defining the time and circumstances of his arrival in Poland, it is nonetheless clear that he wrote his Chronicle just a few years after Zbigniew’s blinding. The dedicatory letter of Book i of the Chronicle, where the author mentions the names of all the Polish bishops — Archbishop Marcin of Gniezno and Bishops Szymon of Płock, Paweł of Poznań, Maurus of Kraków, and Żyrosław of Wrocław — allows us to date the time of the composition of his work precisely to the years 1112–1118; the earlier date is the year when Żyrosław assumed the episcopate, and the later one is the year of Maurus’s death. 15 There is also much in favour of the view that our anonymous author was closely connected to the circles supporting Bolesław in the fight against his 10

Plezia, ‘Nowe studia nad Gallem Anonimem’, pp. 111–20. Plezia, Kronika Galla na tle historiografii XII wieku, pp. 149–78; Bagi, Królowie węgierscy w Kronice Galla Anonima. 12 Wenta, Kronika tzw. Galla Anonima. 13 Fried, ‘Kam der Gallus Anonymus aus Bamberg?’, pp. 497–545. 14 David, Les Sources de l’histoire de Pologne, p. 47; Plezia, Kronika Galla na tle historiografii XII wieku, p. 180. 15 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i. Ep., p. 1 (trans. by Knoll and Schaer, p. 3); see e.g. Plezia, Kronika Galla na tle historiografii XII wieku, p. 136 and pp. 182–95; Kersken, Geschichtsschreibung im Europa der ‘nationes’, pp. 491–99. 11

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brother. The chronicler’s remarks, made in the dedicatory letters to Books i and ii, about the important role supposedly played in the Chronicle’s creation by the prince’s chancellor, Michał, should not be treated as merely a topos or an effort by Gallus to flatter and obtain favour from an important dignitary. Rather, it seems that Chancellor Michał — whom Gallus calls ‘his helper’ and a ‘maker of the task embarked upon’16 — not only helped the chronicler (unfamiliar with Poland) in the gathering of information, indispensable for his work, but that in addition he could have significantly affected the shape of the resulting chronicle.17 Nor should the possibility be excluded that the composition of Gallus’s work was directly connected with efforts undertaken at the princely court in the face of tensions caused by Bolesław’s brutal action against Zbigniew. There is no doubt that Bolesław’s bloody crackdown on his brother met with a negative reaction from at least a part of political and ecclesiastical elites of the Piast monarchy. The public penance the prince had to perform after standing up against Zbigniew clearly shows that public opinion, in part, must have perceived Bolesław’s behaviour toward his brother as sinful, and that it had evoked serious reservations. There is also no doubt that Bolesław’s public humiliation in the rite of penance, in which the prince, clothed in sackcloth and barefoot, had to confess his wrongdoings against his brother and ask for forgiveness for them, seriously undermined his authority and weakened his princely position. It is not, therefore, surprising that in these circumstances attempts were made by Bolesław’s entourage aimed at solidifying the prince’s position, restoring his authority, justifying his policy toward his brother, and presenting him as the only rightful ruler. It is plausible to think that the narrative written by our anonymous author finds its place among the various activities undertaken by Bolesław’s supporters in order to overcome the crisis resulting from the treacherous blinding of Zbigniew, and it can be interpreted as an attempt at appropriating the remembrance of the brotherly conflict by them as well as promulgating and preserving a version of these events postulated by the princely court. As a result, in Gallus’s presentation Bolesław’s penance seems to lose its humiliating nature and is instead reshaped into a great spectacle demonstrating the prince’s Christian virtues and his abilities to wield power as a true Christian 16

Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i. Ep., p. 1 ‘cooperatorii suo venerabili cancellario Michaeli, cepitque laboris opifici’ (trans. by Knoll and Schaer, p. 3: ‘to his helper the venerable chancellor Michael, the maker of the task embarked upon’). See also: Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, ii. Ep., p. 60; trans. by Knoll and Schaer, p. 111. 17 Plezia, Kronika Galla na tle historiografii XII w., pp. 182–95. Cf. Wiszewski, Domus Bolezlai, pp. 141–43.

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ruler. Gallus does not conceal the fact that Bolesław performed penance and had to give satisfaction to his brother, but at the same time he seems to suggest that the prince’s self-denial and sufferings associated with his penance took the form of a ceremony that led the ruler through his Christomimetic humility to the greatest glory.18 Likewise, when describing the events accompanying the earlier phases of dispute between Władysław Herman’s sons, the chronicler does not hide his biases.19 He has no doubts who was right in this conflict and who was guilty. He presents Bolesław as the sole rightful ruler: the latter was the only legitimate son of Władysław Herman, born from the prince’s marriage with Judith, a daughter of King Vratislaw II of Bohemia, and the only truly successor to the Polish throne.20 In contrast to his younger stepbrother, Zbigniew was born out of wedlock and could not be treated as a legitimate son of Władysław Herman.21 To be sure, Gallus admits that the old prince recognized Zbigniew as his son, but at the same time he tries to prove that Władysław Herman’s decision concerning Zbigniew’s recognition did not result from the former’s willingness and was forced upon the prince by the rebellious magnates.22 It is, therefore, not surprising that although, in the face of internal conflicts, Władysław Herman decided to divide the country between both his sons, he still — as Gallus strongly emphasizes — placed his hope for succession first of all in Bolesław, and not in his older son.23 In the chronicler’s rendition, however, Bolesław’s supremacy over Zbigniew did not derive only from the former’s legitimate parentage. Gallus argues that Bolesław had demonstrated since his earliest years that he should be a future ruler of Poland. Already as a young boy he manifested his extraordinary bravery and exceptional military skills on many occasions, enabling him to successfully confront numerous enemies and score many victories against them. In this way he was able to completely fulfil the obligations of a ruler and guarantee 18

Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, iii.25, pp. 157–60; see Dalewski, Ritual and Politics, pp. 85–133. 19 See e.g. Plassmann, Origo gentis, pp. 306–10; Wiszewski, Domus Bolezlai, pp. 258–301. 20 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i.30, p. 56. 21 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, ii.4, p. 68. 22 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, ii.4, pp. 68–71. 23 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, ii.18, p. 86: ‘Iam enim etate et infirmitate continua senescebat et in illo puero succesionis fidutiam expectabat’ (trans. by Knoll and Schaer, p. 153: ‘For he was now old and in constant ill-health, and placed in the boy his hope for the succession’).

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his subjects security and prosperity.24 Zbigniew, by contrast, lacked the virtues required for rulers. He gave in to the advice of evil counsellors25 and was not able to prove his ability to defend the country and protect his subjects.26 Nevertheless, in Gallus’s rendition Zbigniew was not only a weak ruler: the chronicler explicitly accuses him of wanting to expropriate his part of the kingdom from Bolesław. Plotting against his brother, he was to conclude a treaty with his enemies — the Czechs and the Pomeranians — and encourage them to invade Poland. Consequently, he lost his right to be a ruler and was rightly deprived of princely power.27 In his work, however, Gallus did not limit himself to glorifying Bolesław, praising the greatness of his achievements and demonstrating his superiority over Zbigniew. He placed his account of the conflict between Władysław Herman’s sons in a framework of substantial narration, devoted — as he put it — to ‘the exploits of Polish princes’.28 Gallus’s remarks that he decided to include information concerning Bolesław’s predecessors to the Polish throne in honour of Bolesław, or for his sake,29 clearly show that he intended to place his hero in a long sequence of the Polish rulers, presenting him as their rightful heir and successor. Although Gallus generally speaks about Polish princes and Bolesław’s predecessors, there is no doubt that what he was interested in were not all earlier Polish rulers, but only Bolesław’s ancestors and the Piast kindred,

24 See e.g. Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, ii.9–15, pp. 76–79; ii.17–18, pp. 85–86; see Banaszkiewicz, ‘Młodzieńcze gesta Bolesława Krzywoustego’, pp. 11–29. 25 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, ii.35, p. 104. 26 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, ii.17, pp. 84–85; ii.32, pp. 99–100. 27 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, ii.24, p. 91; ii.35, pp. 103–04; ii.36, pp. 105–07. 28 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i. Prohemium, p. 6; ‘opere pretium duximus quasdam res gestas Polonicorum principum gratia cuiusdam gloriosissimi ducis ac victoriosissimi nomine Bolezlaui stilo puerili pocius exarare, quam ex toto posterorum memorie nichil imitabile reservare’ (trans. by Knoll and Schaer, p. 11: ‘I have therefore thought it worth the while, for all my poor style, to record something of the exploits of the Polish princes, in honor of one of the most glorious and victorious of dukes, by name Bolesław, rather than to leave posterity no record at all of a deed worth imitating’). 29 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i. Prohemium, p. 9: ‘Est autem intencio nostra de Polonia et duce principaliter Bolezlao describere eiusque gratia quedam gesta predecessorum digna memoria recitare’ (trans. by Knoll and Schaer, p. 15: ‘Our intention is to tell of Poland and in particular of Duke Bolesław, and for his sake to recount some of the deeds of his forbears that are worthy of record’).

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generatio, to which they had belonged.30 Certainly, Gallus indicates that before the Piasts took princely power, Poland had been ruled by a prince named Popiel who had not belonged to the Piast kindred.31 He seems also to unambiguously suggest the dynastic nature of Popiel’s power when he emphasizes that the seizing of power by the first Piast prince, Siemowit, was connected with the extirpation not only of Popiel himself but also of his progeny.32 But in fact Gallus does not pay much attention to these pre-Piast Polish rulers. He begins his narrative with the elevation of the Piasts and informs the reader about Popiel and his sons only because of a role they played in his story about the beginnings of the new dynasty. For Gallus the time before the Piasts was ‘lost to memory in the oblivion of ages’ and the true history of Poland began only with the Piast kindred.33 The Polish rulers whose deeds he wants to describe are the Piasts. It does not seem that Gallus’s decision to describe the earliest history of Poland in the form of a narration structured around consecutive rulers who were related to each other resulted only from compositional reasons. Subordination of the events presented by the chronicler to the order of succession to the throne determined not only the structure of the narrative he developed, but was also full of meanings.34 An unbroken chain of successions, starting with Siemowit through his successors and ending with Bolesław Wrymouth, clearly proved the rights of the latter — as the sole heir to the truly monarchical kindred — to wield princely power. It is, therefore, no coincidence that while starting his narrative, Gallus evoked an image of a tree, often used in genealogical presentations, and stated that he would present matters in such a way that from the root of the tree 30

Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i. Prohemium, p. 9: ‘Qualiter ergo ducatus honor generacioni huic acciderit, subsequens ordo narrationis intimabit’ (trans. by Knoll and Schaer, p. 15: ‘How, then, the honor of the duchy fell to this kindred will be explained in the next part of the narrative’). See Dalewski, ‘A New Chosen People?’, pp. 145–66. 31 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i.1, p. 9. 32 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i.3, p. 12: ‘Hiis itaque peractis puer Semouith, filius Pazt Chossistconis viribus et etate crevit et de die in diem in augmentum proficere probitatis incepit, eotenus quod rex regum et dux ducum eum Polonie ducem concorditer ordinavit et de regno Pumpil cum sobole radicitus exstirpavit’ (trans. by Knoll and Schaer, p. 23: ‘After the events described, the boy Siemowit, the son of Pazt Chościsko, increased in age and strength, and his excellence grew ever by day, until the King of Kings and Duke of Dukes in harmony made him duke of Poland, and he rid the kingdom once and for all of Pumpil and all his progeny’). 33 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i.3, p. 13 (trans. by Knoll and Schaer, p. 25). 34 Cf. Spiegel, ‘Genealogy’, pp. 48–52.

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he would ascend to the crown.35 While finishing the parts of his narrative concerning Bolesław’s ancestors and starting an account of the birth of his hero, he returned to the image of the tree again and stated that after passing from the root of the tree, it was time to include a fruitful branch in the catalogue.36 In this way he linked Bolesław Wrymouth, this fruitful branch, with the previous Polish rulers and demonstrated how deeply his power was rooted in the dynastic tradition. As already mentioned here, Gallus begins his narration about the history of the Piast dynasty by presenting miraculous events leading to the takeover of power by its first representative, Siemowit.37 He then notes that, after Siemowit’s death, power was taken by his son, Leszek. And then, when Leszek died, his son Siemomysł ascended to the throne.38 Besides mentioning the order of succession, Gallus has little to say about these first three Piast rulers. His narration only becomes more detailed when he starts writing about Siemomysł’s son and successor Mieszko I, the first Christian Polish ruler. But with regard to genealogical matters, however, his information is still rather meagre. We are only informed that while he was still a pagan Mieszko had seven wives.39 But Gallus says nothing about his possible offspring. When Mieszko became a Christian he married a Bohemian princess Dąbrówka and begot a son, Bolesław, who assumed rule over Poland after his father’s death.40 In the case of Mieszko’s son, Bolesław I the Brave, who plays an important role in Gallus’s narrative where he is presented as an ideal ruler, it lacks even this type of information. In one of his stories Gallus, admittedly, mentions Bolesław’s wife, but she remains nameless.41 We learn only that Bolesław had one son, Mieszko II, who succeeded to the realm after his father had passed from this 35

Gallus Anonymus Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i, Prohemium, p. 9: ‘Nunc ergo sic ordiri materiam incipiamus, ut per radicem ad ramum arboris ascendamus’ (trans. by Knoll and Schaer, p. 15: ‘So let us now set about putting out material in order in such a way that from the root of the tree we ascend to the crown’). Cf. Kellner, Ursprung und Kontinuität, pp. 50–61. 36 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i.30, pp. 56–57: ‘Nunc vero, quia succincte per arborem a radice derivando transivimus, ad inserendum cathalogo ramum pomiferum et stilum et animum applicemus’ (trans. by Knoll and Schaer, p. 105: ‘As we have passed swiftly from the root of the tree upwards let me now turn my mind and pen to setting a fruitful branch into our catalogue’). 37 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i.1–3, pp. 9–12. 38 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i.3, p. 13. 39 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i.5, p. 15. 40 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i.6, p. 16. 41 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i.13, pp. 32–34.

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world.42 To Mieszko II’s reign the chronicler does not give much attention. He does not fail, however, to mention that while his father was still alive Mieszko married a sister of Emperor Otto III and begot a son named Kazimierz.43 The nature of relationships within the first generations of the Piast dynasty and rules of succession to the throne known from other contemporary sources differ fundamentally from the image presented in Gallus’s narrative and are more complicated than our chronicler seems to suggest. Not only did Mieszko I have at least two brothers, but it also seems that they participated with him in exercising power. Concerning one brother, unnamed in the source, we know from Widukind of Corvey’s narrative that he was killed in the 960s, during his struggles against the rebelling Saxon count Wichmann Billung and the Veleti.44 Regarding the other, Czcibor, Thietmar of Merseburg reports that in 972 he led an armed force which defeated Margrave Hodo of the Northern March.45 The scarcity of sources does not give many opportunities for describing fully what position Mieszko’s brothers had in the power structures of the Piast monarchy. It seems, however, that their role at Mieszko’s side was not limited merely to fulfilling the military tasks entrusted to them by him, in submission to his authority, and they may very probably have had a share in Mieszko’s power, acting as his co-rulers.46 We also know that Bolesław the Brave — in spite of Gallus’s assertion — was not the only son of Mieszko I. Besides him, the prince had three other sons from his second marriage with Oda, a daughter of Margrave Theodoric of the Northern March.47 Moreover, Mieszko did not hand power over to Bolesław but, shortly before his death in 992, he divided his dominion among all his sons. According to Mieszko’s deathbed decision, Bolesław was to be only one of his successors and was to share power with his three younger stepbrothers. Only after expelling the latter from the country did Bolesław manage to extend his rule over the entire Piast monarchy and monopolize power in his hands.48 42

Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i.7, p. 23; i.17, p. 40. Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i.17, p. 40. 44 Widukind of Corvey, Res gestae Saxonicae, ed. by Hirsch, iii.66, p. 41. 45 Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon, ed. by Holtzmann, ii.29, pp. 74–76. 46 Dalewski, ‘Family Business’, pp. 50–52. 47 Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon, ed.  by Holtzmann, iv.57, p.  196; see Balzer, Genealogia Piastów, pp. 52–54; Jasiński, Rodowód pierwszych Piastów, pp. 100–05. 48 Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon, ed.  by Holtzmann, iv.58, pp.  196–98; see Pleszczyński, ‘Początek rządów Bolesława Chrobrego’, pp. 217–32. 43

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It is even very possible that before Mieszko made a decision about the sharing of power among all his sons, he had initially intended to exclude Bolesław from the succession and hand power over only to his younger sons. This conclusion can be drawn from the document called Dagome iudex (transmitted only in the form of a summary from the 1080s), in which Mieszko donated his realm to St Peter.49 This donation, made in all likelihood around the year 990, established a special bond between the Polish ruler and the Prince of the Apostles. From that time forward, the Piast prince was to rule in Poland by the grace of St Peter, under the saint’s protection and care.50 Mieszko made his donation together with Oda and their two sons. His oldest son, Bolesław, was not mentioned among the donators. His omission seems, therefore, to suggest that it was Mieszko’s intention that Bolesław would not belong amongst those who, thanks to their donation, could count on the support of St Peter and were entitled to wield power over Poland on the saint’s behalf.51 In the case of Bolesław the Brave’s successor, Mieszko II, it seems that his father in fact designated him as his heir. Mieszko had already played an important role at Bolesław’s side during his father’s lifetime, acting as his representative in diplomatic missions or commanding his troops.52 Mieszko’s special position in the power structures of the Piast polity is additionally confirmed by his striking his own coins on a par with Bolesław during the latter’s reign.53 In order to strengthen his position as a future ruler, Bolesław also arranged, most likely in 1013, Mieszko’s marriage to Richeza, Emperor Otto III’s niece and a cousin of his successor Henry II.54 It is also very probable that shortly before his death in 1025, Bolesław the Brave ordered Mieszko to be crowned and made him his co-ruler.55

49 Die Kanonessammlung des Kardinals Deusdedit, ed.  by Wolf von Glanwell, iii.199, p. 359; Kürbis, ‘Dagome iudex’, pp. 363–424; see also Sikorski, Kościół Polsce, pp. 209–75. 50 See Banaszkiewicz, ‘Mieszko  I i władcy jego epoki’, pp.  104–07; Michałowski, ‘Christianisation of Political Culture in Poland’, pp. 32, 45. 51 See Labuda, ‘Znaczenie prawne i polityczne dokumentu Dagome iudex’, pp. 82–100; Labuda, ‘Prawne i polityczne aspekty dokumentu Dagome iudex’, pp. 240–63. 52 Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon, ed.  by Holtzmann, vi.90, pp.  380–82; vii.10, pp. 408–10; vii.17, p. 418; vii.59, p. 472. 53 See e.g. Suchodolski, ‘Początki rodzimego mennictwa’, pp. 353–55. 54 Jasiński, Rodowód pierwszych Piastów, pp. 114–16. 55 Dalewski, ‘Koronacja Mieszka II’, pp. 121–27.

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Yet, from the very beginning Mieszko II’s right to succeed his father was contested.56 Mieszko was only one of the three sons of Bolesław the Brave. Neither of his brothers — neither the older stepbrother Bezprym nor the younger full brother Otto — wanted to accept his elevation and both also aspired to the throne. Open conflict between Mieszko and his brothers broke out soon after Bolesław the Brave’s death. Mieszko initially managed to solidify his power and expelled his brothers from the country.57 Having received backing from Emperor Conrad II and the Rus’ princes, however, they returned in 1031 and overthrew the king. Mieszko had to leave the country and power was taken by Bezprym. Yet his reign lasted only a year: in 1032 he was murdered. Mieszko was able to return to Poland and retook power.58 Taking advantage of the difficult situation of the new-old ruler, who still had to confront the pretensions of other Piast pretenders, Emperor Conrad II decided to intervene in Polish affairs once again. He forced Mieszko not only to give up the royal title, but also to accept a division of his regained realm. The sources are not in agreement on the details of this division as imposed by the emperor. It seems, nonetheless, that Poland was divided into three parts and Mieszko had to agree to share power with his brother Otto and, another Piast pretender, Theoderic, most likely his first cousin, a grandson of Mieszko I and a son of one of the above-mentioned stepbrothers of Bolesław the Brave who had been expelled by the latter in the 990s.59 The fragmentary and not always unambiguous source material we have at our disposal allows us, therefore, to ascertain that in the political culture of the Piast monarchy in the late tenth and the early eleventh centuries power was regarded as a common good, belonging to the entire ruling family, and all members of the dynasty had the right to participate in it. As a result, the circle of people entitled to rule was not restricted to a ruler’s narrow family, his one son, but also included his other relatives, and the dynasty took the form of broad kinship, transcending the narrow confines of the close family group and consisting of close and distant kinsmen who cherished the memories not only of their blood ties but also, perhaps even more, of the monarchical prerogatives 56

Borawska, Kryzys monarchii wczesnopiastowskiej, pp. 73–85; Labuda, Mieszko II król Polski, pp. 62–92; Śliwiński, Bezprym, pp. 154–73. 57 Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi II. imperatoris, ed. by Bresslau, 29, p. 48. 58 Annales Hildesheimenses, ed. by Waitz, pp. 36–37. 59 Annales Hildesheimenses, ed. by Waitz, p. 37; Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi II imperatoris, ed. by Bresslau, 29, p. 49; see Balzer, Genealogia Piastów, pp. 57–58; Jasiński, Rodowód pierwszych Piastów, pp. 126–27.

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in which the whole ruling house, not merely some specific lineage or its members, was vested.60 In the Chronicle of Gallus, however, there is no hint of these relatives of the Piast rulers. Given the scarcity of sources it is difficult to say how memory of the dynasty’s past was preserved and whether it included all members of the ruling house. The note in the Annals of the Cracow Chapter under the year 1033, informing about the death of Otto, one of the above-mentioned brothers of Mieszko II, and describing him as a prince, nevertheless seems to suggest that at least some representatives of the collateral branches of the dynasty were not completely forgotten and it was also remembered that they had wielded princely power.61 It would, therefore, be difficult to say that the lack of information about the collateral branches in the narrative concerning the history of the Piast dynasty composed by Gallus resulted from the lack of memory about them. Instead it seems that their omission should be connected with a conscious decision to limit the dynasty’s history to the history of only one of the lines of the Piast kindred and present the dynastic past as an unbroken chain of successions where, in each generation, power was handed over from a father to his one son. Gallus’s narrative about Bolesław Wrymouth’s predecessors should not, therefore, be treated as a simple record of dynastic memory handed down from one generation to the next. In this respect the Chronicle of Gallus does not differ from many other dynastic chronicles written at the turn of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.62 Similarly to Gallus’s Chronicle, some of them were composed in response to dynastic crises threatening the stability of princely dominions and served to overcome these crises and to legitimize dynastic power.63 Describing the origins of princely dynasties and the deeds of representatives of their consecutive generations, the authors of these chronicles modified memories of the past, cherished and remembered at the princely courts, in ways suited to their political strategies. They used them to create their own image of the dynastic history that was to determine dynastic identity, the rights of the members of the dynasty to participate in power, and the order of succession.64 60

Dalewski, Modele władzy dynastycznej, pp. 57–72. Rocznik kapituły krakowskiej, ed. by Kozłowska-Budkowa, p. 47: ‘MXXXIII Otto dux obiit’. See Balzer, Genealogia Piastów, p. 71; Jasiński, Rodowód pierwszych Piastów, pp. 122–24. 62 Cf. Bisson, ‘On Not Eating Polish Bread in Vain’, pp. 275–89. 63 Bisson, ‘Princely Nobility in an Age of Ambition’, pp. 101–13; see also Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century, pp. 183–91. 64 See e.g. Duby, ‘Remarques sur la littérature généalogique’, pp. 339–45; Guenée, ‘Les géné61

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It seems that similar meanings were connected with the narrative written down by Gallus. Omitting the collateral branches of the Piasts and presenting the history of the princely dynasty as a line of filial successions, the narrative preserved in the Chronicle of Gallus was to serve as an appropriation of the memory of the dynastic past by Bolesław Wrymouth’s line and aimed at reformulating the dynastic identity and transforming the Piast kindred into a vertically oriented dynastic structure where rights to wield power were limited in each generation to one of the dynasty’s members handing it over to his one son, without sharing it with the latter’s brothers or cousins. In his Chronicle, Gallus strongly emphasizes that the Piasts were the only rightful rulers of Poland, the natural lords. In his presentation, the dynasty’s right to wield power found justification in the events accompanying the elevation to the throne of its first representative, Siemowit. The legend about Siemowit’s seizing of power written down by the chronicler is a compound story, drawing on different traditions, pagan and Christian alike. There is no need to discuss here all the issues connected with it.65 What is important for these considerations is that Siemowit was made a prince due to an act of divine intervention and this intervention meant not only handing power over to Siemowit but also to all of his progeny, to all Piast kindred. According to the Chronicle, to be a member of the Piast family was enough to enjoy the right to participate in power belonging to the entire dynasty, not merely to one specific line.66 As a result, in order to establish new patterns of succession and restrict the right to wield power exclusively to a main line of the dynasty it was necessary to erase the memory of collateral branches and remove them from the dynastic past. In this concept of dynasty there was no room for the ruler’s relatives. It is not easy to determine when the story presenting the earliest history of the Piast dynasty as a chain of unbroken individual filial successions known from Gallus’s Chronicle came into existence. However, it seems reasonable to link it with the reign of Mieszko II’s son, Kazimierz the Restorer, and the deep crisis of the Piast monarchy in the late 1030s. The conflicts within the Piast kindred that were accompanied by social unrest and a revival of paganism undermined the position of the ruling house and inclined a portion of the political alogies entre l’histoire et la politique’, pp. 450–77; Spiegel, ‘Genealogy’, pp. 47–53; Shopkow, ‘Dynastic History’, pp. 237–47. 65 See Banaszkiewicz, Podanie o Piaście i Popielu; Deptuła, Galla Anonima mit genezy Polski; see also Żmudzki, ‘Spór o analizę strukturalną podań i mitów dotyczących Początku Polski’, pp. 451–71. 66 Kürbis, ‘Sacrum i profanum’, p.  29; Michałowski, ‘Restauratio Poloniae’, pp.  11–15; Dalewski, ‘Sacrality of Ducal Power in Poland’, pp. 224–26.

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elite to rebel against the last surviving representative of the dynasty, Kazimierz, and expel him from the country, probably in 1037. A few years later, he was, however, able to return and regain power.67 It is very probable that the efforts he undertook in order to stabilize his regained power included also actions aiming at rebuilding its ideological foundations. Unlike his father and grandfather, who were crowned, Kazimierz could no longer refer to the idea of royal anointing. He had to seek another justification for his monarchical claims. It seems that one can also connect these attempts with the Piast dynastic tradition known in the version written down by Gallus, which presented the Piast dynasts as rulers who were summoned by God and who transferred power from father to son without any conflicts.68 For Gallus, who aimed at glorifying Bolesław Wrymouth and justifying his actions against Zbigniew, the Piast dynastic tradition posed opportunities as well as risks. On the one hand, it allowed him to present Władysław Herman’s decision to divide the country between both his sons as being contrary to previous patterns of succession and in this way fully legitimize depriving Zbigniew of power. On the other hand, however, Gallus could not hide the fact that the hero of his Chronicle did not come from the main line of the Piast dynasty. Bolesław Wrymouth’s father was a younger son of Kazimierz the Restorer and was not his successor. He ascended to the throne in 1079 only after his brother, King Bolesław II the Bold, had been expelled from the country and, what is also important, took power by ignoring his nephew’s right to succeed his father.69 There is no doubt that the seizing of power by Władysław Herman meant a radical break with the patterns of succession postulated by the Chronicle. In the aftermath of Bolesław the Bold’s fall, power was taken not by a son of the ruler as it had been in the case of all earlier Piast rulers, but by a representative of the collateral branch of the dynasty. As a result, in order to present his hero as a rightful heir to the Piast dynasty, Gallus had to find a justification for Władysław Herman’s ascension within the Piast dynastic tradition and made an attempt at including his power in the sequence of the consecutive rulers he had described earlier. However, it required him to modify his narration and include in it collateral branches of the dynasty, neglected so far. 67

Łowmiański, Początki Polski, vi.1, pp. 67–97; Labuda, Mieszko II król Polski, pp. 128–34; Bieniak, Państwo Miecława. 68 See Banaszkiewicz, ‘Tradycje dynastyczno-plemienne Słowiańszczyzny północnej’, p. 269; Michałowski, ‘Christianisation of Political Culture in Poland’, pp. 45–46. 69 See Benyskiewicz, Książę Polski Władysław I Herman, pp. 147–52; Krawiec, Król bez korony, pp. 70–108.

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Therefore, while writing about the reign of Kazimierz the Restorer, the chronicler decided for the first time to provide information about details of the ruler’s familial relationships. He mentioned that Kazimierz had taken as a wife a Ruthenian woman of noble family with whom he had four sons and a daughter, who married a Bohemian king. The wife and the daughter remained nameless in the text, but the author scrupulously enumerated and named all of the sons.70 Likewise, Gallus devoted much space to describing the fate of Bolesław the Bold’s son, Mieszko. It does not seem that all this information resulted from the chronicler’s special interest in genealogical matters nor from him having access to better sources than the earlier generations of the Piast rulers had. The reasons behind his remarks about these members of the Piast dynasty were more complicated. It is no coincidence that while writing about the younger brothers of Bolesław the Bold and Władysław Herman the chronicler limited himself to noting only their births and deaths, without giving any additional information about them.71 His account about Bolesław the Bold’s son is more elaborated and plays a more important role in his narrative. He does not hide the fact that the young princeling was the rightful successor to the throne and his rights were fully recognized by his uncle. Władysław Herman, who did not yet have a son of his own, recalled him from exile, gave him as a wife a Ruthenian princess, and treated him as his heir. Gallus even seems to suggest that Mieszko would have succeeded his uncle if he had lived longer. However, he died prematurely.72 With his death, Bolesław the Bold’s line of the dynasty also died off and power could be rightfully taken over by Bolesław Wrymouth, who, as the legitimate son of Władysław Herman, was the only truly successor to the previous Piast rulers. It may seem surprising, but the concept of the Piast dynasty as a narrow vertically oriented familial structure presented by Gallus had no impact on the hero of his Chronicle. Before his death in 1138 Bolesław Wrymouth did not hand power over to his one son, but instead divided the country among all of them. It seems that, in spite of Gallus’s efforts, old ideas of power as a common good belonging to all members of the dynasty were too strongly rooted in the political culture of the Piast monarchy to be fully eradicated and in the end they 70

Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i.19, p. 44: ‘Postea vero de Rusia nobilem cum magnis divitiis uxorem accepit, de qua filios IIIIor unamque filiam, regi Bohemie desponsandam, generavit. Nomina autem filiorum eius hec sunt: Bolezlaus, Wladislauus, Mescho et Otto’ (trans. by Knoll and Schaer, p. 81: ‘Subsequently, he took as wife a Russian woman of noble family and great wealth, by whom he had four sons and a daughter who was to become the bride of the king of Bohemia. The names of his sons are Bolesław, Władysław, Mieszko, and Otto’). 71 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i.30, p. 56. 72 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i.29, pp. 55–56.

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prevailed.73 This is not to say, however, that the chronicler’s attempt to transform the dynasty’s identity met with no success. Even if the Chronicle did not manage to change how the dynasty’s members perceived themselves and shaped their mutual relations in the practice of political actions, it at least defined the ways in which the earliest dynastic past was, and still is, remembered.

Works Cited Primary Sources Annales Hildesheimenses, ed. by Georg Waitz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 8 (Hanover: Hahn, 1878) Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae et gesta ducum sive principum Polonorum, ed. by Karol Maleczyński, Monumenta Poloniae Historica, n.s., 1 (Kraków: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, 1952); Engl. trans. and ann. by Paul W. Knoll and Frank Schaer, The Deeds of the Princes of the Poles, Central European Medieval Texts, 3 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2003) Die Kanonessammlung des Kardinals Deusdedit, i: Die Kanonessammlung selbst, ed.  by Viktor Wolf von Glanvell (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1905) Rocznik kapituły krakowskiej, ed. by Zofia Kozłowska-Budkowa, in Najdawniejsze roczniki krakowskie i kalendarz, Monumenta Poloniae Historica, n.s., 5: (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1978), pp. 21–105 Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon, ed. by Robert Holtzmann, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, n.s., 9 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1935) Widukind of Corvey, Res gestae Saxonicae, ed. by Paul Hirsch, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 60 (Hanover: Hahn, 1935) Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi  II. imperatoris, ed.  by Harry Bresslau, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 61 (Hanover: Hahn, 1915)

Secondary Studies Bagi, Dániel, Królowie węgierscy w Kronice Galla Anonima (Kraków: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, 2008) Balzer, Oswald, Genealogia Piastów (Kraków: Akademia Umiejętności, 1895) Banaszkiewicz, Jacek, Podanie o Piaście i Popielu: Studium porównawcze nad wczesnośred­ niowiecznymi tradycjami dynastycznymi (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1986) 73

See Dalewski, ‘Was Herrscher taten’, pp. 125–37.

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——  , ‘Mieszko  I i władcy jego epoki’, in Polska Mieszka  I. W tysiąclecie śmierci twórcy państwa i Kościoła polskiego 25 V 992–25 V 1992, ed. by Jan M. Piskorski (Poznań: Ośrodek Wydawnictw Naukowych, 1993), pp. 91–109 —— , ‘Młodzieńcze gesta Bolesława Krzywoustego czyli jak zostaje się prawdziwym rycerzem i władcą’, in Theatrum ceremoniale na dworze książąt i królów polskich, ed. by Mariusz Markiewicz and Ryszard Skowron (Kraków: Zamek Królewski na Wawelu, 1999), pp. 11–29 ——  , ‘Tradycje dynastyczno-plemienne Słowiańszczyzny północnej’, in Ziemie polskie w X wieku i ich znaczenie w kształtowaniu się nowej mapy Europy, ed.  by Henryk Samsonowicz (Kraków: Universitas, 2000), pp. 261–77 Benyskiewicz, Krzysztof, Książę Polski Władysław I Herman, 1079–1102 (Zielona Góra: Oficyna Wydawnicza Uniwersytetu Zielonogórskiego, 2010) Bisson, Thomas N., ‘On Not Eating Polish Bread in Vain: Resonance and Conjuncture in the Deeds of the Princes of Poland’, Viator, 29 (1998), 275–89 —— , ‘Princely Nobility in an Age of Ambition (c. 1050–1150)’, in Nobles and Nobility in Medieval Europe: Concepts, Origins, Transformations, ed.  by Anne  J. Duggan (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000), pp. 101–13 ——  , The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009) Borawska, Danuta, ‘Gallus Anonim czy Italus Anonim’, Przegląd Historyczny, 56 (1965), 111–19 ——  , Kryzys monarchii wczesnopiastowskiej w latach trzydziestych XI wieku, 2nd  edn (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2013) Dalewski, Zbigniew, ‘Sacrality of Ducal Power in Poland in the Earlier Middle Ages’, in Monotheistic Kingship: The Medieval Variants, ed. by Aziz Al-Azmeh and János M. Bak (Budapest: CEU Press, 2005), pp. 215–30 ——  , ‘Was Herrscher taten, wenn sie viele Söhne hatten — zum Beispiel im Osten Europas’, in Die Macht des Königs: Herrschaft in Europa vom Frühmittelalter bis in die Neuzeit, ed. by Bernhard Jussen (Munich: Beck, 2005), pp. 125–37 —— , Ritual and Politics: Writing the History of a Dynastic Conflict in Medieval Poland, East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 440–1450, 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2008) —— , ‘A New Chosen People? Gallus Anonymus’ Narrative about Poland and its Rulers’, in Historical Narratives and Christian Identity on a European Periphery: Early History Writing in Northern, East­Central and Eastern Europe (c. 1070–1200), ed. by Ildar Garipzanov, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 26 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 145–66 ——  , ‘Koronacja Mieszka II’, in Historia narrat: Studia mediewistyczne ofiarowane Profesorowi Jackowi Banaszkiewiczowi, ed. by Joanna Sobiesiak, Andrzej Pleszczyński, Michał Tomaszek, and Przemysław Tyszka (Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS, 2012), pp. 115–31 ——  , Modele władzy dynastycznej w Europie Środkowo­Wschodniej we wcześniejszym średniowieczu (Warsaw: Instytut Historii PAN, 2014)

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——  , ‘Family Business: Dynastic Power in Central Europe in the Earlier Middle Ages’, Viator, 46 (2015), 43–59 David, Pierre, Les Sources de l’histoire de Pologne à l’époque des Piasts, 963–1386 (Paris: Les belles lettres, 1934) Deptuła, Czesław, Galla Anonima mit genezy Polski: Studium z historiozofii i hermeneu­ tyki symboli dziejopisarstwa średniowiecznego (Lublin: Instytut Europy ŚrodkowoWschodniej, 1990) Duby, Georges, ‘Remarques sur la littérature généalogique en France au XIe et XIIe siècles’, Comptes­rendus de séances de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles­lettres, 111 (1967), 335–45 Fried, Johannes, ‘Gnesen — Aachen — Rom: Otto III. und der Kult des hl. Adalbert: Beobachtungen zum älteren Adalbertsleben’, in Polen und Deutschland: Die Berliner Tagung über den ‘Akt von Gnesen’, ed. by Michael Borgolte, Europa im Mittelalter, 5 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002), pp. 235–80 ——  , ‘Kam der Gallus Anonymus aus Bamberg?’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 65 (2009), 497–545 Guenée, Bernard, ‘Les généalogies entre l’histoire et la politique: la fierté d’être Capétien, en France, au Moyen Âge’, Annales ESC, 33 (1978), 450–77 Jasiński, Kazimierz, Rodowód pierwszych Piastów (Warsaw: Volumen, 1992) Jasiński, Tomasz, O pochodzeniu Galla Anonima (Kraków: Avalon, 2008) Kellner, Beate, Ursprung und Kontinuität: Studien zum genealogischen Wissen im Mittel­ alter (Munich: Fink, 2004) Kersken, Norbert, Geschichtsschreibung im Europa der ‘nationes’: Nationalgeschichtliche Gesamtdarstellungen im Mittelalter, Münsterische Historische Forschungen, 8 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1995) Krawiec, Adam, Król bez korony: Władysław I Herman książę Polski (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2014) Kürbis, Brygida, ‘Dagome iudex: Studium krytyczne’, in Początki państwa polskiego: Księga tysiąclecia, i, ed.  by Kazimierz Tymieniecki (Poznań: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1962), pp. 363–424 ——  , ‘Sacrum i profanum: Dwie wizje władzy w polskim średniowieczu’, Studia Źródłoznawcze, 22 (1977), 19–40 Labuda, Gerard, ‘Znaczenie prawne i polityczne dokumentu Dagome iudex’, Studia i Materiały do Dziejów Wielkopolski i Pomorza, 13 (1979), 82–100 —— , ‘Prawne i polityczne aspekty dokumentu Dagome iudex’, in Gerard Labuda, Studia nad początkami państwa polskiego, ii (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 1988), pp. 240–63 —— , Mieszko II król Polski (1025–1034): Czasy przełomu w dziejach państwa polskiego (Kraków: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, 1992) Łowmiański, Henryk, Początki Polski: Polityczne i społeczne procesy kształtowania się narodu do początku wieku XIV, vi.1 (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1985) Maleczyński, Karol, Bolesław III Krzywousty (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1975) Michałowski, Roman, ‘Restauratio Poloniae dans l’idéologie dynastique de Gallus Anonymus’, Acta Poloniae Historica, 52 (1985), 5–43

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—— , ‘Christianisation of Political Culture in Poland in the 10th and Early 11th Century’, in Political Culture in Central Europe (10th–20th Century), i: Middle Ages and Early Modern Era, ed.  by Halina Manikowska and Jaroslav Pánek (Prague: Institute of History, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 2005), pp. 31–46 Mühle, Eduard, ‘Cronicae et gesta ducum sive principum Polonorum: Neue Forschungen zum sogenannten Gallus Anonymus’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 65 (2009), 459–96 Plassmann, Alheydis, Origo gentis: Identitäts­ und Legitimitätsstiftung in früh­ und hoch­ mittelalterliche Herkunftserzählungen, Orbis mediaevalis: Vorstellungswelten des Mittelalters, 7 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2006) Pleszczyński, Andrzej, ‘Początek rządów Bolesława Chrobrego’, in Viae historicae: Księga jubileuszowa dedykowana Profesorowi Lechowi  A. Tyszkiewiczowi w siedemdziesiątą rocznicę urodzin, ed.  by Mateusz Goliński and Stanisław Rosik, Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis, Historia, 152 (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2001), pp. 217–32 Plezia, Marian, Kronika Galla na tle historiografii XII wieku, Rozprawy Wydziału Historyczno-Filozoficznego, 2nd ser., 46 (Kraków: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, 1947) —— , ‘Nowe studia nad Gallem Anonimem’, in Mente et litteris: O kulturze i społeczeństwie wieków średnich, ed. by Helena Chłopocka (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 1984), pp. 111–20 Shopkow, Leah, ‘Dynastic History’, in Historiography in the Middle Ages, ed. by Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis (Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 217–48 Sikorski, Dariusz Andrzej, Kościół w Polsce za Mieszka I i Bolesława Chrobrego (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2011) Śliwiński, Błażej, Bezprym: Pierworodny syn pierwszego króla Polski (986–zima/wiosna 1032) (Kraków: Avalon, 2014) Spiegel, Gabrielle M., ‘Genealogy: Form and Function in Medieval Historical Narrative’, History and Theory, 22 (1983), 43–53 Suchodolski, Stanisław, ‘Początki rodzimego mennictwa’, in Ziemie polskie w X wieku i ich znaczenie w kształtowaniu się nowej mapy Europy, ed.  by Henryk Samsonowicz (Kraków: Universitas, 2000), pp. 351–60 Rosik, Stanisław, Bolesław Krzywousty (Wrocław: Chronicon, 2013) Wenta, Jarosław, Kronika tzw. Galla Anonima: Historyczne (monastyczne i genealogiczne) oraz geograficzne konteksty powstania (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2011) Wiszewski, Przemysław, Domus Bolezlai: Values and Social Identity in Dynastic Traditions of Medieval Poland (c.  966–1138), East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 440–1450, 9 (Leiden: Brill, 2010) Żmudzki, Paweł, ‘Spór o analizę strukturalną podań i mitów dotyczących Początku Polski (na marginesie książek Jacka Banaszkiewicza i Czesława Deptuły’, Przegląd Historyczny, 93 (2002), 451–71

‘By the Crown of My Empire! The Things I Behold Are Greater than I Had Been Led to Believe!’: The Narrative Pattern Sheba Visits Salomon in Medieval Narratives (Gallus’s Chronicle, Chronicon Salernitanum, and Pèlerinage de Charlemagne) Jacek Banaszkiewicz

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n the following analysis I shall focus on three works which differ from one another in their character and belong to different epochs. However, in each of them a narrative appears which maintains its own structural and ideological identity and which was used by its authors to depict the collision of two worlds, an encounter between two powerful rulers. The narrative pattern revives the scenario of a visit by the queen of Sheba to Solomon,1 which unfolded as follows: the queen hears about a king, unknown to her and remote, who is famous for his power. Intrigued, or even tickled in her ambition, and certainly simply curious to know what can be confirmed about the king, the queen embarks on a trip to see Solomon.2 The story reaches its climax in a direct, one would like to say, face-to-face encounter between the otherwise splendid world of the visitor and the world whose lord is the hero-antagonist. 1

i Kings 10.1–10. Boavida and Ramos, ‘Ambiguous Legitimacy’, p. 89: ‘Indeed, from its inception, the story of Sheba and Salomon is concerned with the problem of legitimacy’. For the historical background, see Na’aman, ‘Sources and Composition’, pp. 72–74. 2

Jacek Banaszkiewicz is Professor of Medieval History at the Polish Academy of Science. Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000–1300, ed. by Walter Pohl, Veronika Wieser, and Francesco Borri, celama 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp.  251–269 FHG 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.130261

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When the queen of Sheba had seen all Solomon’s wisdom, and the house that he had built, and the meat of his table, and the sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and their apparel, and his cupbearers, and his ascent by which he went up unto the house of the Lord, there was no more spirit in her.3

It is clearly noticeable how piercingly and comprehensively the monarch scrutinized her rival and his domain, or in other words, how carefully she counted his assets in relation to those which were commonly regarded as the achievements which advanced one’s prestige. Now, in order to close the narrative and for the full triumph of the ruler whose perspective was shown in the account, the final confession of the queen of Sheba, a strict and at the same time unbiased perforce inspector of Solomon’s state, is formulated. It comes from her mouth, with this overtone: ‘After I beheld all of this I can only say that not even half of the glory and might of Solomon had been described in the stories about him. Thus your [Solomon’s] wisdom and prosperity exceed the fame which I heard’ — the monarch concludes.4

The next step taken by the queen of Sheba is a consequence of such a positive evaluation of the kingdom and the monarch himself, her rival in royal fame. In recognition of Solomon’s merits, the African ruler presents him with an enormous gift, ‘and as far as fragrances are concerned, in the future nobody gave to the local lords as many of them as she did’.5 In the accounts which will be discussed below, each of them, as was mentioned, uses the narrative pattern already presented in its own way.6 It serves the authors as a means to outline a general framework of the story, to create dramatic tensions through which one could show in the most lucid way the encounter between two crowned heads of state, and the consequences of the comparison of their splendour.

3

i Kings 10.4–5. i Kings 10.7. 5 i Kings 10.10. 6 My colleague, Professor Andrzej Pleszczyński, kindly suggested another, though specific example from the end of the thirteenth century: The Life of Alexander Nevsky. Here the narrative mechanism in question is realized as follows: the territorial power of Prince Alexander Nevsky flourishes, and just like the queen of Sheba going to Solomon, writes the author of the Life, the master of the Livonian Teutonic Knights, Andreas von Velven, pays the Ruthenian ruler his visit. Thanks to him, the news about Alexander’s wealth spreads widely and Eric XI of Sweden decides to conquer the land of the prince. See Mansikka, ‘Žitie Aleksandra Nevskogo’, p. 2. 4

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Gallus Anonymus on the Congress in Gniezno Let us turn to the first example: the depiction of the Congress in Gniezno in the Chronicle of Gallus Anonymus. The emperor arrives in Gniezno for a number of reasons, but the third of them is as important as the previous two; he wants to assess the renown which ‘famous’ Bolesław enjoys.7 Just as Solomon did with the queen of Sheba, Bolesław surprises his guest with royal splendour so that the emperor has no choice but, following his ancient female predecessor, to repeat: ‘By the crown of my empire, the things I behold are greater than I had been led to believe’.8 Now the moment comes, in accordance with the biblical narrative, to reward the efforts of the monarch who had passed the exam so perfectly. Thus, Otto removes the diadem from his own head and places it on Bolesław’s. Then the extolment of the ‘splendid ruler’ is accompanied by other favours from the emperor, but, unlike Gallus, we will not stick to this thread. Gallus uses a narrative solution which is convenient and fits his conception. The biblical model allows him to frame the story in an appropriate manner, but he does not follow it closely. He knows perfectly well how to modify it so as to highlight the significance and power of the Polish hero. The splendour of the feast held to honour the guest, the richness of Bolesław’s court as well as its courtiers, dripping with gold and clad in furs and other precious attire, and finally the country’s prosperity all correspond to the world of Solomon, but retain their unique flavour.9 The distinguished visitor is faced with another world, about which he is just beginning to learn. Gallus complements the biblical scheme with a new component. Maintaining the right proportions, the chronicler was inspired by experiencing royal ingresses, the celebrations which built adventus regis. Thus, before the visitor enters the community, the group as a whole has already introduced itself to him in a symbolical form. When the emperor is approaching Gniezno, he sees ‘miracula mirifica’ (astounding marvels), and to be more specific, detachments of warriors — knights, as well as their lords, referred to as princes by the author, scattered across the vast plain. They are all dressed so richly that ‘it would be difficult elsewhere in the world to find equally lavish garments’. In addition, each of the parties standing on the Gniezno common differs from one another through 7

Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. and trans. by Knoll and Schaer, i.6, pp. 34–37. Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. and trans. by Knoll and Schaer, i.6, p. 36. 9 See Banaszkiewicz, ‘Giecz na Gallowej liście wielkich grodów Bolesława Chrobrego’, pp. 77–96. 8

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the colour of their luxurious attire.10 It is only later that, after such a welcome, Otto has a chance to experience the splendour at the court of his host.

The Encounter in the Chronicon Salernitanum The Chronicon Salernitanum has Charlemagne or his envoy participate in a similar spectacle. Arriving in Salerno, he is greeted at the gate of the palace of Arechis II. The prince of Benevento orders his warriors, ‘with different weapons and in different attire’, to stand in parade formation, welcoming the guest. The next stage of bringing a distinguished visitor into the community and introducing him takes place on the steps leading to the palace. We do not know the name of the author of the chronicle,11 but we do know that it was written by a monk, most likely a Benedictine from the local monastery of St Mary and St Benedict, who was — one can presume — a frequent visitor to the court of Prince Gisulf I of Salerno (943–997/98).12 The work was written in 974 or soon after that date. The account is part of a thematic sequence through which the Longobard author from Salerno compensates the unpleasant experiences of his community with the Carolingian Empire, thus taming Charlemagne and his armed intervention.13 He also locates the meeting between Charlemagne and Arechis, prince of Benevento, in Salerno, which had become the seat of a rival principate after the division between Benevento and Salerno in the 840s. In the episode quoted, Arechis II ‘subdues’ Charlemagne with the splendour and extravagance of his court, and the already mentioned parade is the first in a series of spectacles whose aim is to make the visitor (and the reader) aware of how great a ruler and prince he is facing.14 And one more word about this military demonstration, ordered by Arechis and performed for Charlemagne just after his arrival in Salerno. The bottom line of such a show seems to be a clear and important message directed at the readers: to express in one impressive take the power of the community, emphasizing the participation of various groups, which differ from one another, in this overall presentation. 10

Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i.6, pp. 18–19. Chronicon Salernitanum. ed. by Westerbergh, pp. 18–19. 12 Alaggio, Saggi di storia Amalfitana, p.  34 n.  9; Kujawiński, ‘Le immagini dell’altro’, pp. 793–94; Berto, ‘I musulmani nelle cronache altomedievali’, p. 5 n. 10. 13 Taviani, ‘Le dessein politique du Chronicon Salernitanum’, pp.  175–89; TavianiCarozzi, ‘Mythe et histoire’, pp. 238–49. It could be Rodoald, the abbot. See Pohl, ‘History in Fragments:`, p. 355; Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, pp. 23–32. 14 See Alaggio, ‘Lo sviluppo urbano’, pp. 23–32. 11

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In constructing this image, the chronicler of Salerno used phrases taken from the History of the Longobards by Paul the Deacon.15 The model here is a parade staged by King Grimoald (662–671) in front of Avar envoys. To veil the small size of his army, he made variously uniformed and armed detachments march again and again before the envoys of the enemy in order to make them believe that Grimoald possessed a great army. In both works, the picture of the ‘military parade’ plays a similar role and it is intended to evoke specific associations: look foreign observers! It is us — our community, manifested as best as possible, through the gathering of men-at-arms, re­ordered in formation, armed according to their detachment and clad in the attire typical of each line.16 If we remember Gallus’s testimony and his report on a similarly designed spectacle, to be held during Otto’s arrival, we find analogous evidence to support the assumption that such an undertaking was, in the opinion of the authors, the best means to demonstrate the power of their own community to others. At the same time, it was an influential medium to convey information concerning the organization, equipment, and splendour of the armed men who formed a given community. In Salerno, however, the matter did not finish with the introductory show. The steps leading to the palace appear before the eyes of the reader. Their construction, following the upward path, suggests that the presentation of the greatness of Arechis’s principate would continue.17 Firstly, some young boys are placed on the steps, holding sparrowhawks and other predatory birds. Further up, we find bachelors in the prime of life with hawks and other birds of prey. Some of the latter are entertaining themselves, playing ‘ad tabulam’.18 Just behind them, here and there, are positioned men whose ‘heads are decorated with grey hairs’, and next, old men holding staves in their hands are placed in a semicircle. 15

Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Waitz, v.21, p. 194. Pohl, ‘Ritualized Encounters’, pp. 67–86; Banaszkiewicz, ‘Otton III jedzie do Gniezna’, pp. 213–20. 17 See Belting, ‘Studien zum beneventanischen Hof ’, pp. 152–53. The author fell prey to the narrative depictions of the chronicler of Salerno, though he boasted that he could carry out ‘die Sondierung von Dichtung und Wahrheit verhältnismäßig leicht’. Similarly, Bezzola, Les origines, p. 223; also Martin, ‘Palais princiers, royaux et impériaux’, p. 174. Undecided: Palmieri, ‘Duchi, principi e vescovi’, p. 80 n. 109. Cf. Granier, ‘Capitales royales et princières’, pp. 63–72; Taviani-Carozzi, ‘Mythe et histoire’, pp. 238–41; Labbé, L’Architecture des palais et des jardins, pp. 216–33; Cobby, Ambivalent Conventions, p. 130; Kowalski, Rymowane zamki, pp. 45, 78–97. 18 Bubczyk, Gry na szachownicy, pp.  19–66; Jonin, ‘La partie d’échecs dans l’épopée médiévale’, pp. 483–97; Mehl, Les jeux au royaume de France, pp. 135–50. 16

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In their centre, Arechis sits on his throne. Thus the (idealized) courtiers were described by the author as actors in a tableau, forming a generational pyramid, in which each group comprising this structure was provided, in accordance with their own status, with the appropriate attributes. On top of this structure, if we continue to apply this architectural metaphor, stood the most precious and significant object of Arechis’s power: the throne, and the ruler himself. Arechis sends one group of his aristocrats to go out to meet Charlemagne or his legate on his way. The dignified visitor and his retinue lose their selfassurance; they assume the ruler is in this magnificent welcoming group, but having learnt the truth, they head forwards, to the town and palace. They err again at the foot of the steps, seeking Arechis among the elegant young men. Being urged on — ‘in antea perambulate’ — they soon make another mistake. Now they look for the lord among the fine-looking iuvenes. This is not their last false assumption, because each consecutive one gave both the author and his Langobard readers a great amount of pleasure, testifying that the poor Franks, duped by the grandeur of the Salernitan court and its courtiers, saw the king even among courtiers — and not even from the highest ranks. When Charlemagne and his retinue reach the group of men dressed in different robes, whose hair is grey, they are certain that they will find the lord among them. Alas, they are wrong again, and only when they get to the hall full of beautiful-looking old men do they notice Arechis sitting on this golden throne.19 The idea of displaying, as if in an exhibition, a group of knights, diversified according to their age and status, is worth noticing; it is relatively scarce as a motif in tenth-century writing (see below). It appears in the chivalric epic much later; we can find a similar staging in the chanson about Aimery of Narbonne (end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century).20 The lord of Narbonne sends sixty knights as emissaries to Pavia to ask, on his behalf, for the hand of Ermengarda, sister of King Boniface. These envoys, impeccable in appearance, equipment, and behaviour, are supposed to convince both the ruler and the chosen one herself that the lord of Narbonne is not an inferior suitor, and that his knights belong to the most distinguished of their rank. One group of twenty knights is composed of mature men. Each of them holds a hawk. The next group, consisting of the lords of fine pedigree, stand out with falcons on their hands. The last group comprises young warriors, juenne bacheler, who hold sparrowhawks. The diver19 20

Chronicon Salernitanum, ed. by Westerbergh, pp. 18–19. See van den Abeele, La fauconnerie, pp. 29–30.

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sity of their age, and in a sense also status, is emphasized by the birds of prey, also ranked according to their value. Taking into consideration the general objective that the above-summarized fragments of the Salernitan and Gallus’s narration pursue, the mighty visitor, already brought to his knees in consequence of the influence of the local circumstances, should now spontaneously reveal the effect upon him, which, of course, will mean some form of favour or exaltation for the host. In the Gallus chronicle, Otto, delighted with the host and his court, argues that the latter deserves more, and therefore immediately crowns him with the diadem taken off his own head.21 In the Salerno Chronicle, the matter is more complicated. The emperor, curious about the great fame of another ruler, finally pays a visit to him. But Arechis is his enemy, and, what is more, an enemy against whom the emperor leads a military campaign during his visit. The emperor, travelling incognito, is hugely impressed by the display of power staged by Arechis. However, in order that he may recognize the lofty status of the prince of Benevento, the Longobard trick is needed. Thus, Arechis stands up from his golden throne when Charles enters the hall so that both men are able to greet each other and he drops, apparently by accident, his golden sceptre (sceptrum). Charles picks it up and hands it over to Arechis saying: ‘The things we (really) behold are not the ones which we heard about, but they clearly are much greater than we had been led to believe’.22 In another part of the plot, the guest, overwhelmed by the splendour of Arechis and his court, will also say that he had not been told even half of the truth about the magnificence of Salerno.23

Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, Song of Roland, and Notker The next narrative scenario is not entirely inspired by the history of the queen of Sheba and Solomon, but is placed within a work organized according to the same principle as the biblical story. The work in question is the mock-heroic epic Pèlerinage de Charlemagne.24 In the long history of the studies on this chanson it has variously been dated to between the end of the eleventh century and the beginning of the thirteenth century, whereas the second part of the 21 Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, i.6, p. 19. Cf. Borgolte, ed., Polen und Deutschland vor 1000 Jahren; Strzelczyk, Zjazd gnieźnieński, pp. 34–61. 22 Chronicon Salernitanum, ed. by Westerbergh, p. 19. 23 Chronicon Salernitanum, ed. by Westerbergh, p. 19; Taviani, ‘Le dessein politique du Chronicon salernitanum’, pp. 180–83. 24 Rossi, ‘Ja ne m’en turnerai’, pp. 139–43.

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twelfth century, with particular reference to the year 1165 (the canonization of Charlemagne), is becoming increasingly popular.25 The emperor embarks on a trip to Constantinople to confirm whether his wife’s conviction about the supremacy of the ruler of Byzantium, Hugo, over the lord of the Franks and the emperor is justified. Charlemagne’s wife offends his pride and vanity badly when he, dressed in his royal outfit, appears in the monastery of St Denis, surrounded by his knights and dignitaries, and asks her rhetorically if she knows a ruler whom a crown and sword would match as perfectly as him. The woman imprudently confesses that she knows somebody who looks more elegant and dignified than Charlemagne while carrying the crown among his knights. If he whom she has in mind would wear it on his head, she declared, he would look the more splendid. The emperor warns his spouse that he will cut off her head if her words prove untrue and finally makes her tell him that person’s name. Rumour has it, Charlemagne’s wife reveals, that it is Hugo the Strong, the ruler of Constantinople. And he is said, she adds, to be the most noble of all across the whole territory from Antioch to the land of the Franks.26 Charlemagne with his paladins set off on their trip. They take a detour to Jerusalem from their route to Constantinople, but finally approach Hugo’s capital, and see in the distance its bell towers, churches, and the glistening domes of other buildings.27 The narrator does not lead Charlemagne and his host towards the town, but suggests going past it on the right side, as we read, and carrying on further down the road for another half a mile. And now comes the key scene: Charlemagne enters a new, surprisingly magnificent context. 25 Aebischer published an epic under the title Le Voyage de Charlemagne à Jérusalem et à Constantinople; see also: Karls des Großen Reise nach Jerusalem und Constantinopel, ed. by Koschwitz; Charlemagne’s Pilgrimage, trans. by Newth, pp. 143–76. Moreover, Rauschen, Die Legende Karls des Großen; Kloocke, Joseph Bédiers Theorie, pp. 458–85; Rossi, ‘Ja ne m’en turnerai’, pp. 211–15; Latowsky, ‘Charlemagne as Pilgrim?’, pp. 153–67; Gabriele, An Empire of Memory; Devereaux, Constantinople and West in Medieval French Literature, pp. 46–57. 26 Thus we notice, as in the case of the tale of the queen of Sheba and Solomon, the application of Propp’s function, originating as an action taken by the hero, his activities intended to remove the lack, as Propp himself named it, which in our case means the will expressed by the main character of the story to satisfy a deep curiosity regarding the mysterious and highly praised Hugo of Constantinople. Propp, Morfologia bajki, pp. 79–81. See also Rossi, ‘Ja ne m’en turnerai’, pp. 153–54; Viaggio di Carlomagno in Oriente, ed. by Bonafin, Preface, p. 2; Pioletti, ‘Esercizi sul cronotopo 10’, pp. 153–62. 27 Le Voyage de Charlemagne, ed. by Aebischer, v. 263 (p. 47). In the translations of this verse of the epic, instead of churches, eagles of Constantinople or their sculptures appear, which are noticeable from a distance: Sansterre, ‘Percevoir ou imaginer un espace urbain’, p. 708 n. 33. The adopted lesson is recommended by Horrent, Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, p. 51.

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Firstly, before his and his paladins’ eyes appears a marvellous garden, filled with ‘arbustes courtois ou lyriques’, and these are blooming hedges of golden chain (Laburnum anagyroides), white oleanders, roses, and hawthorns.28 One can also see stone pine trees. In this paradisiac place the travellers from homespun France notice twenty thousand knights beaming with beauty like the garden surrounding them.29 The beauty primarily concerns their outfits, about which we learn a little more. Each of the knights wears a silk tunic and is decorated with white ermine. Moreover, they are covered with sable furs, hanging down as far as their feet. These great lords spend their time playing chess or tables.30 It is not only this activity which links the great, splendid party with the gathering from the Salernitan Chronicle as Charlemagne approached Arechis’s palace. Like the ones in Salerno, these knights from Constantinople also have with them birds of prey: and to be more specific, falcons and hawks. This is not the end of the wonders which poor Charlemagne, arriving there on a mule, experiences. Here in the garden, next to the knights, one can see three thousand charming girls. They are, of course, dressed extravagantly, in silk, and the golden braiding of their attire glistens. They stroll with their knights (‘amis’), holding their hands, as if coquettishly encouraging them to play. ‘I do not know where the ruler is’ — Charlemagne concludes dryly. And he adds ‘Ici est li barnages grant’ — ‘here is great baronage’.31 The ruler of the Franks soon finds out that not far away one can meet King Hugo and, indeed, the visitors see him cultivating his land with a golden plough. We skip this interesting sequence of events to deal with the presentation of another stage in Charlemagne’s journey to his destination, to the place where the power and splendour of the local lord manifests itself in the best possible way, Hugo’s palace and chambers. When the emperor approaches the building, he dismounts from his hack by the white marble perron which, one can assume, was located close to the entrance to the royal residence and the staircase leading Charlemagne to the palace hall.32 28

Grisward, ‘Paris, Jérusalem, Constantinople’, p. 81. See Bouvier, ‘Ort et jardin’, pp. 41–51; Labbé, ‘Nature et artifice’, pp. 177–95. 30 Le Voyage de Charlemagne, ed. by Aebischer, vv. 265–70 (p. 46). See Sinclair, ‘Conquering Constantinople’, pp. 57–60. 31 Le Voyage de Charlemagne, ed.  by Aebischer, v. 277 (p.  48). See: Burns, Sea of Silk, pp. 139–41. 32 Horrent, Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, p. 56 n. 1; Labbé, L’Architecture des palais, p. 332; Princi Bracini, ‘Perché Hrothgar “stōd on stapole”?’, p. 147. 29

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Unlike in Salerno, this staircase, otherwise a typical component of a stately building, as some scholars have argued, was not used for the staging which would illustrate the power of the ruler. We can only observe this in the palace hall, which is filled with seven thousand knights, clad in ermine fur-lined coats and wearing purple tunics made of cloth of gold. It will not surprise anybody if we add that they are entertaining themselves by playing chess and tables.33 To generalize the thoughts which have crossed our mind after referring to all these examples, one can observe that — if we may put the matter in a slightly grandiloquent way — the epiphany of power of a great medieval monarch worked out for its own purpose certain permanent narrative and stagedesign forms or spectacles. This is the problem identified long ago and still widely recognized, especially in studies on chivalric narrative poems, and on iconography.34 Our primary concern is about a certain structural principle of the cultural functions of the texts summarized above, or some general premises which stand behind the appearances of these established courtly and chivalric images. Of course, they increase the reader’s awareness, through collecting various examples of magnificence, of the splendour and greatness of the ruler — the main character of the story (Bolesław, Arechis, and Hugo) — but it does not matter that much! These marks appear, or rather, impose themselves almost automatically, as long as the ruler and his kingdom are presented to a foreigner. The same can be seen in one of the passages of the Song of Roland. Having told us that Cordova had been captured and looted by the Franks and that not a single pagan was spared, except for those who had adopted Christianity, the author moves his focus to the emperor, pleased with his success. When Charlemagne becomes the main character of the narrative frame, the above-mentioned image comes into play. Charlemagne, it turns out, is sitting in the garden with his paladins, Roland, Olivier, Geoffrey Grisgonelle — the standard-bearer — and others among fifteen thousand remaining knights next to him. They are sitting on the white cloth spread on the grass and, as one can easily guess, some are playing various games of chance, others, older and wiser, so we are told, the game of chess. The young ones are taking physical exercise — swordsmanship.35 33

Le Voyage de Charlemagne, ed. by Aebischer, vv. 334–38, p. 50. Skubiszewski, ‘Ecclesia’, pp. 149–58, 167–69; Labbé, L’Architecture des palais, pp. 357–97; Körntgen, Königsherrschaft und Gottesgnade, pp. 357–79; Ott, Krone und Krönung; L’Orange, Studies on the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship, pp. 19–47. 35 La Chanson de Roland, ed.  by Short, vv. 96–121 (pp.  34–36). See also Viaggio di Carlomagno in Oriente, ed. by Bonafin, Preface, p. 5. 34

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By that tree sits Charlemagne on his golden chair (faldistorium) in the centre marked by a large and soaring stone pine tree, and adorned by a hawthorn bush. ‘The chivalric complete community’ is reflected (travestying the term used by G. Dumézil)36 in a comprehensive way, and it is placed in the archetypical paradisiac garden, awaiting aliens — Saracens, the envoys of King Marsillion.37 Thus, as soon as the monarch assumes the role of the representative of the community — which can be understood in all sorts of ways: the whole community of the subjects or only the knights and lords — in the narrative, he is multiplied by the company of the group, accordingly structured, which, in its composition, can be regarded as the comprehensive representation of the aforementioned community. On the basis of the sources discussed here, it is worth noticing that much earlier than the chivalric epic began to flourish — which is testified, among other things, by the Salernitan Chronicle — the narrative unit had crystallized. The ruler is shown as the most important personage in the social group closest to him, with that social group being diversified according to age and status, and through the presentation of typical attributes designated for each of the distinct subgroups. Thus the design of the ways to approach Charlemagne created by Notker Balbulus, the emperor’s eulogist from the end of the ninth century, had remarkable impact, in spite of its rather rude narrative.38 Not only does he exhaust the Greek envoys with tiring travels in France before they reach the royal palace in his narrative, but on having reached their destination, they are then forced to go through a few, specifically designated staging posts, before they finally get to see the ruler. First, they mistake the marshal of the court for the emperor; next they are sure they see the monarch when they look at the count of the palace, and they err twice more, mistakenly finding Charlemagne in the master of the royal table and next in the chamberlain. This confirms what we conjectured: when the envoys meet the emperor, he appears before them ‘like the sun beaming down on the world’. 36

Georges Dumézil coined the term l’humanité complète — a complete society. It means the kind of society which is based on the ideological model of the tripartite society and it shows its efficiency and power through actions and cooperation among individual groups: the royal/ priestly, warriors, and the people providing the community with wealth and prosperity (peasants, artisans, and also women). See Dumézil, Mythes et dieux des Indo­Européens, pp. 69–115; Sergent, Les Indo­Européens, pp. 382–86, passim. 37 See, Labbé, ‘Nature et artifice’, pp. 177–79. 38 Notker Balbulus, Gesta Karoli imperatoris, ed. by Haefele, ii.6, pp. 56–57.

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Around him are gathered his three sons, compared with heavenly knights, as well as his daughters, together with their mother, who are all, like the emperor, exuding light with their wisdom, jewels, and beauty. Charlemagne is also surrounded by bishops, abbots, princes, and the exercitus — a detachment of the emperor’s forces. Even if the palace in Aachen was indeed opulent, this whole assembly should be located, using a poetic and apt phrase by Jacek Kowalski, within the walls of the ‘rhymed castle’, i.e. architecture as depicted in epics. Notker finishes his description of the scene with the reference to the biblical narrative: If king David appeared in the palace in Aachen, he would chant: ‘Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all judges of the earth, both young men and maidens, old men and children, let them praise the name of our Lord’.39

Thus the whole community of the earth, structured in accordance with their traditional divisions of social hierarchy, and also according to their diversification regarding sex and age, should praise the Lord for the fact that He had established in Aachen a similar community, but the most splendid of them all. We shall continue to explore Notker’s work on Charlemagne, for in it we discover one more example of the mechanism of grading a phenomenon in order to enhance the final effect of the account. Here Charles the Great and his army approach the walls of Desiderius’s capital, Pavia.40 The Lombard ruler, together with Otker, who was once Charles’s paladin but had left the emperor’s court because of injustice and joined his foe, waits for the enemy forces to appear, observing the surroundings from a high tower.41 When military wagons, looking, the author remarks, more sumptuous than those which had been used by Darius or Julius Caesar, appear in the field of vision, Desiderius asks Otker if Charles is present among those troops. The answer is, of course, negative, as are the replies to the next few questions of this kind. Charles is not there. He is not in another detachment, consisting of ordinary soldiers who were commoners conscripted from all parts of the empire. Nor can he be discerned in a few fur39

Notker Balbulus, Gesta Karoli imperatoris, trans. by Ganz, ii.6, pp. 90–91. Psalm 148.11–12. Notker Balbulus, Gesta Karoli imperatoris, ed. by Haefele, ii.17, pp. 82–83. This ‘rhetorical procedure’ free from all historical sediments, as was emphasized, was noticed long ago, see Halphen, Études critiques, pp. 133–34. 41 Otker, or in other words Ogier the Dane, a famous hero of the knightly epic, became an enemy to Charlemagne when his son, Callot, having lost the game of chess, kills his game partner, Ogier’s son, with a chessboard (or with a rook). See Togeby, Ogier le Danois; Voretzsch, Über die Sage von Ogier dem Dänen, pp. 36–37, 67–70. 40

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ther detachments.42 And the emperor does not arrive until the fearful iron host appears. Like his horses, he is clad in iron armour, and flanked on all sides by iron ranks of warriors. The epiphany of Charles’s power mortifies the Lombard ruler Desiderius, just as it mortified the Greek envoys visiting the emperor in Aachen. The pattern of grading the power of the ruler and his kingdom is a satisfying device which adds colour to the story, but is also a suitable tool for promoting propaganda of his own achievements and advantages achieved over an adversary.43 However, it is not always necessary to enumerate the increasing virtues of individual groups within the home community. It suffices if, for example, we can show in the tri-sequent staging that our knights beat the enemy in combat, our priests can attain this victory through prayer, and finally, our women capture the enemy warrior, or themselves manage to defeat the invaders, fighting in their own way and using non-military weapons.44 It would be difficult to 42 A similar spectacle was performed in the Irish epic Táin bó Cúailnge for the arrival of the hosts of the warrior Cormac at Crúachu, the assembly point for the troops of Aillil and the queen Medb. The hero is expected by the assembled people and Medb herself, see Táin bo Cúailnge, ed. by O’Rahilly, p. 142. 43 In late medieval versions about the journey of Charlemagne to Constantinople this means was also applied to magnify the image of the wealth and prosperity of Byzantium. The empire appears in Western European literary descriptions as an emblem, one could say, of fabulous affluence and, as such, possesses appropriate heroes: not only powerful knights and warriors live off the fat of the land and possess treasures, but swineherds and shepherds. See Sechs Bearbeitungen, ed. by Koschwitz, pp. 48, 78–81, 110–12; Horrent, La Chanson de Roland, pp. 377–412; Cheynet, ‘Les motifs narratifs’, pp. 59–77. 44 Such an alliance against the ‘common enemy’, the Pomeranians, is illustrated by Gallus Anonymus: the head of the invaded province — Mazovia —, comes Magnus, boldly chases the enemy with a small army. He is followed by the local bishop with a host of priests, and during the armed clash the bishop asks God for the victory, behaving like Moses during the battle between the Israelites and Amalekites. The day after the battle, victorious for the Mazovians, their women brought to the comes and the bishop a captured Pomeranian warrior. See Banaszkiewicz, ‘Gallus as a Credible Historian’, pp. 27–28. Similarly, a huge preponderance of the Normans of Cotentin over the armed forces of King Aethelred was shown in the Gesta Normannorum ducum, ed. by van Houts, v.4, pp. 12–14, where the knight who survived the massacre reports to the ruler on the complete destruction of his army in the fight against ‘the most dangerous people of one county, where not only the most brave warriors live, but also belligerent women, and it was they that broke the heads of the strongest opponents with poles to carry water, and know that from the hands of those all your warriors died’ (my translation). At times, in order to highlight the ineptitude of the army and the dishonour of the defeat, women were also shown among the victors. In 872 the Thuringians and Saxons organized their military expeditions against the Great Moravians, and because there was no king among them and they were at variance

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find a clearer praise of one’s own community.45 And what is more, the idea of unity of the properly structured group is itself given through the expression of a foreigner who reluctantly has to acknowledge the coherence and nobleness of the respective group.

with each other, they were defeated to a degree that even local poor women beat up the fleeing counts with their sticks, forcing them to dismount from their horses, see Annales Fuldenses, ed. by Kurze, s.a. 872, pp. 75–76. 45 See Gronowska, ‘Fabuły rycerskie’, pp. 101–30.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Annales Fuldenses, ed. by Friedrich Kurze, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 7 (Hanover: Hahn, 1891) La Chanson de Roland, ed. and French trans. by Ian Short, Lettres gothiques (Paris: Librairie générale française, 1990) Charlemagne’s Pilgrimage, trans. by Michael  N. Newth, Heroes of the French Epic: Translations from the ‘Chansons de geste’ (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), pp. 143–76 Chronicon Salernitanum, ed.  by Ulla Westerbegh, Chronicon Salernitanum: A  Critical Edition with Studies on Literary and Historical Sources and Language, Studia latina stockholmiensia, 3 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1956) Gallus Anonymus, Cronicae et gesta ducum sive principum Polonorum, ed.  by Karol Maleczyński, Monumenta Poloniae Historica, n.s., 2 (Kraków: Wydawnictwo PAU, 1952); Engl. trans. and ann. by Paul W. Knoll and Frank Schaer, foreword by Thomas Bisson, editors’ introduction in cooperation with Wojciech Polak, Gesta principum Polonorum: The Deeds of the Princes of the Poles, Central European Medieval Texts, 3 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2003) The ‘Gesta Normannorum ducum’ of William of Jumiège, Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, ii, ed. and trans. by Elisabeth M.  C.  van Houts, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995) Karls des Großen Reise nach Jerusalem und Constantinopel, ed.  by Eduard Koschwitz, Altfranzösische Bibliothek, 2 (Leipzig: Reisland, 1913) Notker Balbulus, Gesta Karoli imperatoris, ed. by Hans F. Haefele, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, n.s., 12 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1959); trans. with an introduction and notes by David Ganz, Einhard and Notker the Stammerer: Two Lives of Charlemagne, Penguin Classics (London: Penguin, 2008), pp. 55–116 Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Georg Waitz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 48 (Hanover: Hahn, 1878) Sechs Bearbeitungen des altfranzösischen Gedichts von Karls des Großen Reise nach Jerusalem und Constantinopel, ed. by Eduard Koschwitz (Heilbronn: Gebrüder Henninger, 1879) Táin Bó Cúailnge from the Book of Leinster, ed. and trans. by Cecile O’Rahilly, Irish Texts Society, 49 (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1967) Viaggio di Carlomagno in Oriente, ed.  by Massimo Bonafin (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2007) Le Voyage de Charlemagne à Jerusalem et à Constantinople, ed. by Paul Aebischer, Textes littéraires français (Geneva: Droz, 1965)

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Secondary Studies Abeele, Baudouin van den, La fauconnerie dans les lettres françaises du XIIe au XIVe siècle, Medievalia Lovaniensia. Series I: Studia, 18 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1990) Alaggio, Rossana, ‘Lo sviluppo urbano di Salerno nel medioevo: i temi della ricostruzione storiografica’, in Memoria, storia e identità: scritti per Laura Sciascia, ed. by Marcello Pacifico, Quaderni-Mediterranea: Ricerche storiche, 17 (Palermo: Associazione Mediterranea, 2011), pp. 17–42 —— , Saggi di storia amalfitana, Intorno ad un mare, 3 (Rome: Fratelli Ferraro, 2013) Banaszkiewicz, Jacek, ‘Gallus as a Credible Historian, or Why the Biography of Bolesław the Brave Is as Authentic and Far from Grotesque as Bolesław the Wrymouth’s’, in Gallus Anonymous and his Chronicle in the Context of Twelfth­Century Historiography from the Perspective of the Latest Research, ed.  by Krzysztof Stopka (Kraków: Wydawnictwo PAU, 2010), pp. 19–33 ——  , ‘Otton  III jedzie do Gniezna: O  oprawie ceremonialnej wizyty cesarza w kraju i stolicy Polan’, in Jacek Banaszkiewicz, Trzy po trzy o X wieku (Kraków: Avalon, 2014), pp. 185–220 ——  , ‘Giecz na Gallowej liście wielkich grodów Bolesława Chrobrego’, in Gród pias­ towski w Gieczu: Geneza, funkcja, kontekst, ed. by Michał Kara and Teresa Krysztofiak (Poznań: Wydawnictwo PTPN, 2016), pp. 75–90 Belting, Hans, ‘Studien zum beneventanischen Hof im 8. Jahrhundert’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 16 (1962), 141–93 Berto, Luigi A., ‘I musulmani nelle cronache altomedievali dell’Italia meridionale: secoli IX-X’, in Mediterraneo medievale: Cristiani, musulmani ed eretici tra Europa e Oltremare, ed. by Marco Meschini (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2001), pp. 3–27 Bezzola, Reto, Les origines et la formation de la littérature courtoise en Occident 500–1200, iii.1 (Paris: Champion, 1963) Boavida, Isabel, and Manuel  J. Ramos, ‘Ambiguous Legitimacy: The Legend of Queen Sheba in Popular Ethiopian Painting’, Annales d’Ethiopie, 21 (2005), 85–92 Borgolte, Michael, ed., Polen und Deutschland vor 1000 Jahren: Die Berliner Tagung über den Akt von Gnesen, Europa im Mittelalter, 5 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002) Bouvier, Jean-Claude, ‘Ort et Jardin dans la littérature médiévale d’Oc’, in Vergers et jar­ dins dans l’univers médiéval, Senefiance, 28 (Aix en Provence: Presses universitaires de Provence, 1990), pp. 41–51 Bubczyk, Robert, Gry na szachownicy w kulturze dworskiej i rycerskiej średniowiecznej Anglii na tle europejskim (Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS, 2009) Burns, Jane E., Sea of Silk: A Textile Geography of Women’s Work in Medieval French Literature, The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009) Cheynet, Magali, ‘Les motifs narratifs dans les proses de Galien restoré à la fin du XVe siècle: les parcours de la mémoire, de Constantinople à Roncevaux’, in Byzance et l’Occident: rencontre de l’Est et de l’Ouest, ed.  by Emese Egedi-Kovács (Budapest: Collège Eötvös Jósef ELTE, 2013), pp. 59–77 Cobby, Anne, Ambivalent Conventions: Formula and Parody in Old French (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995)

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Devereaux, Rima, Constantinople and the West in Medieval French Literature: Renewal and Utopia, Gallica, 25 (Woodbridge: Brewer, 2012) Dumézil, Georges, Mythes et dieux des Indo­Européens, ed.  by Hervé Coutau-Bégarie (Paris: Flammarion, 1999) Gabriele, Mathew, An Empire of Memory: The Legend of Charlemagne, the Franks, and Jerusalem before the First Crusade (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) Granier, Thomas, ‘Capitales royales et princières de l’Italie lombarde d’après la poésie d’éloge (VIIe–IXe siècle)’, in Les villes capitales au Moyen Âge, ed. by Patrick Boucheron, Histoire ancienne et médiévale, 87 (Paris: Sorbonne, 2006), pp. 57–74 Grisward, Joë H., ‘Paris, Jérusalem, Constantinople dans le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne: trois villes, trois fonctions’, in Jérusalem, Rome, Constantinople: l’image et le mythe de la ville au Moyen Âge, ed. by Daniel Poirion, Cultures et civilisations médiévales, 5 (Paris: Sorbonne, 1986), pp. 75–82 Gronowska, Anna, ‘Fabuły rycerskie w Gesta ducum sive principum Polonorum Galla Anonima na tle wybranych przykładów piśmiennictwa średniowiecznego — do końca XIII wieku’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Warsaw, 2009) Halphen, Louis, Études critiques sur l’histoire de Charlemagne (Paris: Alcan, 1921) Horrent, Jules, Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne: essai d’explication littéraire, avec notes de critique textuelle (Paris: Les belles lettres, 1961) ——  , La Chanson de Roland dans les littératures française et espagnol au Moyen Âge, Bibliothèque de la faculté de philosophie et lettres de l’université de Liège (Liège: Presses universitaires de Liège, 1972) Jonin, Pierre, ‘La partie d’échecs dans l’épopée médiévale’, in Mélanges de langue et de littérature du Moyen Âge et de la Renaissance offerts à Jean Frappier, ii, Publications romanes et françaises, 112 (Geneva: Droz, 1970), pp. 483–97 Kloocke, Kurt, Joseph Bédiers Theorie über den Ursprung der Chansons de geste und die daran anschließende Diskussion zwischen 1908 und 1968, Göppinger Akademische Beiträge, 33–34 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1972) Körntgen, Ludger, Königsherrschaft und Gottes Gnade: Zu Kontext und Funktion sakraler Vorstellungen in Historiographie und Bildzeugnissen der ottonisch­frühsalischen Zeit, Orbis medievalis: Vorstellungswelten des Mittelalters, 2 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001) Kowalski, Jacek, Rymowane zamki: Tematy architektoniczne w literaturze starofrancuskiej drugiej połowy XII wieku (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo DiG, 2001) Kujawiński, Jakub, ‘Le immagini dell’altro nella cronachistica del Mezzogiorno longobardo’, Rivista storica italiana, 118 (2006), 767–815 Labbé, Alain, L’Architecture des palais et des jardins dans les chansons de geste: essai sur le thème du roi en majesté (Paris: Champion, 1987) —— , ‘Nature et artifice dans quelques jardins épiques’, in Vergers et jardins dans l’univers médiéval, Senefiance, 28 (Aix en Provence: Presses universitaires de Provence, 1990), pp. 177–95 Latowsky, Anne, ‘Charlemagne as Pilgrim? Request for Relics in the Descriptio qualiter and the Voyage of Charlemagne’, in The Legend of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages: Power, Faith, and Crusade, ed. by Mathew Gabriele and Jace Stuckey, The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave, 2008), pp. 153–67

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Mansikka, Viljo, ‘Žitie Aleksandra Nevskogo: Razbor redakcji i tekst’, Pamjatniki drevnej pis’mennosti i iskusstva, 180 (1913; repr. Leipzig, 1984), 11–48 Martin, Jean-Marie, ‘Palais princiers, royaux et impériaux en Italie méridionale et en Sicile (VIIIe–XIVe siècle)’, in Palais royaux et princiers au Moyen Âge, ed. by Annie Renoux (Le Mans: l’Université du Maine, 1996), pp. 173–80 Mehl, Jean-Michel, Les jeux au royaume de France du XIIIe au début du XVIe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1990) Na’aman, Nadav, ‘Sources and Composition in the History of Solomon’, in The Age of Solomon: Scholarship at the End of Millennium, ed. by Lowell L. Handy (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 57–80 Palmieri, Stefano, ‘Duchi, principi e vescovi nella Longobardia meridionale’, in Longo­ bardia e Longobardi nell’Italia meridionale: le istituzioni ecclesiastiche, ed. by Giancarlo Andenna and Giorgio Picasso (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1996), pp. 43–99 Pioletti, Antonio, ‘Esercizi sul cronotopo 10: Il Voyage de Charlemagne en Orient: la teatralizzazione della parodia’, in Studi offerti a Carmelo Zilli, ed. by Angelo Chielli and Leonardo Terrusi, Biblioteca della tradizione classica (Bari: Cacucci, 2014), pp. 153–62 Pohl, Walter, ‘Ritualized Encounters: Late Roman Diplomacy and the Barbarians, Fifth-Sixth Century’, in Court Ceremonies and Rituals of Power in Byzantium and the Medieval Mediterranean: Comparative Perspectives, ed. by Alexander Beihammer, Stavroula Constantinou, and Maria  G. Parani, The Medieval Mediterranean, 98 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 67–86 ——  , Werkstätte der Erinnerung. Montecassino und die Gestaltung der langobardischen Vergangenheit, MIÖG Ergbd. 39 (Vienna: University of Vienna, 2001) —— , ‘History in Fragments: Montecassino’s Politics of Memory’, Early Medieval Europe, 10 (2003), 343–374 Princi Braccini, Giovanna, ‘Perché Hrothgar “stōd on stapole” (Beowulf 926 a)’, in Echi di memoria: scritti di varia filologia, critica e linguistica in ricordo di Giorgio Chiarini, ed. by Gaetano Chiappini (Florence: Alinea, 1998), pp. 139–58 Propp, Włodzimierz, Morfologia bajki (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1976) Rauschen, Gerhard, Die Legende Karls des Großen im 11. und 12. Jahrhundert, Publikationen der Gesellschaft für Rheinische Geschichtskunde, 7 (Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1890) Rossi, Carla, ‘Ja ne m’en turnerai trescque l’avrai trovez — ricerche attorno al MS Royal 16 E. VIII, testimone unico del Voyage de Charlemagne à Jérusalem et à Constantinople e contributi per una nova edizione del poema’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Fribourg Swiss, 2005) Sansterre, Jean-Marie, ‘Percevoir ou imaginer un espace urbain et suburbain aux XIe–XIIe siècles d’après quelques textes occidentaux’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 89 (2011), 701–09 Sergent, Bernard, Les Indo­Européens: histoire, langues, mythes (Paris: Payot, 1995) Sinclair, Finn E., ‘Conquering Constantinople: Text, Territory and Desire’, in Eastern Voyages, Western Visions: French Writing and Painting of the Orient, ed. by Margaret Topping (Bern: Lang, 2004), pp. 47–68

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Skubiszewski, Piotr, ‘Ecclesia, Christianitas, Regnum et Sacerdotium dans l’art des Xe–XIe siècles: idées et structures des images’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 110 (1985), 133–80 Strzelczyk, Jerzy, Zjazd gnieźnieński (Poznań: Wydawnictwo WBP, 2000) Taviani, Huguette, ‘Le dessein politique du Chronicon Salernitanum’, in L’Historiographie en Occident du Ve au XVe siècle (= Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest, 2 (1980)), 175–89 Taviani-Carozzi, Huguette, ‘Mythe et histoire dans les chroniques d’Italie du Sud (IXe– XIIe siècles)’, in The Medieval Chronicle, ii, ed. by Erik Kooper, Costerus New Series (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002), pp. 238–49 Togeby, Knut, Ogier le Danois dans les littératures européennes (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1969) Voretzsch, Carl, Über die Sage von Ogier dem Dänen und die Entstehung der Chevalerie Ogier (Halle a. Saale: Niemeyer, 1891)

Hungarian Origins and their Political Uses

Hungarian Origins and Carolingian Politics in Regino of Prüm’s Chronicle Maximilian Diesenberger

T

he Hungarian riders were one of the gentes whose history was interwoven with the history of the Latin West — from the Carolingian Empire through the empire’s demise to a new, Ottonian, empire. As a matter of fact, it considerably codetermined the development of these three periods in Western history. The Annals of Saint­Bertin are the first source in the Latin West to mention the Hungarians in 862.1 After that they disappeared from the Latin sources again for almost thirty years, but then they appeared literally every year on the eastern borders of the Frankish realm. In this article I will discuss the function of historiography in the context of the Hungarian raids in the first decades after they were mentioned in the Annals of Saint­Bertin. The intention is to show which challenges the author faced in his efforts to identify the Hungarians, but above all, how social distortions in the West were mirrored by the (narratives about) Hungarians and what role a representative of Western historiography, that is Regino of Prüm and his Chronicle, played in this context.2 1

Annales Bertiniani, ed. by Waitz, s.a. 862, p. 60: ‘Sed et hostes antea illis populus inexperti, qui Ungri vocantur, regnum eiusdem populantur’. This text was written as a contribution to the HERA Joint Research Project ‘After Empire. Using and Not Using the Past in the Crisis of the Carolingian World, c. 900–1050’. I would like to thank Richard Corradini, Simon MacLean, and Walter Pohl for comments on this text. 2 Regino of Prüm, Chronicon, ed. by Kurze; trans. by MacLean, pp. 61–231. On the emerMaximilian Diesenberger is Deputy Director of the Institute for Medieval Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences, and head of the Historical Identity Research division. Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000–1300, ed. by Walter Pohl, Veronika Wieser, and Francesco Borri, celama 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp.  273–285 FHG 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.130262

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The rather routine raids recounted in Saint­Bertin 862 quickly transformed into an extraordinarily violent and pervasive threat to significant swaths of Western Europe. In 899, the Hungarians raided northern Italy. Bavaria followed in 904. They even destroyed a Bavarian army in 907. After attacks against Alemannia, Thuringia, Saxonia, and Hesse between 904 and 910, they reached what is today considered France in 911, where operations were initially smaller, but quickly escalated, inflicting considerable devastation.3 They crossed the Rhine for the first time in 911, and the Annals of Saint­Vincent in Metz provide a detailed report of the Hungarians penetrating into Lorraine in their records for the year 917.4 The Hungarians then moved to Basel in the west, where they destroyed a fair number of monasteries. The nuns at the monastery of Remiremont, which stands at the edge of the Vosges on the Moselle, fled with the relics of St Aldephus to safety beyond the river. Meanwhile, the Hungarians continued their march up the Moselle until they reached Metz.5 Another Hungarian group even penetrated the Frankish realm as far as Burgundy. At the latest, the Hungarians left the North Frankish realm in 926, by which time they had made a lasting impression and had even left some literary traces in our sources. Because of their success, a more contemporary discussion of the origin of these people was needed, at the latest after 899, when Hungarians plundered northern Italy. This narrative was given in Regino of Prüm’s Chronicle, finished in 906 and dedicated to Bishop Adalbero of Augsburg in 908.6 The author presents an exhaustive narrative of this people’s origin to the year 889. In the entry for this year he digresses from his core narrative by explaining the origin of the Hungarians and names the main sources he used. Before starting his excur­ sus, he explicitly refers ‘to the words of historiographers’.7 This is remarkable gence, preservation and demise of the steppe empires see Pohl, ‘Die Rolle der Steppenvölker im frühmittelalterlichen Europa’, pp. 92–102; Pohl, ‘Huns, Avars, Hungarians’, pp. 693–97. 3 Lüttich, Ungarnzüge in Europa, pp. 41–100. Bowlus, ‘The Early Hungarians’, pp. 415–53. Bowlus, The Battle of Lechfeld, pp. 73–95. 4 Annales sancti Vincentii Mettenses, ed. by Pertz, s.a. 917, p. 157; See Lüttich, Ungarnzüge in Europa, p. 66. 5 Translatio III. s. Adelphi abbatis Romarici montis, ed. by Stiltingus, pp. 825–27; Flodoard of Reims, Historia Remensis ecclesiae, ed. by Stratmann, iv.43, pp. 445–46. 6 MacLean, History and Politics, pp. 9–10. 7 Regino of Prüm, Chronicon, ed. by Kurze, s.a. 889, p. 131: ‘Sed priusquam ipsius gentis acta crudelia stilo persequamur, non superfluum videatur, si de Scythiae situ Scytharumque moribus historiographorum dicta sequentes aliquid commemoremus’; trans. by MacLean, p. 202.

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indeed, because he never refers to authors of historiographical works in other passages of his Chronicle, except in his dedicatory letter where he states, it seemed to me unworthy that, since the historians of the Hebrews, Greeks, Romans and other peoples have transmitted to our knowledge through their writings the deeds done in their times, there should be such an unbroken silence concerning our own times.8

Therefore, Regino decided, ‘with all due modesty’, to record the deeds of his time. It included, in particular, the Hungarians, who gained more and more importance for the Latin West in the closing years of the ninth century. Regino was somehow unclear in identifying the Hungarians with an already known gens in the given frame of ethnographic history. He confesses that he did not find them in the books, but notes that they emerged from the Scythian kingdoms. Although he did not definitely identify the Hungarians with this ancient people, he nonetheless treats them as Scythians. Interestingly enough Regino’s depiction of the Hungarians is based on Justin’s Epitome — usually dated to the second century ad — of the Philippic History by Pompeius Trogus. A second source in this passage was Paul the Deacon’s History of the Lombards.9 In Justin Regino found a depiction of Scythia, the region where the Hungarians supposedly came from. He did so by copying various paragraphs from the source, but modified the text where necessary. Generally, he omitted passages in which Justin explained the simple lifestyle of the Scythians in order to celebrate the simplicity and greatness of an ancient civilization. This applies in particular to a passage where Justin talks about the grim climate in the North, which was responsible for the fecundity of the population, arguing for the antiquity and the robustness of the Scythians, whose ‘early years were as distinguished as the period of their empire’, a gens which was ‘always regarded as the oldest in the world’ even ‘more ancient’ than the Egyptians.10 According to Justin the Scythians had the advantage as to origin, because: If the entire earth was once submerged in deep water, then certainly it was all the higher ground [Scythia] which was first uncovered by the retreating flood, whereas 8 Regino of Prüm, Chronicon, ed. by Kurze, Prefatio, p. 1: ‘Indignum etenim mihi visum est, ut, cum Hebreorum, Grecorum et Romanorum aliarum que gentium historiographi res in diebus suis gestas scriptis usque ad nostram notitiam transmiserint, de nostris quam quam longe inferioribus temporibus ita perpetuum silentium sit’; trans. by MacLean, p. 61. 9 Justin, Epitoma, ed. by Seel; Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, pp. 12–187. 10 Justin, Epitoma, ed. by Seel, 2.i.1–5, p. 17; trans. by Yardley, p. 25.

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the water would have remained longest on the lowest soil [Egypt], and the sooner a part of the world dried out the sooner it would have begun to generate living creatures.11

Justin admitted later in his Epitome ‘the rigour of their climate and the barren soil which, so far from enriching the Scythians, barely kept them fed’.12 However, Regino preferred the relevant passage from Paul the Deacon, who used the same climate theory to explain the appearance of the Goths and other gentes: ‘They overflowed with such huge population, however, that the land they already had was not enough to feed them’, Regino wrote and subsequently appropriated this variation for his version of the origin of the Scythians or Hungarians.13 A reason not to implement passages from Justin’s account were obvious contradictions between the text and recent observations about the Hungarians: where Justin states that the Scythians were not acquisitive and they fought for nothing other than glory, Regino had to cut this passage for obvious reasons, since the Hungarians were known in the West for their raids. This simple life-style has also bestowed upon them an equitable character, for they do not covet another’s property — the lust for riches is to be found only where they are in use. One would wish that the rest of mankind exhibited similar moderation and self-restraint with regard to the property of others. Then for sure there would not be so many wars following one after the other in every age and every land; nor would sword and shield eliminate more people than natural causes determined by Fate. In fact it seems amazing that nature should bestow on the Scythians what the Greeks have been unable to achieve with all the protracted teachings of their sages and the precepts of their philosophers, and that a refined morality should suffer by comparison with that of uncultured barbarians. So much more has ignorance of vice benefited the Scythians than knowledge of virtue has the Greeks.14

Apparently, these words of praise, emphasizing the high moral standards of this ancient people, would have directed Regino’s audience towards the opposite point of view. In the course of his narration Regino changed tacitly from the Scythians to the Parthians as a model for the Hungarians, because the latter 11

Justin, Epitoma, ed. by Seel, 2.i.1–21, pp. 17–18; trans. by Yardley, pp. 25–26. Justin, Epitoma, ed. by Seel, 9.ii.7, p. 83; trans. by Yardley, p. 86. 13 Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, i.1, p. 48. See Regino of Prüm, Chronicle, trans. by MacLean, s.a. 889, p. 204. 14 Justin, Epitoma, ed.  by Seel, 2.ii.10–15, pp.  18–19: ‘Haec continentia illis morum quoque iustitiam edidit, nihil alienum concupiscentibus; quippe ibidem divitiarum cupido est […]. Tanto plus in illis proficit vitiorum ignoratio quam in his cognition virtutis’; trans. by Yardley, p. 27, compare to Regino of Prüm, Chronicle, trans. by MacLean, s.a. 889, p. 203. 12

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provided a suitable blueprint for the steppe riders’ way of fighting. In fact, with the Parthians Regino found in Justin what the Hungarians were famous for: The Parthians know nothing of hand-to-hand combat or besieging and storming cities. For them strategy consists in alternate charge and retreat by the cavalry; and they often pretend to flee to put the pursuing enemy off guard against their weapons. In battle the signal is given on a drum, not a trumpet. They cannot fight over a long period; but if their stamina were the equal of the violence of their attack, they would be irresistible. They usually quit the engagement in the very heat of the fight and soon afterwards come back from their retreat to renew the battle, so that the critical moment has to be faced just when one thinks he has won.15

This is what Regino made out of it: But they know nothing about fighting hand-to-hand in formation or taking besieged cities. They fight by charging forward and turning back on their horses, often indeed simulating flight. Nor can they fight for a long time; but they would be irresistible if their perseverance were as strong as their charge. Mostly they leave the battle at the height of the fighting and soon afterward come back from their retreat to fight again, so that just when you think you have won, the critical moment has to be faced.16

In another passage Regino refers to the horse-riding and exercising of archery of the Hungarians, also based on Justin’s description of the Parthians.17 While describing their fighting technique, Regino leaves his model behind, because he wants to present the Hungarians as more terrible than the Parthians. While Justin reports about the latter, ‘They eat no flesh but that which they take in hunting’,18 Regino expands on this topic and reports that the Hungarians ‘did not live like human beings but like beasts. For, so it is rumoured, they eat their meat raw, drink blood, chop up the hearts of captives and swallow them bit by bit just as if they were medicine’.19 In fact, the information about the Hungarians as man-eaters did not derive from Justin. Perhaps Regino found this in Isidore of Seville or in Solinus, who stated that a people in the neighbourhood of the Scythians were man-eaters.20 However, Regino obviously did not leave it at 15

Justin, Epitoma, ed. by Seel, 41.ii.7–10, p. 278; trans. by Yardley, pp. 254–55. Regino of Prüm, Chronicon, ed. by Kurze, s.a. 889, p. 133; trans. by MacLean, p. 205. 17 Justin, Epitoma, ed. by Seel, 41.iii.4, 6–8, pp. 278–79; trans. by Yardley, p. 255. 18 Justin, Epitoma, ed. by Seel, 41.iii.4, p. 278; trans. by Yardley, p. 255. 19 Regino of Prüm, Chronicle, trans. by MacLean, s.a. 889, p. 205. 20 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. by Lindsay, xiv.3.31; Solinus, Collectanea rerum mem­ orabilium, ed. by Mommsen, xv.15, p. 85. 16

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classifying the Hungarians as a people already known since Antiquity. Already at the beginning of his excursus he talks about the Hungarians as ‘a people, who were extremely warlike and more savage than any beast’.21 At the final point of his excursus on the Hungarians the author links the ethnographical information with contemporary events in three ways: first of all, he refers to rumours, which does not happen very often in his text;22 secondly, he ends his story with a hint of the devastating force of this people in Italy, which relates to a raid in 899/900;23 and finally, Regino offers an explicit comparison between the Hungarian way of fighting and Breton tactics, which were similar in key respects and which had been explained in earlier parts of his Chronicle. The difference was mainly that the Bretons used javelins instead of bows and arrows.24 As Simon MacLean put it recently, ‘The Hungarians/ Scythians […] might be culturally alien, but they were militarily familiar and, like the Bretons, beatable’.25 This was the important message in the text. But why did he insert the excursus in the entry to the year 889? This was not the first encounter of the Latin West with the Hungarians, as we know. Regino was certainly also aware of it. But all the main events concerning the Hungarians appear in the contemporary sources later than 889, the first one only in 892, when Hungarian groups fought with Arnulf of Carinthia against the Moravians.26 And nothing special occurred in 889 regarding the Hungarians according to contemporary sources. Later sources, like the Annales Sangallenses maiores from about the middle of the tenth century already report for 888 that Arnulf became king and that in this time the Agareni — meaning the Hungarians as sons of Hagar, a biblical origin which usually referred to the Saracens — came into his realm for the first time. The latter was clearly an addition by the compiler’s own hand.27 The same is true for the text given for the 21

Regino of Prüm, Chronicle, trans. by MacLean, s.a. 889, p. 202. Regino of Prüm, Chronicle, trans. by MacLean, s.a. 889, p. 205; s.a. 866, 877, and 891, pp. 145, 178, and 210. 23 Regino of Prüm, Chronicle, trans. by MacLean, s.a. 889, p. 206. 24 Regino of Prüm, Chronicle, trans. by MacLean, s.a. 889, p. 205; see Regino of Prüm, Chronicle, trans. by MacLean, s.a. 860, p. 137. 25 MacLean, History and Politics, p. 47. 26 Annales Fuldenses, ed. by Kurze, s.a. 892, 894, 895, 896, 900, 901, pp. 121, 125, 126, 129, 134–35, 135. See Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, 325–59. 27 Annales Sangallenses maiores, ed. by. Pertz, s.a. 888, p. 77: ‘Et Arnulphus in regnum elevatur; in cuius tempore Agareni in istas regiones primitus venerunt’. This sentence is based on Annales Alamannici (Codex Turicensis), ed. by Lendi, s.a. 888, p. 182: ‘Arnulfus in regnum elevatur’. 22

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year 892 in these annals. While the Annales Alamannici just report that Arnulf marched against the Moravians, the author of the Annales Sangallenses maiores added that in 892 he also released the Hungarians (Agareni) from ‘where they were enclosured’.28 Many authors of the tenth and the following centuries discussed extensively Arnulf ’s involvement in the making of the Hungarians into a powerful enemy at the end of the ninth century. Most of them wrote the entries to 888 and the early 890s relying on experience of the great battles between the steppe riders and the Ottonian armies. 29 Some of these texts relied on Regino’s Chronicle, for instance the Annalista Saxo, who copied long sections of the Chronicle word for word,30 and the Auctarium Garstense, a text from the twelfth century, which took over the date and the motifs used by Regino.31 While later authors explicitly connected Arnulf ’s policy with the appearance of the Hungarians, nothing could be read about this in Regino’s Chronicle. Regino wrote his text as early as the first years of the tenth century. It would have been possible to explain the origins of the Hungarians in his account for the year 901, when he records their raid in Italy, an event which shocked a lot of people in the Frankish realms and elsewhere.32 In fact, Regino was most probably alluding to this campaign by the steppe raiders in his excursus to 889, when he reports, ‘By their savagery, this abominable people devastated not only the regions already mentioned, but also most of the kingdom of Italy’.33 Such insertions from future events to past years were not uncommon in Regino’s narrative.34 It was obviously not an actual event in 889 which provoked a closer look at the Hungarians’ origins, but the historiographer’s desire to achieve a specific effect in his Chronicle. The key event in Regino’s Chronicle took place in 888. 28

Annales Sangallenses maiores, ed. by Pertz, s.a. 892, p. 77: ‘Arnolfus contra Maravenses pergebat, et Agarenos ubi reclusi erant, dimisit’; see Annales Alamannici (Codex Turicensis), ed. by Lendi, s.a. 892, p. 184: ‘Arnolfus rex contra Marauenses pergebat’. 29 See, for instance, Liudprand of Cremona, Antapodosis, ed. by Chiesa, i.13, pp. 16–17. 30 Annalista Saxo, ed. by Nass, s.a. 890, p. 111. 31 Auctarium Garstense, ed. by Wattenbach, s.a. 899, p. 565: ‘Ungari ex Scithia egressi Pannoniam ingrediuntur, humano sanguine et crudis carnibus utentes’. 32 Regino of Prüm, Chronicle, trans. by MacLean, s.a. 901, p. 226; Annales Fuldenses, ed. by Kurze, s.a. 900, p. 134: ‘Interim vero Avari, qui dicuntur Ungari, tota devastate Italia, ita ut occisis episcopis quamplurimis Italici contra eos depellare molientes in uno prelio una die ceciderunt XX milia’; Annales Alamannici (Codex Turcensis), ed. by Lendi, s.a. 899, p. 184. 33 Regino of Prüm, Chronicle, trans. by MacLean, s.a. 889, p. 206. 34 For the use of sources in Regino’s Chronicle see MacLean, ‘Insinuation’, pp. 1–28; West, ‘Knowledge’, 137–59.

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In the passage referring to this year, he vividly describes the crisis of political authority that erupted in the Carolingian Empire after Charles the Fat’s deposition and death.35 After Charles’s death, chaos, a lack of hierarchy, and a lack of hegemony prevailed. To highlight the immediate effects of Charles’s death, a clear break with a glorious past had to be illustrated. Regino assigned this role to the Hungarians, who were (unlike the Northmen, who raided Prüm in 882 and 892, but were never described in the Chronicle in similar fashion) a new, alien people on the borders of the Frankish realms with the potential to become a real threat to the larger social whole. In the first years of the tenth century, when Regino wrote the Chronicle, it was obvious to everyone how dangerous the Hungarians really were. In fact, there is another hint that the fate of Charles the Fat is linked with the excursus on the Scythians or Hungarians, in Regino’s narrative. The conceptual framework and vocabulary in his account of the succession of Charles the Fat in 888 derives from Justin’s description of Alexander the Great’s end.36 Justin’s Epitome also provided Regino with the model for the excursus on the Hungarians, as mentioned before. Justin was an important source for Regino. Single sentences or small sections appear in many parts of his Chronicle.37 From this source derive important assertions, like the statement on kings which Regino gives for 866: ‘the hearts of kings are greedy and never satisfied’.38 But Justin’s Epitome was used most intensively to describe the end of Charles the Fat. Regino started to use Justin for his entry for 887, in which he discussed the illness of Charles the Fat and reflected on Charles’s fortuna, which made him comparable to his grandfather Charlemagne.39 The excursus on the Hungarians in the account of events in the year 889 is the most extensive section. The entry stops with 890, when Regino discusses the political disintegration of Brittany.40 In doing so, he turns the historical developments of 887 to 890 into a distinct block in his narrative that stands for a peripety in the development of the Frankish realm. For this, Justin’s Alexander episode was 35

Regino of Prüm, Chronicle, trans. by MacLean, s.a. 888, pp. 198–202. Regino of Prüm, Chronicle, trans. by MacLean, s.a. 888, pp. 198–99. 37 See Manitius, ‘Regino und Justin’, pp. 192–204, for a list of quotations from Justin in Regino’s Chronicle. 38 Regino of Prüm, Chronicle, trans. by MacLean, s.a. 866, p. 151; cf. Justin, Epitoma, ed. by Seel, 38.vi.8, p. 262. See MacLean, ‘Insinuation’, p. 18. 39 Regino of Prüm, Chronicle, trans. by MacLean, s.a. 887, p. 197. see Airlie, ‘Sad Stories’, pp. 119–20. See also Nelson, ‘Peers in the Early Middle Ages’, pp. 44–45. 40 Regino of Prüm, Chronicle, trans. by MacLean, s.a. 890, pp. 208–09. 36

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very aptly chosen, because it also describes the fighting among the generals that happened after his death. To locate the excursus of the Hungarians in the account of 889 was therefore a dramaturgical decision by a historiographer. It was meant to link an important moment in late Carolingian history — the death of Charles the Fat — with an appropriate threat. But there is more: Regino used the appearance of this people to communicate a political statement. He dedicated his Chronicon to Bishop Adalbero of Augsburg, who was a leading figure in the East Frankish church. What is more, Adalbero was one of the main backers of Louis the Child’s regime.41 Together with Hatto of Mainz he had baptized Louis in 893 and remained closely involved in the young ruler’s upbringing. Louis’s charters refer to Adalbero as his nutritor.42 By dedicating his work to such a man, the author hoped to gain influence over Louis’s court. Concerning the Hungarian threat, we can watch Regino in his attempt to educate the king. He dedicated his text to Adalbero in 908, but stopped writing in 906.43 It is very likely that the battle of Bratislava in 907, which claimed the lives of several leading Bavarian aristocrats and led to a fundamental reconfiguration of the high nobility, was one reason for Regino’s silence.44 Although dux Liutpold was blamed for the defeat,45 this battle obviously cast a negative light on the young king, who was already viewed as weak.46 In putting the appearance of the Hungarians in the context of the death of Charles the Fat, the responsibility for the rising power of the steppe riders and the inadequate defensive measures of 907 were neatly shifted to events and circumstances which occurred before the ruling king was even born. Moreover, by linking the Hungarians with the death of Charles the Fat, rumours about the irresponsible involvement of Arnulf, Louis’s father, in unleashing the steppe riders against his enemies could be elegantly countered.47 In the Chronicle, Arnulf, a hero in the Annals of Fulda, 41 Regino of Prüm, Chronicle, trans. by MacLean, Preface, pp. 61–62. See MacLean, History and Politics, pp. 48–49. 42 Diplomata Ludowici infantis, ed. by Schieffer, pp. 100 n. 4, 110 n. 9, and 196 n. 65. 43 MacLean, History and Politics, pp. 9–10. Airlie, ‘Sad Stories’, pp. 111–13. 44 See Hiestand, ‘Preßburg 907’, pp. 1–20. Deutinger, ‘Die Schlacht bei Pressburg’, pp. 58–70. 45 Annales Alamannici (Codex Modoetiensis), ed. by Lendi, s.a. 907, p. 186: ‘item baugauriorum cum ungaris insuperabilis atque liutpaldus dux eorum supersticiosa superbia occisa paucique christianorum evaserunt interemptis multis episcopis comitibusque’. 46 Salomon of Constance, Carmen, ed. by von Winterfeld, 1, pp. 299–301. 47 For these rumours see in particular Liudprand, Antapodosis, ed.  by Chiesa, i.13, pp. 16–17.

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‘was only simply one more ruler in what was now a landscape crowded with rulers’, as Stuart Airlie put it.48 But this does not mean that Regino derogated the prestige of Arnulf or diminished the importance of the East Frankish realm under King Louis. Quite the contrary: past glories and severe faults happened in the late 880s in the West as well as in the East.49 In overemphasizing the effects of Charles the Fat’s death in 888, Regino provided an unencumbered past for the young ruler and offered advice for a promising future.50

48

Airlie, ‘Sad Stories’, pp. 121–22. For a more detailed analysis see a forthcoming monograph by the author. 50 Becher, ‘Arnulf von Kärnten’, pp.  669–70. See also Goldberg and MacLean, ‘Royal Marriage’. For a contemporary reaction to Regino’s Chronicon see Diesenberger, ‘Steppenreiter’, pp. 150–68. 49

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Works Cited Primary Sources Annales Alamannici (Codex Turicensis, Codex Modoetiensis), ed. by Walter Lendi, in Unter­ suchungen zur frühalemannischen Annalistik: Die Murbacher Annalen; Mit Edition, Scrinium Friburgense, 1 (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag Freiburg Schweiz, 1971), pp. 146–92 Annales Bertiniani, ed.  by Georg Waitz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 5 (Hanover: Hahn, 1883) Annales Fuldenses, ed. by Wilhelm Kurze, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum seperatim editi, 7 (Hanover: Hahn, 1891) Annales sancti Vincentii Mettenses, ed. by Georg Heinrich Pertz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores, 3 (Hanover: Hahn, 1839), pp. 155–60 Annales Sangallenses maiores, ed.  by Georg Heinrich Pertz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores, 1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1826), pp. 72–85 Annalista Saxo, ed.  by Klaus Nass, Die Reichschronik des Annalista Saxo und die säch­ sische Geschichtsschreibung des 12. Jahrhunderts, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Schriften, 41 (Hanover: Hahn, 1996) Auctarium Garstense, ed. by Wilhelm Wattenbach, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores, 9 (Hanover: Hahn, 1851), pp. 561–69 Diplomata Ludowici infantis, ed.  by Theodor Schieffer, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Diplomata regum Germaniae ex stirpe Karolinorum, 4 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1960), pp. 73–232 Flodoard of Reims, Historia Remensis ecclesiae, ed.  by Martina Stratmann, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores, 36 (Hanover: Hahn, 1998) Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. by W. M. Lindsay, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1911) Justin, Epitoma historiarum Philippicarum, ed. by Otto Seel (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1985); Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus, trans. by J. C. Yardley (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994) Liudprand of Cremona, Antapodosis, ed. by Paolo Chiesa, Corpus Christianorum, continuatio mediaevalis, 156 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), pp. 1–150 Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Ludwig Bethmann and Georg Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum (Hanover: Hahn, 1878), pp. 12–187 Regino of Prüm, Chronicon, ed. by Friedrich Kurze, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 50 (Hanover: Hahn, 1890); trans. by Simon MacLean, History and Politics in Late Carolingian and Ottonian Europe: The Chronicle of Regino of Prüm and Adalbert of Magdeburg (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), pp. 61–231 Gaius Julius Solinus, Collectanea rerum memorabilium, ed. by Theodor Mommsen (Berlin: Weidmann, 1895)

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Salomon of Constance, Carmen, ed. by Paul von Winterfeld, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Poetae latini aevi Carolini, 4.1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1899), 1, pp. 297–306 Translatio III. s. Adelphi abbatis Romarici montis, ed. by Joannes Stiltingus, Acta sanctorum, Sept. iii (Antwerp, 1750), pp. 824–27

Secondary Studies Airlie, Stuart, ‘Sad Stories of the Deaths of Kings: Narrative Patterns and Structures of Authority in Regino of Prüm’s Chronicle’, in Narrative and History in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Elizabeth M. Tyler and Ross Balzaretti (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 105–31 Becher, Matthias, ‘Arnulf von Kärnten — Name und Abstammung eines (illegitimen?) Karolingers’, in Nomen et Fraternitas: Festschrift für Dieter Geuenich zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Uwe Ludwig, Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde, 62 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008), pp. 665–82 Bowlus, Charles, The Battle of Lechfeld and its Aftermath, August 955: The End of the Age of Migration in the Latin West (Burlington: Aldershot, 2006) —— , ‘The Early Hungarians as Mercenaries, 860–955’, in Mercenaries and Paid Men: The Mercenary Identity in the Middle Ages, ed.  by John France, History of Warfare, 47 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 415–53 Deutinger, Roman, ‘Die Schlacht bei Pressburg und die Entstehung des bayerischen Herzogtums’, in Im Schnittpunkt frühmittelalterlicher Kulturen: Niederösterreich an der Wende vom 9. zum 10. Jahrhundert, ed. by Roman Zehetmayer, Mitteilungen aus dem Niederösterreichischen Landesarchiv, 13 (St Pölten: Amt der Niederösterreichischen Landesregierung, 2008), pp. 58–70 Diesenberger, Maximilian, ‘Die Steppenreiter aus dem Osten — eine exegetische Herausforderung’, in Im Schnittpunkt frühmittelalterlicher Kulturen: Niederösterreich an der Wende vom 9. zum 10. Jahrhundert, ed. by Roman Zehetmayer, Mitteilungen aus dem Niederösterreichischen Landesarchiv, 13 (St  Pölten: Amt der Niederösterreichischen Landesregierung, 2008), pp. 150–68 Goosmann, Eric, and Rob Meens, ‘A Mirror of Princes Who Opted out: Regino of Prüm and Royal Monastic Conversion’, in Religious Franks: Religion and Power in the Frankish Kingdoms; Studies in Honour of Mayke de Jong, ed. by Rob Meens, Dorine van Espelo, Bram van den Hoven van Genderen, Jannecke Raaijmakers, Irene van Renswoude, and Carine van Rhijn (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017), pp. 296–313 Goldberg, Eric, and Simon MacLean, ‘Royal Marriage, Frankish History and Dynastic Crisis in Regino of Prüm’s Chronicle’, Medieval Worlds, 10 (2019), 107–29 Hiestand, Rudolf, ‘Preßburg 907: Eine Wende in der Geschichte des ostfränkischen Reiches?’, Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte, 57 (1994), 1–20 Lüttich, Rudolf, Ungarnzüge in Europa im 10. Jahrhundert, Historische Studien, 84 (Berlin: Ebering, 1910) MacLean, Simon, History and Politics in Late Carolingian and Ottonian Europe: The Chronicle of Regino of Prüm and Adalbert of Magdeburg (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009)

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——  , ‘Insinuation, Censorship and the Struggle for Late Carolingian Lotharingia in Regino of Prüm’s Chronicle’, English Historical Review, 124 (2009), 1–28 Manitius, Max, ‘Regino und Justin’, Neues Archiv, 25 (1900), 192–204 Nelson, Janet L., ‘Peers in the Early Middle Ages’, in Law, Laity and Solidarities: Essays in Honour of Susan Reynolds, ed.  by Pauline  A. Stafford, Janet  L. Nelson, and Jane Martindale (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), pp. 27–46 Pohl, Walter, ‘Huns, Avars, Hungarians – Comparative Perspectives Based on Written Evidence’ in Complexity of Interaction along the Eurasian Steppe Zone in the First Millennium CE, ed. by Jan Bemmann, Michael Schmauder, Bonn Contributions to Asian Archaeology 7 (Bonn: Vor- und Frühgeschichtliche Archäologie, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, 2015), pp. 693–702. —— , ‘Die Rolle der Steppenvölker im frühmittelalterlichen Europa’, in Im Schnittpunkt frühmittelalterlicher Kulturen: Niederösterreich an der Wende vom 9. zum 10. Jahrhundert, ed. by Roman Zehetmayer, Mitteilungen aus dem Niederösterreichischen Landesarchiv, 13 (St Pölten: Amt der Niederösterreichischen Landesregierung, 2008), pp. 92–102 West, Charles, ‘Knowledge of the Past and the Judgement of History in Tenth-Century Trier: Regino of Prüm and the Lost Manuscript of Bishop Adventius of Metz’, Early Medieval Europe, 24 (2016), 137–59 Wolfram, Herwig, Grenzen und Räume. Geschichte Österreichs vor seiner Entstehung, Österreichische Geschichte 378-907 (Wien: Ueberreuter, 1995)

Us and Them: The Description of Foreigners and Indigenous Peoples in Master P.’s and Simon of Kéza’s Gesta (Thirteenth Century) Dániel Bagi

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n this paper I will give a short summary of the subject of foreigners and indigenous people as seen and interpreted by the first chronicle writers of the Hungarian dynasty in the thirteenth century. Medieval narrative texts were primarily of a literary nature,1 and therefore performed special functions.2 Medieval historiography in Hungary, as in the whole of East and Central Europe, never became independent from the royal and ducal courts, so it provides a mirror for the practice and changes in the course of royal/ducal politics. The question is what exactly the relationship of reality and fiction in narrative texts is. Since the pioneering studies of Herbert Beumann, Hans-Werner Goetz, and recently Gerd Althoff,3 there has been no doubt that medieval narrative works frequently describe the reality of the ‘Zeitgeist’ with fictional devices. Fictional stories, however, often say more about the reality of the historical environment of the authors than about their subject matter.4 1

Adamska, ‘The Study of Medieval Literacy’. See generally: Schmale, Funktion und Formen. 3 Beumann, ‘Die Historiographie des Mittelalters als Quelle’; Althoff, ‘Genealogische und andere Fiktionen’; Goetz, ‘“Vorstellungsgeschichte”’. 4 See as classical study: Beumann, Widukind von Korvei. 2

Dániel Bagi is Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History and the head of the Department of Eastern and Central European History at the Eötvös Lorand University Budapest. Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000–1300, ed. by Walter Pohl, Veronika Wieser, and Francesco Borri, celama 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp.  287–304 FHG 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.130263

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In the present paper I will try to analyse two historiographic texts from the point of view of their narratives regarding foreigners, and the relationship of ‘us and them’: Master P.’s Gesta Hungarorum from the beginning of the thirteenth century, and Simon of Kéza’s Gesta Hungarorum from the last decades of the same century. Depictions of ethnic conflicts in medieval narrative sources have for a long time been one of the preferred research subjects of Hungarian medievalists.5 However, only a few narrative texts about the earliest periods of Hungarian history have been preserved.6 Some texts going back to the second half of the eleventh century are preserved in two compilations from the fourteenth century, the so-called Hungarian Chronicle Composition.7 The first chronicles written by a single author appeared only in the thirteenth century. The first of them is the so-called Gesta Hungarorum written by Master P., former notary of the late King Béla, commonly known as ‘Anonymus’.8 The second one is another Gesta Hungarorum, written by Simon of Kéza, the notary of King Ladislas IV, referred to as the Cuman, about the origin and deeds of the Hungarians.9 It would not be an overstatement to say that these two historical works influenced the national consciousness, but not only that of the Hungarians: to the present day both Master P. and Simon of Kéza remain reference texts for Slovak and Rumanian intellectuals as well.10 Beginning our analysis with Master P.’s Gesta, historical research in the last two centuries has made serious efforts to determine the identity of Master P., when his work was composed, and what his intention was in writing it. To come to the first general question, I must confess, despite all efforts, that there are still only theories about his identity, as since the time of the first edition of the sole manuscript of the Gesta Hungarorum from the thirteenth century, we have only known the initial of his name. He might have been called Peter, Paul, or even Pósa, and 5

Kristó, ‘Oroszok’; Kristó, Magyar historiográfia, i, pp. 33–44; Györffy, A magyarság keleti elemei; Berend, At the Gate of Christendom. 6 Chronici Hungarici compositio, ed. by Domanovszky; ed. and trans. by Bak and Veszprémy; see Kristó, Magyar historiográfia, i, p. 35; Veszprémy, ‘Árpád-kori történeti elbeszélő forrásaink’, p. 13. 7 On this topic see: Kristó, Magyar historiográfia, i, pp. 22–29; Kristó, A történeti irodalom, pp. 8–14; summarized by: Bagi, ‘Problematik der ältesten Schichten’. 8 Anonymus, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by Jakubovich and Pais; see also its modern bilingual edition: Anonymus, The Deeds of the Hungarians, ed. and trans. by Rady and Veszprémy. 9 Simon of Kéza, Gesta, ed. by Domanovszky; ed. and trans. by Veszprémy and Schaer. 10 See for example: Madgearu, The Romanians in the Anonymous ‘Gesta Hungarorum’; Steinhübel, Nitrianske kniežatstvo.

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could have held a higher church position in Hungary.11 Scholars are more successful in writing about the time of composition of Master P.’s work. In medieval Hungary there were four kings called Béla, the first of whom lived in the eleventh century, the second and third in the twelfth century, while the fourth one ruled in the second half of the thirteenth century.12 One of the most important results of philological and other research on the text of the Gesta that could be convincingly verified is that the work must have been written after the death of King Béla III (1176–1192), but before the Mongol invasion of 1241.13 Furthermore, it now seems clear that Master P., whoever he was, was one of the proponents of the new social and economic policies of King Andrew II (1205–1235); we can therefore presume that the work was written sometime around 1210, when the so-called institutiones novae of the king were developed and propagated among the Hungarian nobility. These new measures by the king had one general goal, to fundamentally change the ancient social and economic system based on the administration of goods coming from the counties under royal rule (comitatus).14 At first sight Master P.’s Gesta Hungarorum presents the following subjects: the origins and the emergence of the dynasty of the Arpads (that is, the birth of Duke Álmos),15 the emergence of the Hungarian principality, the creation of the so-called ‘Blood contract’ between the seven Hungarian tribes which created the legal bonds between the dynasty and the seven tribes,16 the conquest 11

Most recent summary about the historiography of the Gesta Hungarorum: Thoroczkay, ‘Az Anonymus-kérdés kutatástörténeti áttekintése’. 12 Kristó and Makk, Az Árpád­házi uralkodók, pp. 56–197. 13 Kristó, A történeti irodalom, p. 26. 14 For a summary of the issue see: Engel, The Realm of Saint Stephen, pp. 83–101. See specific studies devoted to this topic by: Nógrády, ‘Magistratus et comitatus tenentibus’; Kristó, ‘II. András király “új intézkedései”’; Zsoldos, ‘II. András Aranybullája’. 15 Anonymus, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by Jakubovich and Pais, 3, p. 38; ed. and trans. by Rady and Veszprémy, 3, pp. 12–14: ‘Anno dominice incarnationis DCCCo XVIIIIo Ugek, sicut supra diximus, longo post tempore de genere Magog regis erat quidam nobilissimus dux Scithie, qui duxit sibi uxorem in Dentumoger filiam Eunedubeliani ducis, nomine Emesu, de qua genuit filium, qui agnominatus est Almus. Sed ab aventu divino est nominatus Almus, quia matri eius pregnanti per sompnium apparuit divina visio in forma asturis, que quasi veniens eam gravidavit et innotuit ei, quod de utero eius egrederetur torrens et de lumbis eius reges gloriosi propagarentur, sed non in sua multiplicarentur terra. Quia ergo sompnium in lingua Hungarica dicitur almu et illius ortus per sompnium fuit pronosticatus, ideo ipse vocatus est Almus. Vel ideo vocatus est Almus, id est sanctus quia ex progenie eius sancti reges et duces erant nascituri. Quid ultra!’. See: Spychała, Studia. 16 Anonymus, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by Jakubovich and Pais, 6, pp. 40–41; ed. and trans. by Rady and Veszprémy, 6, p. 18: ‘Primus status iuramenti sic fuit: Ut, quamdiu vita duraret

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of the Carpathian Basin led by the Arpads along with the subjugation of foreign rulers and their people found there, and finally the donation of different parts of the country to those who accompanied the leaders of the tribes in the conquering of the Carpathian Basin.17 Furthermore, Master P. is also the first ‘historian’ of the Hungarian nobility, which started arguing for its own historical memory and special political and economic privileges at the time, supported in part by Andrew II.18 Master P. created, sometimes fictively, genealogical bonds between the first ‘land-taker’ generation of the Hungarian nobility and the noble clans familiar to him in his lifetime. His work is therefore, as one of the most excellent researchers of the Gesta Hungarorum put it, a kind of ‘Gesta regum, gesta nobilium’,19 setting out the memorial history of both the dynasty and the nobility. Master P.’s Gesta Hungarorum is also a narrative of great importance regarding the issue of the multilingual and multi-ethnic character of medieval Hungary; however, he was also the first author in Hungarian history who connected the land grab by the Hungarian tribes with the suppression of others. His vision of the territory of the later Kingdom of Hungary being conquered by the Hungarian tribes inspired many scholars to see real events in Master P.’s narratives, and to accept that the figures in the Hungarian’s work, like Duke Ménmarót,20 Gealu/ tam ipsis quam etiam, posteris suis semper ducem haberent de progenie Almi ducis. Secundus status iuramenti sic fuit: Ut, quicquid boni per labores eorum acquirere possent, nemo eorum expers fieret. Tertius status iuramenti sic fuit: Ut isti principales persone, qui sua libera voluntate Almum sibi dominum elegerant, quod ipsi et filii eorum nunquam a consilio ducis et honore regni omnino priverentur. Quartus status iuramenti sic fuit: Ut, siquis de posteris eorum infidelis fieret contra personam ducalem et discordiam faceret inter ducem et cognatos suos, sanguis nocentis funderetur, sicut sanguis eorum fuit fusus in iuramento, quod fecerunt Almo duci. Quintus status iuramenti sic fuit: Ut, siquis de posteris ducis Almi et aliarum personarum principalium iuramenti statuta ipsorum infringere voluerit, anathemati subiaceat in perpetuum’. 17 Anonymus, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by Jakubovich and Pais, 12–46, pp. 50–95; ed. and trans. by Rady and Veszprémy, 12–46, pp. 34–102. 18 On the extensive literature on this topic see: Zsoldos, ‘II. András Aranybullája’, pp. 1–4. 19 Győry, Gesta regum, pp. 39–40. 20 Anonymus, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by Jakubovich and Pais, 28, p. 70; ed. and trans. by Rady and Veszprémy, 28, pp. 64–66: ‘Tosu vero et Zobolsu adepta victoria reversi sunt ad ducem Arpad subiugando totum popolum a fluvio Zomus usque ad Crisium et nullus contra eos ausus fuit manus levare. Et ipse Menumorout dux eorum magis preparabat vias suas in Greciam eundi, quam contra eos veniendi. Et deinde regressi descenderunt iuxta quandam fluvium nomine Humusouer et venerunt usque ad lutum Zerep. Et deinde egressi venerunt usque ad Zeguholmu et ibi volebant transire Crisium, ut contra Menumorout pugnarent, sed venientes milites Menumorout eis transitum prohibuerunt. Deinde egressi per diem unum equitantes castra metati sunt iuxta Parvos Montes et hinc iuxta fluvium Turu equitantes, usque ad Thysciam

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Gyalu,21 or even the cowardly Duke Salan,22 were real rulers who lived in the ninth century, and they themselves were the ancestors of Rumanians or even Slovaks. There is no place in this short paper to cite all of the earlier theories from mostly Czech, Slovak, and Rumanian scholars, arguing for the continuation and primordiality of Slavic or even Daco-Roman structures, language, and customs in the Carpathian Basin,23 which were frequently employed as historical arguments in border disputes after World War I. It would be better to mention more recent studies, which have changed our perspective as far as they actually assert that the early Kingdom of Hungary was a state, with Slavic or even Daco-Roman roots.24 Hence, Master P.’s vision of history was accepted by non-Hungarian historians as well, but they drew opposing conclusions from it. For them, Master P. was the most important source of proof that the Hungarian tribes found existing ethnic and social structures in the Carpathian Basin which they then suppressed, and the frameworks of which were taken pervenerunt. Et in portu Drugma fluvium Thyscie transnavigantes, ubi etiam per gratiam Arpad ducis cuidam Cumano militi, nomine Huhot, magnam terram aquisiverunt quam posteritas eius usque nunc haberunt’. 21 Anonymus, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by Jakubovich and Pais, 26, pp. 66–67; ed. and trans. by Rady and Veszprémy, 26, p. 62: ‘Tunc Tuhutum audita bonitate terre illius misit legatos suos ad ducem Arpad, ut sibi licentiam daret ultra silvas eundi contra Gelou ducem pugnare. Dux vero Arpad inito consilio voluntatem Tuhutum laudavit et ei licentiam ultra silvas eundi contra Gelou pugnare concessit. Hoc dum Tuhutum audivisset a legato, preparavit se cum suis militibus et dimissis ibi sociis suis egressus est ultra silvas versus orientem contra Gelou ducem Blacorum. Gelou vero dux Ultrasilvanus audiens adventum eius congregavit exercitum suum et cepit velocissimo cursu equitare obviam ei, ut eum per portas Mezesinas prohiberet, sed Tuhutum uno die silvam pertransiens ad fluvium Almas pervenit. Tunc uterque exercitus ad invicem pervenerunt medio fluvio interiacente. Dux vero Gelou volebat, quod ibi eos prohiberet cum sagittariis suis’. 22 Anonymus, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by Jakubovich and Pais, 30, p. 71; ed. and trans. by Rady and Veszprémy, 30, p. 68: ‘Dux vero Arpad transactis quibusdam diebus inito consilio et sui nobiles miserunt nuntios suos ad ducem Salanum, qui nuntiarent ei victoriam Thosu et Zobolsu nec non et Tuhutum quasi pro gaudio et peterent ab eo terram usque ad fluvium Zogea. Quod sic factum est. Missi sunt enim Etu et Voyta, qui, cum invenissent ducem Salanum in sabulo Olpar, mandata gaudia nuntiaverunt et terram ab eo usque ad fluvium Zogea postulaverunt. Salanus dux hoc audito in maximum irruit timorem et terram ab ipso postulatam timore percussus usque ad fluvium Zogeua duci Arpad concessit et legatis diversa dona presentavit. Septimo autem die Etu et Voyta accepta licentia ad dominum suum sunt reversi, quos dux Arpad honorifice recepit et audita legatione eorum factum est gaudium magnum in curia ducis et cepit dux donare suis fidelibus loca et possessiones magnas’. 23 See for example: Pop, ‘De manibus Valachorum scismaticorum …’, pp. 16–54. 24 Steinhübel, Nitrianske kniežatstvo, pp. 301–02.

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over by the conquerors. So, both Hungarian scholars and those from other nations deduced from Master P.’s vision the origins and characteristics of the territorial administrative structure of the early Kingdom of Hungary. As is commonly known, King St Stephen created both the ecclesiastical and the administrative system in Hungary, the bishoprics, and the so-called ‘comitatus’, which, to the present day, has remained the basic unit of the civil administration system in Hungary.25 The origins, shape, and function of, as well as changes to the ‘comitatus’ have been discussed by scholars since the nineteenth century. Generally, there are two leading theories about their origins: they were either appropriated from an existing foreign (mostly Slavic26 or Carolingian)27 structure, or they are described as part of the authentic Hungarian heritage. For some scholars who argue for the foreign origin of structural elements of the Hungarian administrative structure, Master P.’s tale about the conquering of the Carpathian Basin often serves as the most important piece of evidence for the continuity of Great Moravian or other earlier structures there.28 However, in the eyes of those who argue for the autochthonous origin of the administrative and social structures of medieval Hungary, Master P.’s work actually means the opposite: the narrative of the blood contract, the creation of the first political bonds, and finally, the conquering and dividing of the conquered lands among themselves convinced scholars that they could perceive the continuity of ancient Hungarian bonds brought and inherited from the times of the pagan principality.29 A reasonable question would be whether Master P.’s work depicts real multi-ethnic relations at the time of the land grab by the Hungarian tribes. Classical philological and modern criticism of sources could prove that Master P.’s Gesta Hungarorum is not one of the most remarkable sources for events of the ninth century. The text is a typical gesta,30 containing many epic and topological elements using widely known classical and medieval patterns. 31 He might have studied somewhere in Europe, as he himself confesses in the prologue of his work;32 thus he adapted patterns of the literary tradition of 25

Engel, The Realm of Saint Stephen, pp. 31–45. Léderer, Magyarország története, p. 78. 27 Marczali, ‘A vezérek kora’; Deér, Pogány magyarság, p. 35. 28 For example: Chaloupecký, Staré Slovensko, pp.  45–46; Steinhübel, Nitrianske kniežatstvo, pp. 31–47. 29 Györffy, Tanulmányok a magyar állam eredetéről; Györffy, King Saint Stephen, pp. 78–83. 30 On the classification see: Plezia, Kronika Galla, pp. 22–26. 31 On Master P.’s sources from Latin literature see Thoroczkay, ‘Anonymus latin’. 32 Anonymus, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by Jakubovich and Pais, Prologus, p. 33; ed. and 26

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his lifetime. Secondly, Master P., as has been mentioned above, was one of the followers of the new royal policy of Andrew II, who intended to change the ancient social and economic structures of the Kingdom of Hungary established by King Stephen and which had determined the entire social composition of the country for over two centuries.33 The philosophy of the ‘new institutions’ introduced by Andrew II was to elevate the nobility to the level of the dynasty by funding it, even exorbitantly at times. Therefore, the image of ancient Hungarian society depicted in Master P.’s Gesta Hungarorum more closely reflects the reality of the turn of the thirteenth century, and delivers ‘historical evidence’ of the noble clans known to Master P. regarding the deeds of their ancestors, as well as about the ancient character of the donation by the rulers to noblemen. And finally, the presentation of the blood contract, the acceptance of the Arpads’ leadership by the other tribes, and the conquest and subjugation of the Carpathian Basin play their specific roles in Master P.’s mind. He tried to convince his audience that one of the most ancient customs in Hungary was for those who had worked to earn something to continue possessing it.34 In other words: the ancestors of the dynasty and the nobility conquered the country by their own sweat and blood, and therefore it now has to belong to their descendants, the kings and the noblemen. This vision of history created by Master P. became the basic philosophical principle of the modus pos­ sidendi of the Hungarian nobility (to which we may add the East and Central European nobility as well). The idea of feudalism and feudal bonds was almost trans. by Rady and Veszprémy, Prologus, p. 2: ‘P dictus magister ac quodam bone memorie gloriosissimi Bele regis Hungarie notarius N suo dilectissimo amico, viro venerabili et arte litteralis scientie inbuto, salutem et sue petitionis effectum. Dum olim in scolari studio simul essemus et in hystoria Troiana, quam ego cum summo amore complexus ex libris Darethis Frigii ceterorumque auctorum, sicut a magistris meis audiveram, in unum volumen proprio stilo compilaveram, pari voluntate legeremus, petisti a me, ut, sicut hystoriam Troianam bellaque Grecorum scripseram, ita et genealogiam regum Hungarie et nobilium suorum, qualiter septem principales persone, que Hetumoger vocantur, de terra Scithica descenderunt vel qualis sit terra Scithica et qualiter sit generatus dux Almus aut quare vocatur Almus primus dux Hungarie, a quo reges Hungarorum originem duxerunt, vel quot regna et reges sibi subiugaverunt aut quare populus de terra Scithica egressus per ydioma alienigenarum Hungarii et in sua lingua propria Mogerii vocantur, tibi scriberem. Promisi etenim me facturum, sed aliis negotiis impeditus et tue peti­ tionis et mee promissionis iam pene eram oblitus, nisi mihi per litteras tua dilectio debitum red­ dere monuisset’. 33 Engel, The Realm of Saint Stephen, p. 94. 34 Anonymus, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by Jakubovich and Pais, 6, p. 40; ed. and trans. by Rady and Veszprémy, 6, p. 18: ‘Secundus status iuramenti sic fuit: Ut, quicquid boni per labores eorum acquirere possent, nemo eorum expers fieret’.

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completely unknown and unacknowledged by them, and all donations were in force for eternity (‘in perpetuum’).35 This basic character of Master P.’s Gesta Hungarorum also influences his narratives about conquering the people found in the country. As a result of the research efforts of many generations, it seems clear today that Master P.’s work refers to conflicts between the Byzantine Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary, which determined almost the entire ‘foreign policy’ of the Hungarian rulers from the middle of the twelfth century.36 The Byzantine Empire made territorial claims against the Hungarian rulers regarding the southern parts of the country. We can assume that one of the responses was Master P.’s narrative about the conquest of the entire Carpathian Basin by the Hungarians in the ninth century, and its continuous possession since those times. We should treat the people and the rulers found and conquered by the Hungarians in this light. Reading the text, we can assume that Master P.’s invocation of the multi-ethnic character of the Carpathian Basin was an argument for his contemporaries, to prove that the territory whose ownership was being questioned had belonged to the Hungarian kings and the nobility since ancient times, as they had earned it from others by their own effort, through conquest, trade, or even by callidity. Therefore, to treat the Gesta Hungarorum as one of the more credible witnesses of the circumstances of the ninth century is fraught with danger. The Gesta Hungarorum of the anonymous notary of the late King Béla is a rather unsuitable source for discovering exactly what the relations between the indigenous people and foreigners in the Carpathian Basin looked like at the time of the Hungarian conquest. The author himself was concerned about it only as far as he needed to achieve his narrative or political goals at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and he did not care about the ethnic conditions of the Hungarian past. On the other hand, Master P. was interested in questions of multi-ethnicity, but only so long as the other peoples remained under Hungarian rule. The text provides us with even less information about the origins of the later administrative and social structure of the country. Whatever the intention and characteristics of Master P.’s Gesta Hungarorum, there is no doubt that from its very beginning the Kingdom of Hungary was not a country of only indigenous people, whatever this term meant in the eleventh 35 On feudalism-like constructs as an honour introduced in Hungary by the Angevins in the fourteenth century, see: Engel, The Realm of Saint Stephen, pp. 141–75. 36 Kapitánffy, ‘Der ungarische Anonymus’; Horváth, ‘Die griechischen (byzantinischen) Sprachkenntnisse’.

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century.37 One of the earliest pieces of evidence in support of this assertion can be found in the so-called Libellus de institutione morum of King St Stephen to his son, Prince Emery, also called the Admonitions.38 The Admonitions must have been written in the second decade of the eleventh century, before Emery’s death,39 and it comprises one of the latest Carolingian specula regia (king’s mirror) preserved in Europe. The text, however, differs from the customary style of ninth- and tenth-century Carolingian specula, whose authors recommended that the forthcoming ruler maintain the usual royal virtues. In the Libellus the entirety of royal power was derived from the relationship of the ruler to the ‘decors of the royal palace’, the bishops, the noblemen, the royal council, and the incoming guests, called hospites in the text.40 Even the last passage of this part of the king’s admonitions, declaring that ‘kingdoms of one language and of one custom are weak and feeble’,41 has caused much discussion among scholars. Many of them argue that the text gave clear answers for dealing with the multilingual and multi-ethnic characteristics of the early Arpadian monarchy, and even journalists of the present day have followed in their footsteps, arguing in political debates for the existence of a minority policy of the kings of the Arpadian dynasty from as early as the thirteenth century.42 Others, such as Kálmán Guoth, tragically deceased at a young age, asserted that this chapter of the Libellus supplies evidence of its later origin, because guests, especially from Germany, arrived at the earliest during the thirteenth century.43 However, as 37

For more on the topic see: Berend, At the Gate of Christendom. Libellus de institutione morum, ed. by Balogh; trans. by Bak and Sweeney. 39 See: Szűcs, ‘Szent István intelmei’. 40 Szűcs, ‘Szent István intelmei’, p. 278. 41 Libellus de institutione morum, ed. by Balogh, 6, p. 625: ‘Nam unius lingue uniusque moris regnum inbecille et fragile est. Propterea iubeo te fili mi, ut bona voluntate illos nutrias, et honeste teneas, ut tecum libentius degant, quam alicubi habitent. Si enim tu destruere, quod ego edificavi, aut dissipare quod congregavi studueris, sine dubio maximum detrimentum tuum patietur regnum. Quod ne fiat, tuum quottidie auge regnum, ut tua corona ab hominibus habeatur augusta’ (trans. by Bak and Sweeney, 6, p. 103: ‘For infirm and weak is the kingdom of one language and one custom. Therefore, I command you, my son, to nourish them in good will and retain them with integrity, so that they stay with you rather than live elsewhere. But if you wish to destroy what I have built and dissipate what I have gathered, your realm will, beyond doubt, suffer great loss. To avoid that, augment the kingdom every day so that your crown may be seen by men as august’). 42 As a first example see: Szekfű, ‘Még egyszer’. 43 Guoth, ‘Egy forrás’. 38

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was proven by Elemér Mályusz and later by Jenő Szűcs,44 the Admonitions follow the formal and contextual requirements of the ninth- and tenth-century literary and political customs. Consequently, the regnum mentioned here does not mean the whole kingdom or the country, but rather the royal court and power. The newly arrived guests, thus, were only members of the ecclesiastical and military elites, bishops and knights invited by the king, who — as the text of the Admonitions asserts — brought ‘documenta et arma’: literacy and military force in the service of the ruler.45 Therefore the Libellus de institutione morum provides evidence for the ‘multinational’ character of Hungary insofar as the royal court and the ecclesiastical positions everywhere in East-Central Europe were filled by foreign church and military dignitaries in the eleventh century. In this context, it shows the integration of many foreign newcomers in the service of the king. Regarding the multi-ethnic cohesion of the elites in the earliest times, we have yet another piece of evidence: the first Hungarian king was belted with the sword by Hont and Pázmány, the founders of one of the earliest noble clans in Hungary, who were of foreign descent;46 one of the earliest counties established by King Stephen was named after Hont. Beyond this, independently of the intellectual content of the Libellus de institutione morum and the multi-ethnic characteristics of the Hungarian elites at the beginning of the eleventh century, the Kingdom of Hungary had been inhabited by many foreign ethnic groups since the beginning of its history, coming from both Eastern and Western Europe. This process accelerated dramatically from the end of the twelfth century onwards, when the immigration of western and eastern populations caused the ethnic and linguistic composition of the subjects of the kings of Hungary to begin to develop into a new kind of conglomerate. From the second half of the twelfth century onwards, mostly Vallonian, Italian, and German groups of both rural and urban origin arrived in Hungary. They were followed in the thirteenth century by the Teutonic 44

Mályusz, ‘Az egynyelvű ország’, pp. 55–56; Szűcs, ‘Szent István intelmei’, p. 286. Libellus de institutione morum, ed. by Balogh, 6, pp. 624–25: ‘Roma vero usque hodie esset ancilla, nisi Eneades fecissent illam liberam. Sicut enim ex diversis partibus et provinciis veniunt hospites, ita diversas linguas et consuetudines, diversaque documenta et arma secum ducunt, que omnia regna ornant et magnificant aulam et perterritant exterorum arrogantiam’ (trans. by Bak and Sweeney, 6, p. 103: ‘Rome would still be servile had the sons of Aeneas not made her free. Just as guests arrive from diverse regions and areas, so, too, do they bring diverse languages and customs, diverse teachings and tools with them which all adorn the kingdoms, bring praise to the court, and deter outsiders from arrogance’). 46 Chronici Hungarici compositio, ed. by Domanovszky, 64, p. 313; ed. and trans. by Bak and Veszprémy, 64, p. 110. 45

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Knights,47 as well as civic groups, such as Saxon communities, which settled in the Kingdom of Hungary in the Zips and in Transylvania.48 As for an oriental element, we can mention the massive settlement of the Cumans in the deserted territory between the Danube and Tisza Rivers after the middle of the thirteenth century. Pechenegs, Ishmaelites, and Jews had already appeared earlier. Thus, especially after the Mongol invasion in 1241, medieval Hungary became if not a multi-ethnic country in its modern sense, surely a kingdom populated by many ethnic groups of diverse language and social conditions whose rights were granted by privileges given by the kings of Hungary. No wonder that the next dynastic chronicle after Master P., the Gesta Hungarorum by Simon of Kéza, had to provide answers to the question of why so many foreigners had come to Hungary, what their relationship to the native Hungarians was, how their coexistence functioned, and what kind of legal conditions the newcomers had. The Gesta Hungarorum of Simon of Kéza was written between 1282 and 1285; there is no surviving medieval manuscript of this text, and it is known only from later copies from the early modern era.49 The Gesta Hungarorum was — one could say — destined to be a study about ‘us and them’, since Simon of Kéza was the notary of a king, Ladislas IV, who himself was to an extent of foreign origin. Ladislas IV was the son of Stephen V and the grandson of King Béla IV, who, before the Mongol invasion of 1241, had initiated the invitation of the pagan Cumans to Hungary, and who started permanently settling their tribes after his return from his Dalmatian asylum in 1241.50 Indeed, King Béla made a pact with the Cuman rulers, arranging a marriage between his son and the daughter of a Cuman prince. Ladislas IV, also known as the Cuman, was born from this alliance, and — if we can trust the Hungarian chronicle — kept some Cuman customs, such as the uxores, which resulted in a visit by a papal legate in around 1273.51 47

Zimmermann, Der Deutsche Orden in Siebenbürgen. Kristó, Early Transylvania, pp.  57–98; Homza, ‘Dzieje wczesnośredniowiecznego Spisza’; Fügedi, ‘Das mittelalterliche Ungarn als Gastland’. 49 As general literature see: Veszprémy and Szovák, ‘Krónikák, Legendák, Intelmek’, pp. 739–49. 50 Szűcs, Az utolsó Árpádok, pp. 387–445; Engel, The Realm of Saint Stephen, pp. 101–23. 51 Chronici Hungarici compositio, ed. by Domanovszky, 182–83, pp. 472–73; ed. and trans. by Bak and Veszprémy, 182–83, pp. 332–34: ‘Iste enim rex Ladizlaus filiam regis Karoli de Apulia in coniugium habebat, sed spreto thoro coniugali filiabus adhesit Cumanorum Cyduam, Cupchech et Mandulam vocatas ac alias quamplures in concubinas habebat, quarum amore cor 48

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The Gesta Hungarorum composed by Simon of Kéza, long regarded among scholars as the oldest chronicle written about Hungarian history,52 has four main parts. Apart from the prologue, it describes the history of the Huns, identifying them as the ancestors of the Hungarians. The second main part of the narrative is devoted to Hungarian history and the origins of the Hungarians. The Gesta Hungarorum also contains a so-called list of newcomers (advenae),53 classifying all of those who immigrated to the Kingdom of Hungary during the Middle Ages by their social status. However, this list of advenae does not seem to be genuine, but is probably taken from a late thirteenth-century edition of the Hungarian Chronicle Composition, known and used by Simon of Kéza.54 Simon of Kéza’s intention in writing is more than clear. He had to find the causes of the fact that the newcomers — in this case the Cumans — had taken over the leadership of the Kingdom of Hungary, and he also had to answer the question of how cohesion between the ‘genuine Hungarians’ and the ‘newcomers’ worked. He must have had good reasons to try to depict a cohesive new Hungarian society in his work. As is commonly known, the integration of the Cumans was initially unsuccessful due to differences in their way of life.55 This is why Simon of Kéza adopted the well-known topological commonplace of the Western European Latin historiography, practised since Regino of Prüm and spread across the whole of Europe, that the Hungarians were descendants of the Huns themselves.56 However, he tried to describe the multicultural, multiethnic, and even multilingual character of the Kingdom of Hungary and the cohesion among its components not from a purely ethnic approach, but from eius est merito depravatum et a suis baronibus et regni nobilibus odio habebatur. Hinc insuper contra eum, quia Cumanice et non catholice conversabatur, Philippus Firmanus sedis apostolice legatus adinvenit, qui barbas radere, crines detruncare contra mores Hungaricos et pilleos Cumanicos, quorum usus in Hungaria iam in consuetudine habebatur, abicere demandabat. Regem etiam anathematis vinculo feriens, ut paganos odiret, ritum Christianorum diligeret et thoro viveret coniugali. Sed nichil in rege proficiens repatriavit’. 52 Erdélyi, Krónikáink atyja. 53 Simon of Kéza, Gesta, ed.  by Domanovszky, 76–99, pp.  187–94; ed. and trans. by Veszprémy and Schaer, 76–99, pp. 158–85. 54 Chronici Hungarici compositio, ed. by Domanovszky, 38–53, pp. 295–304; ed. and trans. by Bak and Veszprémy, 38–53, pp. 82–94. 55 Szűcs, Az utolsó Árpádok, pp. 45–46. 56 Regino of Prüm, Chronicon, ed. by Kurze; also for example in the Gallus Anonymus Chronicle: Galli Anonymi chronicae, ed. by Maleczyński, pp. 7–8; ed. by Knoll and Schaer, Primo prohemium, p. 14: ‘Igitur terra Sclauonica […] a Tracia autem per Ungariam ab Hunis, qui et Ungari dicuntur, quondam occupatam […] diffinitur’.

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the perspective of their legal status. Kéza’s intellectual horizon is aligned with the tenets of the communitas theory of the second half of the thirteenth century, based generally on the reception of Roman law and new ideas about social status spreading in the western part of Europe.57 Consequently it is no wonder that the author treated the future destiny of the many foreign people coming to Hungary during the thirteenth century not as a question of ethnicity or linguistic characteristics, but as a matter of their social status and existing legal bonds. According to the ideas espoused by Simon of Kéza, even the Huns had social and legal structures compatible with Roman law, since they elected Attila as their king more Romano,58 after Roman customs, and the Hungarians inherited this legal and social construct directly from the Huns. Thus, for Simon of Kéza, multi-ethnicity meant first of all that there had been and still was a ‘them’ who came later and joined the Hungarians, but he imagined only one future for them: by learning and adopting the social and legal structures of the Hungarians they could achieve the same status as the natural inhabitants of the country. For this purpose, Kéza modified one of the passages of the adve­ nae preserved in the Hungarian Chronicle Composition. While according to the Chronicle Composition the newcomers possessed the same nobility as the Hungarians,59 in Simon of Kéza’s mind they could only reach it tempore pro­ cessu, as time went by, after their acculturation.60 To draw some conclusions: there is no doubt that the Kingdom of Hungary was a multicultural country from the beginning, based on the cohesive coexistence of different ethnic groups. The kingdom, founded and organized by the 57

Szűcs, ‘Theoretical Elements’, pp. lxxxv–ic. Simon of Kéza, Gesta, ed. by Domanovszky, 10, p. 151; ed. and trans. by Veszprémy and Schaer, 10, p. 38: ‘Postquam vero exercitus se dispersit, Romano more Huni super se Ethelam regem praeficiunt, ipseque Budam fratrem suum de flumine Tize usque Don super diversas exteras nationes principem constituit ac rectorem’. 59 Chronici Hungarici compositio, ed. by Domanovszky, 53, pp. 303–04; ed. and trans. by Bak and Veszprémy, 53, p. 94: ‘Preterea intraverunt autem in Ungariam tam tempore regis Geyche et sancti regis Stephani quam diebus regum aliorum Bohemi, Poloni, Greci, Ispani, Hismahelite seu Saraceni, Bessi, Armeni, Saxones, Turingi, Misnenses et Renenses, Cumani, Latini, qui diutius in regno conmorando, quamvis illorum generatio nesciatur, per matrimoniorum diversorum contractus Ungaris inmixti nobilitatem parti et descensum sunt adepti’. 60 Simon of Kéza, Gesta, ed. by Domanovszky, 94, p. 192; ed. and trans. by Veszprémy and Schaer, 94, p. 174: ‘Intraverunt quoque temporibus tam ducis Geichae quam aliorum regum Boemi, Poloni, Graeci, Bessi, Armeni et fere ex omni extera natione, quae sub caelo est, qui servientes regibus vel caeteris regni dominis ex ipsis pheuda acquirendo nobilitatem processu temporis sunt adepti. Quorum nomina comprehendere aestimavi in presenti libro onerosa’. 58

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Arpads, lay at the crossroads of many peoples and cultures and therefore its multi-ethnic characteristics were more than natural. However, the memory of multiculturalism, as well as its interpretation, depended to a large extent on the nature of the ‘national’, or rather dynastic historiography. The cultural tradition of the Middle Ages did not focus on the real conditions of foreigners (language, culture, etc.), but it tried to measure them according to the political and legal customs, as well as traditions of the Kingdom of Hungary. Master P. was the first to invoke the image of ‘us and them’, presenting the process of land-taking by the Hungarian tribes and the conquering of the people found in the Carpathian Basin. Master P. himself must have known that in his lifetime — as well as before — Hungary was populated not only by Hungarians sensu stricto: since the eleventh century there had been continual migration from the east and the west, and there were always communities of diverse confessional, cultural, or even linguistic background. But Master P. did not pay any attention to this: he projected the circumstances of his own lifetime onto the beginnings of Hungarian history. So, Master P. created a non-integrative image about the Hungarians and other people found in the Carpathian Basin, arguing mainly for the rights of the conquerors, and in this way founding a historical tradition which influenced many generations of scholars from the nineteenth century onwards. Simon of Kéza chose a different way. If there is someone in the medieval Hungarian dynastic historiography who had the capability of portraying the integration of many different ethnic groups in Hungary, it was him. His motivation is clear: he was the subject of a king who was regarded as a ‘product’ of the Hungarian-Cuman alliance of the thirteenth century. Although he must have been conscious of the many foreign social groups coming into Hungary, especially during the thirteenth century, he treated this process exclusively from the legal point of view, focusing on the process of cultural and legal acculturation. In this way Simon of Kéza became the first ‘historian’ in Hungary to depict the ethnic cohesion of indigenous and foreign elements of the Hungarian ‘nation’. However, his vision of a Hungary of many nations was rather a cohesive construct of legal nature. From the early thirteenth century onwards, the Hungarian royal court was interested in learning about its own history, but the missing data had to be replaced by retrospective fictional narrations. The two works presented in this chapter provide clear evidence that they were written according to the contemporary literary tradition in Europe, but they also show that their authors were interested in issues of multi-ethnicity, integration, and conflict between ethnic groups and communities, not as modern scholars are, but rather as part of their own cultural context.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Anonymus, Gesta Hungarorum, ed., trans., and annotated by Martin Rady and László Veszprémy, Anonymus, Notary of King Béla: The Deeds of the Hungarians, Central European Medieval Texts, 5 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2010); ed. by Aemilius Jakubovich and Desiderius Pais, P. Magistri, qui Anonymus dicitur Gesta Hungarorum, in Scriptores rerum Hungaricarum, i, ed.  by Emericus Szentpétery, reprint  edn (Budapest: Nap Kiadó, 1999), pp. 33–117 Chronici Hungarici compositio saeculi XIV, ed. by Alexander Domanovszky, in Scriptores rerum Hungaricarum, i, ed.  by Emericus Szentpétery, reprint  edn (Budapest: Nap Kiadó, 1999), pp. 219–505; The Illuminated Chronicle: Chronica de gestis Hungarorum e codice picto saec. XIV / Chronicle of the Deeds of the Hungarians from the Fourteenth­ Century Illuminated Codex, ed. and trans. by János  M. Bak and László Veszprémy, with a preface by Norbert Kersken, Central European Medieval Texts, 9 (Budapest: CEU Press, National Széchényi Library, 2018) Galli Anonymi chronicae et gesta ducum sive principum Polonorum, ed. by Karol Maleczyński, Monumenta Poloniae Historica, n.s., 2 (Krakow: PAU, 1952); Engl. trans. and ann. by Paul W. Knoll and Frank Schaer, Gesta principum Polonorum: The Deeds of the Princes of the Poles, Central European Medieval Texts, 3 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2003) Libellus de institutione morum, ed. by Iosephus Balogh, in Scriptores rerum Hungaricarum, ii, ed. by Emericus Szentpétery, reprint edn (Budapest: Nap Kiadó, 1999), pp. 613–27; Engl. trans. by János Bak and James Ross Sweeney, New Hungarian Quarterly, 29/112 (1988), 98–105 Regino of Prüm, Chronicon, ed. by Friedrich Kurze, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 50 (Hanover: Hahn, 1890) Simon of Kéza, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. and trans. by László Veszprémy and Frank Schaer, with an introduction by Jenő Szűcs, The Deeds of the Hungarians by Simon of Kéza, Central European Medieval Texts, 1 (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999); ed. by Alexander Domanovszky, in Scriptores rerum Hungaricarum, i, ed.  by Emericus Szentpétery, reprint edn (Budapest: Nap Kiadó, 1999), pp. 131–94

Secondary Studies Adamska, Anna, ‘The Study of Medieval Literacy: Old Sources, New Ideas’, in The Development of Literate Mentalities in East­Central Europe, ed. by Anna Adamska and Marco Mostert (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 13–47 Althoff, Gerd, ‘Genealogische und andere Fiktionen in mittelalterlicher Historiographie’, in Gerd Althoff, Inszenierte Herrschaft: Geschichtsschreibung und politisches Handeln im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2003), pp. 28–51

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Bagi, Dániel, ‘Problematik der ältesten Schichten der ungarischen Chronikkomposition des 14. Jahrhunderts im Lichte der ungarischen Geschichtsforschung der letzten Jahrzehnte — einige ausgewählte Problemstellen’, in Historiography, ed. by Wojciech Falkowski, Quaestiones Medii Aevii novae, 12, Societas Vistulana (Warsaw: Fundacja Centrum Badán Historycznych, 2007), pp. 105–28 Berend, Nora, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and ‘Pagans’ in Medieval Hungary, c. 1000–1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) Beumann, Helmut, Widukind von Korvei (Weimar: Böhlau, 1950) ——  , ‘Die Historiographie des Mittelalters als Quelle für die Ideengeschichte des Königtums’, Historische Zeitschrift, 160 (1955), 449–88 Chaloupecký, Václav, Staré Slovensko, Spisy Filosofické Fakulty University Komenského, 3 (Bratislava: Filozofická fakulta univerzity Komenského v Bratislave, 1923) Deér, József, Pogány magyarság, keresztény magyarság, 2nd  edn (Budapest: Holnap Kiadó, 1993) Engel, Pál, The Realm of Saint Stephen: A  History of Medieval Hungary 895–1526 (London: Tauris, 2001) Erdélyi, László, Krónikáink atyja, Kézai (Father of our Chronicles, Kézai) (Szeged: Prometheus, 1933) Fügedi, Erik, ‘Das mittelalterliche Ungarn als Gastland’, in Erik Fügedi, Kings, Bishops, Nobles and Burghers in Medieval Hungary, ed. by János Bak, Collected Studies, 229 (London: Variorum Reprints, 1986), no. VIII, pp. 471–507 Györffy, György, Tanulmányok a magyar állam eredetéről: A nemzetségtől a vármegyéig, a törzstől az országig; Kurszán és Kurszán vára (Studies about the Origin of the Hungarian Statehood: From the Clans to the Counties, and from the Tribes to the Country; Kurszán, and the Castle of Kurszán) (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1959) ——  , A  magyarság keleti elemei (Oriental Ethnic Elements of the Hungarian Nation) (Budapest: Gondolat, 1990) ——  , King Saint Stephen of Hungary, trans. by Peter Doherty, Eastern European Monographs, 403 (Highland Lakes: Atlantic Research, 1994) Goetz, Hans-Werner, ‘“Vorstellungsgeschichte”: Menschliche Vorstellungen und Meinungen als Dimension der Vergangenheit; Bemerkungen zu einem jüngeren Arbeitsfeld der Geschichtswissenschaft als Beitrag zu einer Methodik der Quellenauswertung’, in Hans-Werner Goetz, Vorstellungsgeschichte: Gesammelte Schriften zu Wahrnehmungen, Deutungen und Vorstellungen im Mittelalter, ed.  by Anna Aurast and others (Bochum: Winkler, 2007), pp. 3–18 Guoth, Kálmán, ‘Egy forrás két történetszemlélet tükrében’ (The Same Source Mirrored by Two Views of History), Századok, 76 (1942), 43–64 Győry, János, Gesta regum — gesta nobilium: Tanulmány Anonymus krónikájáról (Study on Master P’s Chronicle) (Budapest: Országos Széchenyi Könyvtár, 1948) Homza, Martin, ‘Dzieje wczesnośredniowiecznego Spisza’, in Historia Scepusii, i, ed. by Martin Homza and Stanisław A. Sroka (Bratislava: Avalon, 2010), pp. 126–329 Horváth jr., János, ‘Die griechischen (byzantinischen) Sprachkenntnisse des Meisters P.’, Acta antiqua Academiae scientiarum Hungaricae, 17 (1969), 17–48; 18 (1970), 371–412; 19 (1971), 347–82

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Kapitánffy, István, ‘Der ungarische Anonymus und Byzanz’, in Byzance et ses voisins: mélanges á la mémoire Gyula Moravcsik à l’occasion du centième anniversaire de sa nais­ sance, ed.  by Terèzia Olajos, Acta Universitatis Attila József Nominatae. Opuscula Byzantina, 9 (Szeged: Generalia, 1994), pp. 69–76 Kristó, Gyula, ‘Oroszok az Árpád-kori Magyarországon’ (Russians in Hungary in the Age of the Arpads), in Gyula Kristó, Tanulmányok az Árpád­korról (Studies about the Age of the Arpads) (Budapest: Magvető, 1983), pp. 191–207 ——  , A  történeti irodalom Magyarországon a kezdetektől 1241­ig (Historiography in Hungary from its Beginnings up to 1241) (Budapest: Argumentum, 1994) ——  , ‘II. András király “új intézkedései”’ (The So-Called ‘New Measures’ of King Andrew II), Századok, 135.2 (2001), 251–300 —— , Early Transylvania (895–1324) (Budapest: Lucidus, 2001) ——  , Magyar historiográfia, i: Történetírás a középkori Magyarországon (Hungarian Historiography, i: Historiography in Medieval Hungary) (Budapest: Osiris, 2003) Kristó, Gyula, and Ferenc Makk, Az Árpád­házi uralkodók (The Rulers of the Dynasty of the Arpads) (Budapest: IPM, 1988) Léderer, Emma, Magyarország története a honfoglalástól 1526­ig (History of Hungary from the Land Taking until 1526) (Budapest: Egyetemi, 1957) Madgearu, Alexandru, The Romanians in the Anonymous ‘Gesta Hungarorum’: Truth and Fiction, Bibliotheca rerum Transsilvaniae, 34 (Cluj-Napoca: Centrul de Studii Transilvane, 2005) Mályusz, Elemér, ‘Az egynyelvű ország’ (The Country of One Language), in Elemér Mályusz, Klió szolgálatában: Válogatott történelmi tanulmányok (In the Duty of Clio: Selected Studies on History) (Budapest: MTA Történettudomànyi Intézete, 2003), pp. 53–72 Marczali, Henrik, ‘A vezérek kora és a királyság megalapítása’ (The Age of the Hungarian Principality and the Foundation of the Kingdom), in A magyar nemzet története, i (History of the Hungarian Nation), ed.  by Sándor Szilágyi (Budapest: Atheneum, 1895), pp. 3–319 Nógrády, Árpád, ‘Magistratus et comitatus tenentibus: II. András kormányzati rendszerének kérdéséhez’ (On the Question of the Government Reforms by King Andrew II), Századok, 129.1 (1995), 157–94 Plezia, Marian, Kronika Galla na tle historiografii XII. wieku (Kraków: Polskiej Akademii Umiejętności, 1947) Pop, Ioan-Aurel, ‘De manibus Valachorum scismaticorum …’: Romanians and Power in the Mediaeval Kingdom of Hungary; The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, Eastern and Central European Studies, 4 (Frankfurt: Lang, 2013) Schmale, Franz-Josef, Funktion und Formen mittelalterlicher Geschichtsschreibung, 2nd edn (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993) Spychała, Lesław, Studia nad legendą dynastyczną Arpadów: Między pulpitem średniowiecznego skryby a ‘warsztatem’ współczesnego badacza (Wroclaw: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2011) Steinhübel, Ján, Nitrianske kniežatstvo: Pociatky stredovekého Slovenska rozpravanie o dejinach násho uzemia a okilitych krájin od strahovania narodov do zaciatku 12 storocia (Bratislava: RAK, 2004)

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Szekfű, Gyula, ‘Még egyszer középkori kissebségeinkről’ (One More Time on the Question of our National Minorities in the Middle Ages), Magyar Szemle, 39/157 (1940), 169–77 Szűcs, Jenő, ‘Theoretical Elements in Master Simon of Kéza’s Gesta Hungarorum (1282–1285)’, in The Deeds of the Hungarians by Simon of Kéza, ed. and trans. by László Veszprémy and Frank Schaer, with an introduction by Jenő Szűcs (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999), pp. xxix–cii —— , Az utolsó Árpádok (The Last Arpads) (Budapest: Osiris, 2002) —— , ‘Szent István intelmei: Az első magyarországi államelméleti mű’ (The Admonitions of King Saint Stephen. The First Work of Political-Philosophical Nature in Medieval Hungary), in Szent István és az államalapítás, ed.  by László Veszprémy (Budapest: Osiris, 2002), pp. 271–89 Thoroczkay, Gábor, ‘Az Anonymus-kérdés kutatástörténeti áttekintése (1977–1993) i and ii’, Fons, 1.2 (1994), 94–149 and Fons, 2.2 (1995), 117–73 —— , ‘Anonymus latin nyelvű külföldi forrásai: Historiográfiai áttekintés’ (The Foreign Latin Literary Sources of Master P.: Historiographical Overview), Turul, 72.3–4 (1999), 108–17 Veszprémy, László, ‘Árpád-kori történeti elbeszélő forrásaink (11–13. század) nyugateurópai kapcsolatai’ (West-European Connections of our Narrative Sources of the Age of the Arpads) (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Hungarian Academy of Science, 2007) Veszprémy, László, and Kornél Szovák, ‘Krónikák, Legendák, Intelmek: Utószó’, in Scriptores rerum Hungaricarum, ii, ed.  by Emericus Szentpétery, reprint  edn (Budapest: Nap Kiadó, 1999), pp. 721–99 Zimmermann, Harald, Der Deutsche Orden in Siebenbürgen: Eine diplomatische Untersuchung (Cologne: Böhlau, 2011) Zsoldos, Attila, ‘II. András Aranybullája’ (The Golden Bull of King Andrew  II), Történelmi Szemle, 53.1 (2011), 1–38

Christian Identity versus Heathendom: Hungarian Chroniclers Facing the Pagan/Nomadic Past and the Present László Veszprémy The Frontispiece of the Illuminated Chronicle, c. 1358 The so-called Illuminated Chronicle is an outstanding masterpiece of Angevin art, outstanding not only in Hungary, but in all of Central Europe.1 On the frontispiece of the Chronicle is seated King Louis the Great within a symbolic arrangement of a buon governo representation in which the ruler is found between the secular and ecclesiastical worlds.2 On his right are standing heavily armed western-style knights, while on his left stand lightly armed eastern-style soldiers. Both groups are dignitaries, as indicated by their golden epaulettes. The question of who they are is still open today. Do they represent the dual Hungarian medieval military system? Are the knights on the right westernized Hungarian dignitaries, those on the left, the Cuman, Szekler captains, or members of the Jazig ( Jassic) bodyguard, the latter mentioned for the first time in 1323?3 Perhaps they refer to the twofold conquest of the country, first by the Huns, and later by the Hungarians proper, as is described in the chroni1

Veszprémy, ‘Chronicon pictum’. Chronicon Pictum, ed.  by Mezey, p.  1; Marosi, ‘Das Frontispiz’, p.  364; Marosi, ‘The Illuminations’, p. 31. 3 Pálóczi, Pechenegs, Cumans, Iasians. 2

László Veszprémy is Professor of Medieval History at Pázmány Péter Catholic University of Piliscsaba-Budapest and former Director of the MOD Institute of Military History, Budapest. Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000–1300, ed. by Walter Pohl, Veronika Wieser, and Francesco Borri, celama 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp.  305–318 FHG 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.130264

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cles of Hungary in great detail. As János Bak has suggested, in the nomadic, eastern figures one may perhaps identify the pagan ancestors of the Hungarian kings.4 Ernő Marosi has offered similar arguments, referring to certain manuscripts of the Trojan Wars in which Trojan warriors are depicted in eastern costumes, opposed to the Greeks wearing modern western armour.5 Or do those on the left perhaps rather represent a row of the southern and eastern vassal principalities (Walachia, Moldavia, Bosnia) that formed a buffer zone around Hungary? This would not be surprising, since Austrian chroniclers, such as the author of the Steirische Reimchronik, regularly stressed the exotic character of the Hungarian army because of its multi-ethnic auxiliaries.6 Perhaps the king of Hungary is being portrayed as the lord of the east and the west, on the left his Hungarians, on the right his western vassals, allies, and mercenaries. The date 1358 (if the chronicle was not illuminated later) is after King Louis’s victories over Naples and after his first victory over Venice (with the Peace of Zara, February 1358). Unfortunately, the text of the chronicle stops in the middle of a sentence, a sentence describing the catastrophic defeat in 1330 of Louis’s father, King Charles. There is not a word about the coming years of his reign from 1342.7 And so we will also stop here and turn our attention to the first surviving medieval chronicles in Hungary, chronicles that also focus on the east–west problem and Hungary’s search for its place in the Christian world.

The Image of Hungary in the Surviving Chronicles: A Twofold Continuity: Pagans and Christians For quite a long period of time, the image of Hungary as transmitted by Hungarian chronicles was different than its image as received in the west. In early Hungarian legal and hagiographic texts, the country is described as a successful Christian kingdom, though not without confrontations with its surviving heathen customs. After the pagan uprisings of 1046 and 1061, the church organization was rebuilt and consolidated within a few decades, in fact, by the 1080s the first Hungarian saints, among them the first king, had been canonized. 4

Bak, ‘Harcosok’, pp. 65–66. Marosi, ‘Magyarok’, pp. 89–91; Marosi, ‘The Illuminations’, pp. 30–40. 6 Schünemann, ‘Ungarische Hilfsvölker’; Marosi, ‘Magyarok’, p. 90; Radek, Das Ungarnbild, pp. 153–56. 7 The Illuminated Chronicle, ed. and trans. by Bak and Veszprémy, 209, pp. 378–79. 5

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But in the view from the west, the country remained a dubious place and its Christianity questionable. It is a telling sign that in the Chansons de geste, Hungarians enter the stage as the allies of the Saracens — this either referring to their raids of the tenth century, or to the conflicts during the First Crusade in 1096.8 As a matter of fact, imperial German propaganda questioned the sincerity of their conversion and the sanctity of their first king. Annalista Saxo and Ekkehard of Aura both refer to the opinion of contemporary German crusaders, stating that there is no difference between the Hungarians and the Saracens of the Holy Land.9 Contrary to this tendency, on the other hand, in the twelfth century the prestige of the country began to grow with the saga of Berta, Charlemagne’s supposed Hungarian mother, and the popularity of the Sicambria story, in which an important city of Frankish prehistory is located in Hungary.10 In the same period, Boncompagno da Signa, professor of rhetoric at the University of Bologna, recorded that the sons of non-Hungarian nobles were attending the Hungarian royal court for their education.11 It is not easy to realize the importance of the discovery of the Hunnic past of the country and its dynasty for the development of the Hungarian consciousness. In German chronicles, the Hungarians were traditionally identified as Huns from the tenth century onwards. When Emperor Frederick Barbarossa crossed the country towards the Holy Land in 1189, the Germans identified Etzelburg, the city of Attila, as the Hungarian royal centre.12 Were the Hungarians not perhaps shocked by the fact that while western guests were looking for Hunnic monuments, the Huns and Attila were not mentioned in their own chronicles? Was the response of the anonymous chronicler of the Gesta Hungarorum, and later, the efforts of Simon of Kéza intended to repair this deficiency?13

8

Karl, ‘La Hongrie’. Annalista Saxo, Chronicon, ed. by Nass, s.a. 1096, p. 491: ‘Fama quippe ad Colomanni iam premonuerat aures, inter paganorum et Ungariorum necem nihil aput Teutonicas diferre mentes’ (The news had earlier reached Colomas’s ears that for the Germans, there was no difference between killing a pagan or a Hungarian). See also Ekkehard of Aura, Chronicon, ed. by Waitz, p. 215. 10 Eckhardt, De Sicambria à Sans­Souci; Csernus, ‘La Hongrie et les Hongrois’. 11 Szovák, ‘Boncompagnus’, pp. 507–08. 12 Rady, ‘Recollecting Attila’; Róna-Tas, Hungarians and Europe, pp. 423–28. 13 Williams, Etzel der rîche, pp. 253–60. 9

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The Hungarian Argumentation: A Smooth Continuity between Pagan and Christian Times Hungarian literates have thus argued in favour of a continuity of Hungarian history, a salvific history involving the speedy success, under their first king, of their conversion. The existence of a Hungarian ‘statehood’ is antedated in order to avoid a radical caesura between heathendom and Christianity. At the end of the eleventh century, the Greater Legend of King Stephen reminds its audience of the fact that even imperial Rome became Christian after a period of paganism, and that the pagan Hungarians devastated Europe through divine grace.14 The emperors consequently had no reason to be blamed for their obscure past. In this process, the Stephen legends played a decisive role: they were circulated in large numbers and found their way to Rome as well as many major European libraries. The legend of Bishop Hartvic became extremely popular in the Austrian lands and Poland as a possible authentic source of Hungarian history. By the fifteenth century it had been translated into German.15

The Gesta of the Anonymous Notary The subject of the Gesta Hungarorum, by an anonymous author, is Hungarian prehistory, ducal genealogy, the Hungarian people’s wanderings, and the conquest of the Carpathian Basin.16 According to the chronicler, the Hungarians were led by the Holy Spirit and identified as flagellum Dei during their raids against Christian territories. The author certainly had some modest legal training, arguing that the Hungarians had only reclaimed the heritage of Attila, who had once been the overlord of the region.17 It is strange that the person of Attila 14

Gerics, ‘Politikai és jogi gondolkodás’, pp. 158–60; Legenda maior s. Stephani regis, ed. by Bartoniek, p. 378. 15 Vizkelety, ‘Eine deutsche Fassung der Stephanslegende’; Szovák, ‘L’historiographie Hongroise’, pp. 380–84. 16 Bak, Rady, and Veszprémy, ‘Anonymus: Introduction’, pp.  xix–xxxi; Veszprémy, ‘Anonymus, P. dictus magister’. 17 Anonymus, Gesta, ed. and trans. by Bak, Rady, and Veszprémy, 1, pp. 6–7: ‘Et primus rex Scithie fuit Magog filius Iaphet et gens illa a Magog rege vocata est Moger, a cuius etiam progenie regis descendit nominatissimus atque potentissimus rex Athila, qui anno dominice incarnationis ccccolo io de terra Scithica descendens cum valida manu in terram Pannonie venit et fugatis Romanis regnum obtinuit et regale sibi locum constituit’ (The first king of Scythia was Magog, son of Japheth, and this people were called after him Magyar, from whose royal line

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is inserted into the family tree of the Arpadian dynasty, although no detailed information about the relationship is given. As it is simply written: ‘Álmos [the mythical ancestor of the dynasty] descended from the progeny of Attila’.18 The Hungarian dukes, together with Attila, were the descendants of Japheth and Magog. While the offspring of the latter were the Scythians, he gave his name to the Magyars.19 Apart from a general ethnocentric turn in European historiography at that time, it may be mentioned that there were several reasons why a keen interest in the pagan past of the nation emerged at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and why it was necessary to reformulate a pre-Christian identity. If we accept the 1220s as possible years for this Gesta chronicle’s redaction, we must take into consideration two developments that had recently occurred: the first news of the original eastern homeland of the Hungarians seems to have reached the Hungarian court, perhaps via merchants,20 and in the same years the Cumans east of the Carpathians were finally subjugated, in so-called Cumania in the territory of the future Wallachia.21 One of the crucial and much debated episodes in this chronicle is the joining of the Cuman tribes to the Hungarian tribal confederation.22 The signifithe most renowned and mighty King Attila descended, who, in the year of Our Lord’s incarnation 451, coming down from Scythia, entered Pannonia with a mighty force and, putting the Romans to flight, took the realm and made a royal residence for himself ). 18 Anonymus, Gesta, ed. and trans. by Bak, Rady, and Veszprémy, 5, p. 16. 19 Anonymus, Gesta, ed. and trans. by Bak, Rady, and Veszprémy, 5, pp. 16–17: ‘Tunc elegerunt sibi querere terram Pannonie, quam audiverant fama volante terram Athile regis esse, de cuius progenie dux Almus pater Arpad descenderat’ (Then they chose to seek for themselves the land of Pannonia that they had heard from rumor had been the land of King Attila, from whose line Prince Álmos, father of Árpád, descended). 20 Vásáry, ‘Medieval Theories’, pp. 235–40. 21 Vásáry, Cumans and Tatars, pp. 28–29; Spinei, The Romanians, pp. 155–56; Berend, ‘The Mendicant Orders’, Berend, At the Gate, pp. 210–21; Schünemann, ‘Ungarische Hilfsvölker’, p. 105. 22 Anonymus, Gesta, ed. and trans. by Bak, Rady, and Veszprémy, 10, pp. 28–29: ‘duces Cumanorum […] cum vidissent pietatem Almi ducis, quam fecit circa Ruthenos, pedibus eius provoluti se sua sponte duci Almo subiugaverunt dicentes: Ex hodierna die nobis te dominum ac preceptorem usque ad ultimam generationem eligimus et quo te fortuna tua duxerit, illuc te sequemur. Hoc etiam, quod verbo dixerunt Almo duci, fide iuramenti more paganismo firmaverunt et eodem modo dux Almus et sui primates eis fide se et iuramento se constrinxerunt’ (Then the […] dukes of the Cumans, […] when they saw the kindness with which Prince Álmos treated the Rus’, prostrated themselves at his feet and of their own will subjected themselves to Prince Álmos, saying: ‘From today we choose you as our lord and master until the last genera-

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cance of this episode has been underestimated, as indeed, it could be used as an argument in favour of a later dating of the chronicle, that is, after the Mongol invasion during the reign of King Béla IV (1241–1242). This dating of the Cuman episode runs contrary to the efforts of Hungarian and Romanian historians who tend to date the chronicle much earlier. But in reality, the first contacts with Cumans go back to the beginning of that century, when between 1211 and 1225 the Teutonic Order was invited to the south of Transylvania to fight the Cumans and pacify them. After several attempts, a Dominican missionary bishopric was established there in 1226, in Milko (Milcov) between the rivers of Seret and Olt. In 1227, the Cuman duke Borc (Boricius) was baptized by the archbishop of Esztergom, and the Hungarian king added to his titles the name ‘Cumania’ (used by the Habsburgs until the end of World War I). This Hungarian rule was eradicated by the Tartar invasion of 1241. In fact, a great majority of the Cumans fled before the Tartars already by the end of the 1230s, entering Hungary for the first time in 1239. They finally returned in about 1246 and settled with privileges in central Hungary. The Cuman duke, with his wife and prominent entourage (‘exercitu suo’), was solemnly baptized in Buda in 1254. This was followed by the marriage of a Cuman princess to the son of King Béla IV, the future King Stephen V. Over time the Cumans became the most important allies of the court, although their long process of westernization was characterized by bloody conflicts. Even the Gesta chronicler’s text refers to the political and cultural tensions in his time between the traditional society and the nomadic auxiliary groups represented by the Pechenegs, Szeklers, and Vlachs. His opinion of the light cavalry auxiliary forces is not complimentary; they are explicitly depicted as cowardly. The author employs a kind of archaic style whereby in the prehistory summary of the first chapter we hear of the Scythians’ unmatched expertise with the bow and arrow, but later he refers to the same weapons contemptuously as ‘more paganismo’. Such a critical remark in this chronicle may reflect how these auxiliary peoples were becoming an increasingly significant part of the Hungarian military organization in the thirteenth century. The increasing frequency of their deployment in royal campaigns evoked the outrage of contemporaries, or perhaps envy because of the booty they gained. And while the tactics of the light cavalry caused misgivings in Hungary, the brutality of these troops disturbed observers in the west. tion and where your fortune leads you, there will we follow you’. What they had said in words to Prince Álmos, they moreover confirmed with a sworn pledge in pagan manner and, in the same way, Prince Álmos and his chief men bound themselves to them with a sworn pledge). For the use of the phrase ‘more paganismo’ see Veszprémy, ‘More paganismo’, pp. 190–98.

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During the 1200s not only the name of Cumania was added to the ceremonial Hungarian royal title, but after 1206 also those of Galicia (Halych) and Volhynia, at that time under the rule of Galicia. It was King Andrew II (1205–1235) who followed expansive and aggressive policies against these principalities, and as a consequence, the Hungarian princes Coloman and Andrew Junior seized the throne of Galicia several times between 1214 and 1234. In the anonymous Gesta, only two vassal principalities are mentioned by name, namely, these two eastern ones.23 It may have been too challenging for a contemporary of these events to give them a place in the Hungarian prehistory. Another challenge may have been the concept of the hitherto mythical Hungarian homeland. The Dominicans who had reached this existing homeland returned to the Hungarian court in 1237. They provided exact information about the existence of another Hungary, the Hungaria Magna.24 Earlier, chroniclers like Godfrey of Viterbo had used this and a similar term, but its real location had remained unclear.25 Now it turned out to be a real place: a Hungarian-speaking community had been discovered within a few days’ walking distance from the Volga Bulgarians’ capital. The anonymous author of the Gesta apparently hesitated to put Hungaria Magna on the map: he described two different paths from east to west taken by the ancient wandering Hungarians, and consequently did not make use of these recent discoveries. But then again, he may have finished his chronicle before the arrival of the Dominican friars in 1237. Contrary to the chronicle of the anonymous notary, the dating of the Gesta Hungarorum of Simon of Kéza is very precise. The court cleric and notary of King Ladislas IV wrote his chronicle between 1282 and 1285.26 He structured his chronicle into four parts: Hunnic prehistory, Hungarian history, remarks about immigrant noble kindred, and the social layers of the society. He describes King Ladislas as a most Christian ruler, a Christian personification of Attila, although in Hungary the king remained an adherent of pagan customs and was nicknamed ‘the Cuman’, since his mother was the above-mentioned Cuman princess. The reign of King Ladislas saw perhaps the deepest political crisis of thirteenth-century Hungarian history, above all because of matters regarding the 23 24 25 26

Günther, ‘Das Fürstentum Galizien-Wolhynien’. Vásáry, ‘Medieval Theories’, pp. 226–35. Killgus, ‘Studien’, pp. 66–72. Veszprémy, ‘Simon of Kéza’.

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Cumans. 27 The Cumans participated in almost all royal campaigns, being among the most faithful supporters of the royal power. Nonetheless, they became a target of public envy. They were attacked above all because of their pagan, or half-pagan, way of life, not only by the domestic church but by the papal Curia as well.28 Simon deliberately omits the Cumans being part of the conquering Hungarian tribes, and even mentions their nomadic way of life and plunder as their source of wealth.29 A climax in his story is the victorious campaign of King Ladislas against the revolting Cumans in 1280, which emphasizes the divine help in favour of the king. A late thirteenth-century Hungarian Latin poem describes King Attila in scornful words, and finds similarities between matters related to the Huns and the Cumans.30 Unsurprisingly, in Simon’s chronicle Attila is distanced from the family tree of the Hungarian kings. The Hungarians are associated with the Huns, but the link between Attila and the Arpads becomes ‘metaphorical’, as Martyn Rady has recently described it.31 King Ladislas was pressed by the papal legates and sometimes put under canonical interdict to interfere in the life of the Cumans. Against this regular papal intervention, the court needed a new reassessment of the country’s identity, a Christian kingdom with pagan roots and a significant half-pagan population. Simon changes the origin of the Hungarian dukes radically; perhaps borrowing from Godfrey of Viterbo,32 he inserts the figure of Nimrod instead of Magog as a son of Japheth, this contrary to the story of the Bible.33 This is refuted by the Hungarian chroniclers of the fourteenth century, who remove Nimrod and return to the Magog tradition.34 27

Engel, Realm, pp. 107–10. Berend, At the Gate, pp. 171–82. 29 Simon of Kéza, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by Veszprémy and trans. by Schaer, 95, pp. 176–78: ‘Iidem captivi ex fructu animalium et praeda sola habebant vitam suam, ut Comani’ (trans. by Schaer, pp. 177–79: [After the Hungarian conquest of Pannonia they took prisoners of war] ‘These captives lived the lifestyle of the Cumans, subsisting off the produce of animals or off booty’). 30 De sancto Stephano, ed. by Blume and Dreves, p. 196. See also Berend, At the Gate, p. 206. 31 Rady, ‘Attila and the Hun Tradition’. 32 Hering, ‘Godfrey of Viterbo’, pp. 65–66. 33 Simon of Kéza, Gesta, ed. by Veszprémy and Schaer, 4, pp. 10–12: ‘Menroth, qui gigans post linguarum inceptam confusionem […] duos filios, Hunor scilicet et Mogor […] generavit, ex quibus Huni sive Hungari sunt exorti’ (After the confusion of tongues the giant Menroth [the German variant of Nimrod] […] begot two sons, Hunor and Mogor […] It was from them that the Huns, or Hungarians, took their origins). 34 The Illuminated Chronicle, ed. and trans. by Bak and Veszprémy, 4, pp. 12–13: ‘Ex quibus 28

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It was Simon who worked out the theory of the twofold conquest of the country, first by the Huns, and then by the Hungarians.35 Some decades earlier, the anonymous notary had mentioned only one conquest, though he does refer to the reign and heritage of King Attila, albeit without making his connection precise. Only with reference to the Szeklers does the anonymous chronicler say explicitly that they were the people of Attila, a statement that has given grounds for endless debates. This was not enough. Simon, the well-travelled cleric of King Ladislas, had to perform a ‘Euro-conform’ formulation of their eastern origin that would be convincing to Rome, Naples, and western lay circles alike. His chronicle introduces into the Hungarian narrative literature the concept of the natio, calling the Hungarian nobles ‘communities’, following Italian examples.36 With references to Roman law, the author tries to show that Hungary was a Rechtsstaat even in Hunnic times, with those living there ‘Romano more’. His is the first complete medieval formulation of the Hunnic-Hungarian identity, which is also the basis for the future success of the text. He presents a wide selection of Attila stories as transmitted by Jordanes and other chroniclers, but adds a wide range of extraordinary elements that render it unique among the Attila literature of medieval Europe.37 For a long time it was a firm belief in Hungarian historiography that the Gesta of the anonymous notary was totally forgotten and thus had no impact at all on later chroniclers. But in the 1970s it was shown that Simon of Kéza studied that Gesta thoroughly and borrowed quite a lot from the work. In many aspects the earlier Gesta was practically replaced by Simon’s work. Perhaps this explains why only one mid-thirteenth-century copy of the anonymous chroniapparet omnibus dictum illorum esse [non] verum, qui dicunt, quod Hunor et Magor patres Hungarorum fuerunt filii Nemproth, qui fuit filius Cus, qui fuit Cam, qui fuit a Noe maledictus. Tum quia non essent Hungari de genere Iaphet secundum dictum beati Ieronimi […] Hungari descenderunt a Magog filio Iaphet, qui […] genuit Magor et Hunor, a quo Magari et Huni sunt nominati’ (Whence it is clear for all to see that the words of those are [not] true who say that Hunor and Magor, the fathers of the Hungarians, were the sons of Nimrod, who was the son of Cush, who was the son of Ham, who was cursed by Noah. For then the Hungarians would not be of the seed of Japheth, as says the blessed Jerome […] Therefore, as sacred Scripture and the holy doctors say, the Hungarians are descended from Magog, the son of Japheth […] who begat Magor and Hunor, from whom are named the Magyars and the Huns). 35 Simon of Kéza, Gesta, ed. by Veszprémy and Schaer, 25, pp. 76–78. ‘d-occc-olxxiio anno ab incarnatione Iesu Christi Hunni sive Hungari denuo ingressi in Pannoniam transierunt’; trans. by Schaer, pp. 75–77: ‘It was the year 872 of our Lord’s incarnation […] when the Huns, or Hungarians, entered Pannonia once again’. 36 Szűcs, ‘Theoretical Elements’. 37 Williams, Etzel der rîche, pp. 253–60.

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cle has survived. Extracts from Simon’s chronicle, especially the chapters on the Hunnic period of the Hungarians, were copied nearly verbatim in the National Chronicle and the manuscripts of the Illuminated Chronicle. Consequently, earlier historiographic texts became superfluous. Finally, most of the National Chronicle was incorporated into the chronicle of John of Thurócz, printed twice in the late fifteenth century.38 And the Illuminated Chronicle was used and quoted via the Thurócz chronicle even before its first modern edition in 1867.39 This is why certain interesting episodes in the anonymous chronicle that were omitted from manuscripts of Simon’s chronicle and the Illuminated Chronicle became symbols of a mythical medieval Hungarian constitutional system only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, symbols that include the covenant of blood, the alliance of the seven Hungarian tribes, the contractual relationship between the community of nobles and the royal authority, and their first diet at a place called Szer. It is certain that copies of Simon’s Chronicle reached Italy soon after it was written, probably for propaganda purposes. It was used by the chronicler Paolino da Venezia (d.  1344), and later by other chroniclers, including Dandolo.40 Master Simon’s knowledge of Italian as well as his familiarity with Italy was a great advantage. Paolino is probably a key figure in this story. He was a close supporter of the kings of Naples and thus, may have had access to Simon’s work, which may have been sent there to present an abridged Hungarian history.41 The Angevin kings of Naples regarded themselves possible heirs to the Hungarian throne, the queen of Naples, Mary, being the sister of King Ladislas IV. Indeed, the kings of Naples laid claims to the throne after the death of King Ladislas in 1290, but they inherited it only in 1301 after the death of King Andrew III, the last male member of the Arpad dynasty. Surprisingly, the master narrative of Simon, the most fanciful and imaginary of all medieval Hungarian chronicles, has not survived in a single medieval copy. Despite this fact, it effectively shaped the Hungarian‒Hunnic historical identity until the nineteenth century. It then experienced a temporary retreat, but since the fall of communism its views are again flourishing among the Hungarian public. 38

Veszprémy, ‘John of Thurocz’; for the edition see Iohannes de Thurocz, Chronica Hungarorum, ed. by Galántai and Kristó. 39 Just as a reminder, the chronicles of Anonymus and Simon were first edited a century earlier, in 1746 and 1781. 40 Veszprémy, ‘La tradizione unno-magiara’, pp. 355–75. 41 Heullant-Donat, ‘Une affaire d’hommes et de livres’, pp.  705–08; Heullant-Donat, ‘L’encyclopédisme’.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Annalista Saxo, Chronicon, ed.  by Klaus Nass, Die Reichschronik des Annalista Saxo, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores, 37 (Hanover: Hahn, 2006) Anonymus, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. and trans. by János M. Bak, Martyn Rady, and László Veszprémy, in Anonymus Notary of King Béla: The Deeds of the Hungarians / Master Roger’s Epistle to the Sorrowful Lament about the Destruction of Hungary by the Tartars, Central European Medieval Texts, 5 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2010), pp. 2–129 Chronicon Pictum: Phototypice impressum, ed.  by László Mezey, Hungarian version: (Budapest: Helikon, 1964); German version: Die ungarische Bilderchronik: Chronica de gestis hungarorum (Budapest: Corvina, 1961); English version: Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle, ed. by Dezső Dercsényi (Budapest: Corvina, 1969) De sancto Stephano, ed. by Clemens Blume and Guido M. Dreves, in Historiae rhythmicae: series septima / Liturgische Reimofficien des Mittelalters: Siebente Folge, Analecta hymnica medii aevi, 28 (Leipzig: Reisland, 1898), no. 72, pp. 195–99 Ekkehard of Aura, Chronicon universale, ed. by Georg Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores, 6 (Hanover: Hahn, 1844), pp. 33–231 Godfrey of Viterbo, Pantheon, ed. by Georg Waitz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores, 22 (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1872; repr. 1976) Hartvic, Vita S. Stephani regis, ed. by Emma Bartoniek, in Scriptores rerum Hungaricarum tempore ducum regumque stirpis Arpadianae gestarum, pt 2, ed. by Imre Szentpétery (Budapest: Acad. litt. Hungarica, 1938), pp.  411–40; trans. by Nora Berend, in Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology, ed.  by Thomas Head (New York: Garland, 2000), pp. 375–98 The Illuminated Chronicle: Chronica de gestis Hungarorum e codice picto saec. XIV; Chronicle of the Deeds of the Hungarians from the Fourteenth­Century Illuminated Codex, ed. and trans. by János  M. Bak and László Veszprémy, with a preface by Norbert Kersken, Central European Medieval Texts, 9 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2018) Iohannes de Thurocz, Chronica Hungarorum, i: Textus, ed.  by Elisabeth Galántai and Julius Kristó, Bibliotheca scriptorum Medii Recentisque Aevorum, n.s., 7 (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1985) Legenda maior s. Stephani regis, ed. by Emma Bartoniek, in Scriptores rerum Hungaricarum tempore ducum regumque stirpis Arpadianae gestarum, ii, ed.  by Imre Szentpétery (Budapest: Regia Universitas, 1938), pp. 377–92 (see also The Sanctity of the Leaders: Holy Kings, Princes, Bishops, and Abbots from Central Europe (11th–13th Centuries, ed. by Gábor Klaniczay, Central European Medieval Texts, 11 (Budapest, Central European University Press, 2022) Simon of Kéza, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by László Veszprémy and Frank Schaer, Central European Medieval Texts, 1 (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999)

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Secondary Studies Bak, János, ‘Harcosok vagy ősök? Még egyszer a képes krónika címlapjáról’ (Soldiers or Ancestors? Once Again on the Frontispiece of the Illuminated Chronicle), BUKSZ, 10.1 (1998), 65–66 Bak, János M., Martyn Rady, and László Veszprémy, ‘Anonymus: Introduction’, in Anonymus Notary of King Béla: The Deeds of the Hungarians / Master Roger’s Epistle to the Sorrowful Lament about the Destruction of Hungary by the Tartars, ed. by János M. Bak, Martyn Rady, and László Veszprémy, Central European Medieval Texts, 5 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2010), pp. xvii–xxxviii Berend, Nora, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and ‘Pagans’ in Medieval Hungary, c. 1000–c. 1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) —— , ‘The Mendicant Orders and the Conversion of Pagans in Hungary’, in Alle frontiere della cristianità: i frati mendicanti e l’evangelizzazione tra’200 e’300; atti del XXVIII Convegno internazionale Assisi, 12–14 ottobre 2000 (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 2001), pp. 253–79 Csernus, Sándor, ‘La Hongrie et les Hongrois dans la littérature chevaleresque française’, in La noblesse dans les territoires angevins à la fin du Moyen Âge, ed. by Noël Coulet, Collection de l’École française de Rome, 275 (Rome: École française de Rome, 2000), pp. 717–35 Eckhardt, Alexandre, De Sicambria à Sans­Souci: histoires et légendes franco­hongroises (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1943) Engel, Pál, The Realm of St Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary, 895–1526, trans. by Tamás Pálosfalvi, ed. by Andrew Ayton (London: Tauris, 2001) Gerics, József, ‘Politikai és jogi gondolkodás Magyországon  VII. Gergely korában’, in József Gerics, Egyház, állam és gondolkodás Magyarországon a középkorban (Budapest: METEM, 1995), pp. 144–64 Hering, Kai, ‘Godfrey of Viterbo: Historical Writing and Imperial Legitimacy at the Early Hohenstaufen Court’, in Godfrey of Viterbo and his Readers: Imperial Tradition and Universal History in Late Medieval Europe, ed.  by Thomas Förster (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 47–66 Heullant-Donat, Isabelle, ‘Une affaire d’hommes et de livres: Louis de Hongrie et la dispersion de la bibliothèque de Robert d’Anjou’, in La Noblesse dans les territoires angevins à la fin du Moyen Âge, ed. by Noël Coulet, Collection de l’École française de Rome, 275 (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 2000), pp. 689–708 ——  , ‘L’encyclopédisme sous le pontificat de Jean  XXII, entre savoir et propagande: l’exemple de Paolino da Venezia’, in La vie culturelle, intellectuelle et scientifique à la cour des papes d’Avignon, ed. by Jacqueline Hamesse (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 255–76 Karl, Louis, ‘La Hongrie et les Hongrois dans les chansons de geste’, Revue des langues romanes, 51 (1907), 1–38 Killgus, Oliver, ‘Studien zum “Liber universalis” Gottfrieds von Viterbo’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Augsburg University, 2001) Marosi, Ernő, ‘Das Frontispiz der Ungarischen Bilderchronik (Cod. lat. 404) der Széchényi-Nationalbibliothek in Budapest’, Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, 46–47 (1993–1994), 357–470

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—— , ‘Magyarok középkori ábrázolásai és az orientalizmus a középkori művészetben’, in Magyarok Kelet és Nyugat közt: a  nemzettudat változó jelképei, ed.  by Hofer Tamás (Budapest: Nemzeti Múzeum, Balassi, 1996), pp. 77–98 ——  , ‘The Illuminations of the Illuminated Chronicle’, in Studies on the Illuminated Chronicle, ed.  by János  M. Bak and László Veszprémy, Central European Medieval Texts, Subsidia, 1 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2018), pp. 25–110 Pálóczi Horváth, András, Pechenegs, Cumans, Iasians: Steppe Peoples in Medieval Hungary (Budapest: Corvina, 1989) Radek, Tünde, Das Ungarnbild in der deutschsprachigen Historiographie des Mittelalters, Budapester Studien zur Literaturwissenschaft, 12 (Frankfurt: Lang, 2008) Rady, Martyn, ‘Recollecting Attila: Some Medieval Hungarian Images and their Antecedents’, Central Europe, 1 (2003), 5–17 ——  , ‘Attila and the Hun Tradition in Medieval Hungarian Texts’, in Studies on the Illuminated Chronicle, ed. by János M. Bak and László Veszprémy, Central European Medieval Texts: Subsidia, 1 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2018), pp. 127–38 Róna-Tas, András, Hungarians and Europe in the Early Middle Ages: An Introduction to Early Hungarian History (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999) Schünemann, Konrad, ‘Ungarische Hilfsvölker in der Literatur des deutschen Mittelalters’, Ungarische Jahrbücher, 4 (1924), 99–115 Spinei, Victor, The Romanians and the Turkic Nomads North of the Danube Delta from the Tenth to the Mid­Thirteenth Century, East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450 (Leiden: Brill, 2009) Stöckl, Günther, ‘Das Fürstentum Galizien-Wolhynien’, in Handbuch der Geschichte Russlands, i.1: Bis 1613, von der Kiever Reichsbildung bis zum Moskauer Zartum, ed. by Manfred Hellmann (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1981), pp. 484–533 Szovák, Kornél, ‘L’historiographie Hongroise à l’époque arpadienne’, in Les hongrois et l’Europe: conquête et intégration, ed. by Sándor Csernus and Klára Korompay (Paris: Institut hongrois de Paris, 1999), pp. 375–84 —— , ‘Boncompagnus: Adalék a XIII. század eleji magyar történet külföldi forrásaihoz’, in ‘Quasi liber et pictura’: Tanulmányok Kubinyi András 70. születésnapjára, ed.  by Gyöngyi Kovács (Budapest: ELTE Régészettudományi Intézet, 2004), pp. 503–10 Szűcs, Jenő, ‘Theoretical Elements in Master Simon of Kéza’s Gesta Hungarorum, 1282–1285’, in Simonis de Kéza: Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by László Veszprémy and Frank Schaer, Central European Medieval Texts, 1 (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999), pp. xxix–cii Vásáry, István, ‘Medieval Theories Concerning the Primordial Homeland of the Hungarians’, in Popoli delle steppe: Unni, Avari, Ungari, ii, Settimane di studi del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 35 (Spoleto: Fondazione CISAM, 1988), pp. 213–42 —— , Cumans and Tatars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) Veszprémy, László, ‘La tradizione unno-magiara nella Cronaca universale di fra’ Paolino da Venezia’, in Spiritualità e lettere nella cultura italiana e ungherese del basso medioevo, ed. by Sante Graciotti and Cesare Vasoli (Florence: Olschki, 1995), pp. 355–75 ——  , ‘Anonymus, P. dictus magister’, in Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, i, ed.  by Robert Bjork (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 74–75

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——  , ‘Chronicon pictum’, in Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, i, ed.  by Graeme Dunphy (Leiden: Brill, 2010), p. 391 —— , ‘John of Thurocz’, in Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, iii, ed. by Robert Bjork (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 908–09 —— , ‘Simon of Keza’, in Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, iv, ed. by Robert Bjork (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 1540–41 —— , ‘“More paganismo”: Reflections on Pagan and Christian Past in the Gesta Hungarorum (GH) of the Hungarian Anonymous Notary’, in Historical Narratives and Christian Identity on a European Periphery: Early History Writing in Northern, East Central, and Eastern Europe (c. 1070–1200), ed. by Ildar H. Garipzanov, Medieval Texts and Culture of Northern Europe, 26 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 183–201 Vizkelety, András, ‘Eine deutsche Fassung der Stephanslegende aus dem Jahre 1471’, Magyar Könyvszemle, 84 (1968), 129–45 Williams, Jennifer, Etzel der rîche, Europäische Hochschulschriften, 1st ser., 364 (Frankfurt: Lang, 1981)

Histories of Origins from the Adriatic and the Balkans

Circles of Identity: The Narratives of Thomas of Split and Domnius de Cranchis of Brač Neven Budak

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homas the Archdeacon of Split (c. 1200–1268) composed his magnum opus, the Historia Salonitanorum episcopum atque Spalatensium, or, as it is usually called, the Historia Salonitana1 during the 1260s. It is a history partly composed as a gesta episcopum, partly as a history of the church and the city of Split, and finally, partly as an autobiography.2 One of its goals was to support the construction of an alleged continuity between the ancient city of Salona and its archbishopric on the one side, and Split with its metropolis on the other.3 Not only later Dalmatian authors, but also modern Croatian historiography prove that Thomas succeeded in his attempt.4 Although it is beyond the scope of our current interest, we have to admit that he was also successful in the attempt to preserve his own memory: his tombstone is still kept in the Franciscan monastery of Split, which in his day stood outside the city 1 Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others. Thomas’s Historia has been published several times with translations into Croatian and Russian. See: Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, pp. xviii–xxii. The latest edition is Thomas the Archdeacon, Historia Salonitana, ed. by Perić, Matijević-Sokol, and Katičić. 2 On the character of Thomas’s Historia: Ivić, Domišljanje prošlosti; Matijević-Sokol, Toma Arhiđakon. 3 Budak, ‘Historia Salonitana and Historia Salonitana Maior’, p. 106. 4 Budak, ‘Furta sacra’.

Neven Budak is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Rijeka. Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000–1300, ed. by Walter Pohl, Veronika Wieser, and Francesco Borri, celama 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp.  321–336 FHG 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.130265

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walls, and to whose friars he had strong links. His History remains one of the most important sources for the Croatian High Middle Ages, but also for more general topics, such as the Mongol invasion or the formation of communes.5 Many historians used him in the long-lasting debates about the origins of the Croats, although there has been no in-depth analysis of the role of the Historia Salonitana in constructing identities.6 Even more neglected, in every respect, was the only partly preserved chronicle of Domnius de Cranchis (d. 1421 or 1422), a priest from the island of Brač, who in 1405 composed the first history and description of the island.7 Although Split tried hard since 1240 to incorporate Brač into its own territory, every attempt failed, partly because of the interests of greater powers like the Hungarian-Croatian kings or Venice, and partly because Brač had developed into an independent commune and was too big for Split to subsume. However, economic and social ties bound the island to its continental neighbour and the elite of Brač recognized the nobility of Split as its role model.8 Therefore Cranchis’s history offers us a view from the Dalmatian ‘province’, as opposed to Thomas’s ‘central’ perspective. Thomas’s History is divided into forty-nine chapters, starting with a description and history of antique Dalmatia and ending in 1266 with a description of the death of Archbishop Rogerius, who had preceded the archdeacon’s own departure by two years. Cranchis writes about the Greek origins of the population of Brač in a similar way, although he begins his narrative by describing contemporary political relations. Unfortunately, the preserved fragment now ends abruptly, concluding with events that can be identified as the expedition of Peter II Orseolo to Dalmatia.9 5

For example, see: Sweeney, ‘Thomas of Spalato and the Mongols’; Steindorff, Die dalmati­ nischen Städte im 12. Jahrhundert, pp. 166–70; Steindorff, ‘Der fremde Krieg’. 6 The most recent overviews of the debates on the origin of the Croats can be found in Budak, ‘Identities in Early Medieval Dalmatia’; Dzino, Becoming Slav, Becoming Croat; Budak, ‘Razvitak hrvatskog etničkog identiteta’; Budak, Hrvatska povijest, pp. 86–118. 7 Dujam Hranković (Domnius de Chranchis), Opis, ed. and trans. by Gligo, pp. 205–20. His Descriptio was edited already in 1802 by Andrija Ciccarelli and in 1926 by Karel Kadlec. Hranković was an archpresbyter on Brač and shortly before his death was elected as bishop of Hvar. See: Luči, ‘Hranković, Dujam’. 8 Raukar, Studije, pp. 357–67. 9 This expedition is usually dated to the years 998–1000. Its importance lies in the fact that it was the first time that Venice put almost the whole eastern Adriatic coast under its control. The significance of this temporary success was presented annually by the ceremony of the ‘wedding’ of

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Both authors had the intention of creating some kind of identity for their respective local communities. In the case of the Historia Salonitana this is more obvious. The whole work is composed in such a way as to prove that the Church of Split was nothing but a continuation of the Church of Salona, and that, in the same way, citizens of Split were descendants of the Salonitans. 10 This was important for ecclesiastical matters because it explained why Split had metropolitan rights over other Dalmatian churches (although by Thomas’s time both Dubrovnik and Zadar had also become metropolises).11 The archdeacon was, however, maybe less consciously, creating the civil identity of his commune. It was a time when the Dalmatian communes were fighting for more independence from greater powers surrounding them and threatening their economic and political development.12 On the one hand, Venice ruled over most of what was at that time known as Dalmatia, including Dubrovnik and Zadar, as the largest of the Dalmatian communes. The protection of the Hungarian kings spared Split and Trogir from falling under the lion of St Mark, but at the same time, this royal patronage could also endanger the safety of the city.13 Then there were the mighty lords ruling the hinterland and the pirates from nearby Omiš, threatening not only Split’s ships, but also the commune’s territories on the islands.14 Finally, not even the nearest neighbour, the commune of Trogir, has always been on friendly terms with Split.15 Thomas’s own city in his History thus becomes an Venice with the Adriatic, when the doge, from his ceremonial ship, threw a ring into the sea. For the expedition see: Šišić, Povijest Hrvata, pp. 474–75; Lane, Venice, pp. 26–27; for the ceremony: p. 271. 10 It seems that the interpretation that the Archbishopric of Split was simply a continuation of the one in Salona was formulated in the last quarter of the eighth century. That was a time of intense papal activities in renewing or establishing dioceses along the eastern Adriatic coast, and at that time Split became an outpost of papal influence in Dalmatia. See: Budak, ‘Furta sacra’; Basić and Jurković, ‘Prilog opusu Splitske klesarske radionice’; Dzino, From Justinian to Branimir, pp. 152–53; Jurković and Basić, ‘Élites ecclesiastiche’; Jakšić, ‘Riflessi’. However, the oldest preserved version of this interpretation is Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, xi, pp. 52–59. 11 The Church of Split became the metropolitan for Croatia and Dalmatia in the councils of 925 and 928 held in Split. The argument in favour of Split was the legend that St Domnius, the first bishop of Salona, was a disciple of St Peter. Since it was believed that the Church of Split was simply a continuation of the Salonitan, it was also believed that it originated in apostolic times. On the councils in Split: Prozorov, ‘The Passion of St Domnius’; Prozorov, ‘Where He Is’. 12 Raukar, Studije, pp. 226–42. 13 Raukar, Hrvatsko srednjovjekovlje, pp. 65–73. 14 Klaić, ‘Historijska uloga’. 15 Klaić, Trogir u srednjem vijeku, pp. 116–40.

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isolated island, encircled by different enemies — a situation which necessarily results in the creation of a strong local identity and the adoration of the patria, the synthesis of the Church, the commune and the clerus et populus.16 But, of course, nobody in this world can survive on one’s own. Therefore, Thomas offers consolation to his readers in Split, in the form of belonging to greater and better communities than those in the surrounding area. One of them is Christianity in its Catholic form, the other what he calls the Latin gens.17 The problem, however, was that the majority of Split’s enemies at that time were Christian, except for the Mongols. In order to avoid this inconvenience, Thomas sometimes labels them as heretics, without explaining what kind of heresy he had in mind.18 They are opposed by the citizens of Split, descendants of those who had accepted Christianity in the time of the apostles (as he tried to convince his readers). They could sometimes behave in a non-Christian way and therefore suffer God’s punishment, but all in all they were good Catholics.19 Those who lived around them, threatening their lives and plundering their fields, were descendants of Goths mixed with a wild indigenous tribe called the Koribanti and some newcomers who came with the Goths from Poland and had Slavic names.20 This mixture of peoples became one and Thomas calls them 16

Raukar, Studije, p. 226. Thomas on several occasions identifies the citizens of Split with Latins, for example, when he describes the attack of the Slavs under Lord Relja: ‘But all at once a certain spirit of boldness began to glow in the hearts of the Latins’ (Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, xx, p. 117). Similarly, when discussing the introduction of a podestà, the ‘Latin government’ as he called it, he clearly wanted to demonstrate the superiority of the Latins, to whom the Spalatians, in his mind, belonged, as opposed to the Slavs or others: ‘Archdeacon in particular would summon the clergy and repeatedly urge the people, demonstrating with many arguments that the well-being of the city could be restored only by the governance of the Latins’ (Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, xxxii, p. 221). 18 When writing about Višen, a count of Split and a Croatian lord, Thomas claimed, ‘Višen lived in Zvonigrad, and although he was noble, rich and powerful, he was nevertheless a protector of heretics’ (Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, xxvii, xxviii, pp. 187, 189). Even though the people of Split later elected a certain Peter, Lord of Hum, as their count, the clergy opposed this election, because ‘Peter was, to be sure, a powerful and warlike man, but not free from the disgrace of heresy’ (Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, xxviii, p. 189). 19 Raukar noticed that Thomas, when referring to the inhabitants of Split in a positive way, usually names them clerus et populus, but when he wants to point out their negative behaviour he calls them Spalatenses. Raukar, Studije, pp. 218, 225–26. 20 Thomas is neither the first, nor the only author who identifies Croats or Slavs in Dalmatia with Goths. The same claim can be found in the so-called Annals of the Priest from 17

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alternatively Slavs, Croats, or Goths. They were wild — a characteristic they would retain until Thomas’s own days — but they were Christians. To be sure, they were different from the Dalmatians, inhabitants of what was left of the former Roman province and Thomas labelled them as Arians.21 From the time of the settlement of these Arian newcomers, heresy was, according to Thomas, an almost constant characteristic of the wild neighbours of Split. However, he could not have described his contemporaries as Arians, and by simply using the general accusation of heresy, he leaves the door open to different interpretations. For him, the heretics included two brothers, goldsmiths from Zadar, who had contacts with adherents of the Bosnian church.22 These two might have Dioclia (Ljetopis Popa Dukljanina), more correctly called The Kingdom of the Slavs, a history of a non-existent kingdom of the South Slavs, presumably written in the late twelfth century, although other dates were suggested as well. Different opinions were expressed as to who is the anonymous author of these Annals (in which not a single year is recorded). The newest edition, with reference to related literature, is: Gesta regum Sclavorum, ed. by Živković. Solange Bujan thought that the Annals were a forgery written at the end of the sixteenth century by Mavro Orbini who first published them in 1600. See: ‘Orbinijevo izdanje “Ljetopisa popa Dukljanina”’. For a detailed overview of all editions and interpretations of The Kingdom of the Slavs and the related Croatian Chronicle see: Kowalski, The Kings. However, there is no doubt that the idea of a Gothic identity of the Dalmatian Slavs originated at the latest in the twelfth century. In the so-called Codex from Korčula (Korčulanski kodeks), composed soon after 1130, which is a compilation of different texts (among others Joseph Flavius and Liber pontificalis), the anonymous author states that Totila was a ban to other kings. The title ban was at that time used by Croats. He also changes the name of the Gothic king Theodat into Slavic Bogdan (which is a translation of the king’s name). See: Foretić, ‘Korčulanski kodeks 12. stoljeća’. Also, Andrea Dandolo explains the origin of the Slavs as derived from the Goths: ‘Erant enim Sclavi adhuc gentiles, quia a Gothis originem traxerant; et continuo exercebant piraticam artem’. See: Andrea Dandolo, Chronica, ed. by Pastorello, viii.3, p. 148. 21 ‘These peoples then intermingled and formed one nation, alike in life and customs and with one language. They also began to have their own chiefs. And although they were vicious and ferocious, they were also Christians, albeit extremely primitive ones. They had also been infected with the cancer of Arianism. Many called them Goths, but also Slavs, which was the name of those who had come from Poland or Bohemia’, Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, vii, p. 39. 22 Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, xxiii, pp. 138–39: ‘Now there were at that time two brothers, sons of Zorobabel, one of whom was called Matthew, the other Aristodius. Although their father was from Apulia, they had been citizens of Zadar since childhood. They lived for most of the time in Bosnia, for they were excellent painters and skilled in the art of gold-smithing. They also had a competent knowledge of Latin and the Slavic language and letters. But lured by the devil, they had plunged so deeply into the pestilential abyss of heresy that they not only believed with blind hearts in the impious heresy, but even preached it with wicked lips’.

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been Cathars.23 The question of Bosnian heresy has been a long-disputed one and is of little interest for our topic. But what kind of heresy dirtied the Croatian lords from the hinterland, who, according to our knowledge, were actually Catholics? The answer might be found in Chapter 16, in which Thomas writes about a synod held in 1060, at which the papal legate succeeded in banning the Slavonic liturgy and use of the Glagolitic script.24 Thomas’s explanation was that these ‘Gothic’ letters were invented by a heretic named Methodius and that the priests using them were themselves heretics.25 Since both the Slavonic liturgy and the Glagolitic script remained in use in spite of pressure from Rome (and were even allowed in 1248 by Pope Innocent IV in the diocese of Senj),26 Thomas’s label of heresy might have referred to those lords who allowed the Slavonic liturgy in their territories. Since the Slavonic liturgy and Glagolitic letters — or Cyrillic for that matter — were also an expression of identity (in this case Croatian or other Slavic), in some way opposed to the ‘Latin’ world, Thomas’s animosity towards them should not surprise us. Obviously, Thomas’s own primary identity was that of a citizen of Split. In a broader sense, he saw Split as a part of Dalmatia, once a large province and — 23

In the thirteenth–fifteenth centuries the so-called Church of Bosnia was accused of dualistic heresy and of having connections to Cathars in Dalmatia and in the West. References to the abundant literature on Bosnian ‘heretics’ can be found in: Lovrenović, Na klizištu povijesti, pp. 587–613. It seems that Thomas implies that the two brothers were related to the Bosnian ‘Christians’ (as they called themselves), but he does not express that explicitly. His accusations of heresy are targeted against different people, mostly lords from the hinterland of Split, and it is difficult to say if they always implied connections with Bosnians. If, in his opinion, Arius invented the Slavic script, it is not impossible that Thomas saw as heretics all those who used the Slavonic liturgy or letters (Glagolitic or Cyrillic). See: Budak, ‘Über die Anfänge der slawischen Liturgie’, p. 19. 24 Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, xvi, pp. 76–79. 25 ‘Among these it was decreed and established that no one in future should presume to celebrate the divine mysteries in the Slavic tongue, but only in Latin or Greek, and that neither should anyone of that language be elevated to holy orders. For they said that a certain heretic called Methodius had devised a Gothic alphabet, and he perniciously wrote a great deal of falsehood against the teachings of the Catholic faith in that same Slavic language. On account of this, he is said to have been condemned by divine judgement to a swift end’. Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, xvi, pp. 78–79. Thomas’s interpretations of the decisions of the council are, however, misleading. The prelates of Croatia and Dalmatia did not forbid the Slavic liturgy, but only made elevation to holy orders conditional upon knowledge of Latin. See: Codex diplomaticus, ed. by Stipišić and Šamšalović, i, p. 96: ‘Item Sclavos, nisi Latinas litteras didicerint, ad sacros ordines promoveri […] prohibemus’. 26 Jelić, Fontes historici liturgiae glagolitico­romanae, p. 9.

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according to Isidore of Seville — part of Greece.27 However, the Dalmatia of the thirteenth century was constricted to a few coastal cities and islands.28 It is interesting that Thomas does not try to explain the origins of the Dalmatians as descendants of Roman colonists. On the contrary, he treats them as an indigenous population resisting the attempts of Augustus to conquer them, claiming that Salona surrendered to the Romans only after a long-lasting siege.29 In order to strengthen this Dalmatian identity, Thomas does not fail to remind his readers that St Jerome was also a Dalmatian, as were the Popes Gaius and John IV.30 Faced with the problem of evaluating Diocletian, the archdeacon blames him for the persecution of Christians, but credits him with the construction of the imperial palace near Salona, which then became the nucleus of Split.31 Although in this way he established a connection between Rome and 27

Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. by Lindsay, xiv.4.7, 8. The geographical name ‘Dalmatia’ could have had different meanings. Since the peace treaty of Aachen in 812 it was used either to describe that part of the former Roman province that was still held by the Byzantine Empire or as a synonym for the Kingdom of Croatia and later, less often and for a short while, for the Kingdom of Dioclia. In the narrower sense, describing Byzantine and afterwards Venetian possessions along the eastern Adriatic coast, ‘Dalmatia’ was applied to several coastal towns (Zadar, Split, Trogir) and islands. In Thomas’s own words, ‘However, the name Dalmatia was formerly used in a broader sense, for it was considered as one province with Croatia. […] Today, however, Dalmatia is a maritime region. It begins from Epirus, where Durrës is, and extends up to the gulf of Kvarner’. Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, i, pp. 2–3. 29 ‘At the same time he [Augustus — N.B.] sent the general Vibius with a large army against the Dalmatians; these people, dwelling in the forests of Dalmatia, practiced brigandry and plundered the surrounding provinces’. Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, i, pp. 4–5. 30 Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, i, iv, and viii, pp. 2–3, 20–21, 44–45. 31 ‘During the same period Diocletian […] who originally came from Dalmatia, was chosen as emperor by the Senate and the Roman people, because of the deeds he performed with great energy on behalf of the state. More than all his predecessors this emperor proved a most savage persecutor of Christians. Like a raging lion he hunted down Christ’s faithful throughout the world relentlessly and with bestial savagery, yet still was unable to quench his base thirst for Christian blood’. Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, iv, pp. 18–19. The martyrdom of Salonitan Christians, first of all Domnius, who had been a victim of Diocletian’s persecutions and who later became patron saint of Split, lies at the roots of the identity of the citizens of Split. In a similar way, Diocletian’s palace is an important element of Split’s identity. Thomas writes about Diocletian’s building activities, mentioning, among other things, ‘And because he was by origin a Dalmatian, he ordered a splendid edifice to be constructed near Salona in the manner of a well-fortified city, like an imperial palace, in which 28

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the Dalmatians, especially the inhabitants of Split, he never tried to claim that the Spalatians were Romans, as Constantine Porphyrogenitus had done centuries before.32 In the case of the Ragusans, on the contrary, he followed (or maybe created?) the legend according to which Dubrovnik was established by some newcomers who had been expelled from Rome.33 We can read a similar, though more elaborate interpretation, in The Kingdom of the Slavs.34 For Thomas, the Dalmatian identity was part of a larger community which he called ‘Latin’. In his history he speaks of ‘gens Latina’, ‘regimen Latinorum’, and ‘Latini’.35 On one occasion he uses the term ‘Latini’ to name the Dalmatians, once they are citizens of Split, then defenders of Székesfehérvár against the Mongols, and finally, inhabitants of Italy.36 They are directly opposed to the Slavs. These Latins are capable of establishing a just and well-organized government, called the regimen Latinorum, with professional podestàs coming from abroad (e.g. from Ancona, Bergamo, or Trieste).37 Gargano de Arscindis from there were temples of Jove, Asclepius and Mars, as can be seen to the present day’. Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, iv, pp. 20–21. It is interesting that this ambivalent relation to Diocletian can be found in Constantine Porphyrogenitus’s De adminis­ trando imperio. Constantine blames Diocletian for persecutions of Christians, but at the same times gives him credit for settling Romans in Dalmatia, for founding the city of Dioclia, and for building the palace in Split. See: Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, ed. by Moravcsik and Jenkins, pp. 122–23, 136–37. 32 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, ed. by Moravcsik and Jenkins, pp. 122–23: ‘The emperor Diocletian was much enamoured of the country of Dalmatia, and so he brought folk with their families from Rome and settled them in this same country of Dalmatia, and they were called “Romani” from their having been removed from Rome, and this title attaches to them until this day’. 33 Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, viii, p. 47: ‘It was about this time that some strangers — driven from the city of Rome, as they say — landed in their boats not far from Epidaurus. […] The aforementioned foreigners established themselves in that region and wore down the city of Epidaurus greatly by repeated attacks. When it had been worn down they took it, and after taking it they laid it waste utterly. However, the newcomers intermixed with the populace, and they became one people. They built Dubrovnik and settled there’. 34 Mošin, Ljetopis Popa Dukljanina, pp. 69–71; Budak, ‘Tumačenje podrijetla i najstarije povijesti Hrvata’. 35 Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, xxxii, p. 221: Latin government, Latin people, Latins. 36 Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, xxxviii, p. 291: ‘and there was a very effective garrison of Latins’ (referring, most probably, to the Hospitallers). 37 Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, xxxii, xli, pp. 221, 223, 315.

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Ancona, podestà of Split, also invited at the urging of Thomas himself, is a symbol of such an orderly government: he composed the first statute of Split, made a census of all male adults — in short, in Thomas’s own words, ‘he turned his mind in all parts to see in whatever way the honour and advantage of the city might grow’.38 One of Gargano’s glorious deeds was the war against the pirates.39 For a commune whose economy is to a large extent based on seafaring, and whose fields and cattle are close to the sea, pirates are a constant threat. They are the evil surrounding this isolated world. Already in the first chapter of his History, he tells the story of Cadmus, the Greek, who had come to Epidaurus and became a dreadful pirate, resembling a serpent.40 The cruellest pirates were those based in Omiš, a town not far away from Split. They not only attacked ships, but managed to rule the islands of Hvar and Brač, the latter being considered part of the territory of Split.41 It is difficult to compare the very short fragment of Cranchis’s Chronicle with Thomas’s voluminous History, but some parallels seem interesting enough. The island of Brač, having no settlement we could name a city, was an autonomous commune within the territory of Split, governed by a council and a rector from Split. Cranchis claims that the first inhabitants of the island were Greeks who came after the destruction of Troy and who were later replaced by the Romans.42 During Justinian’s reign, an unnamed barbaric people — presumably the author meant the Goths — devastated the island.43 Sometime there38

Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, xxxiv, pp. 230–31. Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, xxxv, pp. 237–53. 40 Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, i, pp. 6–7. 41 Klaić, ‘Historijska uloga’. 42 ‘Its first inhabitants, as I could copy from some charters, were Greeks who after the destruction of Troy disembarked on this island. Many, among them the archpresbyter Stojša, write that the island was called Bracia because these Greeks were from the town of Ambracia [now Arta in southern Epirus — N.B.]. With time, these Greeks built the city of Brač, called Scripea in the vulgar language, today Škrip. Later it was inhabited by Romans, rulers of the world, after they had subjugated under their authority Salona with all of Dalmatia’. Dujam Hranković, Opis, ed. and trans. by Gligo, pp. 217–18. Škrip was the central settlement on the island, but it never developed characteristics of a town. 43 ‘After a long time, during the reign of Justinian, some barbaric people destroyed this city, as I read in old codices, and its inhabitants were partly killed, partly taken as captives. This barbaric people spilled a lot of blood in our Dalmatia and destroyed many cities, places and fortresses, and this bellicose people did similar cruelties in Italy and in other kingdoms and regions. After the destruction of Brač the island remained deserted so that the inhabitants of Salona and Epetion 39

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after another Gothic people came from the north and the Slavic lands, destroying Salona and nearby Epetion. Survivors from these two towns found refuge on Brač.44 While after some time some of them moved to Diocletian’s palace in Split, the others decided to stay.45 Those who had been nobles in Salona and Epetion also remained nobles on Brač; therefore, those who belonged to the nobility in Cranchis’s times had their origins in the Salonitan, Roman nobles.46 Cranchis’s own family belonged to the nobility of Brač and thus Cranchis constructed his own identity as a descendant of the Romans, although his family name was of Croatian/Slavic origin.47 Obviously, this Slavic–Latin dichotomy was no contradiction in the eyes of the author, which was not unusual at that time.48 Under the emperors of Constantinople the inhabitants of Brač lived peacefully, following the habits and laws of bygone Salona. But this peace was interrupted by the Narentanians, who ‘piraticam artem exercebant’.49 After the [today Stobreč south of Split — N.B.] fought for power over the island because of the multitude of animals which they kept there’. Dujam Hranković, Opis, ed. and trans. by Gligo, p. 218. 44 ‘But another Gothic people from the northern and Slavic lands, worse than the first one, without any announcement of war suddenly invaded Dalmatia which was unarmed because it did not expect such misfortune and among other cities attacked with arms and fire and destroyed Epetion and the big and beautiful Salona. Those poor citizens who could escape their cruelty retreated on boats to the nearby islands, many of them on this island Brač’. Dujam Hranković, Opis, ed. and trans. by Gligo, p. 218. 45 Here Cranchis follows the narrative of Thomas, who also describes how refugees from the islands settled in Diocletian’s palace. See: Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, x, pp. 48–53. 46 ‘Then they again built the old town of Brač and among themselves made an agreement and passed a law which has been kept until today, that those who were noblemen in Salona and Epetion should remain noble also here, and those who were commoners and subjects in those cities should remain so on this island. Today’s noblemen are their descendants and they are real noblemen because they originate from the old noblemen of the glorious cities of Salona and Epetion’. Dujam Hranković, Opis, ed. and trans. by Gligo, p. 218. 47 Radauš, ‘Hranković’. 48 For example, already in 1218 King Andrew recognized the Roman origins of the Babonić kindred from Slavonia: ‘fidelium nostrorum dilectorum Baboned et Stephani comitum de Wodicha filiorum condam comitis Stephani de Gorichia, quos verilocax preconii fama et veritatis experiential de originali domo et stirpe generosa Ursinorum Romane Urbis senatorum propagatos testator’. Codex diplomaticus, ed. by Smičiklas, iii, p. 168. This mixed Roman/Croatian identity became even more popular in the following centuries. 49 Dujam Hranković, Opis, ed. and trans. by Gligo, p. 219. These Narentanians are more or less identical with the pirates from Omiš, as mentioned by Thomas. Omiš was a major stronghold in the territory between the rivers Cetina and Neretva, which was the Neretva county.

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Narentanians destroyed the main settlement, which Cranchis calls a ‘civitas’, the remaining noblemen built a new ‘oppidum et castellum’ close to the sea, but that one was soon destroyed by other pirates, coming from the east.50 After that they decided to build their homes in the hills, away from the sea. The Narentanians were then defeated by the doge of Venice.51 Cranchis’s identities are simpler than those of Thomas. He belongs to the community of ‘Bračani’, inhabitants of Brač. Like the ‘Splićani’, they too have origins in Antiquity, but they are all descendants of Salonitan and Epetian refugees, thus being closely related to the inhabitants of their local centre. Neither Dalmatian, nor Latin identities are mentioned in this brief fragment, except for once, when he mentions ‘nostra Dalmatia’.52 Just like in Thomas’s History, Domnius’s community is not only literally an island surrounded by pirates: it is a place where people live according to the ancient laws and customs of Roman Salona. Though he does not mention a ‘regimen Latinorum’, the parallel is obvious: under Roman laws people live peacefully, while the outer world is ruled by barbarians and pirates. We can assume that Domnius de Cranchis read Thomas’s History, because he mentions the Gothic people that came from the north and from the Slavic lands. However, he does not blame the Slavs for being wild or even heretics. The reason for this might be the fact that on Brač there were Benedictines who used the Slavonic liturgy, and Brač was mainly Slavicized.53 Finally, we can ask the question, was there any echo of Thomas’s and Domnius’s identity constructions in later historiographical writings in Split and on Brač? Although the Split nobleman Michael, son of Madius, continued Thomas’s work soon after the archdeacon’s death, he interpreted the origins of the ‘Splićani’ differently, claiming their Trojan descent. 54 There is also no 50

Dujam Hranković, Opis, ed. and trans. by Gligo, p. 219. Dujam Hranković, Opis, ed. and trans. by Gligo, pp. 219–20. 52 Dujam Hranković, Opis, ed. and trans. by Gligo, p. 218. 53 While the Glagolitic alphabet was predominantly used for writing texts in Croatian/ Slavonic in Croatia and Dalmatia, in the regions to the east of river Krka Cyrillic letter were more common. Two of the oldest Croatian texts written in Cyrillic are preserved on Brač. One is an epigraphic inscription from the former Benedictine monastery of St John the Baptist from Povlja, composed soon after 1184. The other is the so-called Charter from Povlja, related to the same monastery, written in 1250, but containing the transcript of a charter from 1184. See: Katičić, Litterarum studia, pp. 645–49. 54 ‘Incipit historia edita per Micam Madii de Barbazanis de Spalato de gestis Romanorum Imperatorum et Summorum Pontificum’ (facsimile and Croatian translation), ed. by Rismondo, 51

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trace of a Dalmatian or Latin identity, as well as there being no identification of Slavs or Croats with Goths. Another short chronicle, written only a few decades later, in the second half of the fourteenth century, by an anonymous Split nobleman, distinguishes Latins from Croats and sees the inhabitants of Split as participants in the Dalmatian identity.55 The Statute of Split, written down in 1312, mentions Dalmatians and Latins only once, distinguishing them from Slavs and Bosnians who should not be given or sold any ware with a grace period.56 This very brief insight into later narratives might suggest that Thomas’s construction of identities was based on existing practices of ethnic/social labelling, but his writing was very much influenced by his rather good education (he studied in Bologna), resulting in a system which had little in common with the ‘real world’.57 Both Thomas the Archdeacon and Domnius de Cranchis attracted more interest with the development of historiography in the seventeenth century. We can find traces of their interpretations in the Chronica dell’Isola della Brazza, written by the Brač nobleman Vicko Prodić, and Thomas became a first-rate source for Croatian medieval history thanks to Johannes Lucius, the seventeenth-century ‘father of Croatian historiography’.58 While Domnius de Chrancis remained of interest only locally, Thomas’s History started playing a primary role in the construction of identities, both Croatian and Italian (or Dalmatian), in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

pp. 171, 375. A comparison of Thomas’s Historia with Mica’s in Raukar, Hrvatsko srednjovjeko­ vlje, pp. 370–71. 55 A Cutheis, Tabula (facsimile and Croatian translation), ed. by Rismondo, pp. 195, 392. 56 Cvitanić, ed., Statut grada Splita, p. 822. 57 On Thomas’s education see: Thomas the Archdeacon, History, ed. and trans. by Perić and others, pp. xxiv–xxv. 58 Vicko Prodić, ‘Kronika otoka Brača u Dalmaciji’, ed. by Posedel. Lucius/Lučić was the first to publish Thomas’s History: Iohannes Lucius, De regno Dalmatiae et Croatiae, pp. 310–70.

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Works Cited Primary Sources A Cutheis, Tabula, ed.  by Vladimir Rismondo, in Legende i kronike (Legends and Chronicles), ed. by Vedran Gligo and Hrvoje Morović (Split: Čakavski sabor, 1977), pp. 185–202 Andrea Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta, ed.  by Ester Pastorello, Fonti per la storia d’Italia, 12.1 (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1938) Codex diplomaticus regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae, i, ed.  by Jakov Stipišić and Miljen Šamšalović (Zagreb: Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, 1967) Codex diplomaticus regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae, iii, ed.  by Tadija Smičiklas (Zagreb: Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, 1905) Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, ed.  by Gyula Moravcsik and Richard  J.  H. Jenkins (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, 1967) Dujam Hranković (Domnius de Chranchis), Opis otoka Brača (Braciae insulae descriptio), ed. and trans. into Croatian by Vedran Gligo, in Legende i kronike (Legends and Chronicles), ed. by Vedran Gligo and Hrvoje Morović (Split: Čakavski sabor, 1977), pp. 205–20; ed. by Andrija Ciccarelli, in Osservazioni sull’isola della Brazza e sopra quella nobiltà (Venice: Basegio, 1802), pp.  91–94; ed.  by Karel Kadlec, in Statut i reformacije otoka Brača: sa zakonima, povlasticama i listovima Duždeva za Bračku općinu (Statute and Reforms of the Island of Brač), Monumenta historico-juridica Slavorum Meridionalium, 11 (Zagreb: Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, 1926), pp. 201–03 Gesta regum Sclavorum, ed. by Tibor Živković, 2 vols (Belgrade: Istoriiski Institute, 2009) ‘Incipit historia edita per Micam Madii de Barbazanis de Spalato de gestis Romanorum Imperatorum et Summorum Pontificum’, ed.  by Vladimir Rismondo, in Legende i kronike (Legends and Chronicles), ed. by Vedran Gligo and Hrvoje Morović (Split: Čakavski sabor, 1977), pp. 151–84, 365–94 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. by Wallace Martin Lindsay, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 1911) Lucius, Iohannes, De regno Dalmatiae et Croatiae libri sex (Amsterdam: Blaeu, 1666) Statut grada Splita: Splitsko srednjovjekovno pravo / Statuta civitatis Spalati: ius spalatense medii aevi, ed. by Antun Cvitanić (Split: Književni krug, 1998) Thomas the Archdeacon, History of the Bishops of Salona and Split, ed., trans., and commentaries by Damir Karbić, Mirjana Matijević-Sokol, and James Ross Sweeney, Latin text by Olga Perić, Thomae archidiaconi Spalatensis Historia Salonitanorum atque Spalatinorum Pontificum, Central European Medieval Texts, 4 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2006); Historia Salonitana, ed. by Olga Perić, Mirjana Matijević-Sokol, and Radoslav Katičić (Split: Književni krug, 2003) Vicko Prodić, ‘Kronika otoka Brača u Dalmaciji’, ed. by Josip Posedel, in Legende i kronike (Legends and Chronicles), ed. by Vedran Gligo and Hrvoje Morović (Split: Čakavski sabor, 1977), pp. 225–64

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Secondary Studies Basić, Ivan, and Miljenko Jurković, ‘Prilog opusu Splitske klesarske radionice kasnog VIII. stoljeća’ (A Contribution to the Opus of the Split Masonry Workshop of the Late Eighth Century), Starohrvatska prosvjeta, 38 (2012), 149–85 Budak, Neven, ‘Tumačenje podrijetla i najstarije povijesti Hrvata u djelima srednjovjekovnih pisaca’, in Etnogeneza Hrvata (Ethnogeny of the Croats), ed. by Neven Budak (Zagreb: Nakladni zavod Matice hrvatske, 1996), pp. 73–78 (Summary in English: ‘The Origin and the Oldest Croatian History in the Works of Medieval Writers’, pp. 206–08) ——  , ‘Identities in Early Medieval Dalmatia (7th–11th  c.)’, in Franks, Northmen and Slavs: Identities and State Formation in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Ildar Garipzanov, Patrick Geary, and Przemysław Urbańczyk, Cursor mundi, 5 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), pp. 223–41 ——  , ‘Furta sacra et inventio traditionis: Je li doista postojao kontinuitet između Salonitanske i Splitske biskupije?’ (Was There Really a Continuity from the Salonitan to the Split Diocese?), in Munuscula in honorem Željko Rapanić: Zbornik povo­ dom osamdesetog rođendana, ed. by Miljenko Jurković and Ante Milošević (Zagreb: Međunarodni istraživački centar za kasnu antiku i srednji vijek, 2012), pp. 157–79 —— , ‘Historia Salonitana and Historia Salonitana Maior: A Contribution to the Debate about the Relation of the Two Texts’, in Summer School in the Study of Historical Manuscripts, ed. by Mirna Willer and Marijana Tomić (Zadar: Sveučilište u Zadru, 2013), pp. 101–31 ——  , ‘Razvitak hrvatskog etničkog identiteta’ (Development of the Croatian Ethnic Identity), in Nova zraka u europskom svjetlu: Hrvatske zemlje u ranome srednjem vijeku (A New Beam in the European Light: Croatian Lands in the Early Middle Ages), ed. by Zrinka Nikolić Jakus (Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 2015), pp. 73–88 —— , ‘Über die Anfänge der slawischen Liturgie und der glagolitischen Schrift in Dalmatien und Kroatien’, in Religionsgeschichtliche Studien zum östlichen Europa: Festschrift für Ludwig Steindorff zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Martina Thomsen, Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte des östlichen Europa, 85 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2017), pp. 15–22 —— , Hrvatska povijest od 550 do 1100 (Croatian History from 550 to 1100) (Zagreb: Leykam, 2018) Bujan, Solange, ‘Orbinijevo izdanje “Ljetopisa popa Dukljanina”: povijesni falsifikat’ (Orbini’s Edition of the Annales of the Priest from Dioclia: A Historical Forgery), Radovi Zavoda za hrvatsku povijest, 43 (2011), 65–80 Dzino, Danijel, Becoming Slav, Becoming Croat: Identity Transformations in Post­Roman and Early Medieval Dalmatia (Leiden: Brill, 2010) Dzino, Danijel, From Justinian to Branimir: The Making of the Middle Ages in Dalmatia (New York: Routledge 2021) Foretić, Vinko, ‘Korčulanski kodeks 12. stoljeća i vijesti iz doba hrvatske narodne dinastije u njemu’ (The Twelfth-Century Codex from Korčula and its News from the Time of the Croatian National Dynasty), Starine Jugoslavenske akademije znanosti i umjet­ nosti, 46 (1956), 23–44

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Ivić, Nenad, Domišljanje prošlosti (Imagining the Past) (Zagreb: Zavod za znanost o književnosti, 1992) Jakšić, Nikola, ‘Riflessi della »rinascenza liutprandea« nei centri urbani della costa adriatica orientale’, Hortus artium medievalium, 16 (2010), 17–26 Jelić, Luka, Fontes historici liturgiae glagolitico­romanae a XIII ad XIX saeculum (Veglae: Sumptibus Glagolitarum in Dalmatia, 1906) Jurković, Miljenko and Ivan Basić, ‘Élites ecclesiastiche e renovatio: tradizioni tardoantiche nell’arte di VIII e IX secolo in Istria’, in Il ruolo dell’autorità ecclesiastica alla luce di nuovi scavi e ricerche, ed. by Raffaella Farioli Campanati, Clementina Rizzardi, Paola Porta, Andrea Augenti, and Isabella Baldini Lippolis (Bologna: Università di Bologna 2009), pp. 289-302 Katičić, Radoslav, Litterarum studia (Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 1998) Klaić, Nada, ‘Historijska uloga neretvanske kneževine u stoljetnoj borbi za Jadran’ (The Historical Role of the Neretva County in the Centuries-Long Struggle for the Adriatic), Makarski zbornik, 1 (1971), 121–68 ——  , Trogir u srednjem vijeku: Javni život grada Trogira i njegovih ljudi (Trogir in the Middle Ages: The Public Life of the Town of Trogir and of its People) (Trogir: Muzej grada Trogira, 1985) Kowalski, Wawrzyniec, The Kings of the Slavs: The Image of the Ruler in the Latin Text of The Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja (Leiden: Brill, 2021) Lane, Frederic C., Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973) Lovrenović, Dubravko, Na klizištu povijesti (sveta kruna ugarska i sveta kruna bosanska) 1387–1463 (On the Landslide of History (the Holy Crown of Hungary and the Holy Crown of Bosnia) 1387–1453) (Zagreb: Synopsis, 2006) Luči, Bratislav, ‘Hranković, Dujam’, in Hrvatski biografski leksikon, v, ed.  by Trpimir Macan (Zagreb: Leksikografski zavod Miroslav Krleža, 2002), pp. 694–95 Matijević-Sokol, Mirjana, Toma Arhiđakon i njegovo djelo (Thomas the Archdeacon and his Work) ( Jastrebarsko: Slap, 2002) Mošin, Vladimir, Ljetopis Popa Dukljanina (Zagreb: Matica Hrvatska, 1950) Prozorov, Vadim, ‘The Passion of St  Domnius: The Tradition of Apostolic Succession in Dalmatia’, in Scrinium, ii: Universum hagiographicum: Mémorial  R.  P. Michel van Esbroeck, S. J. (1934–2003), ed. by Basil Lourié and Aleksey Mouraviev (Saint Petersburg: Byzantinorossica, 2006), pp. 219–39 —— , ‘Where He Is, Thither Will the Eagles Be Gathered Together: The Metropolitan Status of the Bishop of Spalato from the Decline of Salona until the Councils of Spalato in 925 and 928’, in Saintly Bishops and Bishops’ Saints, ed. by John S. Ott and Trpimir Vedriš (Zagreb: Hagiotheca, 2014), pp. 103–22 Radauš, Tatjana, ‘Hranković’, in Hrvatski biografski leksikon, v (Zagreb: Leksikografski zavod Miroslav Krleža, 2002), p. 694 Raukar, Tomislav, Hrvatsko srednjovjekovlje: Prostor, ljudi, ideje (The Croatian Middle Ages: Space, People, Ideas) (Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 1997) ——  , Studije o Dalmaciji u srednjem vijeku (Studies on Dalmatia in the Middle Ages) (Split: Književni krug, 2007)

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Šišić, Ferdo, Povijest Hrvata u doba narodnih vladara (History of the Croats in the Time of the National Rulers) (Zagreb: Naklada školskih knjiga, 1925) Steindorff, Ludwig, Die dalmatinischen Städte im 12. Jahrhundert: Studien zu ihrer politischen Stellung und gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung (Cologne: Böhlau, 1984), pp. 166–70 —— , ‘Der fremde Krieg: die Heerzüge der Mongolen 1237–1242 im Spiegel der altrussischen und lateinischen Chronistik’, in Südosteuropa: Von vormoderner Vielfalt und nationalstaatlicher Vereinheitlichung: Festschrift für Edgar Hösch, ed.  by Konrad Clewing and Oliver Jens Schmidt (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2005), pp. 93–118 Sweeney, James Ross, ‘Thomas of Spalato and the Mongols: A  Thirteenth-Century Dalmatian View of Mongol Customs’, Florilegium, 4 (1982), 156–83

Grado as Aquileia Nova and Split as Salona Nova? Local Historiography and Local Identity Peter Štih Introduction The question of the extent and manner in which local historiographies (co-) create local identity can be highlighted well through a comparison of medieval Grado and Split. To do this we will use the example of their oldest ecclesiastical histories, histories that link them to ancient Aquileia and Salona, respectively, since the Patriarchate of Grado considered itself the successor of the old metropolitan church of Aquileia, while the Archbishopric of Split as that of Salona. In this context, our interest will focus on how Grado and Split viewed the beginnings of their churches, how they justified their archiepiscopal and metropolitan positions by means of ancient history, and to what extent they reinterpreted and reconstructed this history. In doing so, we will not only examine the reasons behind this inventiveness, but also the mental constructions with which they sought to legitimize their goals through history or otherwise. We thus touch on the question of historiography’s function and its role in the pursuit of different agendas. We will seek to provide answers to these questions by means of local chronicles, whereby historiography in Grado was very different from that in Split. Chronicle writing in Split in the High Middle Ages is largely represented by a Peter Štih, Ph.D., is Professor of Medieval History and Auxiliary Sciences at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000–1300, ed. by Walter Pohl, Veronika Wieser, and Francesco Borri, celama 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp.  337–365 FHG 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.130266

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single work, one that is therefore all the more important, namely, the History of the Bishops of Salona and Split (Historia Salonitana).1 This renowned work, which is not only important for the history of the Salonitan-Split Church and the city of Split, but also for the entirety of medieval Croatian and Dalmatian history, was penned by Thomas, archdeacon of the Church of Split, around 1266. 2 A second work, the Historia Salonitana maior, is closely linked to Thomas’s chronicle.3 Today, the prevailing opinion is that the second work came into being at, most probably, only the beginning of the sixteenth century as a result of a revision made by an unknown author of the first twenty-two chapters of Thomas’s History. The author also included various important documents that Thomas failed to list in his chronicle.4 In terms of historiography, the situation in Grado is entirely different. Four chronicles and a hagiographical text are of great significance for the earliest history of the Church of Grado. These works, written at the end of the tenth and in the eleventh century, are at best only partly associated with Grado; they also mark the beginnings of Venetian historiography.5 The most important and best known among them is the History of the Venetians (Istoria Veneticorum) by John the Deacon. This chronicle, written between 1008 and 1018, has been regarded as the oldest monument of Venetian historiography.6 However, it seems that the oldest manuscript of the Translation of Saint Mark (Translatio sancti Marci) came into existence as early as around 975 (rather than as hitherto believed, only in the mid-eleventh century).7 Should this be the case, John 1

Thomas the Archdeacon, Historia Salonitanorum atque Spalatinorum pontificum, ed. by Karbić, Solkol, and Sweeney. 2 For the biography of Thomas the Archdeacon, see Matijević-Sokol, Toma Arhiđakon, pp. 33–42; Katičić, ‘Toma Arhiđakon’, pp. 331–78. 3 Historia Salonitana maior, ed. by Klaić. 4 Historia Salonitana maior, ed. by Klaić, pp. 76–81, 81–85, 95–103, 105–06; Codex diplo­ maticus, ed. by Kostrenčić, Stipišić, and Šamšalović, i, nos 22–27, pp. 28–39. 5 Manitius, Geschichte, ii, pp. 246–53; Monticolo, ‘Prefazione’; Fasoli, ‘I fondamenti’; Arnaldi and Capo, ‘I cronisti di Venezia’; Carile, ‘Chronica Gradensia’; Fedalto, Aquileia, pp. 175–80. 6 Monticolo, ‘I manoscritti e le fonti’; Monticolo, ‘Prefazione’, pp.  xxix–xxxv; Berto, ‘Giovanni Diacono’. 7 McCleary, ‘Note storiche ed archeologiche’, pp. 223–34 with edition on pp. 238–64. However, McCleary was not familiar with the manuscript kept in Orléans, which is dated to the tenth century and includes lives of saints, including Mark’s translation on fols 120r–126v; see: Catalogue général, xii, pp. 102–04; Geary, Furta sacra, pp. 93–94; Cracco, ‘I testi agiografici’, p. 923 and n. 1.

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the Deacon summarized his narrative about the beginnings of the Church of Grado — identical in both texts and, in the context of John the Deacon’s treatise, the most important part of his text — based on the Translatio rather than vice versa. As far as the remaining three works are concerned — entitled by modern publishers as the Chronicle of the Patriarchs of New Aquileia (Chronica de singulis patriarchis nove Aquileie), Chronicle of Grado (Chronicon Gradense), and Chronicle of Altino (Chronicon Altinate) — very little is known about their authors or their dates of composition. The opinions of historians differ greatly with regard to their origin, relationship to one another, source materials, subsequent interpolations, and historical value. In the face of these differences, the most plausible opinion, presented in a 2003 edition of the three works, is that the Chronicle of the Patriarchs of New Aquileia came into existence shortly before the mid-eleventh century and the Chronicle of Grado in the second half of the eleventh century, while various redactions of the Chronicle of Altino seem to have emerged between the end of the eleventh to the beginning of the thirteenth centuries.8

Aquileia — Grado The Patriarchate of Aquileia associated its beginnings and the related prestigious position as Italy’s second most important church (after Rome) with Mark the Evangelist and Peter the Apostle.9 The Lombard migration from Pannonia to Italy in 568 brought about a political rift in Italy and caused the Patriarchate of Aquileia’s ecclesiastical province to be split between two states. One part remained under the rule of the Byzantine emperor, the other ended up under the authority of the Lombard king. Archbishop Paul (Paulinus) I of Aquileia, who had titled himself patriarch in 557, fled from the Lombards and left Aquileia for the nearby Byzantine castrum Grado, in the territory of the future Republic of Venice.10 Grado, located in the northern Adriatic lagoons, thus became the see of an ecclesiastical institution of the highest rank and a piv8

Cronache, ed. by Fedalto and Berto, pp. 153, 169, 191. The legend of Mark’s apostolate in Aquileia and his disciple Hermagoras, the first bishop of Aquileia, came into being before the end of the sixth century, most probably even before 568. However, it was documented for the first time only around 790 by Paul the Deacon, Liber de episcopis Mettensibus, ed. by Pertz, p. 261. See: Bratož, Il cristianesimo Aquileiese, pp. 41–67; Tavano, ‘La leggenda di San Marco’, pp. 17–22. 10 Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, ii.10, p. 78. 9

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otal factor in the Schism of the Three Chapters, with the Aquileian metropolitan bishop and his suffragans upholding the conflict between the Byzantine emperor and the Roman pope. Paul’s second successor, the patriarch Helias, commissioned the construction of a new cathedral in Grado, consecrating it according to Venetian tradition in 579 during the provincial synod, thereby closing their ranks in the dogmatic-schismatic conflict. Eighteen or nineteen bishops from Venetia, Istria, Pannonia, Noricum, and the Second Raetia took part in the Synod of Grado along with the patriarch.11 After the patriarch Severus’s death in 607, Candidianus was elected the new patriarch in Grado. His renouncing of the schism, together with the bishops in Byzantine Istria, led the remaining schismatic bishops to elect a certain Abbot John as the patriarch of the Lombard part of the patriarchate.12 The dual patriarch election resulted in the Aquileian patriarchate, which had been divided between two states since 568, being divided into two. One of them had its see in Byzantine Grado, the other one initially in Lombard Cormons and later (from 737 onwards) in Cividale del Friuli, since Aquileia, ravaged by Attila’s Huns and desolate after the Lombard migration to Italy, a place where malaria was attested in the High Middle Ages, was becoming less and less fit for human habitation.13 The pope, of course, only recognized the Patriarchate of Grado, while the schismatic Patriarchate of Aquileia survived merely due to the interest of the Lombard kings and Friulian dukes. This situation had only changed at the end of the seventh century when the schismatic bishops in the Lombard territory renounced the schism and returned to the arms of the Roman Church, whereby the Aquileian patriarchate won papal recognition as well.14 Rome thus formally authorized the break-up of the former Patriarchate of Aquileia into two metropolitan churches. From this point in time onwards, the pope sent the pallium to both patriarchs.15 In terms of territory, the status quo from 607 was maintained: Grado’s ecclesiastical province still encompassed Byzantine Venetia in the northern Adriatic lagoons and 11 This synod was held most probably between 572 and 577; Margetić, ‘Il sinodo gradense’, pp. 135–40; Krahwinkler, Friaul, p. 73; Bratož, ‘Metropolitansprengel’, pp. 674–78. 12 For the history of the Churches of Aquileia and Grado in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages in more recent works, see Krahwinkler, Friaul, pp. 67–86, 158–79; Rando, Chiesa di frontiera, pp. 13–132; Fedalto, Aquileia, pp. 17–221; and Bratož, Med Italijo in Ilirikom, pp. 505–67. 13 Härtel, ‘Diplomatik und Ortsgeschichte’. 14 Krahwinkler, Friaul, p. 79; Fedalto, Aquileia, p. 200. 15 Epistolae Langobardicae collectae, ed. by Gundlach, nos 3, 8, pp. 694–96, 698–99.

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Istria, while Aquileia’s ecclesiastical province included the territory of Lombard Venetia. No changes occurred after the Frankish occupation of Lombard Friuli (774/76) and Byzantine Istria (788/91), during which the territory of the Patriarchate of Grado again ended up being split between two states, thus, in a way, repeating the situation of 568. Things only started to change after Aquileia, due to its role in the Frankish expansion into the Pannonian-Avar area at the end of the eighth century, grew in importance. Moreover, its energetic patriarchs Paulinus (II) (787–802), Ursus (802–810), and Maxentius (810–838) rediscovered and sought to renew Aquileia’s former glory. The first success came as early as 796, with the allocation of a large missionary area in Pannonia, which in the east extended to the Drava River and the Danube.16 A partial restitution of former Mediterranean Noricum occurred in 811, with the ecclesiastical division of Carantania along the Drava. 17 Conflict with Grado was unavoidable over Istria, on which Aquileia had also set its sights, as well as over the restoration of the old, unified patriarchate under Aquileia. These conflicts may have arisen at some point after the Treaty of Aachen of 812, according to which Istria de jure remained under Frankish rule, while Venetia in the lagoons remained under Byzantium. It is also possible that they began two years later, after Charlemagne’s death, whose will of 811 includes both Grado and Aquileia (Cividale del Friuli) as metropolitan churches of his empire.18 The first peak in these conflicts was the Synod of Mantua in 827, whose one and only task was to settle the dispute between Aquileia and Grado — deciding whose church was the successor of Mark’s tradition and which held metropolitan rights in Venetia and Istria. Aquileia’s preparations for the synod were very thorough. The main elements of the Aquileian argumentation were based on modified accounts from Paul the Deacon’s eighth-century History of the Lombards. This was supported by other (dubious) documents. Introduced by the patriarch Maxentius, the following was stated: Aquileia, founded by Mark the Apostle, was still a discipula and vicaria of Rome. Patriarch Paul had fled from his see, the city of Aquileia, to the island of Grado in his diocese, taking with him the church’s treasure along with the throne of St Mark and that of the first Aquileian bishop, Hermagoras. However, this was not done with the intention of transferring his ecclesiastical 16 17 18

Wolfram, Conversio, pp. 147–49. Caroli Magni diplomata, ed. by Mühlbacher, no. 211, pp. 282–83. Einhard, Vita Caroli Magni, ed. by Holder-Egger, 33, p. 39.

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see to Grado, but rather to escape from raging barbarians. After him, the Church of Aquileia was led by the patriarchs Probinus, Helias, and Severus. Following Severus’s death, Patriarch John was appointed to the post. Candidianus was appointed in Grado, which was merely a plebs of the Aquileian diocese. A heretic due to being antagonistic to the canonical provisions and decrees of the holy fathers, Candidianus had been ordained neither with the consensus of the provincial bishops nor in the city of Aquileia.19 With regard to Istria, which according to Aquileia in the old days had always been subject to the rule of their metropolitan church, the Aquileians claimed that the exarch Smaragdus had forced the Istrian bishops to ordain Candidianus. Additionally, the Aquileians submitted a decretum by the clergy and people from the Istrian capital of Pula dating back to the period prior to Frankish occupation of the peninsula that demanded Patriarch Sigualdus of Aquileia ordain the bishop they had elected. Moreover, Istrian clergymen and noble laymen, as representatives of the Istrian population now free of their Greek chains, addressed a request to the Synod of Mantua asking for permission to return to their Aquileian metropolitan church, under whose authority they had been since ancient times.20 In contrast, Grado was represented at the Synod of Mantua solely by the deacon Tiberius, who held uncertified transcripts of documents. Only the protocol of the Synod of Grado of the patriarch Helias was deemed credible.21 As the historian Patrick Geary has written, ‘Not surprisingly, the Carolingian bishops meeting in Carolingian Mantua decided in favour of Carolingian Aquileia’.22 It was determined that the old Aquileian metropolitan church had been divided into two metropolitan churches contrary to church law, that Aquileia remained the metropolitan church with authority over the Istrian bishops, that Aquileia had always dominated Grado, which was merely a plebs of the diocese of Aquileia and the place to which Patriarch Paul had fled (rather than transferred his see), and that the division of the patriarchate was being caused by the heretic Candidianus and the Greeks, who at that time held authority over Istria. The papal legates and imperial missi who were present confirmed the restoration of the old rights of Aquileia and the authority of the patriarch Maxentius.23 19 20 21 22 23

Concilium Mantuanum, ed. by Werminghoff, pp. 585–86. Concilium Mantuanum, ed. by Werminghoff, pp. 586–87. Concilium Mantuanum, ed. by Werminghoff, pp. 587–89. Geary, Furta sacra, p. 89. Concilium Mantuanum, ed. by Werminghoff, pp. 587, 589.

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Even though Mantua turned out to be a complete success for Aquileia, Grado was neither defeated nor subjugated. It managed to survive with political support from Venice, which already in the following year would acquire the relics of Mark the Evangelist. The legal dispute between the two patriarchates, which were acknowledged both by the papal and imperial side, continued well into the eleventh century, with various levels of intensity and luck.24 At the Synod of Lateran 1027, exactly two hundred years after the Synod of Mantua, the patriarch Poppo of Aquileia achieved his aim, openly supported by Emperor Conrad II, of once again subjugating the plebs Grado to the Aquileian diocese and prohibiting Grado from ever becoming an episcopal see. The Synod also stipulated that Aquileia was the metropolitan church of all of Venetia. At the same time, Pope John XIX and the emperor jointly invested the patriarch Poppo with the possession of Grado.25 Several months later, Poppo of Aquileia received an additional privilege from John XIX, the pope thus once again confirming that Grado belonged to Aquileia and that the Church of Aquileia had been dispossessed of it in a barbarian way, indeed, that Grado had used a ‘falso patriarcali nomine’.26 However, by forming a theory through which it proved its legitimacy and rights, Grado achieved an annulment of the 1027 decision as early as 1044, with Pope Benedict IX de jure re-establishing the de facto continually existing Patriarchate of Grado.27 The predominately literary and historiographical struggle for recognition, within which Grado also resorted to the falsification of papal and synodical documents, is vividly described in the eleventh-century Grado and Venetian chronicles mentioned above. Above all, Grado had to show that the 568 transfer of the patriarchal see from Aquileia to Grado had been a permanent one; they were not dealing with merely a temporary flight from barbarians. Thus, the patriarch of Grado was the legitimate successor of Mark the Evangelist as well as of the first Aquileian bishop, Hermagoras, associated with him. On top of that, Grado argued that the appointment of the patriarch of Aquileia in the dual election of 607 on Lombard territory was con24

For more details, see Meyer, ‘Spaltung’; Lenel, Venezianisch­Istrische Studien, pp. 14–97; Kehr, ‘Rom und Venedig’, pp. 56–101; Schmidinger, Patriarch und Landesherr, pp. 12–16; and Rando, Chiesa di frontiera, pp. 73–83. 25 Conradi II. et Iohannis XIX. synodus Romana, ed. by Weiland, pp. 82–84. 26 Papsturkunden, ed. by Zimmermann, ii, no. 578, pp. 1093–94; Kehr, ‘Rom und Venedig’, pp. 88–92. 27 Papsturkunden, ed. by Zimmermann, ii, no. 618, pp. 1159–64; ‘Kehr, Rom und Venedig’, pp. 93–95.

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trary to canon law, and, finally, that the Church of Grado had metropolitan rights in Venetia as well as in Istria. The first attempt to rehabilitate Grado’s position after the devastating conclusions of the Synod of Mantua in 827 can be found in the poem ‘Aquileia that will never be rebuilt’ (Carmen de Aquileia numquam restauranda), which was penned in Italy during the joint reign of Lothar and Louis II (844–855). In this poem, a Grado (or Venetian) poet merely reverses the arrow that had been launched in Mantua; it was not Candidianus of Grado, but the heretic John, who ‘in Foroiulensi plebicula’ seized the episcopal honour, splitting a single church into two. In view of their malevolence, the Aquileians deserved the ruin of their city.28 Nonetheless, the poem was a paltry attempt to defend Grado’s aspirations. Indeed, stronger arguments were needed, as well as considerable deliberation on how to restylize history to Grado’s advantage. Thus, the report of Paul the Deacon of the escape of Paul I from the Lombards to Grado29 was expanded upon, first in the Translation of Saint Mark and then by John the Deacon around the year 1000. The fleeing patriarch not only brought church treasures (which certainly also implies the relics of saints, although they are not listed by name or even mentioned), but also relics of St Hermagoras and other Aquileian saints. The second successor of Paul I, the patriarch Helias, stipulated with the consensus of Pope Pelagius II (579–590) at a synod of twenty bishops that the urbs of Grado was the metropolitan church of all Venetia. Emperor Heracleos (610–641) then confirmed this decision by sending the throne of St Mark (including the staurotheke), which had been brought from Alexandria to Constantinople by Constantine’s mother Helena. In the lifetime of John the Deacon it was still worshipped in Grado along with the throne of St Hermagoras.30 At another point in his chronicle, John the Deacon mentions a speech delivered by Helias, in which he asked the bishops present at the aforementioned synod to confirm Grado as the metropolitan see. After having given their consent, they wrote and signed a libellus containing the conclusions of the synod.31 28

Carmen de Aquileia numquam restauranda, ed.  by Dümmler, pp.  152–53; Meyer, ‘Spaltung’, pp. 19–20; Lenel, Venezianisch­Istrische Studien, p. 21. 29 Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, ii.10, p. 78. 30 Giovanni Diacono, La cronaca veneziana, ed. by Monticolo, pp. 62–63; Translatio sancti Marci, ed. by Fedalto and Berto, pp. 470, 472. According to the Aquileian version, which is recorded in the minutes of the Synod of Mantua (Concilium Mantuanum, ed. by Werminghoff, p. 585), the thrones of Sts Mark and Hermagoras had been in Aquileia prior to 568, when they were transferred to Grado by the patriarch Paul. 31 Giovanni Diacono, La cronaca veneziana, ed. by Monticolo, pp. 70–71.

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The Chronicle of the Patriarchs of New Aquileia includes a description of the beginnings of the Church of Grado that is similar to that of John the Deacon. The only difference is that according to this chronicle, the patriarch Paul did not bring St Hermagoras’s relics from Aquileia to Grado, but those of Sts Hilarius and Tazianus. It was only later that the patriarch Primogenius (628–647) brought relics of Sts Hermagoras, Felicianus, and Fortunatus to Grado. Primogenius was also given the throne of St Mark by Emperor Justinian, which had been obtained in Alexandria by Emperor Heracleos. Additionally, with the consensus of all bishops present at the Synod of Grado, the patriarch Helias stipulated that Grado was the metropolitan church of Venetia and Istria, for which he received a letter from Pope Pelagius II.32 In both narratives, Grado’s claim to the permanent transfer of the metropolitan see from Aquileia to Grado is substantiated by the fact that Grado was the location of St Hermagoras’s relics as well as that of other Aquileian saints, and that the Church of Grado was in possession of the thrones of both originators of the Church of Aquileia. Moreover, the pope had agreed with Helias’s decision that Grado was to be the metropolitan church of Venetia and Istria, and this was also confirmed by the provincial synod. Through this, Grado attempted to articulate that they were the rightful heirs of the original Aquileia, and that the transfer of the metropolitan see had been legitimized under canon law, not only by the provincial synod, but also by the pope. In the legal dispute between Grado and Aquileia, two arguments were of great significance for the realization of Grado’s aspirations, both associated with a rebuttal of the conclusions of the Synod of Mantua: firstly, that the transfer of the metropolitan see had been decided by the provincial synod, and, secondly, that this decision had been confirmed by the pope. However, since Grado did not possess a single document for these two points it was thus forced to forge a protocol of the Synod of Grado of 579 that decided the transfer of the ecclesiastical see (rather than merely dealing with issues associated with the Schism of the Three Chapters), as well as a letter of Pope Pelagius II, which was inserted into the same synodal document.33 Helias’s falsified synodal protocol must have been fabricated in Grado in the early eleventh century at the latest, since it is mentioned by John the Deacon. Pelagius’s letter was referred to in 1024 by Pope John XIX in his privilege for Grado.34 They were 32

Cronica de singulis patriarchis nove Aquileie, ed. by Monticolo, pp. 5–8, 10–11. Meyer, ‘Spaltung’, pp. 21–23; Kehr, ‘Rom und Venedig’, pp. 20–23. 34 Papsturkunden, ed. by Zimmermann, ii, no. 561, p. 1060; Italia pontificia, ed. by Kehr, vii.2, no. 78, p. 52. 33

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not passed down in their entirety, however, until Andrea Dandolo, doge of Venice, transcribed them in the fourteenth century, supposedly from authentic old codices.35 An entirely different story about the beginnings of the Church of Grado can be gathered from the Chronicle of Grado and the Chronicle of Altino. The narrations of these two later chronicles do not differ in any essential points, although the Chronicle of Altino is somewhat unintelligible. According to the Chronicle of Grado, the establishment of the Church of Grado was to be attributed to Pope Benedict I (557–579), the predecessor of Pelagius II. Doge Beatus, the tribunes, and the noblemen of Venice travelled to Rome to see Benedict I. In his presentation to the pope, Beatus summarized the history of the Aquileian patriarchs after Attila’s destruction of the city of Aquileia (452), which is when the patriarch Marcelinus fled to Grado. There he and four of his successors lived without the pope’s consent. The doge thus petitioned Benedict I to make Grado the new Aquileia (‘novam Aquilegiam institueret’) and the metropolitan church of Venetia and Istria. The pope convened a council of thirty-nine bishops and with their consent did as he had been petitioned. At the same time, he stipulated in a privilege, which he issued with the consent of the bishops present, that the patriarch was to be elected by the people and the clergy, whereupon he was to be invested by the doge. He also stipulated that the new patriarch, after being consecrated by suffragan bishops, was to come to Rome where he would receive the pallium as a mark of the pope’s blessing.36 In accordance with these recently granted rights, the Venetians present elected cardinal Paul of the Church of Rome as the new patriarch. He was invested by Doge Beatus and consecrated by Benedict  I, who sent him to Grado, or New Aquileia, with the pallium. Paul was ‘primus per apostolicam concessionem novae Aquileiae patriarcha’.37 With the consent of the numerous bishops from Verona to Pannonia who gathered at the Synod of Grado, his second successor Helias ordained sixteen bishops in Friuli, Istria, and Dalmatia. Simultaneously, he established six bishoprics in Venetia and stipulated that their bishops were to be elected by the clergy and the people, and that they 35

Andrea Dandulus, Chronica per extensum descripta, ed.  by Pastorello, pp.  81–84; Documenti relativi alla storia di Venezia, ed. by Cessi, i, no. 6, pp. 7–13. 36 Chronicon Gradense, ed. by Monticolo, pp. 37–40. According to the Chronicon Venetum quod vulgo dicunt Altinate, ed. by Simonsfeld, p. 12, eighteen bishops took part in the synod, and the choice of the new patriarch is depicted somewhat differently. 37 Chronicon Gradense, ed. by Monticolo, pp. 40–42.

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were to be invested by the doge in line with Benedict’s privilege. The synodal conclusions received the blessing of Pope Pelagius II.38 The Grado-Venetian tradition transmitted in the Chronicle of Grado and the Chronicle of Altino placed the beginnings of the Church of Grado in the period of the Hunnic destruction of Aquileia rather than the Lombard settlement of Italy. In doing so, the history of the Church of Grado was made a good century older and, at the same time, brought in connection with the tradition of the beginnings of Venetian history that had already been recorded in Louis II’s charter of 85539 (a document that was probably forged), as well as in the midtenth century by Constantine Porphyrogennetos.40 According to this tradition, Venetian history began in the period of Attila the Hun, rather than in that of the Lombard Alboin as implied in Paul the Deacon’s late eighth-century work and as stated in John the Deacon’s early eleventh-century narrative — a narrative that was later canonized.41 Simultaneously, this Grado-Venetian tradition linked the ecclesiastical history with the political one. It credited the doge — and thus the Venetian state — with the establishment of Grado as New Aquileia and the metropolitan see, and provided him, at the same time, with an important role in the process of choosing the new patriarch. Supposedly, the proof for this was provided by Pope Benedict I’s privilege, by means of which the transfer of the patriarchal see to Grado and his metropolitan position in the Venetian-Istrian ecclesiastical province was legitimized under canon law. This privilege of Benedict, which is included in the Chronicle of Grado and was supposedly the first papal charter for the Church of Grado, was clearly a transparent Grado or Venetian fabri38 Chronicon Gradense, ed. by Monticolo, pp. 40–41, 48–50. There are two reports on the Synod of Grado of 579 in the chronicle; the second report includes Helias’s address to the bishops and the conclusion of the synod to establish a Venetian-Istrian ecclesiastical province, adopted from Cronica de singulis patriarchis nove Aquileie, ed. by Monticolo, p. 7. According to the list of the patriarchs of Grado in Chronicon Venetum quod vulgo dicunt Altinate, ed. by Simonsfeld, p. 16, which dates to the early twelfth century, Helias was, in compliance with canon law, elected as patriarch by the emperor in Constantinople and by the general council in Rome; he was installed by the patriarch of Constantinople and his bishops, as well as by the pope in Rome and his bishops (sic!). 39 Ludovici II. diplomata, ed. by Wanner, no. 17, pp. 98–99. 40 Constantinus Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, ed. and trans. by Moravcsik and Jenkins, 28, p. 118. 41 Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, ii.10, p. 78; Giovanni Diacono, La cronaca veneziana, ed. by Monticolo, pp. 60–63. See Borri, ‘Arrivano i barbari’, pp. 224–35.

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cation, like the letter by Pelagius II.42 Nonetheless, in the fourteenth century the privilege was entered into the Liber pactorum primus, an official collection of the lagoon republic’s documents, as one of the Venetian state’s fundamental privileges and part of its ecclesiastical law. Giovanni Monticolo even published it twice in his edition of the oldest Venetian chronicles: as a part of the Chronicle of Grado, and separately under the title Cronaca brevissima delle origini del patriarcato di Grado.43 Regardless of the differences between the two versions of the oldest history of the Church of Grado, both narratives pursue a single goal — to legitimize Grado as the successor of the old Aquileian patriarchate and as the metropolitan see for Venetia and Istria, thus counteracting the conclusions of the Synod of Mantua. Moreover, Grado had to address the accusation of the same synod that, in the dual election of 607, the Grado patriarch had been appointed bishop against canonical provisions and was therefore non-legitimate. The narratives had to show that the exact opposite was the case — it was Aquileia that had sinned. In the mid-ninth century, in the Carmen de Aquileia numquam res­ tauranda, Grado had substantiated the non-legitimacy of the election of John as the patriarch of Aquileia with the same argument as Aquileia had used for Grado, namely that the election had been held in a place that was not a civi­ tas but merely a plebicula.44 At a later point, Grado altered its argumentation by leaning on Paul the Deacon, who in his History of the Lombards neutrally stated that after the death of the patriarch Severus (who had resided in Grado), John was ordained as the patriarch in Aquileia vetere with the consent of the Lombard king and the Friulian duke Gisulf, while the pro-Roman Candidianus was appointed bishop in Grado.45 While this was reported in the same form in John the Deacon’s History of the Venetians soon after the year 1000,46 in the Chronicle of the Patriarchs of New Aquileia and the Chronicle of Grado it was already altered in favour of Grado. These chronicles report that with the consent of the Lombard king, Agilulf, the Lombard duke, Gisulf, had forcefully installed John as a bishop in Cividale del Friuli (not in Aquileia); this was done upon Patriarch Severus’s death, but in the period when his successor 42

Chronicon Gradense, ed. by Monticolo, pp. 39–40; Italia pontificia, ed. by Kehr, vii.2, no. *1, p. 12; Documenti relativi alla storia di Venezia, ed. by Cessi, i, no. 3 (Frontnote), p. 4; Kehr, ‘Rom und Venedig’, p. 16. 43 Monticolo, Cronache veneziane antichissime, pp. xxvii–xxix, 39–40; 55–56. 44 See n. 28. 45 Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, iv.33, p. 127. 46 Giovanni Diacono, La cronaca veneziana, ed. by Monticolo, p. 76.

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Candidianus already reigned in Grado.47 According to Grado’s interpretation, the other patriarchate was thus formed against canon law and without synodal and/or papal approbation. It was done merely due to the political will of the Lombard king and the Friulian duke, who were willing to use force to achieve their goal, at the time when St Hermagoras’s throne in Grado was already occupied by Candidianus. However, eleventh-century Grado could not deny that the pope had recognized both patriarchates and that the pallium was sent to both patriarchs. They were thus forced to distort the papal legitimation of the Patriarchate of Aquileia. Clearly oblivious of the fact that the pope had already recognized the Patriarchate of Aquileia at the end of the seventh century after bishops of the Lombard part of the old patriarchate had renounced the Schism of the Three Chapters, Grado relied on a letter by Pope Gregory II addressed to Patriarch Serenus of Aquileia from 723. In this letter, the pope reminds Serenus that he had sent him the pallium at the request of the Lombard king (Luitprand), and that he ordered him ‘ex apostolica auctoritate’ not to interfere with the rights or possession of others, particularly Grado, and further warned him to remain ‘in finibus gentis Langobardorum’, i.e., within the borders of his diocese.48 Already John the Deacon had transcribed this letter in his History alongside a statement that Serenus had become the first ‘bishop in Cividale del Friuli’ to have been given the pallium by the pope.49 The letter by Gregory II to Serenus can also be found in the Chronicle of the Patriarchs of New Aquileia, according to which the Lombards extorted the pallium for their archbishop from the pope.50 In the situation of two competing patriarchates existing side by side, both recognized by Rome, with the Aquileian patriarch endangering Grado’s rights to the extent that Pope Gregory II had had to intervene with Serenus, the final delimitation between them had already occurred, supposedly, at Pope Gregory III’s Synod of Rome in 731. This synod, to which Grado’s patriarch Antoninus was also invited with his suffragans, was convened due to the iconoclastic controversy.51 In Grado, they also inserted into the synod’s agenda 47

Cronica de singulis patriarchis nove Aquileie, ed. by Monticolo, p. 11; Chronicon Gradense, ed. by Monticolo, p. 50. 48 Epistolae Langobardicae collectae, ed. by Gundlach, no. 8, pp. 698–99. See Kehr, ‘Rom und Venedig’, pp. 45–46. 49 Giovanni Diacono, La cronaca veneziana, ed. by Monticolo, pp. 96–97. 50 Cronica de singulis patriarchis nove Aquileie, ed. by Monticolo, pp. 11–13. 51 Epistolae Langobardicae collectae, ed. by Gundlach, no. 13, p. 703; Liber pontificalis, ed. by Duchesne, i, no. 92, pp. 415–16.

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Patriarch Antoninus’s accusation, directed at Serenus, that claimed he had encroached upon Grado’s territory despite Pope Gregory II’s warning. Serenus’s guilt was proven in the synodal proceedings, and he swore that no such thing would ever happen again. In the fabricated synodal decree summarizing this story, Pope Gregory III stipulated that the patriarchs of ‘new Aquileia, i.e., Grado’ were metropolitan bishops in Venetia and Istria, while each respective Foroiulenses antistes with a see in castrum Cormons had to make do with a diocese in the Lombard territory.52 Thus, by the mid-eleventh century at the latest, Grado had formed a theory with which they sought to prove that the Church of Grado was the legitimate successor of the old Church of Aquileia, whose see had been permanently and finally transferred to Grado. The patriarch of Grado was thus also metropolitan bishop in Venetia and Istria. The emergence of the competing Patriarchate of Aquileia had been imposed by papal and synodal decisions; its jurisdiction was limited to the Lombard and later, to Frankish north-eastern Italy. The key term that summarized Grado’s aspirations was Aquileia nova. With the transfer of the patriarchal see and the takeover of the ecclesiastical legacy, Grado became ‘new Aquileia’. We can already read in John the Deacon’s early eleventh-century History of the Venetians as well as in the Translation of Saint Mark, whose oldest manuscript possibly dates back to the end of the tenth century, that ‘Patriarch Paulus […] fled from Aquileia to the island of Grado […] and named the town Aquileia nova’.53 In the course of the eleventh century, Grado and Venetian writers used the term in their literary and historical works on a more or less regular basis; they also included it in the falsified papal and synodal documents.54 Through this Grado-Venetian tradition, the term Aquileia nova reached even to the papal office. In April 1044, the Synod of Lateran annulled the 1027 decision regarding Grado’s subordination to Aquileia. In a deed issued by Pope Benedict IX, the leader of the Church of Grado, Ursus, was addressed as ‘Gradensis ecclesię nove Aquileię patriarcha’.55 Similarly, Pope Leo IX, in the ‘constitution’ for the Church of Grado of 1053, addressed Ursus’s successor 52

Epistolae Langobardicae collectae, ed.  by Gundlach, no.  13, p.  703. See also Cronica de singulis patriarchis nove Aquileie, ed. by Monticolo, p. 14. Meyer, ‘Spaltung’, p. 30; Lenel, Venezianisch­Istrische Studien, pp. 51–53; Kehr, ‘Rom und Venedig’, pp. 49–50. 53 Giovanni Diacono, La cronaca veneziana, ed. by Monticolo, p. 62; Translatio sancti Marci, ed. by Fedalto and Berto, p. 470. 54 Monticolo, Cronache veneziane antichissime, p. 190 (Register: Aquileia nova). 55 Papsturkunden, ed. by Zimmermann, ii, no. 618, p. 1160; Kehr, ‘Rom und Venedig’, pp. 94–95.

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Dominicus as ‘Gradensis, immo novae Aquilegiae patriarcha’, and stipulated that ‘new Aquileia is head and metropolitan church of entire Venetia and Istria’.56 For Grado, the conclusions of the years 1044 and 1053 were a complete success: as new Aquileia, it was recognized as having exclusive ownership of the heritage, rights, and honour of ancient Aquileia, in terms of age second only to Rome. Its metropolitan position was also over all of Venetia and Istria; the patriarch of Aquileia, as ‘bishop of Friuli’, had to make do with a diocese within the former Lombard borders.57 Nonetheless, just as in the case of the conclusions of the Synods of Mantua and Lateran in 827 and 1027, which on parchment had abolished the Patriarchate of Grado, the conclusions of synods in 1044 and 1053 remained valid on parchment alone as well. While Aquileia was ignored by the Roman Curia and ostensibly had diminished authority, it was supported by the western emperors and still managed to survive as the metropolitan church of former Lombard Venetia and Istria. The conflict between the two patriarchates, whose sees were located so close to each other that they could see each other from bell towers, formally ended only on 24 July 1180. At that point, the patriarch of Grado, Henry Dandolo, following an intervention by Pope Alexander III, renounced in his name and in the name of all his successors any claims of the Church of Grado to Istria.58 In doing so, the idea of Grado as ‘new Aquileia’, which had, in fact, not been relevant for more than a century, was thus finally buried. Paul’s (Paulinus I) flight from Aquileia to Grado in 568 and the establishment of the metropolitan see fundamentally changed the status of this small fortified lagoon island. It became the see of an ecclesiastical institution of the highest rank, leaving a strong mark on the settlement in the following centuries. A modest castrum was given an entirely new identity and appearance. A new sacral complex emerged, consisting of the lavish newly built Cathedral Basilica of St Euphemia, the renovated St Mary’s Church and a baptistery between them.59 Relics of numerous Aquileian saints, including St Hermagoras, were transferred to Grado. The first bishop of old Aquileia became the patron saint of new Aquileia. When in the year 1000 the doge of Venice, Peter II Orseolo, 56

Italia pontificia, ed.  by Kehr, vii/2, no.  90, pp.  55–56; Kehr, ‘Rom und Venedig’, pp. 97–98. 57 Kehr, ‘Rom und Venedig’, p. 98; Rando, Chiesa di frontiera, p. 78. 58 Codice diplomatico Istriano, ed. by Kandler, i, no. 166, pp. 311–13; Italia pontificia, ed. by Kehr, vii.1, no. 102, p. 40. Lenel, Venezianisch­Istrische Studien, p. 97; Schmidinger, Patriarch und Landesherr, p. 16. 59 See Tavano, Aquileia e Grado, pp. 264–422.

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was about to embark on his famous military expedition during which he subjugated numerous eastern Adriatic cities and islands between the Kvarner Gulf and Dubrovnik, he was handed the victory standard of St Hermagoras, the ‘victrix sancti Hermachorae signum’, by Patriarch Vitalius IV Candidianus of Grado.60 Peter II Orseolo had a house built in Grado and during this period, the town underwent a thorough renovation, which also improved its importance and appearance.61 The notion of Grado as new Aquileia, as seems to have emerged in the minds of the leading clergy of the local cathedral church at some point between the end of the tenth and the mid-eleventh centuries, also contributed to its self-confidence and self-understanding.62 This found expression in the history of the Church of Grado as presented in the local GradoVenetian historiography, whose echo reached even to the papal office. Soon after the Synod of Rome in 1053, which affirmed the Patriarchate of Grado as new Aquileia, Dominicus Marango, ‘Dei gratia Gradensis et Aquileiensis ecclesiae patriarcha’, wrote with full confidence to the patriarch Peter III of Antioch that both their churches had originated from St Mark, and moreover, that his own church had received the honour from St Peter himself for its leaders to be styled patriarchs and to sit on the pope’s right-hand side at Roman synods. The patriarch of Antioch, who addressed his colleague merely as archbishop, replied in an ironic and condescending tone that he was familiar with only five patriarchs.63 Indeed, the reality was certainly different from the glamorous image. Not only did Aquileia nova disappear from papal vocabulary after 1053, subsequent papal documents do not even mention jurisdiction in Istria.64 The name Aquileia was once again associated solely with the see of the original patriarchate. Patriarch Poppo (1019–1042) attempted to restore the see’s former glory by building a new monumental basilica in Aquileia, establishing a chapter next to it, and restoring or re-establishing the local Benedictine convent of St Mary.65 But while Aquileia experienced a ‘golden age’ under Poppo, 60

Giovanni Diacono, La cronaca veneziana, ed. by Monticolo, p. 156. Giovanni Diacono, La cronaca veneziana, ed. by Monticolo, p. 150. 62 Opinions as to when the theory of Grado as new Aquileia was formed differ greatly. See Meyer, ‘Spaltung’, p. 32; Lenel, Venezianisch­Istrische Studien, pp. 62–74; Cessi, ‘“Nova Aquileia”’, pp. 100–40. 63 Bianchi, ‘Il patriarca Domenico Marango’, pp. 62–67, 67–77; Rando, Chiesa di frontiera, p. 80. 64 Cessi, ‘“Nova Aquileia”’, p. 138 and n. 2. 65 See the papers in Blasin Scarel, ed., Poppone. 61

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the second half of the eleventh century saw an economic decline in Grado.66 It became increasingly difficult for the local patriarch to live up to his high position, and in the mid-twelfth century he moved to Venice, although the formal transfer of his see did not take place until 1451.67

Salona — Split The early ecclesiastical history of Split, which was the metropolitan church of Dalmatia and Croatia from 925, is in many respects similar to that of Grado. Just as Grado associated the beginnings of its church with ancient Aquileia, Split associated its own with ancient Salona. Both Aquileia and Salona had been provincial metropolises and metropolitan churches at the same time. Both cities — according to later legend, of course — received their first bishops as early as the Apostolic Age, in direct connection with St Peter. Moreover, both cities, at least according to tradition, were devastated by barbarians, or barbarians played a decisive role in their respective falls — the Huns and Lombards in the case of Grado, and the Avars, Slavs, and Goths in that of Salona. Last but not least, Grado and Split achieved their archiepiscopal and metropolitan positions with the transfer of an ecclesiastical see. However, unlike Aquileia, whose metropolitan bishop escaped from barbarians to Grado and thus enabled the continuity of the Church of Aquileia, the Church of Salona fell into ruin and was subsequently restored in Split.68 Additionally, unlike Grado, Split had no competitor with which it fought over the heritage and legacy of the Church of Salona. Consequently, Split was not involved in an ecclesiastical-administrative dispute resembling that between Aquileia and Grado. In this respect, the position of Split’s archbishops and metropolitan bishops differed greatly from that of their counterparts in Aquileia and Grado. This is reflected in the local historiography, which focuses on different points in its ecclesiastical and historical narrative. According to the legend that established itself in Dalmatia no later than the early tenth century, the beginnings of the Church of Salona were associ66 Gregory VII, Registrum, ed. by Caspar, ii.39, pp. 175–76; Kehr, ‘Rom und Venedig’, pp. 104–06. 67 Niero, ‘Dal patriarcato di Grado al patriarcato di Venezia’, pp. 278–84; Rando, Chiesa di frontiera, pp. 81–82; Fedalto, Aquileia, p. 240. 68 A catalogue of (arch)bishops of Salona and Split is included in Bulić and Bervaldi, Kronotaksa; for the question of the (dis)continuity of the Churches of Salona and Split, and the question of Split’s own ecclesiastical tradition, see as the most recent publication Budak, ‘Furta sacra’.

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ated with St Domnius (Dujam). He is said to have been baptized as a young boy in Antioch and taken to Rome by St Peter, where he was consecrated as a bishop and sent to Salona. He died a martyr’s death in 107, in the period of Emperor Trajan, and was buried in Salona. After the city’s fall, his relics were transferred to Split, to the former Diocletian’s Palace.69 Thus says the legend. The Church of Salona was attributed an apostolic beginning, just as in the case of the Churches of Ravenna and Aquileia; the first conclusion of the Synod of Split 925 stipulated that metropolitan authority would be given to the church that was the resting place of St Domnius’s relics.70 His relics were therefore of existential importance for the Church of Split, since they legitimized its position as a metropolitan see. Domnius was thus given a central position in its history. However, a historical bishop with the same name, active in Salona next to the legendary Domnius, also left his footprint in the sources.71 He died a martyr’s death as well, yet not in the period of Emperor Trajan, but in that of Diocletian, most probably in 304. Around 641, a certain Abbot Martin, who ransomed captured Christians from pagan barbarians in Istria and Dalmatia following the orders of the Dalmatian-born Pope John IV (640–642), brought relics of several Salonitan martyrs to Rome, including those belonging to Domnius. John IV had them buried in St Venantius Chapel of the Lateran Baptistery and had a mosaic with their names and images set up in the apse, which is preserved to this day.72 The relics of the historical Domnius, who was most probably the second Salonitan bishop,73 were thus transferred from Salona to Rome, not to Split. It is clear that the Archdeacon Thomas was familiar with both stories, that of the legendary Domnius and that of the historical one, since he brings up both in his chronicle.74 He summarizes the transfer of Domnius’s relics to Rome based on the Book of Pontiffs, and it is very likely that he had seen the Lateran mosaic with the Istrian and Dalmatian saints.75 Naturally, he could 69

Bulić and Bervaldi, Kronotaksa, p.  14; Petrović, ‘Hrvatska latinska hagiografija’, pp. 122–23, 128–29. 70 Historia Salonitana maior, ed. by Klaić, p. 99; Codex diplomaticus, ed. by Kostrenčić, Stipišić, and Šamšalović, no. 23, i, pp. 30–33. 71 Bulić and Bervaldi, Kronotaksa, pp. 12–19. 72 Liber pontificalis, ed. by Duchesne, no. 74, i, p. 330; Veraja, ‘Kapela sv. Venancija’. 73 Bulić and Bervaldi, Kronotaksa, pp. 14–15. 74 Thomas the Archdeacon, Historia Salonitanorum atque Spalatinorum pontificum, ed. by Karbić, Solkol, and Sweeney, 3, pp. 12–17. 75 Matijević-Sokol, Toma Arhiđakon, pp. 73–74.

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not overlook the legendary Domnius, who was considered the founder of the Salonitan-Split Church and the predecessor of all its (arch)bishops. But on the other hand, he also refused to pass over the historical Domnius from the Diocletian period. He attempted to solve the problem with a scholarly construction, according to which after the Domnius of the Apostolic Age another martyr with an almost identical name lived in the period of Diocletian’s and Maximian’s persecutions — Domnion. He died a martyr’s death in Italy, where he was buried. Since he was, so to speak, Domnius’s namesake, Salonitans stole Domnion’s body in Italy and brought it to Salona.76 However, the confusion regarding Domnius in Thomas’s construction, according to which two martyrs with almost identical names yet different provenances were buried in Salona, did not end here. By turning the historical Domnius into the Italic Domnion, the legendary Salonitan Domnius and the historical one amalgamated into a single person, the person whose relics were transferred to Rome by Abbot Martin soon after 640. Thomas’s statement that Pope John IV had ‘the image of St Domnius wearing the pallium and other bishop garments’77 painted on the chapel mosaic could only refer to the legendary Domnius from the Apostolic Age, since the Historia Salonitana had transformed the historical Domnius into the Italic Domnion, who was not a bishop, or at least not considered to be one by Thomas. Archdeacon Thomas thus thickens the plot to an unsolvable degree, making it inconsistent at the most crucial point of the entire history of the Church of Salona and Split, since what had to be proven was that the relics of the first Salonitan bishop, who had been consecrated by St Peter, had been transferred to Split, as this legitimized it as a metropolitan church.78 76

Thomas the Archdeacon, Historia Salonitanorum atque Spalatinorum pontificum, ed. by Karbić and others, 3, pp. 12–17. Thomas’s legend about Domnion is an adapted compilation of the legend of the martyrdom of St Donnino of Fidenza; see Petrović, ‘Hrvatska latinska hagiografija’, pp. 135–36. Literature dealing with this famous chapter of Thomas’s chronicle and the related problem of Domnius’s double identity or his duplication is abundant. Only some of the most recent works are included here: Matijević-Sokol, Toma Arhiđakon, pp. 54–59; Ivanišević, ‘Sveti Donino’; Budak, ‘Furta sacra’, pp. 159–60; Cambi, ‘Uz poglavje’; Petrović, ‘Hrvatska latinska hagiografija’, pp. 121–38. 77 Thomas the Archdeacon, Historia Salonitanorum atque Spalatinorum pontificum, ed. by Karbić, Solkol, and Sweeney, 8, p. 46. 78 As pointed out in Budak, ‘Furta sacra’, p. 164, it was important that the two traditions, according to which both Split and Lateran were the resting places of St Domnius’s relics, were not contradictory, at least from the papal perspective. Otherwise it is difficult to imagine that the pope would have recognized the metropolitan position of the Church of Split based on the

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Earlier in the chronicle, he informs his readers that Diocletian’s palace had stood where Split subsequently came into being, and describes events that took place in the Archbishopric of Salona in the fifth and sixth centuries. Upon Salona’s fall, its inhabitants fled to the central Dalmatian islands, but the difficulties of island life made them return to the mainland, where they rebuilt/ founded, inter alia, Zadar. The most important fact was that, since they were unable to return to destroyed Salona, where they were threatened by barbarian neighbours, they settled in Diocletian’s nearby palace and founded a new city — Split. Thomas concludes the narrative about the earliest history of the Salonitan-Split Church with an explanation of how Split got its first archbishop, and how the pope granted all rights, which had previously belonged to the Church of Salona, to the Church of Split. Finally, the link to Salona was sealed with the transfer of the relics of the bishop and martyr Domnius (along with relics of the martyr Anastasius) to Split.79 Of key importance in Thomas’s narrative from the perspective of medieval Split and its church, are the chapters about Salona’s fall, the founding of the new city of Split by fleeing Salonitans, the establishment of the archbishopric and the metropolitan church in Split, and the transfer to Split of relics of the first Salonitan bishop and martyr St Domnius. Salona’s fall brought an end to its ancient greatness and glory, and the founding of Split represented a new beginning. The Salonitans constituted a link between these two cities. By founding a new city, which rose like a phoenix from the ashes of the abandoned emperor’s palace, they established continuity between them: Split was nothing but a continuation of the old Salona. Archdeacon Thomas does not directly reveal when the refugees from Salona settled in Diocletian’s Palace, however, one can gather from his description of Magnus Severus, a well-respected patrician of old Salona and later of new Split, that this must have happened within the lifetimes of the generation that left the destroyed Salona, thus before the mid-seventh century.80 A modest piece of information transcribed in Trogir in 1511, but presumably from a lost Split chronicle that is now known only from a 1769 publication,81 attests that Magnus Severus was indeed a historical person of that period.82 argument of Split being the resting place of St Domnius’s relics, since the pope must have been aware of the fact that the relics were located in a chapel of the papal baptistery. 79 Thomas the Archdeacon, Historia Salonitanorum atque Spalatinorum pontificum, ed. by Karbić, Solkol, and Sweeney, 5–12, pp. 22–57. 80 Katičić, ‘Vetustiores memoriae’, pp. 35–37, 41–42. 81 Farlati, Illyricum sacrum, iv, pp. 306–07. 82 Katičić, ‘Vetustiores memoriae’, pp. 31–37.

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The arrival in Dalmatia and Split of the papal legate John of Ravenna, whose historicalness is subject to various opinions and who many scholars consider a legendary figure, is to be placed in roughly the same period, i.e., before the midseventh century.83 According to Archdeacon Thomas, the only one to report on the subject, Dalmatia’s clergy elected John of Ravenna as archbishop and he was consecrated by the pope, who stipulated that the Church of Split now possessed all rights that had once belonged to the Church of Salona. John thus also became the metropolitan bishop of Dalmatia. He later arranged the episcopium in the palace that the aforementioned Magnus Severus had bestowed upon the Church of Split; he also transformed Emperor Diocletian’s former mausoleum into a new cathedral church and dedicated it to the Virgin Mary. Lastly, the first archbishop and metropolitan bishop of Split and his fellow Salonitans transferred the relics of two Salonitan martyrs and subsequent patron saints of Split, Sts Domnius and Anastasius, from Salona’s ruins to the cathedral church in Split, which had been consecrated shortly beforehand.84 As already stated, with his narrative about Domnius and his relics, which he has transferred to Rome and later to Split, Thomas the Archdeacon gets entangled in a difficult-to-explain contradiction. However, it is certainly important in this context that Thomas does not mention the first and second provincial synods of Split in 925 and 928, which were of great significance for his church. Based on the ecclesiastical link to Salona, the first synod stipulated, and the second confirmed, that Split was the metropolitan church of Dalmatia and Croatia, whereupon Pope Leo VI sent the pallium to the archbishop of Split, John, as the new metropolitan bishop.85 Thomas must have been familiar with the conclusions associated with the synods and papal letters,86 which are known to us from the Historia Salonitana maior.87 We can assume that they must have (also) been preserved in the archives of the Church of Split at the time of Thomas writing his chronicle. This leads us to ask why he did not refer to them. Why did he withhold the conclusion of the first Synod of Split, a con83 An overview of different opinions is included in: Matijević-Sokol, Toma Arhiđakon, pp. 75–113. See also Budak, ‘Furta sacra’, pp. 166–72. 84 Thomas the Archdeacon, Historia Salonitanorum atque Spalatinorum pontificum, ed. by Karbić, Solkol, and Sweeney, 11 and 12, pp. 52–55. 85 Codex diplomaticus, ed.  by Kostrenčić, Stipišić, and Šamšalović, i, nos  23, 25–27, pp. 30–33, 35–39. 86 See Matijević-Sokol, Toma Arhiđakon, pp. 91–93. 87 Historia Salonitana maior, ed. by Klaić, pp. 94–106. Although they are obviously preserved in a redacted form, they are considered authentic: Katičić, Litterarum studia, pp. 382–92.

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clusion of such consequence for the legitimacy of his church’s metropolitan position, since it stipulated that the church and the city where the relics of the blessed Domnius, who had been sent to Salona to preach by St Peter, are laid to rest has ‘supremacy over all churches of the province and is given the legal title of the metropolitan church over all bishoprics’?88 There is no clear answer to this question. One acceptable opinion is that by not mentioning this, he was attempting to move the establishment of the Split metropolitan church historically further into the past and closer to Salona’s fall. However, this increases the probability that John of Ravenna was a fictional person, with Thomas either moving the first metropolitan bishop of Split John, documented in 928, further into the past, or referring here to the bishop of Salona (Split) of the same name who took part in the Council of Nicaea in 787.89 Whatever the case may be, ancient Salona was not only important for the identity and self-understanding of the Church of Split, but also for Split as a municipal community. Both Archdeacon Thomas and Constantine Porphyrogennetos were aware that in Split’s local memory, Salona held a central position regardless of the fact that it was separated from Split by the political border between the principality of Croatia and Byzantine Dalmatia. Salona’s grand ruins, their city crammed into the emperor’s palace, and the relics of their patron St Domnius90 were a constant reminder for the inhabitants of Split of times past and the events in which they saw their beginnings. As is shown best by the Historia Salonitana, authored by a local well-educated archdeacon, Split was linked to Salona in terms of both spirit and memory. The birth of a new city and its church can, in Thomas’s narrative, therefore be understood as translatio Salonae. In this sense, Split was Salona nova, although this name was never actually used. Thomas’s narrative is not to be understood as a report of actual events, but first and foremost as an interpretation made by a thirteenth-century author who was attempting to historically legitimize the primacy of the Church of Split, which had originated in the transfer to Split of the bishop of Salona and Peter’s disciple Domnius. His short depiction of the transfer of Domnius’s relics probably served as a basis for all subsequent texts on St Domnius’s transfer,

88

Codex diplomaticus, ed. by Kostrenčić, Stipišić, and Šamšalović, i, no. 23/I, p. 31. Lamberz, Die Bischofslisten, p. 40; Katičić, ‘Imena’, pp. 29–30. 90 The Split cathedral, which is dedicated to Virgin Mary, was already referred to as St Domnius Church before the mid-tenth century: Constantinus Porphyrogenitus, De adminis­ trando imperio, ed. and trans. by Moravcsik and Jenkins, chap. 29, p. 136. 89

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which later hagiographers supplemented with new contents and explanations.91 According to what is probably the most interesting explanation, St Domnius was linked to the so-called Split Evangelistary (Evangeliarium Spalatense), the oldest and most important liturgical book of the Split cathedral, dated from the sixth to early ninth centuries.92 According to two of these later hagiographical texts, the evangelistary, which was said to have been written by Domnius himself in ‘apostolic letters, designed in an old manner’, was found on the saint’s chest when his grave was opened in Salona.93 The evangelistary thus became a special relic, which additionally emphasized the link of Split and its church with old Salona. Similarly, in medieval Aquileia it was believed that they possessed an evangelistary (Codex Foriuliensis) originating in the Apostolic Age that established their church. Hermagoras, the first bishop of Aquileia, was said to have received it from Mark the Evangelist, who had supposedly written his Gospel in it precisely in Aquileia.94 Thomas’s narrative became, in the words of Nenad Ivić, a master narrative of the history of Archbishopric of Split and thus a canonized image of the past into which new data and explanations could be entered according to new challenges or needs.95

Conclusion To sum up, we can say that the oldest ecclesiastical histories of mediaeval Grado (Venice) and Split illustrate the importance of the role of local historiography in the formation of local identity and related historical traditions. Historiography turned out to be a very useful tool for the historical legitimization of privileges and everything associated with it. It did not merely (co-)create local identity and historical traditions with explanations and constructions about the past, it also canonized this identity and the related traditions with written documents. Moreover, these historiographical narratives were able to serve as a starting point for new interpretations of the past, interpretations that tried to meet the requirements of the respective present. 91

Thomas the Archdeacon, Historia Salonitanorum atque Spalatinorum pontificum, ed. by Karbić, Solkol, and Sweeney, 12, p. 56; Petrović, ‘Hrvatska latinska hagiografija’, pp. 135–36. 92 Facsimile edition: Evangeliarium Spalatense, ed. by Barišić and Cambi. See Popović, ‘Evanđelijar svetog Dujma’; Katičić, Litterarum studia, pp. 244–46. 93 Petrović, ‘Hrvatska latinska hagiografija’, p. 137. 94 See the recent publication Scalon, ‘L’Evangeliario “Forogiuliese”’, pp. 3–13. 95 Ivić, ‘Dosezi sjećanja’, p. 130.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Andrea Dandulus, Chronica per extensum descripta aa. 46–1280, ed. by Ester Pastorello, Rerum Italicarum scriptores, 12.1 (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1938), pp. 1–327 Carmen de Aquileia numquam restauranda, ed.  by Ernst Dümmler, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Antiquitates, 2: Poetae Latini aevi Carolini, 2 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1884; repr. 1999), pp. 150–53 Caroli Magni diplomata, ed.  by Engelbert Mühlbacher, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Diplomata Karolinorum, 1: Die Urkunden Pipins, Karlmanns und Karl des Großen (Hanover: Hahn, 1906; repr. 1991) Chronicon Gradense, ed. by Giovanni Monticolo, in Cronache veneziane antichissime, i, Fonti per la storia d’Italia, 9 (Rome: Forzani, 1890), pp. 19–51 Chronicon Venetum quod vulgo dicunt Altinate, ed. by Henry Simonsfeld, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores, 14: Supplementa tomorum I–XII, pars II. Supplementum tomi, XIII (Hanover: Hahn, 1883; repr. 1988), pp. 1–69 Codex diplomaticus regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae, i, ed. by Marko Kostrenčić, Jakov Stipišić, and Miljenko Šamšalović (Zagreb: Ex officina Societatis Typographicae, 1967) Codice diplomatico Istriano, i, ed. by Pietro Kandler, 2nd edn (Triest: Riva, 1986) Concilium Mantuanum, ed. by Albert Werminghoff, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Concilia, 2/2: Concilia aevi Karolini, 2, 819–42 (Hanover: Hahn, 1898; repr. 2003), no. 47, pp. 583–89 Conradi  II. et Iohannis  XIX. synodus Romana, ed.  by Ludwig Weiland, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Constitutiones et acta publica imperatorum et regum, 1, inde ab a. 911 usque ad a. 1197 (Hanover: Hahn, 1893; repr. 2003), no. 38, pp. 82–84 Constantinus Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, ed. by Gyula Moravcsik, trans. by Romilly J. H. Jenkins, Corpus fontium historiae Byzantinae, 1 (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1967) Cronache (= Ioannes Diaconus, Istoria Veneticorum; Chronica de singulis patriarchis nove Aquileie; Chronicon Gradense; Chronicon Altinate; Andreas Dandulus, Chronica per extensum descripta; Translatio sancti Marci), ed. by Giorgio Fedalto and Luigi Andrea Berto, Scrittori della Chiesa di Aquileia, 12.2 (Rome: Città Nuova, 2003) Cronica de singulis patriarchis nove Aquileie, ed.  by Giovanni Monticolo, in Cronache veneziane antichissime, i, Fonti per la storia d’Italia, 9 (Rome: Forzani, 1890), pp. 5–16 Documenti relativi alla storia di Venezia anteriori al mille, i: Secoli V–IX, ed. by Roberto Cessi, Testi e documenti di storia e di letteratura latina medioevale, 1 (Padua: Gregoriana, 1942) Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, ed.  by Oswald Holder-Egger, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 25, 6th edn (Hanover: Hahn, 1911; repr. 1965)

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Epistolae Langobardicae collectae, ed. by Wilhelm Gundlach, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Epistolae, 3, Epistolae Merowingici et Karolini aevi, 1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1892; repr. 1994), pp. 691–715 Evangeliarium Spalatense: Faksimilno izdanje, izrađeno prema izvorniku iz Arhiva splitske prvostolnice (sig. KAS 621), ed. by Marin Barišić and Nenad Cambi, Biblioteka Knjiga Mediterana, 32 (Split: Nadbiskupija splitsko-makarska, 2004) Giovanni Diacono, La cronaca veneziana, ed.  by Giovanni Monticolo, in Cronache veneziane antichissime, i, Fonti per la storia d’Italia, 9 (Rome: Forzani, 1890), pp. 57–187 Gregory VII, Registrum, ed. by Erich Caspar, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Epistolae selectae in usum scholarum separatim editae, 2.1: Registrum libri I–IV (Berlin: Weidmann, 1920; repr. 1990) Historia Salonitana maior, ed. by Nada Klaić, Posebna izdanja Srpske akademije nauka i umetnosti, 391, Odeljenje društvenih nauka, 55 (Belgrade: Naučno delo, 1967) Italia pontificia, ed.  by Paul Fridolin Kehr, vii: Venetiae et Histria, pt  1: Provincia Aquileiensis; pt  2: Respublica Venetiarum–Provincia Gradensis–Histria (Berlin: Weidmann, 1923–1925) Liber pontificalis, ed. by Louis Duchesne, Le Liber pontificalis: texte, introduction et com­ mentaire, 2 vols (Paris: Thorin, 1886–1892) Ludovici  II. diplomata, ed.  by Konrad Wanner, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Diplomata Karolinorum, 4 (Munich: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1994) Papsturkunden, i: 896–996; ii: 996–1046, ed. by Harald Zimmermann, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Denkschriften der phil-hist. Klasse 174 and 177 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1984–1985) Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Ludwig Bethmann and Georg Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum saec. VI–IX (Hanover: Hahn, 1878; repr. 1988), pp. 12–187 ——  , Liber de episcopis Mettensibus, ed.  by Georg  H. Pertz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores, 2: Scriptores rerum Sangallensium, Annales, chronica et historiae aevi Carolini (Hanover: Hahn, 1829; repr. 1976), pp. 261–68 Thomas the Archdeacon, Historia Salonitanorum atque Spalatinorum pontificum  / Archdeacon Thomas of Split: History of the Bishops of Salona and Split, Latin text by Olga Perić, ed., trans., and annotated by Damir Karbić, Mirjana Matijević-Sokol, and James Ross Sweeney, Central European Medieval Texts, 4 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2006) Translatio sancti Marci, ed.  by Girogio Fedalto and Luigi Andrea Berto, in Cronache, Scrittori della Chiesa di Aquileia, 12.2 (Rome: Città Nuova Editrice, 2003) pp. 468–84

Secondary Studies Arnaldi, Girolamo, and Lidia Capo, ‘I cronisti di Venezia e della Marca Trevigiana dalle origini alle fine del secolo XIII’, in Storia della cultura Veneta, i: Dalle origini al Trecento, ed.  by Girolamo Arnaldi and Gianfranco Folena (Vicenza: Pozza, 1976), pp. 387–423

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Berto, Luigi Andrea, ‘Giovanni Diacono’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, lvi (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 2001), pp. 8–10 Bianchi, Guido, ‘Il patriarca do Grado Domenico Marango tra Roma e l’Oriente’, Studi veneziani, 8 (1966), 19–125 Blasin Scarel, Silvia, ed., Poppone: l’età d’oro del patriarcato di Aquileia (Rome: ‘L’Erma’ di Bretschneider, 1997) Borri, Francesco, ‘Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! Foundation Myths and origines gentium at the Adriatic Arc’, in Post­Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 215–70 Bratož, Rajko, Il cristianesimo Aquileiese prima di Costantino fra Aquileia e Poetovio, Ricerche per la storia della chiesa in Friuli, 2 (Udine: Istituto Pio Paschini per la storia della chiesa in Friuli, 1999) —— , Med Italijo in Ilirikom: Slovenski prostor in njegovo sosedstvo v pozni antiki, Dela I. razreda Slovenske akademije znanosti in umetnosti, 39 and Zbirka Zgodovinskega časopisa, 46 (Ljubljana: Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete, 2014) ——  , ‘Der Metropolitansprengel von Aquileia vom 5. bis zum frühen 7. Jahrhundert’, in Die Ausgrabungen im spätantik­frühmittelalterlichen Bischofsitz Sabiona­Säben in Südtirol, i: Frühchristliche Kirche und Gräberfeld, ed. by Volker Bierbrauer and Hans Nothdurfter, Münchener Beiträge zur Vor- und Frühgeschichte, 58 (Munich: Beck, 2015), pp. 665–700 Budak, Neven, ‘Furta sacra et inventio traditionis: Je li doista postojao kontinuitet između salonitanske i splitske biskupije?’, in Munuscula in honorem Željko Rapanić: Zbornik povodom osamdesetog rođendana, ed.  by Miljenko Jurković and Ante Milošević, Dissertationes et monographiae, 5 (Zagreb: Sveučilište u Zagrebu, 2012), pp. 157–79 Bulić, Franjo, and Josip Bervaldi, Kronotaksa salonskih biskupa uz dodatak Kronotaksa spljetskih nadbiskupa (od razorenja Solina do polovice XI. v.) (Zagreb: Kat. tiskovno društvo, 1912–1913) Cambi, Nenad, ‘Uz poglavje “De sancto Domnio et sancto Domnione” kronike Tome Arhiđakona’, in Salonitansko­splitska crkva u prvom tisućljeću kršćanske povijesti, ed. by Josip Dukić, Slavko Kovačić, and Ema Višić-Ljubić, Biblioteka Crkve u svijetu, 43 (Zagreb: Splitsko-makarska nadbiskupija, 2008), pp. 67–80 Carile, Antonio, ‘Chronica Gradensia nella storiografia veneziana’, in Grado nella sto­ ria e nell’arte, i, Antichità Altoadriatiche, 17 (Udine: Arti grafiche friulane, 1980), pp. 111–38 Carile, Antonio, and Giorgio Fedalto, Le origini di Venezia (Bologna: Pàtron, 1978) Catalogue général des manuscrits des Bibliothèques publiques de France, xii (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1889) Cessi, Roberto, ‘“Nova Aquileia”’, in Roberto Cessi, Le origini del ducato veneziano, Collana storica, 4 (Naples: Morano, 1951), pp. 99–148 Cracco, Giorgio, ‘Testi agiografici: religione e politica nella Venezia del Mille’, in Storia di Venezia dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima, i: Origini — Età ducale, ed. by Lellia Cracco Ruggini and others (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1992), pp. 923–61

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Farlati, Daniele, Illyricum sacrum, iv: Ecclesia suffraganeae metropolis Spalatensis (Venice: Coleti, 1769) Fasoli, Gina, ‘I fondamenti della storiografia veneziana’, in La storiografia veneziana fino al secolo XVI: aspetti e problemi, ed. by Agostino Pertusi, Civiltà Veneziana Saggi, 18 (Florence: Olschki, 1970), pp. 11–44 Fedalto, Giorgio, Aquileia, una chiesa due patriarcati, Scrittori della Chiesa di Aquileia, 1 (Rome: Città Nuova, 1999) Geary, Patrick J., Furta sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages, 2nd  edn (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) Härtel, Reinhard, ‘Diplomatik und Ortsgeschichte: Zum hochmittelalterlichen Erscheinungsbild von Aquileia’, in Rutengänge: Studien zur geschichtlichen Landeskunde; Festgabe für Walter Brunner zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. by Meinhard Brunner, Gerhard Pferschy, and Gernot  P. Obersteiner (Graz: Historische Landeskommission für Steiermark, 2010), pp. 33–46 Ivanišević, Milan, ‘Sveti Donino i splitski arhiđakon Toma’, Vjesnik za arheologiju i povijest dalmatinsku, 100 (2007), 125–44 Ivić, Nenad, ‘Dosezi sjećanja i zaborava: pad Salone i naseljavanje Splita u Tome Arhiđakona’, in Toma Arhiđakon i njegovo doba, ed. by Mirjana Matijević-Sokol and Olga Perić, Biblioteka Knjiga Mediterana, 35 (Split: Nadbiskupija splitsko-makarska, 2004), pp. 129–42 Katičić, Radoslav, ‘Vetustiores ecclesiae Spalatensis memoriae’, Starohrvatska prosvjeta, 17 (1987), 17–51 ——  , ‘Imena dalmatinskih biskupija i njihovih biskupa u aktima ekumenskoga koncila u Niceji godine 787’, in Radoslav Katičić, Uz početke hrvatskih početaka, Biblioteka znanstvenih dijela, 70 (Split: Književni krug, 1993), pp. 25–35 ——  , Litterarum studia: Književnost i naobrazba ranoga hrvatskoga srednjovjekovlja, 2nd edn (Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 2007) —— , ‘Toma Arhiđakon i njegovo djelo’, in Thoma Archidiaconus: Historia Salonitana / Toma Arhiđakon: Povijest salonitanskih i splitskih prvosvećenika, ed.  by Olga Perić, Mirjana Matijević-Sokol, and Radoslav Katičić, Biblioteka Knjiga Mediterana, 30 (Split: Književni krug, 2003), pp. 329–440 ——  , ‘“Ecclesia Salonitana” u svojem novom sjedištu do X. stoljeća’, in Salonitansko­ splitska crkva u prvom tisućljeću kršćanske povijesti, ed. by Josip Dukić, Slavko Kovačić, and Ema Višić-Ljubić, Biblioteka Crkve u svijetu, 43 (Zagreb: Splitsko-makarska nadbiskupija, 2008), pp. 435–51 Kehr, Paul Fridolin, ‘Rom und Venedig bis ins 12. Jahrhundert’, Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 19 (1927), 1–180 Krahwinkler, Harald, Friaul im Frühmittelalter: Geschichte einer Region vom Ende des fünften bis zum Ende des zehnten Jahrhunderts, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 30 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1992) Lamberz, Erich, Die Bischofslisten des VII. Ökomenischen Konzils (Niceanum  II.), Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse, Abhandlungen, n.s., 124 (Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2004)

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Lenel, Walter, Venezianisch­Istrische Studien, Schriften der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft in Strassburg, 9 (Strassburg: Trübner, 1911) Manitius, Max, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, ii: Von der Mitte des zehnten Jahrhunderts bis zum Ausbruch des Kampfes zwischen Kirche und Staat (Munich: Beck, 1923) Margetić, Lujo, ‘Il sinodo gradense di Elia’, in Lujo Margetić, Histrica et Adriatica: Raccolta di saggi storico­giuridici e storici, Collana degli Atti di Ricerche storiche — Rovigno, 6 (Triest: Unione degli italiani dell’Istria e di Fiume, 1983), pp. 135–40 Matijević-Sokol, Mirjana, Toma Arhiđakon i njegovo djelo: Rano doba hrvatske povijesti ( Jastrebarsko: Naklada Slap, 2002) McCleary, Nelson, ‘Note storiche ed archeologiche sul testo della “Translatio sancti Marci”’, Memorie storiche Forogiuliesi, 27/29 (1931–1933), 223–64 Meyer, Wilhelm, Die Spaltung des Patriarchats von Aquileja, Abhandlungen der königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaft zu Göttingen, phil.-hist. Klasse, n.s., 2.6 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1898) Monticolo, Giovanni, ‘I manoscritti e le fonti della cronaca del diacono Giovanni’, Bullettino dell’Istituto storico italiano, 9 (1890), 37–328 —— , ‘Prefazione’, in Cronache veneziane antichissime, i, ed. by Giovanni Monticolo, Fonti per la storia d’Italia, 9 (Rome: Forzani, 1890), pp. viii–xxxix Niero, Antonio, ‘Dal patriarcato di Grado al patriarcato di Venezia’, in Grado nella sto­ ria e nell’arte, i, Antichità Altoadriatiche, 17 (Udine: Arti grafiche friulane, 1980), pp. 265–84 Petrović, Ivanka, ‘Hrvatska latinska hagiografija i salonitansko-splitska hagiografija sv. Domnija i sv. Anastazija’, in Salonitansko­splitska crkva u prvom tisućljeću kršćanske povijesti, ed. by Josip Dukić, Slavko Kovačić, and Ema Višić-Ljubić, Biblioteka Crkve u svijetu, 43 (Zagreb: Splitsko-makarska nadbiskupija, 2008), pp. 107–67 Popović, Vladislav, ‘Evanđelijar svetog Dujma u Splitu’, Crkva u svijetu, 25.3 (1990), 231–49 Rando, Daniela, Una chiesa di frontiera: le istituzioni ecclesiastiche veneziane nei secoli VI– XII (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994) Scalon, Cesare, ‘L’Evangeliario “Forogiuliese”’, in I libri dei patriarchi: un percorso nella cultura scritta del Friuli medievale, ed. by Cesare Scalon (Udine: Istituto Pio Paschini per la storia della chiesa in Friuli, 2014), pp. 1–13 Schmidinger, Heinrich, Patriarch und Landesherr: Die weltliche Herrschaft der Patriarchen von Aquileia bis zum Ende der Staufer, Publikationen des Österreichischen Kulturinstituts in Rom, 1.1 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1954) Tavano, Sergio, Aquileia e Grado: Storia–arte–cultura, 3rd edn (Triest: Lint, 1999) ——  , ‘La leggenda di San Marco prima di Venezia’, in Il paese ed il territorio di San Canzian d’Isonzo nel Medioevo: atti della giornata di Studi sancanzianesi 14 Maggio 2011 (Udine: Editreg, 2012), pp. 15–33 Veraja, Fabijan, ‘Kapela sv. Venancija u Rimu i kult solinskih mučenika’, in Salonitansko­ splitska crkva u prvom tisućljeću kršćanske povijesti, ed. by Josip Dukić, Slavko Kovačić, and Ema Višić-Ljubić, Biblioteka Crkve u svijetu, 43 (Zagreb: Splitsko-makarska nadbiskupija, 2008), pp. 81–106

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Wolfram, Herwig, Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum: Das Weißbuch der Salzburger Kirche über erfolgreiche Mission in Karantanien und Pannonien; Herausgegeben, über­ setzt, kommentiert und um die Epistola Theotmari wie um Gesammelte Schriften zum Thema ergänzt, Dela  I. razreda Slovenske akademije znanosti in umetnosti, 38 and Zbirka Zgodovinskega časopisa, 44, 3rd edn (Ljubljana: Hermagoras, 2013)

Patria Venecia: John the Deacon’s Search for Venetian Origins* Francesco Borri

‘A

nd that people do not plough, do not sow, do not harvest the grapes.’ So runs a famous passage of the Honorantie Civitatis Papie, one of the oldest witnesses on the revenues of the Italian kingdom’s capital Pavia, probably composed during the reign of Hugh of Provence (r. 924–947).1 The people in question were the Venetians, who by that time were regularly navigating the waterways of northern Italy to Pavia. When at the end of the ninth century Notker of Saint Gall narrated the 776 arrival of Charlemagne (r. 768–814) in the Lombard capital, he commented on the simplicity of the king’s clothes while hunting, a habit that his successor Louis the German (r. 843–876) — one of the narrative’s heroes — had inherited from him; Charlemagne’s companions, by contrast, were dressed in costly robes which had been brought to Pavia by the boats of Venice: ‘The Venetians had carried all the wealth of the east from their territories beyond the sea’.2 Thus Notker paints a picture of luxuries, alien to Frankish austerity, being brought to the heart of the Lombard kingdom

* This article was written thanks to FWF funding for the project P 29004: Aristocracies between the Tides. I would like to express my gratitude to Christina Pössel and Veronika Wieser for their help and valuable suggestions. 1

Honorantie civitatis Papiae, ed. by Brühl and Violante, 57–58, p. 18: ‘Et illa gens, non arat, non seminat, non vindemiat’. 2 Notker of Saint Gall, Gesta Karoli, ed. by Haefele, ii.17, p. 86: ‘ad quam numper Venetici de transmarinis partibus omnes orientalium divitias advectasset’. Francesco Borri is Associate Professor at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000–1300, ed. by Walter Pohl, Veronika Wieser, and Francesco Borri, celama 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp.  367–387 FHG 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.130267

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by these fellows, whom many contemporary observers described as strange, shifty, and weird. Beginning with a famous letter by Cassiodorus — which contains one of the very few positive remarks on the Venetians’ habits written by an outsider — authors commented on the peculiar and even somewhat amusing life of the people of the Venetian lagoons, who were dwelling in spatia infinita, as Cassiodorus wrote, in the vast and wild swamps and lagoons between Italy and the Adriatic.3 The inhabitants of the Venetian lagoons began to question the origins of their own peculiar way of life early on. Reflections on this topic seem to mark the awareness of a shared ancestry and destiny, yet the moment at which a specific Venetian identity emerged — the ‘origini dell’identità lagunare’, as it was called by Massimiliano Pavan and Girolamo Arnaldi in a very influential contribution — remains, to a certain extent, a matter of debate.4 At the roots of the difficulty of pinning down the beginnings of a Venetian identity is the long continuity of Venetian history since Antiquity. The very name of the modern town of Venice refers to a tradition stretching back into the distant past: Venetia et Histria was in fact the tenth region of Augustus’s Italy. This extensive territory on the edges of the Adriatic covered parts of the modern Italian regions of Lombardy, Friuli, and Veneto, together with the western part of the Istrian Peninsula, now lying in Croatia and Slovenia. In the aftermath of the Lombard conquest, the name Venetia began to signify two distinctive regions, as Paul the Deacon wrote at the end of the eighth century: a waterborne imperial province and an inland region, part of the Lombard kingdom; today, besides the city of Venice, the ancient Venetia also gives its name to the Veneto district.5 These semantic developments mirrored the broader social and political changes taking place over the course of the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries. In the next pages, I will discuss how the oldest Venetian historiography — particularly the eleventh-century Istoria Veneticorum attributed to the deacon John — searched for discontinuity in this long history in order to narrate the beginning of Venice. Particularly, I will deal with John’s usage of late antique and early medieval barbarian stories of origin, such as Paul the Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum, to construct Venetian identity. 3

Cassiodorus, Epistolae, ed. by Giardina, Cecconi, and Tantillo, xii.24, pp. 108–10. On the peculiarity of the northern Adriatic: Ammerman and McClennen, eds, Venice before San Marco; Borca, ‘Il caso dell’alto Adriatico’. 4 Pavan and Arnaldi, ‘Le origini dell’identità lagunare’. 5 Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, ii.14, p. 81. On this process: Azzara, Venetiae.

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The major steps for the formation of this identity are rather well known. The aforementioned letter by Cassiodorus is generally seen as the earliest written evidence of a permanent settlement in the Venetian lagoons.6 The Lombards’ takeover of the region’s major inland strongholds, such as Concordia and Oderzo, in the late sixth and the first half of the seventh centuries contributed to Venetia’s increasingly coastal character. The loss of Ravenna in 751 was perhaps a critical moment in the shattering of Italy’s Roman identity; the remaining imperial domains of Italy such as Otranto, Naples, Rome, and the Venetian lagoons were torn apart by strong centripetal forces that triggered the creation of boundaries and local allegiances. From the testament of Bishop Ursus (d. 853) of Olivolo, a charter written in 853, we know that by the midninth century, a church dedicated to St Peter existed on one of the islands of modern-day Venice, today’s San Pietro in Castello. The foundation’s chosen dedicatory saint may perhaps indicate the Frankish and Roman Catholic influences stretching to the Venetian duchy, together with the province’s growing autonomy from Constantinople.7 Ursus’s testament is also the first text to refer to Venetia as patria.8 In the mid-ninth century, this patria Venecia — the homeland of Venice — was not yet a town (a civitas) but a group of smaller settlements scattered across the islands of the lagoons, each with its own inhabitants and identity; the name of this region’s dwellers, Venetici, had long described a provincial identity grounded in the Roman past rather than a community of cives. Only from the tenth century onwards did Venetia slowly begin to resemble a town.9 A few years before Ursus’s charter, the identities referring to smaller communities are attested in the 840 Pactum Lotharii, an economic and political treaty between the Venetians and their Carolingian neighbours. In it, the populus Veneticorum is formed of the habitatores of diverse settlements which spread from the mainland along the lagoons’ shores from Chioggia to Grado, and over the inner as well as the barrier islands.10 From John’s narrative 6

Gelichi, ‘Venezia’, p. 164. Testament of Ursus, ed. by Gaeta, p. 9: ‘Insuper de propria rem meam pro medelam anime meae offero pro restauracionem ipsius sancte ecclesiae Beati Petri Apostoli, idest libras trecentas de argento bono adhuc et aliud quod nobis omnipotens Deus inspiraverit et beatissimus Petrus Apostolus’. On the testament: Gasparri, ‘I testamenti’, pp. 110–11. It has also been suggested that the charter could be a twelfth-century forgery: Pozza, ‘Il testamento del vescovo Orso’. On the church: Cracco, ‘I testi agiografici’, p. 190. 8 Testament of Ursus, ed. by Gaeta, p. 7: ‘in patrie Veneciae’. 9 Gasparri, ‘Venezia’, p. 75. 10 Pactum Lotharii, ed. by Boretius, pp. 130–31: ‘et cum ipso populo Veneticorum, idest cum 7

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we learn that these local origins may have gained salience in given political and social conjunctures. This was the case, for example, during some conflicts internal to the duchy at the beginning of the ninth century: we know that Duke Obelerius’s men were the Metamaucenses, that is the inhabitants of the insula of Malamocco, while his opponent Duke John had his power basis in Cittanova, also called civitas Eracliana. The Translatio s. Marci, a narrative allegedly composed between the ninth and eleventh centuries that I will briefly discuss below, also emphasized that the two Venetian tribunes who stole St Mark’s relics from Alexandria, Bonus and Rusticus, hailed from Malamocco and Torcello, respectively.11 Inhabitants of different settlements were therefore differently labelled, as possible reflection of distinctive allegiances and identities, but nevertheless all part of a broader Venetian identity.12 It was the province of Roman origin that Ursus called his homeland, and in the words patria Venecia we glimpse strong ‘significati ideali ed etici’, as Gherardo Ortalli put it.13 Ursus’s idea of Venetia as a unified patria clearly distinguishable from neighbouring regions seems to have been shared by the highest authority of the duchy: both Duke Peter Tradonicus (836–864) and his son John figure among the witnesses to Ursus’s will.14 It is in this charter that we apparently find for the first time the consciousness of a Venetian identity distinct from that of its Frankish and Lombard neighbours as well as from the other former domains of imperial Italy.

A Look Backwards Reflecting on the past, the earliest Venetian authors, John among them, were concerned in drawing a line between a Roman past, when the Venetians inhabited a larger region of Roman Italy, and the present in which they were living, allegedly independent and free, on boats and in timber structures rising from habitatoribus Rovoalti, castri Helibolis, Amurianae, Mathamauci, Albiolae, Cluiae, Brunduli, Fossionis, Laureti, Torceli, Amianae, Burani, Civitatis novae, Finis, Equili, Caprularum, Gradi, Caput Argeris’. 11 Translatio s. Marci, ed. by Colombi, ix.3, p. 53: ‘inter quos erant clarissimi Bonus tribunus Metamaucensis et Rusticus Torcellensis’. 12 John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, ii.24, 26, pp. 108–10; ii.41, p. 120. 13 Ortalli, ‘I cronisti’, p. 768. 14 Testament of Ursus, ed. by Gaeta, p. 10: ‘Signum manus domno excellentissimo Petro imperiali cosolis propria manum sua cum consensum populi Venecie pro prorio signum fecit. + Christi et in hoc testamento in omnibus consencienti. + Iohannes dilectus eius filius gloriosus dux Veneciarum in hoc testamentum rogatus ad Ursus episcopus manu mea subscripsi’.

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the cloudy waters of the western Adriatic. Stories recounting this transformation were scant, so that the Historia Langobardorum, a narrative written at the end of the eighth century by the Lombard historian Paul the Deacon, was of key importance. As is well known, while Paul’s focus was on the Lombards, he also narrated the history of many of his own people’s neighbours, the Italian ‘Romans’ among them. It was this interest of Paul’s that made him the main authority for the Venetian history of the seventh and eighth centuries. The Historia Langobardorum also offered an appealing blueprint for origin stories. Paul’s legacy in the historiography of Venice was therefore twofold. On the one hand, he offered the fundamental nodes around which to unfold the ‘Roman’ history of Venice; on the other, he presented a strong narrative model. In the second book of his history, Paul the Deacon narrated how Bishop Paulinus of Aquileia (557–571) fled to Grado from the incoming Lombards.15 This brief story became the cornerstone of the whole tradition on the origins of Venice. From the following century onwards, we can find fragments of an ongoing discourse on the intricate Venetian past that built on this very account.16 The story of Paulinus’s move to Grado developed into the legend according to which the barbarians (they could be Huns or Lombards) destroyed a big city of Antiquity, such as Aquileia, and caused the population to seek refuge and settle in the uninhabited marshes of the lagoons.17 A myth that was likely enriched by elements stemming from other stories, such as the diaspora following the War of Troy: in later traditions, Antenor became one of the first settlers of eastern Veneto. Other models for the Venetian origin myth derived from Christian texts such as Eugippius’s Vita Severini, written at the beginning of the sixth century, which recounts how the Roman population of a frontier region on the Danube searched for shelter in Italy, a narrative built on biblical models of Exodus.18 Barbarian invasions as the trigger for the foundation of new settlements are to be found in many other narratives; we may here recall Salvian’s De gubernatione Dei.19 The earliest clues for a narrative of Venetian origins involving the pattern of the destruction of a city and its inhabitants’ flight and founding of a new settlement come from a charter of Emperor Louis II (844–875) of 855. 15

Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, ii.10, p. 78. Reimitz, ‘Die Konkurrenz der Ursprünge’; Carile, ‘La città di Venezia’. 17 La Rocca, ‘Città scomparse’. I have discussed these topics in: Borri, ‘Arrivano i Barbari a cavallo!’. 18 Pohl and Diesenberger, eds, Eugippius und Severin; von Winckler, ‘“Wie aus dem Haus der Ägyptischen Knechtschaft”’. 19 Lambert, ‘The Barbarians’. 16

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In it, we read how Patriarch Paulinus of Aquileia fled to Grado not because of the Lombards, but due to Attila’s pillaging.20 This is the first occurrence of a tradition involving Attila, which was recorded in a complete form for the first time in the middle of the tenth century by Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (r. 913–959).21 In his account the Venetians (Βενέτικοι) who are also the ‘Franks of Aquileia’ (Φράγγοι ἀπὸ Ἀκουϊλεγίας) fled before Attila, ‘king of the Avars’ (Ἀττίλα, τοῦ βασιλέως τῶν Ἀβάρων) and built huts on previously uninhabited islands, where they began a new life.22 In this version, the key role of the patriarch has been omitted: it was suggestive, but rather exceptional. The bishop’s flight remained paramount in the stories compiled in the Venetian duchy because it reflected the necessity of securing the ecclesiastical rights of the Venetian sees, whose clerics claimed a filiation from the powerful bishoprics of Late Antiquity. A lengthier version of this story is recorded in the Translatio s. Marci, a narrative which was apparently composed between the ninth and eleventh centuries, as mentioned above.23 It is an informative and entertaining story, recounting the past of Venetia while focusing on the theft of St Mark’s relics in Alexandria and their subsequent journey to Rivus Altus, today’s Rialto, in the Venetian lagoons. The Translatio begins with an account of Venetian origins, which is indeed the oldest reflection on the topic that we possess. The narrative opens by recalling St Mark as the apostle of Aquileia and telling how, at the time of the Lombard invasion of Italy, Patriarch Paulinus took shelter in Grado, carrying the bodies of Hermagoras and other patron saints with him. A second flight toward the lagoons was eventually triggered by further Lombard attacks and led to the settlement of the wild marshes at the edge of the Adriatic. The narrative then moves on to the ninth century and the transfer of St Mark’s body from Egypt to the Venetian lagoon. 20

Louis II, Diplomata, ed. by Wanner, 17, p. 98. Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, ed. by Moravcsik and Jenkins, 28, p. 118. 22 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, ed. by Moravcsik and Jenkins, 28, p. 118. 23 Nelson McCleary, the first modern editor of the Translatio, originally established the date of composition of the Translatio s. Marci as shortly after 1050; see McCleary, ‘Note storiche e archeologiche’. In more recent years, historians have generally been inclined to assume an earlier date. The ninth century as the time for the Translatio’s production was proposed in: DennigZettler and Zettler, ‘La traslazione di San Marco’; as well as in Rosada, ‘Il Chronicon Venetum’, p. 94. Cracco has argued for a date in the second half of the tenth century: Cracco, ‘I testi agiografici’, pp. 939–40. For the suggestion that the text was written at end of the tenth century, see Colombi, Storie di cronache e di reliquie, p. 83. 21

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Aurea Venetia These heterogeneous stories made up the material available to the author of the Istoria Veneticorum. This first historian of Venice wrote his narrative focusing on the duchy and its inhabitants at the very beginning of the eleventh century, during the reign of Duke Otto Orseolo (r. 1009–1024). In his 1999 edition of the chronicle, the first one since the Giovanni Monticolo’s of 1890, Luigi Andrea Berto offered a new reading of the whole narrative. He proposed that the title Chronicon used by Monticolo and subsequent generations of scholars was inappropriate and suggested calling the text Istoria Veneticorum instead. Moreover, abandoning Monticolo’s — and Georg Heinrich Pertz’s before him — division of the work into two sections, Berto divided the history into four books, each split into chapters (Book i: fifty-two chapters; ii: sixty; iii: fortysix; iv: seventy-eight).24 The author of the chronicle is anonymous. He was originally identified as John Sagornino, a Venetian smith, whose complaint to Duke Domenicus Flabianico (r. 1032–1043) is preserved in the text’s two oldest manuscripts.25 This identification led Pertz, who edited the chronicle in 1846, to assume that the oldest manuscript was an autograph and that the latest entries were progressively added by the author, as in some annals or the Roman Liber pontificalis.26 However, the attribution to Sagornino was abandoned in the early twentieth century, and the author is now identified as John the Deacon, one of the courtiers of Duke Otto’s father, Peter II (r. 991–1009). This John had been one of Duke Peter’s ambassadors to the court of Emperor Otto III (r. 982–1002) and was supposedly the organizer of that emperor’s secret trip to Venice; a certain deacon John also figured among the signatories of many charters between 991 and 1008.27 John’s narrative focuses on the dukes of Venice and their dynastic struggles, their relationships with kings and emperors, and on the long wars the Venetians conducted against their neighbours. Patriarchs and bishops are among the narrative’s protagonists, too. John did not follow the genre of gesta episcoporum, which after Paul the Deacon’s Liber de episcopis Mettensibus had become one 24 Pazienza, ‘Archival Documents’, p. 30 n. 14, finds no confirmation in the manuscript tradition for this partition. 25 Rosada, ‘Il Chronicon Venetum’, p. 82. 26 Georg Pertz’s idea was already criticized in Monticolo, ‘I manoscritti e le fonti’, pp. 49–51. 27 John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, iv.55–62, pp. 196–200. On John: Berto, In Search, pp. 149–51. Moreover: Fasoli, ‘I fondamenti’, p. 31.

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of the most popular genres for narrating the history of a town — as we can see from the histories of Ravenna and Naples.28 John’s choice may have reflected the nature of the Venetian lagoons as a province rather than a single town. Like Paul the Deacon, who used the succession of kings to structure time in his Historia Langobardorum, John preferred dukes as the main characters of his story, whose reigns mark the steps of time’s progress. This choice, in my opinion, reveals John the Deacon’s dependence on Paul: we know with some degree of certainty that John indeed aimed to write a story somewhat similar to Paul’s, because he was eager to imitate the latter’s style.29 John was only partially successful in this, however: while Paul’s story is among the most entertaining of the Latin Middle Ages, John’s narrative is considerably less fascinating. There is not much spark in his writing and, as far I can tell, no complicated subtexts or hidden messages.30 Nevertheless, the Istoria Veneticorum is a very informative and precious narrative; it is keenly political in character, dealing with the Venetians and their dukes from the Lombard conquest of Italy to the year 1008; its ending is apparently missing. It provides the most complete chronological framework for history of the ninth- and tenthcentury Adriatic.31 It also preserves some otherwise unknown stories on the Ottonian dynasty and Constantinople, and contains a vivid description of the Hungarian raids on Italy as well as a rich ethnography of Dalmatia. In the very last lines of this work as it has come down to us, John describes Duke Peter II’s family, commenting on the tragic death of John Orseolo, Peter’s son, and his wife Maria Argira in the epidemic of c. 1006. He goes on to narrate the election of Ursus, another son of Peter’s, to the see of Altinum.32 With this episode, the Istoria Veneticorum abruptly ends. We do not know if the author died before completing his work: certainly, however, he survived Peter II, who died in 1009. We know from charters that there was a deacon named John alive after 1018 who was also a courtier, but the name was so common in the period that such evidence is hardly conclusive. More suggestive is that while recounting Peter II Orseolo’s descendants, John commented that the duke’s third born, Otto, ‘the aforesaid mentioned little boy’ — puerulus — had now followed his 28

Sot, Gesta episcoporum; there is a (relatively) new edition of Paul the Deacon’s work: Liber de episcopis Mettensibus, ed. by Kempf. 29 Monticolo, ‘I manoscritti e le fonti’, p. 101. 30 Fasoli, ‘I fondamenti’, p. 16. 31 On the political nature of the story: Arnaldi and Capo, ‘I cronisti’, p. 393. 32 Death of John and Maria: John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, iv.75, p. 210; Ursus becomes bishop of Altinum: iv.77, p. 212.

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father to lead the duchy. As Otto became duke in 1009, the Istoria was written after this date.33 Like many other, I believe that the death of the glorious Peter II in 1009, the year after Ursus’s election as bishop of Altinum, together with the summary of its the duke’s achievement for Golden Venice would have been a perfect way to end the narrative.34 Many years ago, Roberto Cessi suggested that the manuscript we possess is incomplete and that the last leaf may have been lost over the course of the centuries. At the same time, he implied that John put down his pen because of the misfortunes that befell the duchy during of Otto’s reign.35 In John’s narrative, the history of the Venetian duchy is a story of its slow emergence from darkness and brutality, with the violent regime of its early rulers being succeeded by more prosperous and brilliant times. John recounted the continuous institutional experiments taking place in the duchy together with their disastrous outcomes. He clearly blames the Venetians for deviating from what he believed to be the optimal form of government, that is, the rule of dukes.36 According to John, whenever Venice was not governed by dukes, usurpation seems to have been the normal way of succession among the rulers. John obsessively recounts the blinding of predecessors and rivals, a form of punishment he associates with the East. Many of the rulers’ biographical entries end with the laconic and disturbing sentence: ‘et evulserunt oculos eius’ — ‘and they pulled his eyes out’. The insistence on this unsettling detail might have served narrative aims but may also have simply reflected the duchy’s early days, characterized by turmoil and violence. Moreover, it may have echoed Venice’s long-lasting allegiance with the Eastern Roman world, where deposed emperors often suffered the same torment. John was keen to emphasize this parallel, as will be discussed below. John’s lengthy descriptions of the long reign of Peter II Orseolo, the duke’s friendship with Emperor Otto III, the conquest of Dalmatia and the Venetian 33 John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, iv.77, p. 210: ‘Tercius est ordine Otto, predictus puerulus, patris quin constat dignitate equivocus’. 34 John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, iv.20, p. 168: ‘Aurea Venetia’. 35 Cessi, Venezia ducale, p. 380: ‘può essere che la malaugurata sorte abbia disperso le pagine di questo torbido periodo, ovvero che contrario destino abbia repentinamente interrotto la narrazione; ma può anche essere che un senso di sconforto e di rammarico, suscitato dal declinare della sorte dopo tanti brillanti successi, abbia distolto lo scrittore dal continuare il racconto’; quoted in Rosada, ‘Il Chronicon Venetum’, p. 85. 36 John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, ii.18, p. 104: ‘quendam superstitiosa stultitia’.

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navy’s rescue of Bari by lifting the Saracen’s siege, represent the climactic final section of his narrative.37 It was a fortunate time for the Venetian duchy, characterized by wealth, a rare truce with the papacy, precious friendships with the eastern and western emperors, and military glory. In John’s view, Peter was the best in a long succession of rulers. His greatness was also meant to conceal the dark origins of his family, as the Orseolos had risen to power in the aftermath of the bloody downfall of the House of Candiano in 976. 38 In John’s narrative, Peter I (r. 976–978) was a most holy man, who died in the Catalan monastery of Prades. By contrast, Peter Damian (1007–1072), narrating the life of the monk and founder of the Camaldolese order, Romuald of Camaldoli (c. 951–c. 1025), suggested that the first Orseolo was implicated in the brutal murder of the last Candiano, and that his guilt for this crime was the motivation behind his conversion to the monastic life.39 According to other rumours, the very name Orseolo, reminiscent of ursus (bear), derived from the beastlike brutality which the family had employed to obtain power.40 The masters of Venice may therefore have had reasons for searching for an appropriate past, a discourse reflected in John’s narrative.

John’s Ladder For his account of the history of the Venetians and their dukes during the second half of the tenth century, John seems to have been able to rely on rich source material, as this section of the narrative occupies a lengthy part of the whole book. However, he rarely commented on his sources, so that we are left to speculate on their nature. John had access to charters, his own experiences, and many eyewitnesses to the events of the preceding decades. It is likely that for his longer episodes, such as Otto III’s secret visit to the Venetian lagoons, John relied on his own memories and oral sources.41 However, he seems to have had written narratives at his disposal, too. Already over a century ago, Enrico 37

John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, iv.30–78, pp. 176–212. John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, iv.12–13, p. 162. 39 Peter Damian, Vita beati Romualdi, ed. by Tabacco, 5, pp. 22–23. On Peter I: Ortalli, Petrus I. Orseolo, pp. 11–14. 40 Gesta vel obitus domni Petri, ed. by Ortalli, 2, p. 3: ‘Dicti autem Ursones propter ferocitatem ac potenciam proprie nationis, eo quod terrore eorum prevalebat in vicinis gentibus ursino more atrocis’. Cracco, ‘I testi agiografici’, p. 194. 41 John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, iv.56–59, pp. 196–200. On this: Görich, ‘Heimliche Herrscherbegegnung’; Berto, ‘Segreti a Venezia’. 38

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Besta suggested that John was able to consult some kind of Annales Venetici while narrating the history of these years; a phrase in John’s work seems to suggest this.42 The result of this wealth of sources is an account full of characters and details. Reconstructing the older past of his community, John was, by contrast, building on much more fragmentary — and to us puzzling — evidence. While narrating the reigns of Duke Maurice (r. 764–787) and his son John (r. 787–804), the author candidly wrote that he could find no testimony on the quality of the latter’s actions.43 On some occasions, John adapted older information in order to gain new meaning: the eclipse of 840, which, according to many of the authors recording the astronomical event, had foretold the death of Emperor Louis the Pious (r. 814–840), is in the Istoria Veneticorum linked to the arrival of the patrician Theodosius in Venice, which led to the tragically failed expedition of the Venetian army against the Saracens of Taranto.44 John may have had access to reliable sources of information on the Empire of Constantinople that have not come down to us.45 Narrating the rise of the House of Candiano at the beginning of the tenth century, he informed his reader that he wanted to interrupt the narrative of the dukes’ succession in order to tell a lengthy anecdote concerning Emperor Romanus I Lacapenus (r. 920–944).46 This story is otherwise unknown in Western sources, as is the 860 Rhos’ attack on Constantinople that John recounts in his second book.47 The story of Emperor Michael  I’s (r.  811–813) defeat at the hands of the Bulgarians was also known to the author of the Annales regni Francorum, but John’s is the only Western account that records the emperor’s subsequent entry into a monastery.48 Earlier on, while narrating the reign of Emperor Nicephorus (r. 802–811), John recorded the uprising of the tyrant Turchis, whose failed attempt to gain the crown ended in the destruction of Trsat (part of today’s 42

John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, i.1, p. 48: ‘et libris annalibus comprobatur’. Besta, ‘Sulla composizione’. 43 John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, ii.19, p. 104: ‘quem neque scripto neque relatione experti sumus suae patriae commoda bene tractasse’. 44 John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, ii.50, p. 124. 45 Monticolo, ‘I manoscritti e le fonti’, p. 152. 46 John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, iv.1–6, pp. 154–58 (iv.1, p. 154): ‘Sane non absurdum videtur interponere quomodo predictus Romano imperiale fastigium usurpavit’. 47 John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, ii.58, p. 128. 48 Annales regni Francorum, ed.  by Pertz, s.a. 813, p.  139; John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, ii.30, p. 114.

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Rijeka in Croatia).49 Here too, the author offers the only Latin account of the rebellion of the patrician of Anatolikon, Bardanes ‘ὁ Τοῦρκος’, otherwise recorded only in Eastern sources.50 Bardanes rebelled in Anatolia, but his uprising may have had Western repercussions of which we are unaware, and this could be the reason for John mentioning the Istrian settlement of Trsat in the story. John may also have had catalogues of bishops and patriarchs at his dispos51 al. Such texts could have been the sources for the celestial signs he records as having preceded the deaths of various prelates.52 John’s stories regarding Pope John VIII (r. 872–882) may have relied on a narrative (perhaps extracts of the pope’s letters?), which perhaps also included the names of Dalmatian dukes Domagoj (864–876), Zdeslav (r. 878–879), and Branimir (r. 879–892) to whom Pope John wrote letters and who feature in the Istoria Veneticorum, being otherwise rarely attested.53 Monticolo proposed that a lost narrative may have focused on the years of Duke Obelerius (r. 804–810) and Patriarch Fortunatus of Grado (r. 802–824) at the very beginning of the ninth century, periods also covered in some detail by a number of entries in the Annales regni Francorum.54 The first part of the book, narrating the period from c. 550 to the deposition of Duke Domenicus Monegarius (r. 756–764) in 764, is mostly a collection of excerpts from Paul the Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum and Bede’s Chronica maiora. 55 This section, which amounts to a quarter of the whole book, is not contained in the oldest manuscript of the Istoria Veneticorum, the Codex Urbinate 440, which is missing its opening leaves. The beginning of John’s Istoria thus survives only in a thirteenth-century manuscript, now in the Vatican library in Rome, and its authorship has been questioned on different

49

John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, ii.23, p. 106: ‘Quem quidam tirrannus, Turchis nomine, magna expedicione stipatus, conatus est ad praelium provocare. Sed augustus cum sui imperii pene omnia loca contra tyrrannum tueretur, tantumodo solum Tarsaticum destruere potuit’. 50 ‘Bardanes Turkos’. 51 Monticolo, ‘I manoscritti e le fonti’, pp. 130–39. 52 Bloody rain: John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, iii.24, p. 142; doors opening and closing in the sky: iii.29, p. 144. 53 See also the reflections in: Monticolo, ‘I manoscritti e le fonti’, pp. 109–39. 54 Monticolo, ‘I manoscritti e le fonti’, pp. 102–09. 55 Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz; Bede, Chronica maiora, ed. by Mommsen.

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occasions.56 Giovanni Monticolo believed that the opening section of the thirteenth-century Codex Vaticanus was a faithful copy of John’s history.57 In contrast, Luigi Andrea Berto noted an inconsistency in vocabulary between the two sections, and therefore argued that the opening chapters found in the Vatican codex (up to Chapter ii.18 of his edition) should be seen as a later addition.58 Already before Berto, prominent historians had suggested that these sections should be seen as a later addition to an eleventh-century original, but nobody has argued for the extraneity of the narrative’s first section to the rest of the work so clearly and forcefully as him.59 However, in my opinion, the narrative’s internal consistencies nevertheless suggest a unitary work, written by John at the beginning of the eleventh century. The opening section should be seen as an authorial bricolage in which fragments of Paul and Bede are skilfully tied together by John’s brief interpolations, giving meaning to the whole. Such a method would account for the differences in vocabulary between this and the later sections. In crafting a new narrative out of these prestigious sources, John is in line with many Italian historians of the age who aimed to present themselves as continuators of Paul the Deacon. I want to suggest that the reliance on Paul is among the strongest arguments for the unitary character of the entire narrative.

Tesserae of Meaning The excerpts from the works of Paul the Deacon and Bede in the earliest section of the Istoria Veneticorum relate the history of Constantinople and the Eastern Empire, the patriarchs of Aquileia and the bishops of Rome. These fragments cover two hundred years of imperial rule in central and northern Italy, bridging the years between the Lombard invasion together with the alleged foundation of Venice in the late sixth century and the appearance of local Venetian documentation in the eighth and ninth centuries. A similar intellectual achievement was accomplished in the so-called seventeenth book of Paul’s Historia Romana, a narrative perhaps composed at the beginning of the ninth century.60 56

Originally Codex Urbinate 721; since the eighteenth century: BAV, Codex Urbinate 440. Thirteenth-century manuscript: BAV, Codex Vaticanus 5269. 57 Monticolo, ‘I manoscritti e le fonti’, pp. 84–92. 58 Berto, The Political and Social Vocabulary, p. 244. 59 i.e. Fasoli, ‘Le origini della storiografia veneziana’, p. 30. 60 Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xviii, pp. 239–68. Maskarinec, ‘Who Were the Romans?’, pp. 336–54.

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Paul’s Roman history, written in sixteen books around 760, narrates the history of Roman Empire from the mythical reign of Janus up to that of Emperor Justinian (r. 527–565); the seventeenth book is a compendium of Paul’s passages from the Historia Langobardorum dealing with the history of the Eastern Empire, continuing the same author’s Historia Romana up to the eighth century. The opening sections of the Istoria Veneticorum are of paramount importance for understanding how John used the models offered by earlier authors in order to represent the past of his own community. He took passages from Bede’s Chronica maiora concerning the history of the Eastern Empire, its relationship with Rome, and its conflict with the Arabs in the Mediterranean; the flood of the Tiber in 590 is also recorded, as well as the pilgrimages of individual Angles and Saxons to Rome.61 However, John relied much more frequently on the Historia Langobardorum. Paul’s narrative concerned the few glories and many misfortunes of a barbarian gens, but the fragments that John incorporated into the Istoria Veneticorum were in their original context rather marginal. In John’s work, these secondary plots concerned with the imperial fringes of the Lombard kingdom were skilfully joined together in order to narrate a Roman tale. John’s agency becomes even clearer once we notice him correcting lapses in his sources.62 Using the great achievement of Paul the Deacon as a model, John aimed to write an alternative history of the Lombard settlement and its consequences. In this new context, the Venetians, who, along with the other Romans, had in Paul the Deacon’s version been the faceless victims of the Lombards, now became the protagonists. Paul described his ancestors’ arrival in the Venetian lagoons under the leadership of the warlike King Alboin at Narses’ invitation and the subsequent flight of the Aquileian patriarch. In contrast, John the Deacon, like the anonymous author of the Translatio s. Marci, accomplished a twist of perspective by which Narses became the main protagonist.63 In the meanwhile, Alboin — who was the hero of the Historia Langobardorum’s first two books — becomes a marginal character stepping into the background and who receives only a single mention.64

61

Bede, Chronica maiora, ed. by Mommsen, s.a. 557–60, 567, 578, 588–92, pp. 316–21. Colombi, Storie di cronache e reliquie, p. 129, i.e. Iustinianus corrected to Iustinus. 63 Translatio s. Marci, ed. by Colombi, iv–v, pp. 49–51. 64 John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, i.4, p. 52: ‘et egressi cum Alboin rege suo Italiam possessuri adveniunt’. 62

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A Roman History Made Barbarian Passages and information from Paul the Deacon’s writings did not only serve as the backbone of John’s Venetian history. It also seems that John made Paul’s narrative structures his own. Stefano Gasparri thoughtfully suggested that John’s account of Duke Paulicius’s election echoes the one of the first Lombard king, Agilmund, as narrated by Paul.65 Paul wrote that the Lombards desired to be no longer guided by dukes, and therefore raised a king to rule over them.66 In his Istoria Veneticorum, John in turn narrated how the Venetians believed it dishonourable to live under the authority of tribunes and therefore elected Paulicius as the first duke of the Venetiae.67 I would add that a further similarity between the two deacons’ texts is John’s odd tale of the five years when the duchy was ruled by masters of soldiers (magistri militum), which closely echoes Paul’s episode of the ten years following the murder of King Cleph (r. 572–574) during which the Lombards were ruled by dukes.68 It was following the blueprint of the Historia Langobardorum that John the Deacon explained the settlement of the wild marshes of the lagoons as the result of a migration triggered by the Lombard conquest of Italy. As the Lombards searched for their lost fatherland in Pannonia and frozen Scandinavia, so the Venetians looked back to the great and crumbling cities of Roman Antiquity. This was suggestively expressed in John’s catalogue of the singulae insulae of the lagoons, showing how John was able to use the structure of Paul’s account to frame his own, original material.69 The inventory, which lists the larger and most significant settlements of the duchy from north to south, is embedded in John’s master narrative of the birth of Venice according to which every settlement on the water was founded by the inhabitants of a particular city of Antiquity.70 They were the Venetici at the origins of Venice. 65

Gasparri, ‘The First Dukes’, pp. 12–13. Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, i.14, p. 54: ‘nolentes iam ultra Langobardi esse sub ducibus’. 67 John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, ii.2, p. 94: ‘omnes Venetici, una cum patriarcha et episcopis convenientes, communi consilio determinaverunt quod dehinc honorabilius esse sub ducibus quam sub tribunis manere’. 68 John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, ii.11, p. 98; Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, iii.32, p. 90. 69 John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, i.6, pp. 54–55; Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ii.14–24, pp. 81–86. 70 John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, i.6, p. 54: ‘verum etiam ducatus dignitatem atque episcopati sedem habere et possidere videtur’. Monticolo, ‘I manoscritti e le fonti’, p. 144. 66

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While the label Venetici must have triggered an association with the province of the imperial past, in John’s narrative it gained strong ethnic connotations.71 On the one hand, it was as a result of the shattering of the old Roman provincial order that the Venetians emerged from the Roman past. On the other, relying on the history of Paul the Deacon, John appropriated for the Venetians the etymology of the name Venetici as explained in the sixth century by Jordanes, who described its meaning as ‘praiseworthy’.72 Jordanes, however, had been referring to the ancient gens who had inhabited the region in preRoman times. It became nevertheless descriptive of the Venetians: Jordanes’s etymology was constantly repeated in Venetian historiography; in addition to its reception by the anonymous author of the Translatio s. Marci and John the Deacon, the story was also recorded by Constantine Porphyrogenitus and even reached the Pyrenees, where it was included in the hagiography dedicated to Peter I Orseolo.73 In the Translatio s. Marci, Jordanes’s short entry is greatly elaborated becoming among the cornerstones of the later myth of the Serenissima.74 According to the Translatio’s author, the Venetians are a gens remarkable for its nobility, faithfulness, and devotion to the divine teachings. In their land, there are no thieves, and nobody harasses the other; only God’s will is accomplished in Venice. * * * In the years following Duke Peter II Orseolo’s death in 1009, John the Deacon wrote a history of Venice starting with its first settlement and continuing up to his own day. The result is a highly informative source, which constituted the narrative framework for the history of the early medieval Adriatic and its neighbouring regions. John integrated different sources into his narrative, most of which remain unknown to us. When dealing with more recent events, John was able to create a rich and colourful narrative, but when addressing Venice’s more distant history, his material became progressively scantier. Writing about these bygone years, John had to rely most strongly on Paul the Deacon’s 71

For the Romans as a gens: Pohl, ‘Introduction’, pp. 7–8, 26–27. John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, i.5, pp. 52–54; Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, ii.14, p. 81; Jordanes, Getica, ed. by Mommsen, 148, pp. 96–97. 73 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, ed. by Moravcsik and Jenkins, 28, p. 118; Gesta vel obitus domni Petri, ed. by Ortali, 2, p. 3. 74 Translatio s. Marci, ed. by Colombi, vii.2, p. 52. Gina Fasoli, ‘Nacita di un mito’; Cracco, ‘I testi agiografici’, p. 183. 72

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Historia Langobardorum, the eighth-century tale of the Lombards’ origins and misfortunes. Not only did Paul’s Historia become the most important source for the oldest history of Venice, this story also had a fundamental influence on John’s whole narrative structure. The role of Paul’s Historia speaks for the unitary character of John’s Istoria Veneticorum. While some propose that the narrative found in the thirteenth-century Vatican manuscript is a later addition to the original text, it was in reality authored by John the Deacon and was simply absent from the oldest manuscripts. John opened his narrative by quoting Paul the Deacon, recounting that there were two Venetiae: one stretching to Pannonia, which had been evangelized by St Mark and whose metropolis was Aquileia; the second lying between the islands of the Adriatic, wonderfully located, inhabited by many and surrounded by the waves.75 John, as it was the discourse of the time, knew that the second Venice, his home on the water, descended from the older Roman province and the majestic ruins of the imperial past, which he could admire across the turbid waters surrounding their timber houses and boats of the lagoon settlement. In order to bridge the divide between the imposing architecture of the bygone years and the cloudy waters where the Venetians were living, John looked at the fragments that Paul had dedicated to the Romans living at the fringes of the Lombard kingdom. In order to build the history of his own people, he collected and assembled those episodes and characters, which in the original contexts were blurred and marginal. Bringing these old fragments into the spotlight of history, John built a new narrative, creating a most original interpretation of the past.

75

John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, i.2, p. 48: ‘Secunda vero Venecia est illa, quam apud insulas scimus, que Adriatici maris collecta sinu, interfluentibus undis, positione mirabili, multitudine populi feliciter habitant’.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Bede, Chronica maiora, ed. by Theodor Mommsen, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Auctores antiquissimi, 13 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1898), pp. 247–327 Cassiodorus, Epistolae, ed. by Andrea Giardina, Giovanni Cecconi, and Ignazio Tantillo, Cassiodoro: Varie, v: libri XI, XII (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2015) Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, ed. and trans. by Gyula Moravcsik and Romilly J. H. Jenkins, Corpus fontium historiae Byzantinae, 1 (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1967) Gesta vel obitus Domni Petri ducis Venecie atque Dalmacie, ed. by Gherardo Ortalli, Fonti per la storia dell’Italia medievale, Antiquitates, 46 (Rome: ISIME, 2016) Honorantiae civitatis Papie, ed. by Carl-Richard Brühl and Cinzio Violante, Die ‘Honorantie civitatis Papie’: Transkription, Edition, Kommentar (Cologne: Böhlau, 1983) John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. by Luigi Andrea Berto, Fonti per la storia dell’Italia medievale, 2 (Rome: Zanichelli, 1999); [with the title Chronicon], ed.  by Giovanni Monticolo, in Cronache veneziane antichissime, Fonti per la storia dell’Italia, 9 (Rome: ISIME, 1890), pp. 57–171; [with the title Chronicon Venetum], ed, by Georg Heinrich Pertz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores, 7 (Hanover: Hahn, 1846), pp. 4–38 Jordanes, Getica, ed.  by Theodor Mommsen, Iordanis Romana et Getica, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Auctores antiquissimi, 5.1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1882), pp. 53–138 Louis II, Diplomata, ed. by Konrad Wanner, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Diplomata, Die Urkunden der Karolinger, 4, Ludwig II (Munich: Hahn, 1994) Notker of Saint Gall, Gesta Karoli, ed. by Hans F. Haefele, in Notker der Stammler: Taten Kaiser Karls des Großen (Notkeri Balbuli Gesta Karoli Magni imperatoris), Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, n.s., 12 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1959), pp. 1–93 Pactum Lotharii, ed. by Alfred Boretius, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Capitularia, 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1897), pp. 130–35 Peter Damian, Vita beati Romualdi, ed. by Giovanni Tabacco, Fonti per la storia dell’Italia, 94 (Rome: ISME, 1954) Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Ludwig Bethmann and Georg Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Langobardorum (Hanover: Weidmann, 1878), pp. 12–187 ——  , Historia Romana, ed.  by Amedeo Crivellucci, Fonti per la storia dell’Italia, 51 (Rome: ISIME, 1914) ——  , Liber de episcopis Mettensibus, ed.  by Damien Kempf, Dallas Medieval Texts and Translation, 19 (Leuven: Peeters, 2013) Testament of Ursus, ed. by Franco Gaeta, in S. Lorenzo, Fonti per la storia di Venezia II: Archivi ecclesiastici, Diocesi castellana, 1, i (Venice: Comitato Pubblicazione delle Fonti relative alla Storia di Venezia, 1959), pp. 5–12 Translatio s. Marci, ed.  by Emanuela Colombi, in Storie di cronache e reliquie nella Venetia altomedievale, Antichità altoadriatiche: Monografie, 6 (Trieste: Editreg, 2012), pp. 16–63

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Secondary Studies Ammerman, Albert J., and Charlie E. McClennen, eds, Venice before the before San Marco: Recent Studies on the Origins of the City (Colgate: Colgate University, 2001) Arnaldi, Girolamo, and Lidia Capo, ‘I cronisti di Venezia e della Marca Trevigiana dalle origini alla fine del secolo xiii’, in Storia della cultura veneta, i: Dalle origini al Trecento, ed. by Girolamo Arnaldi (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1976), pp. 387–423 Azzara, Claudio, Venetiae: determinazione di un’area regionale fra Antichità e alto Medioevo, Studi veneti, 4 (Treviso: Canova, 1994) ‘Bardanes Turkos’, in Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit Online, no.  766

[accessed 24 April 2022] Berto, Luigi Andrea, The Political and Social Vocabulary of John the Deacon’s Istoria Veneticorum, Cursor mundi, 12 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) —— , In Search of the First Venetians: Prosopography of Early Medieval Venice, Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 41 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014) ——  , ‘Segreti a Venezia nell’alto Medioevo: la visita di Ottone  III e il “codice segreto” della “Istoria Veneticorum” di Giovanni Diacono’, in Secrets and Discovery in the Middle Ages, ed. by José F. Meirinhos, Celia López Alcalde, and João Rebalde, Textes et études du Moyen Âge, 90 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 213–22 Besta, Enrico, ‘Sulla composizione della cronaca veneziana attribuita al diacono Giovanni’, Atti del r. Istituto veneto di scienze lettere ed arti, 73 (1914), 775–802 Borca, Federico, ‘Il caso dell’alto Adriatico: un “unicum” nell’antichità classica?’, Quaderni di storia, 44 (1996), 115–45 Borri, Francesco, ‘Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! Foundation Myths and origines gentium in the Adriatic Arc’, in Post­Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 215–70 Carile, Antonio, ‘La città di Venezia nasce dalle cronache’, in Le città italiane tra la tarda Antichità e l’alto Medioevo, ed. by Andrea Augenti, Biblioteca di archeologia medievale, 20 (Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio, 2006), pp. 137–49 Cessi, Roberto, Venezia ducale, i: Duca e popolo (Venice: Officine grafiche Ferrari, 1963) Colombi, Emanuela, Storie di cronache e reliquie nella Venetia altomedievale, Antichità altoadriatiche: Monografie, 6 (Trieste: Editreg, 2012) Cracco, Giorgio, ‘I testi agiografici: Religione e politica nella Venezia del Mille’, in Storia di Venezia Storia di Venezia: dalle origini alla caduta, i: Origini–Età ducale, ed.  by Lelia Cracco Ruggini and others (Turin: Treccani, 1992), pp. 923–61 Dennig-Zettler, Regina, and Alfons Zettler, ‘La traslazione di San Marco a Venezia e a Reichenau’, in San Marco: aspetti storici e agiografici, ed. by Antonio Niero (Venice: Marsilio, 1996), pp. 689–709 Fasoli, Gina, ‘Nascita di un mito (il mito di Venezia nella storiografia)’, in Studi storici in onore di G. Volpe, ii (Florence: Sansoni, 1958), pp. 445–79 —— , ‘I fondamenti della storiografia veneziana’, in La storiografia veneziana fino al secolo XVI: aspetti e problemi, ed. by Agostino Pertusi (Florence: Olschki, 1970), pp. 11–44

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Gasparri, Stefano, ‘Venezia fra l’Italia bizantina e il regno italico: la civitas e l’assemblea’, in Venezia: itinerari per la storia della città, ed. by Stefano Gasparri, Giovanni Levi, and Pierandrea Moro (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997), pp. 61–82 —— , ‘I testamenti nell’Italia settentrionale fra viii e ix secolo’, in Sauver son âme et se perpétuer: transmission du patrimoine et mémoire au haut Moyen Âge, ed. by François Bougard, Cristina La Rocca, and Régine Le Jan, Collection de l’École française de Rome, 351 (Rome: École française de Rome, 2005), pp. 97–113 ——  , ‘The First Dukes and the Origins of Venice’, in Venice and its Neighbors from the 8th to 11th Century: Through Renovation and Continuity, ed. by Sauro Gelichi and Stefano Gasparri, The Medieval Mediterranean, 111 (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 5–26 Gelichi, Sauro, ‘Venezia tra archeologia e storia: la costruzione di un’identità urbana’, in Le città italiane tra la tarda Antichità e l’alto Medioevo, ed. by Andrea Augenti, Biblioteca di archeologia medievale, 20 (Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio, 2006), pp. 151–83 Görich, Knut, ‘Heimliche Herrscherbegegnung: Kaiser Otto III. besucht Venedig (1001)’, in Venedig als Bühne: Organisation, Inszenierung und Wahrnehmung europäischer Herrscherbesuche, ed. by Romedio Schmitz-Esser, Knut Görich, and Jochen Johrendt, Studi: Schriftenreihe des deutschen Studienzentrums in Venedig, n.s., 16 (Regensburg: Schnell und Steiner, 2017), pp. 51–66 Lambert, David, ‘The Barbarians in Salvian’s De Gubernatione Dei’, in Ethnicity and Culture in Late Antiquity, ed.  by Steven Mitchell and Geoffrey Greatrex (London: Classical Press of Wales, 2000), pp. 103–15 La Rocca, Maria Cristina, ‘Città scomparse in area veneta nell’alto medioevo: dati archeologici, fonti scritte e memoria storiografica’, in L’Adriatico dalla tarda antichità all’età carolingia, ed. by Gian Pietro Brogiolo and Paolo Delogu (Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio, 2005), pp. 287–307 Lascaratos, John, and Spyros Marketos, ‘The Penalty of Blinding during Byzantine Times’, Documenta Ophthalmologica, 81 (1992), 133–44 Maskarinec, Maya, ‘Who Were the Romans? Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy’, in Post­Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 297–363 Mazzarino, Santo, ‘Il concetto storico-geografico dell’unità veneta’, in Storia della cultura veneta, i: Dalle origini al Trecento, ed.  by Gianfranco Folena (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1976), pp. 1–28 McCleary, Nelson, ‘Note storiche ed archeologiche sul testo della Translatio Sancti Marci’, Memorie storiche forogiuliesi, 27–29 (1931–1933), 223–64 Monticolo, Giovanni, ‘I manoscritti e le fonti della Cronaca del diacono Giovanni’, Bullettino dell’Istituto storico italiano, 9 (1890), 37–328 Ortalli, Gherardo, Petrus  I. Orseolo und seine Zeit: Anmerkungen zur Geschichte der Beziehungen zwischen Venedig und dem Ottonischen Reich, Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani: Quaderni, 39 (Venice: Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani, 1990) —— , ‘I cronisti e la determinazione di Venezia città’, in Storia di Venezia, ii: L’età del Comune, ed. by Gherardo Ortalli and Giorgio Cracco (Rome: Treccani, 1995), pp. 767–82

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Pavan, Massimiliano, and Girolamo Arnaldi, ‘Le origini dell’identità lagunare’, in Storia di Venezia: Dalle origini alla caduta, i: Origini–Età ducale, ed. by Lelia Cracco Ruggini and others (Turin: Treccani, 1992), pp. 409–56 Pazienza, Annamaria, ‘Archival Documents as Narrative: The Sources of the Istoria Veneticorum and the Plea of Rižana’, in Venice and its Neighbors from the 8th to 11th Century: Through Renovation and Continuity, ed.  by Sauro Gelichi and Stefano Gasparri, The Medieval Mediterranean, 111 (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 27–50 Pohl, Walter, ‘Introduction: Early Medieval Romanness — a Multiple Identity’, in Transformations of Romanness: Early Medieval Regions and Identities, ed. by Walter Pohl and others, Millennium Studies, 71 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), pp. 3–40 Pohl, Walter, and Maximilian Diesenberger, eds, Eugippius und Severin: Der Autor, der Text und der Heilige, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 2 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2001) Pozza, Marco, ‘Il testamento del vescovo Orso (853 febbraio): un documento genuino o falsificato?’, in Historiae: Scritti per Gherardo Ortalli, ed. by Claudio Azzara and others, Studi di storia, 1 (Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2013), pp. 49–59 Reimitz, Helmut, ‘Die Konkurrenz der Ursprünge in der fränkischen Historiographie’, in Die Suche nach den Ursprüngen: Von der Bedeutung des frühen Mittelalters, ed. by Walter Pohl, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 8 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2004), pp. 191–209 Rosada, Bruno, ‘Il Chronicon Venetum di Giovanni Diacono’, Ateneo veneto, 178 (1990), 79–94 Sot, Michel, Gesta episcoporum / gesta abbatum, Typologie des sources du Moyen Âge occidental, 37 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981) Winckler, Katharina von, ‘“Wie aus dem Haus der Ägyptischen Knechtschaft”: Römer, Barbaren und Migration im Donauraum nach der Vita Severini’, in Wandel durch Migration?, ed.  by Hans Geisler, Arbeiten zur Archäologie Süddeutschlands, 29 (Munich: Dr Faustus, 2016), pp. 29–38

The ‘Dioclean Tradition’ in Serbian Literature of the Early Thirteenth Century Aleksandar Uzelac

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everal early states emerged in the centuries after the Slavic migrations to the Balkans. These acquired their names in two ways: either from tribal denominations — as was the case with the Croats, Bulgars, and Serbs — or from geographic toponyms or hydronyms. The latter included Bosnia as well as the regions that emerged in the eastern Adriatic between the Cetina River to the north and the Bojana River to the south — Narenta, Zachloumia, Travounia, and Dioclea. Bosnia and Narenta took their names from rivers; Zachloumia, also known as Hum, from the Proto-Slavic term za hŭlmŭ — ‘beyond the hill’; Dioclea or Dioclitia, situated between Lake Skadar and the Adriatic Sea, roughly corresponding to the southern parts of the contemporary Republic of Montenegro, from the name of the Roman municipium and episcopal seat. Only the name of Travounia, situated between Zachloumia in the north-west and Dioclea in the south-east, is of uncertain origin; a possible etymology connects it to the ProtoSlavic word treba (sacrifice) or trebište (altar).1 Dioclea was also known under the name Zeta. The second name, Zeta, attested in sources since the late eleventh century, also originated from the name of a river.2 At approximately the end of 1

Bešić and others, eds, Istorija Crne Gore, i, pp.  316–17, 332, 359–60; Blagojević, ‘Nemanjići i državnost Duklje’, pp. 8–9; Antonović, ‘Od Duklje do Zete’, p. 89. 2 The name Zeta is first attested in the Strategikon of Byzantine writer Kekaumenos, composed in c. 1080, Cecaumeni Strategicon, ed. by Wassilewsky and Jernstedt, 74, p. 27. Aleksandar Uzelac is Senior Research Associate at the Institute of History, Belgrade. Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000–1300, ed. by Walter Pohl, Veronika Wieser, and Francesco Borri, celama 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp.  389–411 FHG 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.130268

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the twelfth century, the name Rascia or Rassa appears as a synonym for Serbia; it probably stemmed from the name of the episcopal seat of Ras (Arsa in Late Antiquity).3 According to the De Administrando Imperio, a celebrated work attributed to the Byzantine emperor and writer Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (913–59), the inhabitants of Narenta, Zachloumia, and Travounia ‘originated from the unbaptized Serbs’. Dioclea, however, is conspicuously omitted in the enumeration of ‘Serbian’ lands: the information in the De Administrando Imperio about Dioclea did not go beyond basic geographic features and the names of its several cities.4 Byzantine sources of the eleventh century were more familiar with Dioclea, usually referring to the people there as ‘Serbs’, ‘Dalmatians’ or ‘Tribalians’. At that time, this small area of land became the centre of the statehood on the eastern shores of the Adriatic. ‘Archons’ or the princes of Dioclea are attested since the late tenth century,5 but it was only during the reign of Stefan Vojislav (c. 1034–1050) that they managed to successfully overthrow the Byzantine hegemony and lay the foundations for an independent state. Stefan Vojislav was succeeded by Mihailo (Michael, c. 1050–1081), often regarded as the first ‘Dioclean king’. Mihailo managed to obtain a royal crown from the pope some time before 1078.6 During the reign of his son Constantine Bodin (1081–1099), the state reached the peak of its power. His successors lost much of their influence due to internal struggles, 3

Dinić, ‘O nazivima srpske srednjovekovne države’, pp.  30–33; Kalić, Evropa i Srbi, pp. 95–110. 4 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, ed. by Moravcsik, xxxiii– xxxvi, pp. 160–65; Bešić and others, eds, Istorija Crne Gore, i, pp. 317–32; Novaković, ‘Duklja u spisu De administrando imperio’, pp. 75–86; Blagojević, ‘Nemanjići i državnost Duklje’, p. 9; Komatina, ‘Identitet Dukljana prema De administrando imperio’, pp. 33–46; Aleksić, Srpske zemlje pre Nemanjića, pp. 299-303. 5 The first historically attested archon or prince of Dioclea was a certain Peter, known only from his seal. He is usually identified with Petrislav, mentioned in the Chronicle of the Priest of Dioclea as the father of the historical ruler Jovan Vladimir (c. 990–1016), a contemporary of the Bulgarian emperor Samuil; see Gesta regum Sclavorum, ed. by Kunčer, xxxv, i, p. 124; Živković, Portreti srpskih vladara, p. 83. See also Aleksić, Srpske zemlje pre Nemanjića, pp. 104–05, 265. 6 Codex diplomaticus, ed. by Smičiklas, no. 123, i, p. 158; Bešić and others, eds, Istorija Crne Gore, i, pp. 393–94; Komatina, Crkva i država u srpskim zemljama, pp. 138–39. In the Church of St Michael in Ston (Stagno), built on the border of Travounia and Zachoumia, there is a portrait of a ruler with a crown, usually identified with Mihailo, Radojčić, Portreti srpskih vla­ dara, pp. 11–12; Stevović, ‘O prvobitnom izgledu i vremenu gradnje crkve Sv. Mihajla u Stonu’, pp. 175–95. However, the portrait is probably of an earlier date, and identification with Stefan Vojislav is recently proposed, Tomas, ‘Nova promišljanja’, pp. 48–52.

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pressure from the Byzantine Empire, as well as the growing strength of neighbouring Serbia, or Rascia. Almost everything known about these successors comes from the Chronicle of the Priest of Dioclea, allegedly composed in the late twelfth century, but with an uncertain date of origin and background (purportedly a Latin translation of a lost Slavic manuscript), and of dubious authorship that still elicits much controversy among historians.7 In the first half of the twelfth century, Rascia acquired the dominant political role among the polities in the eastern Adriatic. Its rulers managed to establish their control over the principalities of Travounia and Zachloumia and gradually to overshadow their counterparts in Dioclea. In the twelfth century the political system in the lands of Rascia, Travounia, and Zachloumia (but not in Dioclea) rested upon the principle of the so-called shared principalities. In essence, this meant that the ruler, who held the supreme title of grand župan or arch-župan, shared his power with his close cousins, who had titles of lesser rank, usually that of knez (prince). The knezes or princes had their own territories; sometimes these corresponded to earlier proto-states such as Zachloumia or Travounia, and sometimes they were formed by gathering several smaller units — župas — under a single power and authority. There was no clear principle of inheritance, although primogeniture was practised more often than seniority. This system was promoted in particular by the Byzantine central government in order to control disobedient Serbian rulers and to strengthen the factions that were more willing to cooperate with the empire. Despite frequent meddling of the imperial government in internal Serbian affairs, the principle that the supreme rule belonged to the members of the same family was nonetheless respected.8 Stefan (Stephen) Nemanja was elevated to power according to this principle and with Byzantine support, together with his three brothers Stracimir, Miroslav, and the oldest, Tihomir, who took over the title of the grand župan.9 7

The latest critical edition of this text is Gesta regum Sclavorum, ed. by Kunčer, i, pp. 1–181. Among recent dissenting opinions, one should note the conclusions of T. Živković, according to whom the text was composed at the beginning of the fourteenth century by a certain Roger, who for a short time purportedly held the office of the archbishop of Bar (Antivari); Gesta regum Sclavorum, ii, pp. 339–72. See also the opinion of S. Bujan, who argues that the text is nothing other than a late sixteenth-century fabrication of the Dubrovnik historian Mauro Orbini; Bujan, ‘La Chronique du prêtre de Dioclée’, pp. 5–38. 8 Blagojević, ‘Srpske udeone kneževine’, pp.  45–62; Pirivatrić, ‘Manojlo  I Komnin’, pp. 89–118; cf. Živković, Portreti srpskih vladara, pp. 188–92. 9 In addition to Nemanja, the ruling name Stefan, which probably entered the Rascian dynasty through Hungarian influence, is also attested among his brothers — Stracimir and

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Nemanja’s father was a member of the side branch of the ruling lineage in Rascia, and he and his brothers were also related to Bodin’s descendants in Dioclea, probably via their mother’s side.10 In 1168, Nemanja’s ambitions led to an armed conflict between him and his close cousins. The oldest brother Tihomir died in a battle that took place near the village of Pantino in Kosovo, while Stracimir and Miroslav eventually submitted to Nemanja, who took over the supreme title from his deceased brother. Although he owed his rise to power to the Byzantine emperor, Nemanja, like his predecessors, did not hesitate to use the favourable conditions to turn against Constantinople. His initial attempts were not successful and at one point, he was captured and brought as a prisoner to the city on the Bosphorus. After Emperor Manuel’s death in 1180, Nemanja again began to pursue energetic political activities. He took part in various alliances and anti-Byzantine coalitions, with his diplomatic ventures only overshadowed by the many military campaigns taking place in the penultimate decade of the twelfth century. At first, Nemanja found a useful ally in Hungary; around 1185, he allied himself with the Bulgarian rebels led by the Assen family, which would eventually establish the Second Bulgarian Empire; on the eve of the Third Crusade he entered into negotiations with Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa. In the end, Nemanja did not manage to wipe out Byzantine political influence in Serbia completely. His forces suffered defeat at the Battle of Morava in 1191 and he was forced to negotiate a compromise. Nevertheless, the de facto independent position of Serbia was acknowledged and only a facade of Byzantine supreme authority was preserved, through the marriage of Nemanja’s middle son Stefan with the Byzantine princess Eudokia. Nemanja’s achievements were duly noted by his two sons, who were also his first biographers — Sava, who became the founder of the autocephalous Orthodox Church in the Nemanjić lands and its first archbishop (1219), and Miroslav, i.e. Stefan Stracimir and Stefan Miroslav, Stari srpski zapisi i natpisi, ed. by Stojanović, no.  10, i, pp.  5–6; Tomović, Morfologija ćiriličkih natpisa na Balkanu, p.  37; MarjanovićDušanić, Vladarska ideologija Nemanjića, pp. 43–44. 10 Due to the lack of sources, the precise degree of kinship is impossible to determine with certainty. There are various hypotheses about the place of Nemanja’s lineage in Rascia’s ruling dynasty. According to some opinions, Nemanja’s father may have been the son of the grand župan Vukan (c. 1090–1112), his nephew Stefan Vukan or Vukan’s successor Uroš I (c. 1113–1145); see Leśny, ‘Stefan Zavida als Sohn von Uroš I’, pp. 38–49; Živković, Forging Unity, pp. 313–29. It is usually assumed that the marital relations between Nemanja’s family and Bodin’s descendants were established through the marriage of the Dioclean king Gradihna and an unnamed Rascian princess. The marriage is recorded in Gesta regum Sclavorum, ed. by Kunčer, xlv, i, p. 174.

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Stefan, who succeeded Nemanja to the throne and became the first crowned king of the Nemanjić dynasty in 1217. These two biographies, or, to be precise, hagiographies, represent the most influential examples of the early Serbian literature that emerged in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. In terms of thematic range and conceptual framework, the patterns of these texts relied on existing Byzantine models, but they were also merged with the already established hagiographical traditions of the Slavic Church.11 The texts of Sava and Stefan generally fall into the same genre and are mutually connected through literary, political, and family ties. Nonetheless, there are several striking differences between them. Sava’s Vita Simeonis, written in 1207, was designed as a preface to the typikon of the Studenica Monastery, founded by Nemanja.12 In contrast to Stefan, however, Nemanja is never referred to as a saint by Sava. Stefan concluded his Vita after the canonization of their father, nine years later than the text by Sava; the last events Stefan mentions are his father’s negotiations with the Latin emperor Henry of Flanders (1206–1216) and the Hungarian king Andrew II (1205–1235), which most probably took place in 1215.13 Sava’s biography can still be considered as falling largely within the genre of classical hagiography, despite its implied dynastic claim. By contrast, Stefan’s text, although framed in an ornate rhetorical style and enriched with many borrowings from the Bible, primarily served a secular purpose. It was oriented towards Nemanja’s worldly life rather than his monastic one, and also encompassed important moments from the early reign of Stefan himself.14 Therefore, due to the different concepts and aims, Stefan, although familiar with Sava’s biography, did not primarily rely on his brother’s work.15 His hagiography of Nemanja served as a basis of another text dedicated to the founder of the dynasty, a text written in 1264 by the Athonite monk Domentian, who was Sava’s disciple. In terms of actual biographical data, Domentian’s Life of St Simeon does not go beyond Stefan’s text; its extant manuscripts also contain an earlier and more prominent work by the same author — his Life of St Sava, written in either 1243 or 1254 (the latter date being the more probable).16

11 12 13 14 15 16

Hafner, Studien, pp. 54–77; Birnbaum, ‘Byzantine Tradition Transformed’, pp. 244–48. Critical edition, Spisi Svetog Save, ed. by Ćorović, pp. 151–75. Critical edition, Stefan Prvovenčani, Sabrana dela, ed. by Jovanović, i–xx, pp. 14–107. Birnbaum, ‘Byzantine Tradition Transformed’, pp. 248–49. Ćorović, ‘Međusobni odnošaj biografija Stefana Nemanje’, pp. 1–5. Critical edition, Domentijan, Žitije Sv. Save, ed. by Jovanović, pp. 1–435.

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* * * In the works of Nemanja’s biographers, Dioclea (or Zeta) held an important place among Nemanja’s territorial acquisitions. This was due to personal and political reasons. Nemanja himself was born in Dioclea, at the time when his father Zavida had fled from Rascia in the face of political upheavals. Unlike other lands conquered (or liberated, from the Serbian perspective) by Nemanja, Dioclea had been the centre of the state that preceded the Nemanjić dynasty; last but not least, this area was the focus of internal struggles for power between Stefan and his older brother Vukan in Serbian lands at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Before we turn our attention to the place of Dioclea in the Nemanjić texts, some observations about the regional political developments in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries need to be briefly presented here. First, it is necessary to underline that the relations between Rascia and Dioclea during the twelfth century are shrouded in obscurity.17 The Chronicle of the Priest of Dioclea, marked by tacit anti-Rascian notes, follows events only to the beginning of the second half of the twelfth century.18 The last passages of the Chronicle, considered historically accurate, are dedicated to the Dioclean ruler Radoslav, who reigned under Byzantine patronage and did not bear the title of king as his predecessors had, but only that of prince. His possessions in Travounia and Zachloumia were taken over by Desa, the son of the grand župan of Rascia Uroš II (c. 1145–1162).19 Desa’s power in the maritime lands soon ended under unknown circumstances, and neither Radoslav nor his successor Mihailo managed to restore these lost domains. Mihailo, who also only carried the title of prince,20 did not have any influence in the coastal cities of Dioclea; during his reign supreme civil and military authority was in the hands of the Byzantine provincial governor — the dux of Dalmatia and Dioclea. One 17 A useful overview and some interesting hypotheses about political and economic aspects of these relations can be found in: Živković, Forging Unity, pp. 293–312. 18 According to the Chronicle, King Bodin installed two of his officials, the brothers Vukan and Mark, in Rascia. They swore an oath in their own name as well as that of their descendants that they would always obey Bodin and all his successors. Gesta regum Sclavorum, ed. by Kunčer, xlii, i, p. 162. Such an oath, absurd in its essence, was obviously constructed by the author of the Chronicle to express the dependency of Rascia on Dioclea. 19 Gesta regum Sclavorum, ed.  by Kunčer, xlvii, i, pp.  180; Blagojević, Srpske udeone kneževine, pp. 55–58; Živković, Portreti srpskih vladara, pp. 161–73. 20 Árpádkori új okmánytár, ed. by Wenzel, no. 89, vi, p. 139; Odabrani spomenici srpskog prava, ed. by Solovjev, no. 5, pp. 4–5; Tomović, Morfologija ćiriličkih natpisa na Balkanu, p. 34.

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of them has been recorded by name — a certain Izanacius (Isaacius?), who was present at the consecration of the Cathedral of St Tryphon in Kotor (Cattaro) in 1166.21 It is unknown whether Mihailo already became prince of Dioclea at the time, but neither he nor his predecessor are mentioned among the representatives of the secular and ecclesiastical elite present at the consecration. This indicates that in the second half of the twelfth century Bodin’s descendants had no power in Kotor; under their direct rule remained only the territories in the hinterland of the historical Dioclea.22 Mihailo’s political influence was just a shadow of the power wielded by his predecessors of the late eleventh century. It rested upon the military support of Byzantium, which disintegrated at the beginning of the penultimate decade of the twelfth century, following the death of Manuel I Komnenos. A letter from Gregory, the archbishop of Bar (Antivari), written in 1183, recorded how Mihailo was ‘hard pressed and threatened by his uncles’, undoubtedly Stefan Nemanja and his brother Miroslav, prince of Hum.23 Approximately at the same time, the Serbian grand župan finally ended what remained of the Dioclean state, liquidating Greek garrisons in the coastal cities and annexing these territories.24 These events are only described in Stefan’s biography of his father, but from other sources it is evident that the military operations in Dioclea were just part of the Nemanja’s campaigns on the Adriatic coast. In 1184 and 1185, Nemanja and Miroslav tried to conquer Dubrovnik (Ragusa), which also acknowledged the supreme authority of Constantinople, but they were unsuccessful. The peace treaty between Dubrovnik and the Serbian leaders was concluded on 27 September 1186. At that time, the city transferred its allegiance and put itself under the protection of William II the Good of Sicily (1166–1189).25 It was in Dubrovnik, out of Nemanja’s reach, that the arch21

Codex diplomaticus, ed. by Smičiklas, no. 98, ii, p. 102; for a general overview of the Byzantine possessions in the region during the reign of Manuel I Komnenos, see Goldstein, ‘Byzantine Rule in Dalmatia’, pp. 97–125; on the theme Dalmatia and Dioclea, see Ferluga, Vizantijska uprava u Dalmaciji, pp. 132–36, 140. 22 Blagojević, ‘Nemanjići i državnost Duklje’, pp. 11–12. 23 Árpádkori új okmánytár, ed. by Wenzel, no. 89, vi, p. 139; Ravić, ‘Pismo barskog episkopa Grgura’, pp. 183–90. In the same letter, Gregory complained about the hardships inflicted on Bar by the ‘magnus iupanus’ Nemanja. 24 It is accepted that the military operations in Dioclea ended before January 1186; at that time a plenipotentiary of the Serbian grand župan was already present in Kotor; Codex diplo­ maticus, ed. by Smičiklas, no. 194, ii, p. 198. 25 Codex diplomaticus, ed. by Smičiklas, no. 196, ii, pp. 201–02; Zbornik srednjovekovnih ćiriličkih povelja, ed. by Mošin, Ćirković, and Sindik, no. 1, i, pp. 45–48.

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bishop Gregory, Mihailo’s wife Desislava, as well as members of her retinue, found refuge after they had to escape from Dioclea.26 Not long thereafter, Dioclea was given as an appanage to Nemanja’s oldest son Vukan. He is mentioned as a ‘lord of Zeta’ in Nemanja’s donation to the city of Split (Spalato), issued in c. 1190.27 In the following years, Vukan appears in documentary sources as the ‘king of Dioclea and Dalmatia’. His title is attested in an 1195 inscription on the Church of St Lucas in Kotor, which reads: ‘built at the time of grand župan Nemanja, and his son Vukan, the king of Dioclea, Dalmatia, Travounia, Hvosno, and Toplica’.28 The territories that Vukan controlled were not limited to the Adriatic provinces of Dioclea and Travounia; they also included Hvosno, part of the modern south-west Kosovo region, and Toplica, in south-eastern Serbia.29 However, Vukan did not reign in his lands as a sovereign ruler — he was under the supreme authority of his father, as demonstrated in the inscription in the Church of St Lucas. At the state council convoked in Ras in 1196, Nemanja decided to abdicate; he took monastic vows and assumed the name Simeon; his wife Anne went with him to the monastery of Studenica, but Nemanja was not content to stay there for a long time. In late 1197 he moved to Mt Athos, where he joined his youngest son Sava, who as a teenager had chosen the spiritual life, residing as a monk in the Greek monastery of Vatopedi. Together they obtained permission from Emperor Alexios III (1195–1203) to build a new religious community on the site of the abandoned neighbouring monastery of Hilandarion or Hilandar. In the years to come, the rebuilt monastery would become the most important foundation of the Nemanjić dynasty.30 As Sava later related, in the council of Ras, Nemanja proclaimed his middle son Stefan as his successor, while Vukan was officially granted the title of veli knez or ‘grand prince’. Sava clearly intended to provide a balance between his two brothers by conveying how at the council, Nemanja ordered Vukan ‘to obey’ Stefan and Stefan ‘to respect’ his older 26

Odabrani spomenici srpskog prava, ed. by Solovjev, no. 5, pp. 4–5. Zbornik srednjovekovnih ćiriličkih povelja, ed. by Mošin, Ćirković, and Sindik, no. 7, i, pp. 63–64. The donation is preserved only in a later Latin transcript made by Croatian historian Johannes Lucius (1604–1679); Dinić, Tri povelje iz ispisa Ivana Lučića, pp. 69–70. 28 ‘Sub tempore domini Nemane magni iupani et filii sui Velcani, regi Dioclie, Dalmatie, Tribunie, Toplize et Cosne’, Sindik, ‘O političkim i društvenim prilikama u Kotoru’, p. 14; Tomović, ‘Natpis na Crkvi sv. Luke u Kotoru’, p. 26; Bubalo, ‘Titule Vukana Nemanjića’, p. 80. 29 Blagojević, ‘Srpska administrativna podela Kosova i Metohije’, pp.  134–36; Mišić, ‘Toplica u tituli velikog kneza Vukana Nemanjića’, pp. 19–25. 30 Barišić, ‘Hronološki problemi oko godine Nemanjine smrti’, pp. 40–48. 27

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brother.31 Nemanja’s decision was usually explained by the fact that Stefan was married to the Byzantine princess Eudokia, that he was endowed with the prestigious title of sebastocrator by the court in Constantinople, and that his fatherin-law Alexios became emperor in 1195. Nonetheless, it is more probable that Vukan, born before Nemanja became grand župan, was never considered his successor, whereas Stefan, born after Nemanja’s elevation to power, was designated as heir apparent, even before he married Eudokia.32 In the following years, the precarious balance between the two centres of power in the Serbian lands was maintained. Vukan possessed his own court and chancery; he led an active foreign policy, staunchly supported the local ecclesiastical elite, and conveyed the church council in his lands in 1199 with the blessings of the Pope Innocent III, in order to promote the aspirations of the Archbishopric of Bar. In the papal letters issued in the years 1199 and 1200, Vukan was acknowledged as the ‘glorious king of Dioclea and Dalmatia’, although it remains unknown whether he just assumed the title or received a formal coronation.33 In several documents originating from an archive in Kotor and issued between 1197 and 1200, Vukan also appears as a ‘king’, without any mention of his brother.34 It is usually assumed that Stefan had no effective power in Vukan’s domains, but the semblance of unity of the state was nonetheless preserved and, at least in the eyes of the pope, Stefan’s supreme jurisdiction on the shores of the eastern Adriatic was formally acknowledged. At the same time, he recommended his legates, the chaplain John of Casamari and the subdeacon Simon, to Vukan, Innocent III wrote with the same purpose to Stefan, ‘grand župan of Serbia and his wife’.35 31

Spisi Svetog Save, ed. by Ćorović, pp. 157–59. Marjanović-Dušanić, Vladarska ideologija Nemanjića, pp. 105–07. The fact that Stefan’s full name was also ‘Stefan Nemanja’ (Spisi Svetog Save, ed. by Ćorović, pp. 157, 172, 173) circumstantially confirms the notion that he was predestined to be the father’s heir from birth. 33 ‘Karissimo in christo filio Wulcano illustri regi Dalmatie et Dioclie’; ‘W. eadem gratia Dioclie atque Dalmatie rex’; ‘Karissimi in Christo filii nostri Vulcani Dioclie regis illustris’, Vetera monumenta Slavorum Meridionalium, ed. by Theiner, ix, x, xxii, i, pp. 5, 6, 13; Bubalo, ‘Titule Vukana Nemanjića’, pp. 81–82. 34 ‘sub tempore domini nostri Velcanni, Dioclie, Dalmacie, Tribunie atque Toplizze incliti regis’; ‘sub tempore regis Velcanni’; ‘sub tempore domini nostri regis Velcanni’, Codex diplomati­ cus, ed. by Smičiklas, nos 270, 305, 318, ii, pp. 287, 324, 342; Blagojević, ‘Nemanjići i državnost Duklje’, p. 16. 35 Vetera monumenta Slavorum Meridionalium, ed. by Theiner, ix, xi, i, p. 6; Komatina, Crkva i država u srpskim zemljama, pp. 222–23. 32

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It was only Nemanja’s authority, strongly felt even in a far-away monastery in Greece, that prevented open conflict between Vukan and Stefan. After he died in Hilandar (13 February 1199) there was nothing to stop the escalation. A clear indication of the changes is preserved in a document from Kotor dated 1201, when the Venetian citizen Lauro Ziani, elected as comes in the city, pledged an oath of fealty to Stefan and his sons.36 The conspicuous omission of Vukan may suggest that at that time, Stefan had already made the first moves to disinherit his brother. The civil war soon began. Initially, Vukan gained the upper hand. He managed to secure the support of the Hungarian king Emeric (1196–1204) and to take control of the Serbian capital Ras, while Stefan had to abandon his possessions. Around 1202, Vukan again turned to the pope, this time as a ‘grand župan of Serbia’.37 His ‘degradation’ in rank is also attested in a domestic source, a gloss inserted in the so-called Vukan’s Gospel (despite its name, the manuscript was written for Stefan in Ras at the end of the twelfth century), where a praise to the ‘grand župan Vuk, the ruler of all Serbian lands, the Zeta region and the maritime cities’ has been inserted by the hand of an unknown scribe.38 The change in Vukan’s title can be easily explained. His royal title was limited only to the coastal lands of Dioclea and Travounia; it did not have any weight in the Serbian interior and Vukan was fully aware of that. Nemanja’s oldest son was not content with the title of grand župan; he actively aspired to be crowned king of Serbia. The same goal was expressed by Stefan, possibly as early as 1199.39 Innocent III was unwilling to respond positively to Stefan’s pleas, but after Vukan took control over Ras, the pope readily gave his full support to the older brother. He sent a request to the Hungarian archbishop of Kalocsa to perform Vukan’s coronation. It never took place, either because of the reluctance of his ally King Emeric, who himself began to posture as king of Serbia, or more probably because Vukan’s position soon became precarious.40 In the meantime, Stefan aligned himself with a Hungarian adversary — the Bulgarian ruler Kaloyan (1197–1207) and eventually with his help managed to renew the war. Although details of the events have not been preserved in the 36

Sindik, ‘O političkim i društvenim prilikama u Kotoru’, pp. 15–16. Vetera monumenta Slavorum Meridionalium, ed. by Theiner, xxxii, i, pp. 18–19. 38 Stari srpski zapisi i natpisi, ed. by Stojanović, no. 7, i, p. 5. 39 Stefan’s plea to obtain the crown was explicitly stated in a papal letter from 1204 sent to the Hungarian king with respect to past events: Vetera monumenta Slavorum meridionalium, ed. by Theiner, lvii, i, p. 36; Komatina, Crkva i država u srpskim zemljama, pp. 250–51. 40 Vetera monumenta Slavorum Meridionalium, ed. by Theiner, xxxii, lvi, i, pp. 19, 34–35; Bubalo, ‘Titule Vukana Nemanjića’, pp. 82–83. 37

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sources, except that Kaloyan’s forces led by a certain Cuman mercenary named Gubanus devastated parts of Serbian lands,41 it is certain that the peace between the two parties was achieved around 1205 under the terms of the status quo ante. As a sign of reconciliation, the two brothers asked Sava to transfer the remains of their father from Hilandar to Studenica in 1207, where the cult of St Simeon was jointly established by them.42 Vukan then returned to his lands, where he soon disappeared from the historical stage under unknown circumstances. He remained the ‘king of Dioclea and Dalmatia’ until the end of his reign, but in the inner parts of Serbia he was only acknowledged as a grand prince.43 After Vukan’s demise, Stefan was able to firmly establish his power. He effectively limited the power of Vukan’s sons in Zeta, especially that of his successor George, who kept the title of ‘king’ but held no real power.44 Stefan pursued another one of his goals — to obtain the royal crown for himself — after Honorius III ascended to the papal throne. The efforts finally brought success; the following year Stefan was officially crowned as king of Serbia by a papal legate. The coronation was probably performed in the Episcopal Church of St Peter and Paul in Ras.45 This was one of the crucial moments in the development of the Nemanjić state and its official affirmation on the international scene. 41

Font, ‘Ungarn, Bulgarien und das Papsttum’, pp. 260–63. Spisi Svetog Save, ed.  by Ćorović, pp.  171–73; Maksimović, ‘O godini prenosa Nemanjinih moštiju’, pp. 437–44. The oldest inscription in Studenica clearly shows that Vukan actively participated in the decoration of the monastery after Nemanja’s remains were buried there: ‘This most holy temple […] was raised by noble grand župan and father-in-law of Greek emperor kyr Alexios, Stefan Nemanja, who received angelic features as Simeon the monk. It was ended and painted thanks to the noble master of all Serbian lands, grand župan and sebastokra­ tor Stefan and his brother, great prince Vukan in the year 6717 [1208–1209], 12th indiction’, Todić, ‘Ktitorska kompozicija u naosu Bogorodičine crkve’, p. 35. 43 Vukan is last mentioned as a king (‘re Velcano’) in a later chronicle written by Junius Resti (1669–1735) from Dubrovnik with respect to the events that took place around 1207: Chronica Ragusina Iunii Restii, ed. by Nodilo, iii, p. 75. 44 George is mentioned as a king (‘Georgius rex’) in his oath pledged to Venetian doge Pietro Ziani in 1208: Listine o odnošajih između Južnoga Slavenstva i Mletačke republike, ed. by Ljubić, xxxv, i, p. 27; Ćirković and others, eds, Istorija Crne Gore, ii.1, p. 12. After Stefan’s coronation, his oldest son and successor Radoslav (1227–1234) appears as a king in three documents from Kotor, issued in 1220–1227 and dated ‘sub tempore domini regis Radoslavi’; Codex diplomaticus, ed. by Smičiklas, nos 136, 169, 181, iii, pp. 163, 195, 208. It is disputed whether Radoslav was just the ‘king of Dioclea’ or ‘king of all Serbian lands’, as a co-ruler of his father, who became seriously ill in the years preceding his death in 1227; Bubalo, ‘Da li su kralj Stefan Prvovenčani i njegov sin Radoslav bili savladari?’, pp. 210–17. 45 Kalić, Evropa i Srbi, pp. 214–16. 42

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* * * Most of the events that shaped the destiny of the Serbian lands at the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth centuries did not find their place in the narratives of Nemanja’s sons. Not only are important moments from Nemanja’s life and career omitted, such as his meeting with Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa in the city of Niš (1189), but also the names of Nemanja’s father or brothers.46 Considering the narrow historical perspective in the early Serbian hagiographies, oriented towards particular moments in Nemanja’s life — his elevation to power, building of the churches, summary presentations of his military campaigns and monastic life — it is striking that the Dioclea appears prominently in these texts. The relation between Stefan Nemanja and this land was established at the very beginning of his life. As both of his sons attest, Nemanja was born in the region of Ribnica, a small valley along the namesake tributary of the Morača River, lying in the heart of Dioclea. As Sava writes: Let this be known to you about our blessed father lord Simeon, from his birth to his death. His birth was in Zeta, in Ribnica, where he received the holy baptism. When this lad was brought here, a bishop of the Church of St  Apostles made a prayer and anointed him, and thus he received his second baptism.47

And as Stefan writes: Although I was not born then, nor do I remember his [Nemanja’s] birth, I heard there was a great turmoil in these parts of this Serbian land then, as well as in Dioclitia, Dalmatia, and Trаvounia. His father was deprived of the land by his brothers, driven by the envy of the devil. Forced by their insurgency, he went to the place of his birth, named Dioclitia, where, by the will of God and Blessed Virgin he begat 46 Marjanović-Dušanić, Vladarska ideologija Nemanjića, pp.  101–03. The name of Nemanja’s father — Zavida — is known from an inscription in the monastery of St Peter and Paul in the valley of the Lim River, founded by Nemanja’s brother Miroslav: ‘In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I, son of Zavida, the servant of God by the name of Stefan Miroslav, Prince of Hum, built this church of the Saint Apostle Peter’, Marković, ‘O ktitorskom natpisu kneza Miroslava’, pp. 21–46; as well as from a short gloss (‘Glorious prince Miroslav, son of Zavida’) preserved in the so-called Miroslav’s Gospel, one of the oldest surviving documents in Serbian recension of the Old Church Slavonic language, written in 1186, Stari srpski zapisi i natpisi, ed. by Stojanović, no. 6, i, p. 3. 47 Spisi Svetog Save, ed. by Ćorović, p. 173. A note on the translation: the Serbian terms otačastvo (literally: ‘belonging to the father’ or ‘fatherland’) and dedina or dedovina (literally: ‘belonging to the grandfather’ or ‘grandfatherland’) are translated as ‘patrimony’ and ‘heritage’, respectively, as these words more properly reflect the context of the selected passages; cf. Kovačević, ‘Tradicija o Dukljanskom kraljevstvu’, p. 294.

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this holy child who will, by divine providence, become the gatherer of the ruined lands of his patrimony, shepherd, teacher, and their restorer. It was in a place called Ribnica. Because Latin priests were in this land, by the will of God, he was baptized according to the Latin rites in a temple. When his father returned to the capital [the city of Ras], he received his second baptism from the hands of the holy men and archpriests, in the midst of the Serbian land, in the church of the celebrated Holy Apostles Peter and Paul.48

Despite referring to the same events, the differences between the two narratives can be easily noted. For Sava, Nemanja’s birth in the Dioclean region of Ribnica was mainly important due to the fact that he was baptized ‘twice’ (although the second time only the anointment was performed). Namely, as Sava notes further in his text: ‘with this man, everything was miraculous’, ‘as a child he was baptized twice’, as a monk ‘he received his blessings twice’ (reference to the two degrees of monasticism in Eastern Orthodoxy — the little and the great shema), and finally, ‘his body was buried twice, first time at Mt Athos, where he fell into a sleep and from there it was taken away and transferred here [in Studenica], where his remains were put in the grave for the second time’.49 Stefan also mentions Nemanja’s ‘twofold baptism’, providing more details, but omitting the important fact that his father was only anointed in Ras. For him, however, the political circumstances surrounding Nemanja’s birth had more weight; Dioclea was not only the birthplace of Nemanja, but also of his father, who had to return there because he was deprived of his heritage by his brothers. Here arise strong parallels between the misfortunes of Nemanja’s father and Nemanja himself, who also came into conflict with his brothers before he became grand župan, which Stefan relates at length.50 Another, albeit at first glance minor, difference in the two texts is geographic terminology. While Sava only used the Slavic name Zeta, Stefan always referred to the region as Dioclitia (Dioclea). The same is repeated in the enumeration of Nemanja’s conquests: Sava: Let it be known to all that God  […] put this thrice blessed our lord and our father […] named Stefan Nemanja to rule the entire Serbian land. Led by his wisdom given by God, he restored his fallen heritage and acquired Zeta with its cities in maritime lands, both Pilots in Raban and Patkovo, Kostrc, Drškovina, Sitnica, Lab, Lipljan, Glubočica, Reke, Uška, Pomoravie, Zagrlata, Levče, and Belica in the 48 49 50

Stefan Prvovenčani, Sabrana dela, ed. by Jovanović, ii, pp. 18–19. Spisi Svetog Save, ed. by Ćorović, pp. 173–74. Stefan Prvovenčani, Sabrana dela, ed. by Jovanović, v, pp. 28–33.

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Greek lands. With his efforts and wisdom, he reclaimed all of these, taken away by violence from his heritage, the Serbian land that rightfully belonged to him.51

Stefan: He took over Dioclitia and Dalmatia, his patrimony and his birthplace, in truth his heritage, held with force by the Greek nation. They built cities in this land, so it was named the Greek domain. The names of these cities are the city of Danj, the city of Sardoniki, Drivast, the city of Rosaf called Skadar, the city of Svač, the city of Ulcinj, and the glorious city of Bar. The city of Kotor he left [unharmed], fortified it, and there he moved his court, which stands to this day. The other cities were broken down and demolished; thus, he changed their glory into the image of desolation. He wiped out the Greek name, to be mentioned no longer in that region, while to his men who were in those cities, no harm was done.52

There is no need to go into the details about the territories listed by Sava as Nemanja’s acquisitions,53 or about the cities mentioned in Stefan’s report.54 What is important is that in both texts, Nemanja is presented as a restorer of the fallen patrimony and heritage. However, from Sava’s perspective, Nemanja’s heritage was ‘Serbian lands’ in general; all acquired territories, including Zeta, were nothing more than small parts of the ‘heritage’ previously taken away and now reclaimed. Nemanja’s acquisitions are represented in the same way in his founding charter for Hilandar, composed in 1198 (but most probably authored by Sava), as well as in Stefan’s donation to the same monastery, issued between 1200 and 1202.55 However, in Stefan’s Vita Simeonis, Nemanja’s patrimony is equated with his birthplace Dioclea for the first time. This is once again under51

Spisi Svetog Save, ed. by Ćorović, pp. 151–52. Stefan Prvovenčani, Sabrana dela, ed. by Jovanović, vii, pp. 38–41. 53 ‘Both Pilots in Raban’ refers to the regions of Upper and Lower Pilot in the valley of Drim, in modern northern Albania; Patkovo, Kostrc, Drškovina, Lab, Lipljan, and Sitnica are small župas in the southern and central part of the Kosovo region; the rest of the territories mentioned in the text are župas in the valleys of South and Great Morava, in eastern and southeastern Serbia; Blagojević, ‘O zemljištu radnje Nemanjine’, pp. 70–73. 54 Kotor and Bar are well known and places that have already been mentioned. All other cities mentioned in the text: Danj (Dagno), Sardoniki (Sarda), Drivast (Drivasto), Skadar (Scutari), Svač (Suacio), and Ulcinj (Dulcigno), were local episcopal seats, suffragans of Bar, located in the furthest south-east part of historical Dioclea. All of them, except Ulcinj in Montenegro, are now in the territory of north-western Albania. 55 Spisi Svetog Save, ed. by Ćorović, p. 1; Zbornik srednjovekovnih ćiriličkih povelja, ed. by Mošin, Ćirković, and Sindik, nos 9, 12, i, pp. 68, 80; Barišić, ‘Hronološki problemi oko godine Nemanjine smrti’, pp. 48–49. 52

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lined in the final chapters of Stefan’s text. Referring to his conflict with the ruler of Epirus, Michael Komnenos Doukas, which took place around 1214, Stefan remarks: ‘There was a man, named Michail, from the Greek nation, of imperial lineage, in the land of Drač […] situated near Dioclitia and the land of Dalmatia, the patrimony of St Simeon’.56 The differences in the two narratives of Nemanja’s sons referring to their father’s heritage and patrimony have not remained unnoticed. The prominent Serbian scholar J. Kovačević remarked more than half a century ago that ‘before Stefan’s coronation the sources mention Serbian lands definitely as Nemanja’s patrimony, and after the coronation attribute it to Dioclea and Dalmatia’.57 Stefan’s insistence on Dioclea and Dalmatia as Nemanja’s patrimony undoubtedly had a political purpose, but it may be noted that this was not related to the coronation. Namely, the royal crown does not appear as a motif in Vita Simeonis at all, although the text was finished just a year before his coronation took place. Also, the two lands Dioclea and Dalmatia are presented as a pair, just as they are in the royal title of his fraternal adversary Vukan. These are indications that the change in the narratives of the early Nemanjić texts with respect to ‘Nemanja’s patrimony’ was related to Stefan’s efforts to marginalize his nephews, the sons of Vukan, during the second decade of the thirteenth century, and to dismember the system of the Shared Principalities. Unlike Sava, whose description of the council in Ras in 1196 shows the intention to settle a dispute between the two quarrelling brothers, Stefan alludes to Nemanja’s decisions from a different perspective. According to him, when Nemanja decided to abandon worldly life and relegate his power, he allegedly said, ‘I give my world to one who stayed among you, to rule on my throne, to whom I blessed among you as God blessed the offspring of Job to reign among you’.58 Here Stefan is referring to his ascension to the father’s throne, while the role of Vukan is omitted altogether and he is not even mentioned, except as an unnamed brother who ‘neglected the order of his lord and his father; he transgressed. He took foreigners with him and led them against his patrimony; he took away my lands and devastated them’.59 Thus, the representation of Dioclea 56

Stefan Prvovenčani, Sabrana dela, ed.  by Jovanović, xviii, pp.  88–89; Komatina, ‘Istorijska podloga čuda Sv. Simeona’, pp. 126–27. 57 Kovačević, ‘Tradicija o Dukljanskom kraljevstvu kod Nemanjića’, pp.  291–92; cf. Antonović, ‘Od Duklje do Zete’, pp. 85–86. 58 Stefan Prvovenčani, Sabrana dela, ed. by Jovanović, x, pp. 50–51. 59 Stefan Prvovenčani, Sabrana dela, ed. by Jovanović, xiv, pp. 72–73. While contemporaries acknowledged Vukan’s title of grand prince, in the visual representations of the Nemanjić

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and Dalmatia as Nemanja’s patrimony served as a pretext for Stefan, who was his father’s sole successor to the throne as he himself emphasizes, to strengthen his position as a grand župan, but also to establish his undisputed rule in the maritime regions of his state. * * * There has been a long-held view that Stefan presented himself as the continuator of the ‘Dioclean kingdom’ and Dioclean royal tradition when he aspired to obtain the crown for himself. This view is based on a single passage in the biography of Sava, written by his disciple and Athonite monk Domentian. According to him, Sava chose one of his followers, Bishop Methodius, and sent him to the pope of ‘the Great Roman State’ and ‘the holder of the seat of St apostles Peter and Paul’. As Domentian continues, Sava needed the blessings of the pope to perform the coronation of his brother ‘with the royal crown of the kingdom of their patrimony, in which Nemanja was born with God’s providence, named Dioclitia and called the great kingdom from the beginning’.60 Domentian’s intention to establish a relationship between the royal tradition of Dioclea and Stefan’s coronation seems obvious, although an additional question emerges here. Was the idea of the ‘great kingdom from the beginning’ part of Stefan’s designs when he attempted to obtain the crown, or was it a later invention of the learned monk from Hilandar? Before turning our attention to this, a note needs to be made about the veracity of the writer’s words with respect to the Serbian embassy to Rome. Domentian attributed the act of Stefan’s coronation to Sava, although it was performed by the legate sent by Honorius III, as is clearly shown in the records of the contemporary historian Thomas of Split (1200–1268) and of the fourteenth-century Venetian chronicler Andrea Dandolo.61 The Serbian bishop Methodius, whom Domentian menlineage, depicted in their foundations of Gračanica and Dečani in the first half of the fourteenth century, he appears without the title and simply as ‘Vuk, son of Nemanja’; Bubalo, ‘Titule Vukana Nemanjića’, p. 85. 60 Domentijan, Žitije Svetoga Save, ed. by Jovanović, xix, pp. 248–49. 61 Thomas of Spalato, Historia Salonitanorum atque Spalatinorum Pontificum, ed. by Perić, xxv, pp. 162–63: ‘Eodem tempore Stephanus dominus Servie sive Rasie, qui mega iupanus appellabatur, missis apochrisariis ad Romanam sedem, impetravit ab Honorio summo pontifice coronam regni. Direxit namque legatum a latere suo, ui veniens coronavit eum primuque regem constituit terre sue’ (Eng. trans. by Sweeney: ‘At that time Stefan, the lord of Serbia or Rascia, who was called the grand župan, sent high-ranking envoys to the Holy See to ask for a royal crown from Pope Honorius. The supreme pontiff dispatched his legate a latere, who upon arrival crowned Stefan and instituted him as the first king of his land’); Аndreae Danduli Chronica,

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tions as Sava’s emissary, indeed performed diplomatic duties in Rome, but he was sent there in 1220 by Stefan, three years after his coronation. However, the letter Stefan sent to the pope on that occasion is preserved in a shortened form and it shows that Stefan was already the ‘crowned king’, and that the mission of Methodius was of a political nature, possibly related to the existing enmity between Serbia and Hungary.62 Domentian either did not know the contents of Stefan’s letter of 1220, or did not use what he knew. In Stefan’s Vita Simeonis, which Domentian was aware of and used, ‘Dioclea and Dalmatia’ was the birthplace, the patrimony, and the heritage of Stefan Nemanja; however, it was not ‘the great’ or ‘the old’ kingdom as portrayed by the latter writer. Stefan’s earlier correspondence with the pope from 1216 to 1217 is lost, but the sources at our disposal do not indicate that Stefan ever called upon the royal tradition of Dioclea. Such a motif is not found, neither in his preserved correspondence with Innocent III, nor in the short passages about his coronation in the works by Andrea Dandolo and Thomas of Spalato. Quite the contrary, the latter, who was a contemporary of these events, commented that Stefan was ‘instituted as the first king of his land’. In the same way, in his founding charter to the monastery of Žiča (1220), Stefan emphasizes that he was ‘the first-crowned king of the whole Serbian land, Dioclitia, Travounia, Dalmatia, and Zahloumia’.63 Until the end of his reign, Stefan maintained that he was the first-crowned king of Serbia, Dioclea, and all other lands he ruled.64 In the eleventh or early twelfth century, the Dioclean kingdom did not exist in a strict sense and it is not remembered as such by the contemporaries thereof. In Latin sources, Mihailo and Bodin are regularly styled as ‘the kings of the Slavs’.65 In contemporary narrative sources of Byzantine provenience, they ed. by Pastorello, p. 287: ‘Stestanus quoque dominus Raxie et Servie, qui megadipanus apelabatur, dum neptem condam Henrici Dandulo ducis accepisset in coniugem, ex suasione uxoris, abiecto scismate, per nuncios a papa optinuit ut regio titulo decoratus esset, et per legatum cardinalem ad hoc missum, una cum coniuge coronati sunt’ (And also Stefan, lord of Rascia and Serbia, who was called grand župan, after he accepted the grand-daughter of the late Enrico Dandolo in marriage and renounced the schism at the instigation of his wife, was decorated with the royal title by the messengers from the pope, and crowned together with his wife by the legate cardinal, sent for that purpose). Whether the marriage was concluded immediately before Stefan’s coronation, as the Venetian chronicler alleges, or a decade earlier, when Stefan divorced Eudokia, is disputed. 62 Rački, ‘Pismo prvovienčanoga kralja srbskoga Stjepana’, p. 55. 63 Zbornik srednjovekovnih ćiriličkih povelja, ed. by Mošin, Ćirković, and Sindik, no. 14, i, p. 91. 64 Zbornik srednjovekovnih ćiriličkih povelja, ed. by Mošin, Ćirković, and Sindik, nos 16, 18, 20, 21, i, pp. 97, 101, 105, 109. 65 Papal letter to Michaheli regi Sclavorum, from 1078, in Codex diplomaticus, ed.  by

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appear as archons of ‘the Tribalians’ or ‘the Serbs’ (on one occasion, ‘the Serbs, also called the Croats’).66 The term Dioclea existed only as a territorial unit. It appears as such on the recently discovered seal of Bodin, which bears the following inscription: ‘Constantine, protosebastos and exousiastes of Diokleia and Serbia’.67 Therefore, all contemporary sources, irrespective of their origin, show that the royal title of ‘Dioclean kings’ was not limited to Dioclea. This territorial restriction came into effect only at the time of the renovation of the ‘kingdom’ by Nemanja’s son Vukan in the late twelfth century. Serbian scholar Ivana Komatina recently argued that, although Domentian’s ‘great kingdom from the beginning’ does indeed refer to the state ruled by Mihailo and Bodin, its ‘royal crown’ was not so much an indication of the continuity between the kings of the past and Stefan, but rather emphasis of the ‘rightful’ claims of Nemanja’s middle son and his heir to Dioclea, the ‘kingdom’ previously ruled by his older brother Vukan.68 Here, it needs to be mentioned that the term ‘Regnum Diocliae’ (Kingdom of Dioclea) appears in a document allegedly issued by Antipope Clement III in relation to the establishment of the Archbishopric of Bar in 1089 and its jurisdiction over the bishoprics in the maritime areas and the interior of the Serbian lands.69 It is possibly a fabrication, written in the early thirteenth century at the time of an ongoing dispute between the ecclesiastical seats of Bar and Dubrovnik over the rank of the former.70 The dispute, in which Dubrovnik denied the rank and jurisdiction of Bar, despite the assertion of its status at the council of 1199, continued until the mid-thirteenth century. Only then was Smičiklas, no.  123, i, p.  158; in 1080, the Norman noble Archiris sent his daughter ‘ad Michalam regem Sclavorum’ for the king’s son Bodin, Lupi Protospatarii annales, ed. by Pertz, s.a. 1081, p. 60; ‘Bodinus Sclavorum rex’ provided hospitality for the Crusader army led by Count Raymond IV of Toulouse in early 1097, Orderici Vitalis Ecclesiasticae historiae, ed. by Le Prevost, ix, iii, pp. 485–86; Uzelac, Krstaši i Srbi, pp. 76–84. 66 Cecaumeni Strategicon, ed. by Wassilewsky and Jernstedt, 71, pp. 25; Ioannis Scylitzae Synopsis historiarum, ed. by Thurn, 28, p. 475; John Skylitzes sometimes used the terms ‘the Tribalians’ and ‘the Serbs’ to distinguish the inhabitants of the provinces of Dioclea and Serbia; Komatina, ‘Srbija i Duklja u delu Jovana Skilice’, pp. 159–86. 67 Cheynet, ‘La place de la Serbie dans la diplomatie byzantine’, p. 90. In the Byzantine hierarchy, the rank of exousiastes was higher than the mere title of archon, and was used as an equivalent of the Latin rex; Komatina, ‘Vizantijska titula Konstantina Bodina’, pp. 61–76. 68 Komatina, ‘Veliko kraljevstvo od prva’, pp. 28–32. 69 Kehr, ‘Papsturkunden in Rom’, pp. 148–49. 70 As suggested by Komatina, Crkva i država u srpskim zemljama, pp. 139–44. See, however, arguments in favour of the authenticity of the document by Mitrović, ‘Kraljevstvo od iskona’, pp. 65–73.

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the rank of the archbishopric in Bar finally and indisputably confirmed. This success was achieved mainly due to the efforts of John of Plano Carpini, a former missionary to the Mongols and archbishop in Bar between 1247 and 1252, but also thanks to the Serbian king Uroš (1243–1276), the youngest son of Stefan the First-Crowned, who staunchly supported the claims of the Roman Catholic seat in his lands.71 The document, allegedly from the late eleventh (but probably from the early thirteenth) century, is nonetheless important for our topic because it suggests that Vukan ‘restored’ the Kingdom of Dioclea and Dalmatia at the insistence of the local Catholic representatives. It was the church in Bar that needed the Kingdom of Dioclea and its king of Dioclea, more than Vukan needed the title himself; his ambitions were aimed at Ras, the title of grand župan, and the overthrow of his brother. Nonetheless, the strategic partnership concluded between the secular and spiritual powers in Dioclea benefited both sides. Vukan provided support to the ecclesiastical seat in his lands and gave strength to its claims for the archbishopric rank, while receiving in return the sympathy of the local church and the pope. Another fact that deserves a mention is that Vukan’s royal title did not correspond to those of the old ‘Slavic kings’ Mihailo and Bodin. Its role model could have been nothing other than the title of the Byzantine provincial governor — the dux of Dalmatia and Dioclea — who held the supreme power in the region before Nemanja’s conquests. Thus, the Byzantine political legacy in the eastern Adriatic continued to exist in the ensuing decades, although in a distorted form. This was a bitter irony, especially considering Stefan’s words about how Nemanja ‘wiped out the Greek name in that region’. The three sources analysed above — Sava’s and Stefan’s biographies of their father and Domentian’s biography of Sava — are not only mutually dependent, but taken together they form a complex, albeit sometimes conflicting narrative about the beginnings of the holy dynasty established by Stefan Nemanja. In these texts, over the course of two generations Dioclea was gradually transformed from just one of the many provinces taken over by Nemanja, to his ‘patrimony’ and ‘heritage’, until it finally was acknowledged as ‘the great kingdom from the beginning’. This transformation is particularly important because it reflects the unstable political conditions, the clashes between the two political centres and the two branches of the ruling family, and indirectly even the dispute between the two seats of the Roman Catholic Church in the Adriatic. All these factors and circumstances had their due share in the modelling of the earliest works of Serbian medieval literature. 71

Komatina, Crkva i država u srpskim zemljama, pp. 300–34.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Andreae Danduli Chronica per extensum descripta aa. 46–1280, ed. by Ester Pastorello, Raccolta degli storici italiani, 12.1 (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1937) Árpádkori új okmánytár  / Codex diplomaticus Arpadianus continuatus, vi:  890–1235, ed. by Gustav Wenzel (Pest: Ferdinánd Eggenberger, 1867) Cecaumeni Strategicon et incerti scriptoris de officiis regiis libellus, ed. by B. Wassilewsky and Victor Jernstedt (St Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1896) Chronica Ragusina Iunii Restii ab origine urbis usque ad annum 1451, item Joannis Gundulae 1451–1484, ed.  by Natko Nodilo, Monumenta spectantia historiam Slavorum Meridionalium, 25 (Zagreb: Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts, 1893) Codex diplomaticus regni Croatiae, Slavoniae et Dalmatiae, ed.  by Tadija Smičiklas, i: Listine godina 743–1100 (Zagreb: Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts, 1967), ii: Listine XII. vijeka 1101–1200 (Zagreb: Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts, 1904), iii: Listine godina 1201–1235 (Zagreb: Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts, 1905) Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, ed. and trans. by Gyula Moravcsik and R.  J.  H. Jenkins (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, 1967) Domentijan, Žitije Svetoga Save, ed. by Tomislav Jovanović, trans. and commentaries by Ljiljana Juhas-Georgijevska (Belgrade: Serbian Literary Society, 2001) Gesta regum Sclavorum, ed. and trans. by Dragana Kunčer, commentaries by Tibor Živković, 2 vols (Belgrade: Institute of History, 2009) Ioannis Scylitzae Synopsis historiarum, ed.  by Hans Thurn, Corpus fontium historiae Byzantinae — Series Berolinensis, 5 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973) Kehr, Paul F., ‘Papsturkunden in Rom: Erster Bericht’, Nachrichten von der Königl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen Philol.­hist. Klasse, 2 (1900), 111–97 Listine o odnošajih između Južnoga Slavenstva i Mletačke republike, i, ed. by Šime Ljubić, Monumenta spectantia historiam Slavorum Meridionalium, 1 (Zagreb: Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts, 1868) Lupi Protospatarii annales, ed.  by Georg Heinrich Pertz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores, 5 (Hanover: Hahn, 1844), pp. 52–63 Odabrani spomenici srpskog prava (od kraja XII do XV veka), ed. by Aleksandar V. Solovjev (Belgrade: Geca Kon, 1926) Orderici Vitalis Ecclesiasticae historiae libri tredecim, ed. by Auguste Le Prevost, iii (Paris: Jules Renouard, 1845) Rački, Franjo, ‘Pismo prvovienčanoga kralja srbskoga Stjepana papi Honoriju  III god. 1220’, Starine Jugoslavenske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti, 7 (1875), 53–56 Spisi Svetog Save, ed. by Vladimir Ćorović, Dela starih srpskih pisaca, 1 (Belgrade: Serbian Royal Academy, 1928)

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Stari srpski zapisi i natpisi, ed.  by Ljubomir Stojanović, i (Belgrade: Serbian Royal Academy, 1902) Stefan Prvovenčani, Sabrana dela, ed. by Tomislav Jovanović, trans. and commentaries by Ljiljana Juhas-Georgijevska (Belgrade: Serbian Literary Society, 1999) Thomas of Spalato, History of the Bishops of Salona and Split, trans. and commentaries by Mirjana Matijević-Sokol, Damir Karbić, and James Ross Sweeney, Latin text ed.  by Olga Perić, Thomae archidiaconi Spalatensis Historia Salonitanorum atque Spalatinorum Pontificum, Central European Medieval Texts, 4 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2006) Vetera monumenta Slavorum Meridionalium historiam illustrantia, ed.  by Augustin Theiner, 2 vols (Rome: Typis Vaticanis, 1863–1875), i (1863) Zbornik srednjovekovnih ćiriličkih povelja i pisama Srbije, Bosne i Dubrovnika, i, ed.  by Vladimir Mošin, Sima Ćirković and Dušan Sindik (Belgrade: Institute of History, 2011)

Secondary Studies Aleksić, Marko, Srpske zemlje pre Nemanjića. Od 7. do 10. veka (Belgrade: Laguna, 2020) Antonović, Miloš, ‘Od Duklje do Zete: Srbija i Zeta krajem XII i u prvoj polovini XIII veka’, Belgradeski istorijski glasnik, 3 (2012), 85–94 Barišić, Franjo, ‘Hronološki problemi oko godine Nemanjine smrti’, Hilandarski zbornik, 2 (1971), 31–58 Bešić, Zarije, and others, eds, Istorija Crne Gore, i: Od najstarijih vremena do kraja XII veka, (Titograd [Podgorica]: Redakcija za istoriju Crne Gore, 1967) Birnbaum, Henrik, ‘Byzantine Tradition Transformed: The Old Serbian Vita’, in Aspects of the Balkans: Continuity and Change, ed. by Henrik Birnbaum and Speros Vryonis (The Hague: Mouton, 1972), pp. 243–84 Blagojević, Miloš, ‘Srpske udeone kneževine’, Zbornik radova Vizantološkog instituta, 36 (1997), 45–62 ——  , ‘O zemljištu radnje Nemanjine’, in Stefan Nemanja — Sveti Simeon Mirotočivi: istorija i predanje, ed. by Jovanka Kalić (Belgrade: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 2000), pp. 65–75 ——  , ‘Srpska administrativna podela Kosova i Metohije u XII veku’, in Srbi na Kosovu i Metohiji, ed. by Stevan Karamata and Časlav Ocić (Belgrade: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 2006), pp. 125–37 ——  , ‘Nemanjići i državnost Duklje — Zete — Crne Gore’, Zbornik Matice srpske za istoriju, 83 (2011), 7–24 Bubalo, Đorđe, ‘Da li su kralj Stefan Prvovenčani i njegov sin Radoslav bili savladari?’, Zbornik radova Vizantološkog instituta, 46 (2009), 201–29 —— , ‘Titule Vukana Nemanjića i tradicija Dukljanskog kraljevstva’, in Đurđevi Stupovi i Budimljanska eparhija: Zbornik radova, ed. by Milan Radujko (Belgrade: Faculty of Philosophy, 2011), pp. 79–94 Bujan, Solange, ‘La Chronique du prêtre de Dioclée: un faux document historique’, Revue des études byzantines, 66 (2008), 5–38

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Cheynet, Jean-Claude, ‘La place de la Serbie dans la diplomatie byzantine à la fin du XIe siècle’, Zbornik radova Vizantološkog instituta, 45 (2008), 89–97 Ćirković, Sima, and others, eds, Istorija Crne Gore, ii.1: Od kraja XII do kraja XV veka (Titograd [Podgorica]: Redakcija za istoriju Crne Gore, 1970) Ćorović, Vladimir, ‘Međusobni odnošaj biografija Stefana Nemanje’, in Svetosavski zbornik, i, ed. by Vladimir Ćorović (Belgrade: Serbian Royal Academy, 1936), pp. 1–40 Dinić, Mihailo, ‘Tri povelje iz ispisa Ivana Lučića’, Zbornik Filozofskog fakulteta u Belgradeu, 3 (1955), 69–94 ——  , ‘O nazivima srpske srednjovekovne države’, Prilozi za jezik, književnost, istoriju i folklor, 32 (1966), 26–34 Ferluga, Jadran, Vizantijska uprava u Dalmaciji (Belgrade: Vizantološki institut, 1957) Font, Marta, ‘Ungarn, Bulgarien und das Papsttum um die Wende vom 12. - zum 13. Jahrhundert’ in Hungaro­Slavica: X. Internationaler Slavistenkongress, Sofia, ed. by Péter Király and Attila Hollós (Budapest: Akademiai Kiadó, 1988), pp. 259–67 Goldstein, Ivo, ‘Byzantine Rule in Dalmatia in the 12th Century’, in Byzanz und Ostmitteleuropa 950–1453: Beiträge zu einer table–ronde des XIX International Congress of Byzantine Studies, Copenhagen 1996, ed. by Günter Prinzing and Maciej Salamon (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999), pp. 97–125 Hafner, Stanislaus, Studien zur altserbischen dynastischen Historiographie, Südosteuropäische Arbeiten, 62 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1964) Kalić, Jovanka, Evropa i Srbi: srednji vek (Belgrade: Institute of History, 2006) Komatina, Ivana, ‘Istorijska podloga čuda Sv. Simeona u Žitiju Simeonovom od Stefana Prvovenčanog’, Zbornik radova Vizantološkog instituta, 51 (2014), 111–33 ——  , Crkva i država u srpskim zemljama od IX do XIII veka (Belgrade: Institute of History, 2016) —— , ‘Veliko kraljevstvo od prva: Krunisanje Stefana Nemanjića i tradicija Dukljanskog kraljevstva u XII i XIII veku’, Istorijski časopis, 65 (2016), 15–34 Komatina, Predrag, ‘Vizantijska titula Konstantina Bodina’, Zbornik radova Vizantološkog instituta, 48 (2011), 61–76 ——  , ‘Srbija i Duklja u delu Jovana Skilice’, Zbornik radova Vizantološkog instituta, 49 (2012), 159–86 —— , ‘Identitet Dukljana prema De administrando imperio’, Zbornik radova Vizantološkog instituta, 51 (2014), 33–46 Kovačević, Jovan, ‘Tradicija o Dukljanskom kraljevstvu kod Nemanjića’, Istorijski časopis, 5 (1955), 291–94 Leśny, Jan, ‘Stefan Zavida als Sohn von Uroš I. und Vater von Stefan Nemanja: Ein Beitrag zur serbischen Prosopographie’, Südostforschungen, 48 (1989), 37–49 Maksimović, Ljubomir, ‘O godini prenosa Nemanjinih moštiju u Srbiju’, Zbornik radova Vizantološkog instituta, 34–35 (1986), 437–44 Marjanović-Dušanić, Smilja, Vladarska ideologija Nemanjića: diplomatička studija (Belgrade: Serbian Literary Society, 1997) Marković, Miodrag, ‘O ktitorskom natpisu kneza Miroslava u crkvi Svetog Petra na Limu’, Zograf, 36 (2012), 21–46

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Mišić, Siniša, ‘Toplica u tituli velikog kneza Vukana Nemanjića’, in Stefan Nemanja i Toplica: tematski zbornik, ed.  by Dragiša Bojović (Niš: Centre for Church Studies, 2011), pp. 19–25 Mitrović, Katarina, ‘Kraljevstvo od iskona: Barska (arhi)episkopija i Duklja’, in Srpska kraljevstva u srednjem veku, ed.  by Siniša Mišić (Belgrade: Faculty of Philosophy, Centre for Historical Geography and Historical Demography, 2017) pp. 47–83 Novaković, Bojan, ‘Duklja u spisu De administrando imperio’, Zbornik radova Vizantološkog instituta, 49 (2012), 75–86 Pirivatrić, Srđan, ‘Manojlo  I Komnin, Carski san i samodršci oblasti srpskog prestola’, Zbornik radova Vizantološkog instituta, 48 (2011), 89–118 Radojčić, Svetozar, Portreti srpskih vladara u srednjem veku (Skoplje: Museum of Southern Serbia, 1934) Ravić, Ivana, ‘Pismo barskog episkopa Grgura splitskom kanoniku Gvalteriju’, Stari srpski arhiv, 10 (2012), 183–90 Sindik, Dušan, ‘O političkim i društvenim prilikama u Kotoru krajem XII veka’, in Crkva svetog Luke kroz vjekove: zbornik radova, ed. by Vojislav Korać (Kotor: Serbian Orthodox Church Community, 1997), pp. 14–21 Stevović, Ivan, ‘O prvobitnom izgledu i vremenu gradnje crkve Sv.  Mihajla u Stonu’, Zbornik radova Vizantološkog instituta, 35 (1996), 175–95 Todić, Branislav, ‘Ktitorska kompozicija u naosu Bogorodičine crkve u Studenici’, Saopštenja, 29 (1997), 35–45 Tomas, Ivana, ‘Nova promišljanja o crkvi Sv. Mihajla u Stonu’, Ars Adriatica, 6 (2016), 41–60 Tomović, Gordana, Morfologija ćiriličkih natpisa na Balkanu (Belgrade: Institute of History, 1974) ——  , ‘Natpis na Crkvi sv. Luke u Kotoru’, in Crkva svetog Luke kroz vjekove: zbornik radova, ed. by Vojislav Korać (Kotor: Serbian Orthodox Church Community, 1997), pp. 23–34 Uzelac, Aleksandar, Krstaši i Srbi (XI–XII vek) (Belgrade: Utopia, 2018) Živković, Tibor, Portreti srpskih vladara (IX–XII vek) (Belgrade: Zavod, 2006) ——  , Forging Unity: The South Slavs between East and West (Belgrade: Institute of History, 2008)

The Rus’ Primary Chronicle, the Old Testament, and the Byzantine Background

The Debate over Authorship of the Rus’ Primary Chronicle: Compilations, Redactions, and Urtexts Donald Ostrowski

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he text that we call the Povest’ vremennykh let (PVL), whose title has been translated variously as Tale of Bygone Years, Rus’ Primary Chronicle, Russian Primary Chronicle, and Nestorchronik, is a foundational text for the study of early East Slavic history and culture. Horace G. Lunt has made the case that the original title of the PVL was based on a Byzantine model and should be understood as Повѣсть врѣменъ и лѣтъ, which he translated as Tale of Years and Time.1 I will return to this issue below. The text also provides evidence regarding West and South Slavic history, Byzantium, and the steppe peoples. It starts with a description of the biblical flood quoted from the Byzantine Chronicle of George Hamartolos and concludes sometime in the 1110s (the exact year depending upon which scholar is describing its end and which independent variables they are basing their conclusions on). The introductory part of the PVL is in narrative format. From the entry for the year 852 (6360) onward, the entries are in an annalistic format. The PVL is a combination of earlier Rus’ annal accounts, eyewitness reports, and material from other texts. Besides the Chronicle of Hamartolos, it includes: treaties between the Greeks and the Rus’; the Pannonian Life of Methodius, 1

Lunt, ‘Pověst’ vrěmennykh” lět’.

Donald Ostrowski is a Lecturer in History at Harvard University Extension School and Associate of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000–1300, ed. by Walter Pohl, Veronika Wieser, and Francesco Borri, celama 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp.  415–448 FHG 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.130269

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Archbishop of Moravia; the Revelations of Pseudo­Methodios of Patara; the Rus’ Paleia; the Psalter and other books of the Bible; accounts of the seven ecumenical councils; and so forth. Some scholars also count among its sources the Testament (Поучение) of Volodimir Monomakh as well the account of the Tower of Babel from the Chronographia of John Malalas.2 The opening lines of the PVL (0,1–0,4),3 from which it obtains its name, reads three slightly different ways in the five main manuscript witnesses.4 In the Khlebnikov copy, the text reads: Повѣсть временьныхъ лѣтъ нестера чьрноризьца Феодосиева манастыря печерьскаго отъкуду Русьская земля стала есть (The Tale of bygone years of Nestor a monk of the Feodosii Caves Monastery, from where came the Rus’ land and who first began to rule in it and from where the Rus’ land became to be.)

The Laurentian copy reads: Повѣсть временьныхъ лѣтъ отъкуду есть пошьла Русьская земля и къто въ неи почалъ пьрвѣе къняжити, и отъкуду Русьская земля стала есть. (The Tale of bygone years from where came the Rus’ land and who first began to rule in it and from where the Rus’ land became to be.)

The Radziwiłł, Academy, and Hypatian copies read: Повѣсть временьныхъ лѣтъ чьрноризьца Феодосиева манастыря печерьскаго, отъкуду есть пошьла Русьская земля и къто въ неи почалъ пьрвѣе къняжити, и отъкуду Русьская земля стала есть.

2

Tolochko, ‘Christian Chronology’. Column and line references are given according to The Povest’ vremennykh let, ed. by Ostrowski. 4 These MS witnesses are: 1.) Laurentian, dated to 1377 (Laur, L), St Petersburg, RNB, MS F.IV.2; 2.) Radziwiłł, dated to the 1490s (Radz, R), St Petersburg, BAN, 34. 5. 30; 3.) Academy, dated to end of fifteenth century (Acad, A), Moscow, RGB, MDA, MS 5/182; 4.) Hypatian, dated to c. 1425 (Hypa, H), St Petersburg, BAN, MS 16. 4. 4; 5.) Khlebnikov, dated to the sixteenth century (Khle, Kh), St Petersburg, RNB, MS F.IV.230. Kloss dated it to the 1550s–1560s on the basis of its watermarks. Kloss, ‘Predislovie k izdaniiu 1998 g.’, p. G. In addition, in the few places where there are lacunae in the Khlebnikov, a direct copy of it has been used to fill them: 6.) Pogodin, dated to the early seventeenth century (Pogo, P). St Petersburg, RNB, MS Pogodin 1401. 3

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(The Tale of bygone years of a monk of the Feodosii Caves Monastery, from where came the Rus’ land and who first began to rule in it and from where the Rus’ land became to be.)

While the witnesses thus disagree on whether the author identifies himself (or was identified as) a monk of the Feodosii Caves Monastery and whether his name was Nestor (to be discussed below), all five witnesses are in agreement on the trinary set of questions that the chronicler tasks himself with answering: 1.) What were the origins of the Rus’ land? 2.) Who were its first rulers? and 3.) How did the Rus’ land come to be and what had it become by the time of the writing of the chronicle? The answers to these three questions provide the historiographical outlook of the chronicler-author, although they might not have originally been his own. The PVL chronicler may have incorporated the viewpoints of earlier chroniclers and authors of sources into the final version, using these viewpoints either with or without editing them to conform to his own views. Nonetheless, one can detect two emplotments within the text overall, which in turn reflect two virtual viewpoints of the past. The first emplotment begins when humankind was at a low point in history just after the biblical flood, when it had barely escaped complete destruction. The narrative follows a generally upward direction from the point of view of the author/compiler,5 a trajectory leading from the Hebrews to the birth of Christ, from there to the reign of Constantine the Great (306–337), eventually proceeding to the baptism of Princess Ol’ga (s.a. 955) and the reign of her grandson Volodimir Sviatoslavich (980–1015). A high point of this narrative is reached in the description of the events leading up to the baptism (s.a. 988) of Volodimir and then of all the Rus’ people. Another high point is reached with the reign of Volodimir’s son Iaroslav (1019–1054) and a listing of his accomplishments as ruler (s.a. 1037). This narrative line follows the mythos of an archetypal classical comedy.6 It focuses primarily on human agency, not direct intervention by divine or supernatural forces. Oleg, Igor’, and Sviatoslav sign treaties with the Greeks. Ol’ga outsmarts the Byzantine emperor (PVL 60,25–61,24) as well as the Derevlians (PVL 55,10–60,1). The Byzantine princess Anna leads Volodimir to accept baptism (PVL 110,26–111,16). Iaroslav makes Kyiv a centre of Christian learning. For the narrator, the main obstacle that the Rus’ have to overcome is their belief in pagan deities. The narrator refers to this residual belief in his 5 6

On the concept of ‘authorship’ of medieval texts, see Bolduc, ‘The Author in the Middle Ages’. Ostrowski, ‘Pagan Past’.

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description of the idol of Perun being carried to the Dnepr River. The throwing of the idol into the Dnepr River is a counterpoint to the mass baptism of the people of Kyiv who are forcibly marched into the same river. The river both carries pagan ignorance away (by carrying the idol away) and brings Christian knowledge (through the act of baptism). This process creates a new nation. Volodimir appeals (s.a. 988) to God to ‘look on this new people’ (PVL 118,13) and ‘make these new people […] to know thee as the true God’ (PVL 124,12). The Rus’ are described in his eulogy (s.a. 1015) ‘as his new people’ (PVL 131,25). Boris and Gleb are described after their martyrdom (s.a. 1015) as ‘interceding with him (God) for his new Christian people’ (PVL 133,28). Among the accomplishments of Iaroslav (s.a. 1037), according to the chronicler, is that the devil has been ‘conquered by this new Christian people’ (PVL 153,17–18). It is likely this emplotment was in an earlier chronicle (perhaps the hypothetical compilation of 1073 that the Russian philologist Aleksei A. Shakhmatov (1864–1920) attributed to the monk Nikon),7 which brought the narrative through the reign of Iaroslav, and was then subsequently incorporated into the PVL as we know it with additional text provided by the PVL’s author/compiler. A second emplotment begins with placing the ‘Tale of the Founding of the Caves Monastery’ within the entry for 1051,8 then continues from 1054 to the end of the narrative (which occurs at s.a. 1114). The plot thickens with the coming of the Polovtsians (s.a. 1061). While the description of the next fifty years or so has its ups and downs, the trajectory is generally even. The lack of unity among the princes that the chronicler describes is one of the major causes of the pagan (Polovtsian) depredations, and thus must be counted high among ‘our sins’. In that sense, this second emplotment corresponds rather neatly with one of the common plots of the classic romance genre. The hero of the romance in this case is Volodimir Monomakh, who is mentioned near the beginning of the second narrative (s.a. 1053) as being born ‘from the Greek princess’ and ascends the throne of Kyiv close to the narrative’s end (s.a. 1113). Among other indications that he is the romance’s hero is the people of Kyiv appealing to him (s.a. 1097) through Vsevolod’s widow and the Metropolitan Nikola ‘to guard the Rus’ land and to have battle with the pagans’ (PVL 264,5–264,6). The chronicler, however, does not hold much optimism for the pagans (Polovtsians) being overcome without divine intervention. 7

Shakhmatov, Razyskaniia, pp. 420–60. ‘The Tale of the Founding of the Caves Monastery’ does not exist as a separate work outside of the PVL. 8

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While possible that these two emplotments are the result of a single narrator’s composing two narrations, it is more likely, given the way the chronicle is compiled, that the first emplotment was by a different chronicler. And it might not have been part of an earlier version of the PVL. In other words, one needs to keep in mind the differences between a source text for the PVL and a composition that was intended to be, and later became, what we know as the PVL itself. If there was only one author, then who was that author? If the different parts of the text were composed by different authors, then who were those authors and which parts of the text were they responsible for? And who were responsible for the source texts? Three candidates have been proposed as the author of the PVL: 1. Nestor (c. 1056–1114), a monk of the Kyivan Caves Monastery; 2. Sil’vestr (c. 1053–1123), hegumen of St Michael’s Monastery in Vydubichi (1116), bishop of Pereiaslavl’ (1118–23); and 3. Vasilii, a monk of the Kyivan Caves Monastery. The question of who wrote the PVL is accompanied not only by the question of whether the entire PVL was compiled and written by one person, but also to what extent the person we identify as the author of the PVL might have been only fulfilling the role of editor. Was the author of the PVL assembling various excerpts from source texts and earlier chronicles for the first time, placing them within his own narrative matrix and thereby creating a new work altogether, or did he merely add a concluding part to an already existing chronicle that had been compiled by one or more earlier editors or authors? The answers to these questions determine to a great extent our understanding of the text, especially in regard to historiographical identity in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In the following, I will discuss and evaluate the evidence and arguments for and against each of the above candidates in turn and analyse what role they might have played. Note that the following discussion is not intended as a historiographical survey of what every scholar who has written on the subject has said, since my focus is primarily on the variety of ideas about the PVL’s authorship. The textual relationship of the main witnesses bears on the authorship question, but here, too, we encounter some controversy. Fortunately for our purposes, we do not have to go into the divisive issues of that textual relationship controversy. We need only consider the parts that are generally agreed upon. In particular there is agreement that the five main witnesses can be divided into two groups, the Laurentian group (which includes the Laurentian, Radziwiłł,

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and Academy copies) and the Hypatian group (which includes the Hypatian, Khlebnikov, and Pogodin copies). There is also general agreement on the dating of these manuscript copies. For each of the three author candidates, I discuss four points: 1.) the evidence for attributing the PVL to this author; 2.) the arguments for that attribution; 3.) the arguments against that attribution; and 4.) the strength of this evidence and these arguments when compared to each other. In the end, I provide an assessment of how the results of this analysis affect our understanding of the PVL as a source for historiographical identity of the time.

A. Nestor as the Author of the Archetype of the PVL (hereafter, PVLα). 1. Evidence for Nestor The primary evidence for Nestor is the interpolation in the opening lines of the PVL (0,1–0,4) in the Khlebnikov copy cited above: The Tale of bygone years of Nestor a monk of the Feodosii Caves Monastery, from where came the Rus’ land and who first began to rule in it and from where the Rus’ land began to be.

None of the other direct witnesses to PVLα have the name ‘Nestor’ in the heading. The question is whether the sixteenth-century scribe of the Khlebnikov copy had access to information about the authorship of the twelfth-century archetype or made a sixteenth-century educated guess as to the author’s name. In addition, in a letter to Archimandrite Akindin of the Kyivan Caves Monastery in 1232, the monk Polikarp mentions Nestor twice in connection with a ‘chronicle’. In Discourse 25, Polikarp refers to ‘Nestor who wrote a chronicle’ (Hecтepъ, иже написа лѣтописець).9 And in Discourse 27, Polikarp refers to ‘the blessed Nestor who wrote about the blessed fathers Damian, Ieremei, Matfei, and Isakii in a chronicle’ (блаженый Нестерь въ лѣтописци написа о блаженых отцѣх, о Дамияне, Іереміи, и Матфѣи, и Исакыи).10 The stories about Damian, Ieremei, Matfei, and Isakii do appear in the PVL (189,7–191,12) s.a. 1074, but Shakhmatov thought the PVL author borrowed 9 Kyievo­Pechersʹkyi pateryk, ed. by Abramovych, p. 126; cf. The ‘Paterik’ of the Kievan Caves Monastery, trans. by Heppell, p. 145. 10 Kyievo­Pechersʹkyi pateryk, ed. by Abramovych, p. 133; cf. The ‘Paterik’ of the Kievan Caves Monastery, trans. by Heppell, p. 152.

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that section from an earlier Caves Monastery chronicle.11 Polikarp also states that the stories he included in the letter were heard from Simon, bishop of Vladimir and Suzdal’ (1214–1226).12 Finally, the Russian historian Vasilii N. Tatishchev (1686–1750) claimed to have discovered three other chronicles — the Kabinet, the Ioakim, and the Raskol’nik — that attest to Nestor’s being the author of the PVL. 13 It was thought that all three were lost in a fire shortly after Tatishchev’s death in 1750. However, our information about them comes only from later versions of Tatishchev’s History, which has prompted some scholars to doubt that these chronicles ever existed. The ‘historiographer’ Nikolai M. Karamzin (1766–1823) considered them to be ‘fantasies and inventions’ and referred to the information in them, information that is only reported by Tatishchev, as a special category of questionable source evidence that he called ‘Tatishchev information’.14 In 1961, however, the historian Sergei L. Peshtich (1914–1972) claimed to have identified one of these ‘lost’ chronicles as being the extant Ermolaev copy of the Hypatian branch.15 Peshtich also suggested, based on V. A. Petrov’s having ‘convincingly shown’ during a talk given at the Lenigradskoe otdelenie Instituta istorii (LOII) in 1959, that another of these ‘lost’ chronicles, the Kabinet, is merely one of the copies of the Nikon Chronicle.16 Peshtich’s claim and suggestion have not been corroborated or refuted in the scholarly literature. Nonetheless, if he is right, then neither chronicle would provide independent attestation of a Nestor authorship since both chronicles are deriva-

11 Shakhmatov, ‘Kievopecherskii paterik i Pecherskaia letopis’’, p.  798; Shakhmatov, Kievopecherskii paterik i Pecherskaia letopis’, p. 4. 12 Kyievo­Pechersʹkyi pateryk, ed. by Abramovych, p. 124. The ‘Paterik’ of the Kievan Caves Monastery, trans. by Heppell, p. 42. The relevance of this evidence is contested, among others, by Rusinov, ‘Poslanie inoka Polikarpa’. 13 Tatishchev, Istoriia rossiiskaia, i, pp. 119–21. 14 Karamzin, Istoriia gosudarstva Rossiiskogo, i, pp. xxvii–xxix, nn. 347, 385, 398, 420, 455, 463, 486; ii, nn. 9, 17, 65, 115, 121, 128, 131, 133, 145, 148, 156, 167, 170, 176, 179, 186, 189, 190, 208, 214, 222, 225, 229, 239, 246, 247, 255, 256, 263, 266, 269, 270, 278, 279, 296, 307, 308, 319, 331, 357, 366, 373, 375, 415, et passim; cf. Lur’e, ‘Problems of Source Criticism’, pp. 1–2. 15 Peshtich, Russkaia istoriografiia XVIII veka, i, pp. 256–58. 16 Peshtich, Russkaia istoriografiia XVIII veka, i, p. 252.

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tive — the Ermolaev from the Khlebnikov,17 while the Nikon Chronicle itself is derivative from other chronicles.18 Boris M. Kloss and Vadim I. Koretskii (1927–1985), like Peshtich, were not so ready to dismiss these non-extant chronicles as fabrications. They point out that Tatishchev had access to some of the finest libraries in Russia of the early eighteenth century, which held a number of chronicles,19 and that he travelled widely, including to Siberia, in search of manuscripts.20 Without access to these chronicles, however, we cannot verify how accurately Tatishchev reported on them, and whether or not they derive from the Khlebnikov copy. Accordingly, this evidence remains unconfirmed. 2. Arguments for Nestor Among the first historians to attribute at least part of the PVL to Nestor was Tatishchev in the early eighteenth century, as mentioned above. According to him, Nestor wrote the part of the PVL that leads to the year 1093, while Sil’vestr continued the chronicle to 1116.21 The German historian August Schlözer (1735–1809) attributed the entire PVL to Nestor.22 In 1815, the philologist Roman F. Timkovskii (1785–1820) also proposed that Nestor was the sole author of the entire text.23 Karamzin, in his monumental Istoriia gosu­ darstva Rossiiskogo (History of the Russian State) of 1816, accepted Nestor as the author of the entire PVL.24 He saw evidence of Nestor as the author within the text itself. Nestor  […] was gifted by a curious mind, he listened with attention to the oral legends of ancient times, to the popular historical tales; he saw the monuments, he saw the graves of the princes; he conversed with patricians, with the elders of Kyiv,

17

Shakhmatov, ‘Predislovie’, pp. xv–xvi. Kloss, Nikonovskii svod i russkie letopisi XVI–XVII vv., pp. 134–81. 19 Luppov, Kniga v Rossii v pervoi chetverti XVIII v., pp. 184–203; Luppov, Kniga v Rossii v poslepetrovskoe vremia, 1725–1740, pp. 169–95, 253–65. 20 Kloss and Koretskii, ‘V. N. Tatishchev’, pp. 5–8. 21 Tatishchev, Istoriia rossiiskaia, i, p. 120. 22 Von Schlözer, Nestor. 23 Timkovskii, ‘Kratkoe issledovanie o Paterike prepodobnogo Nestora’, pp. 70, 73. 24 Karamzin, ‘Ob istochnikakh’, pp. xv–xvii. 18

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with travellers, with dwellers of different Rus’ regions; he read Byzantine chronicles, church notes and thus became the first chronicler of our motherland.25

Of course, Karamzin was engaging in a bit of circular reasoning, because if any individual person wrote the entire text of the PVL, then that person, too, would be accorded these characteristics. As for the monk Vasilii, to whom some later scholars have attributed the text, Karamzin asserted that he supplied only supplemental information.26 Shakhmatov attributed the writing of the entire text of the first redaction to Nestor, but favoured Sil’vestr as the editor of the extant second redaction.27 Shakhmatov decided there were three redactions of the PVL, all done within a seven-year period (1111–1118), with the second redaction being based on the first, and the third, based on the second: • 1st redaction (Nestor) 1111, 1112, or 1113 (last entry 1110)28 • 2nd redaction (Sil’vestr) 1116 (last entry 1110) • 3rd redaction 1118 (last entry 1117) He proposed that Volodimir Monomakh was dissatisfied with the first redaction by Nestor, which was too favourable to his predecessor as prince of Kyiv, Sviatopolk Iziaslavich, and thus commissioned Sil’vestr to improve it by adding more information about Volodimir himself. Sil’vestr did so in the Vydubyts’kyi Monastery, where he was hegumen. In Shakhmatov’s opinion, Sviatopolk’s action upset the monks of the Kyivan Caves Monastery, so they undertook a third redaction of the PVL at their monastery to restore the pride of their institution. In Shakhmatov’s construct, Nestor, in order to create the first redaction, revised and added to a hypothetical text that Shakhmatov called the Nachal’nyi svod (Beginning Compilation), which he dated variously between 1093 and 1095. That Nachal’nyi svod he saw as incorporating the hypothetical Kyivan Caves Compilation of 1073 as well the hypothetical Novgorodian

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Karamzin, ‘Ob istochnikakh’, p. xv. Karamzin, ‘Ob istochnikakh’, pp. 95–96 n. 184. 27 Shakhmatov, Razyskaniia, p.  2; Shakhmatov, ‘Nestor letopisets’ (1916), p.  32; Shakhmatov, ‘Nestor letopisets’ (1914), p. 32. 28 Shakhmatov proposed at least three different dates for when he thought this redaction was made: 1111 in Shakhmatov, ‘Vvodnaia chast’’, p. xviii; 1112 in Shakhmatov, ‘Vvodnaia chast’’, p. xi; and 1113 in Shakhmatov, Razyskaniia, p. 2. 26

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Compilation of 1050. The Compilation of 1073, he saw, in turn, as being based on the hypothetical Kyivan Caves Compilation of 1039. Shakhmatov claimed that Sil’vestr’s reworking of the first redaction wiped out any distinguishable traces of that redaction.29 Shakhmatov ended his 1916 PVL edition with the entry for 1110, but called it Nestor’s text in the redaction of Sil’vestr (second redaction). He continued the text of the third redaction (of 1118) in his edition according to the Hypatian group of manuscript copies. In a two-part article published in 1924, Vasilii M. Istrin (1865–1937) contended that Nestor extended an already existing chronicle to 1113 and that Sil’vestr made a copy of that text in 1116. Istrin concluded that the continuation had to extend to 1113 because of the chronology found in the PVL s.a. 852, which ends with the death of Sviatopolk in 1113. The chronicler would have had to have known that year in order to calculate the number of years since Iaroslav’s death.30 Istrin posited that the folia on which the Nestorian continuation from 1110 to 1113 was placed were lost in the Sil’vestrian copy, from which all the other copies of the Laurentian group derived. Sil’vestr’s colophon, Istrin proposed, was preserved only because it was on a special folio or on the binding.31 In 1947 and again in 1950, Dmitrii S. Likhachev (1906–1999) stated that he considered Nestor to be the sole author of the entire text: ‘The writer of this new historical work was in all probability a monk at the Crypt Monastery, Nestor.’32 Yet in the same 1950 article he hedged the single-authorship question with the following statement: The chronicle only seems contradictory, unintegrated, and mosaic-like as long as we proceed from the idea that it was written from beginning to end by one author. This author will then appear to lack a unified style, worldview, system of political beliefs, and so on. But as soon as we abandon the idea of a single author and realize that the true author was the era in which the chronicle was written and that it rests not on a system of ideas but on a dynamic interaction of ideas, the chronicle will reveal its true unity — a unity determined not by the author’s individuality, but by reality, a unity reflecting all of life’s contradictions.33

29 30 31 32 33

Shakhmatov, ‘Vvodnaia chast’’, pp. xi, xvii; cf. p. xlii. Istrin, ‘Zamechaniia’, pp. 220, 230. Istrin, ‘Zamechaniia’, p. 231. Likhachev, Russkie letopisi, pp. 147–71; Likhachev, ‘“Povest’ vremennykh let”’, p. 102. Likhachev, ‘“Povest’ vremennykh let”’, p. 49.

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Likhachev made no attempt to equate Nestor with the era, so the apparent contradiction remains unresolved. Both Shakhmatov and Likhachev were aware of the stylistic differences between the PVL and other works attributed to Nestor, but dismissed them with the explanation that Nestor wrote the PVL twenty-five years after he wrote those other works; thus, according to them, his style changed.34 In addition, Shakhmatov argued that Nestor was reluctant to change the material of the older Caves Monastery chronicle, just as Sil’vestr was reluctant to change the material of the version of the PVL he redacted. Likhachev concluded that the references in the letter from the monk Polikarp ‘strongly connected the name of Nestor with the composition of the Povest’ vremennykh let’.35 In 1967, the Slavist and literary scholar Ludolf Müller (1917–2009) supported Shakhmatov’s contention that Nestor wrote the first redaction. He posited that Sil’vestr wrote a continuation of the text to 1115 or 1116, but that this part was lost in the Laurentian group.36 In 1971, the historian Mark Kh.  Aleshkovskii (1933–1974) concluded that Nestor compiled the svod (compilation) of 1091 from earlier materials and then added his own narrative until 1115. Aleshkovskii called this hypothetical version the ‘authorial’ PVL.37 In 1994, the historian Leonid V. Milov (1929–2007) published a stylometric comparison of the introductory part of the PVL with the Tale (Skazanie), which is not attributed to Nestor, and the Reading (Chtenie) of the Life of Boris and Gleb, which is attributed to Nestor. Milov found a relatively high coefficient among the three works. He concluded that there is a basis to think that Nestor was also the author of the introductory part of the PVL, but he would not state this definitively.38 In 2001, the Slavic philologist Alan Timberlake proposed that when Sil’vestr edited Nestor’s text of 1110, he did not add continuation entries.39 Also in 2001, Müller published his translation of the PVL into German, and continued to think that Nestor was the author of the non-extant first redaction of the PVL and that Sil’vestr was responsible for the extant second redaction. 34

Likhachev, Russkie letopisi, p. 148. Likhachev, Russkie letopisi, p. 148. 36 Müller, ‘Die “dritte Redaktion”’. 37 Aleshkovskii, Povest’ vremennykh let: Sud’ba literaturnogo, p. 29. Cf. Aleshkovskii, Povest’ vremennykh let: Iz istorii sozdaniia. 38 Milov, ‘Kto byl avtorom “Povesti vremennykh let”?’. 39 Timberlake, ‘Redactions’, p. 201. 35

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He asserted, as Istrin had, that Sil’vestr did add entries through 1115 or 1116, but that these folia were lost in the Laurentian group of manuscripts.40 3. Arguments against Nestor In 1861, the historian Nikolai I. Kostomarov (1817–1885) pointed out a number of contradictions between the contents of the Reading of the Life of Boris and Gleb, attributed to Nestor, and the PVL: the Reading says there were no apostles in Rus’ before Volodimir, but the PVL recounts the journey of the apostle Andrew through Rus’. The Reading says Volodimir gave Boris the town of Volodimir-in-Volhynia, but in the PVL, it says the town was Rostov. The Reading says that when Volodimir died, Sviatopolk came to Kyiv, whereas the PVL says he was already in Kyiv. In the Reading, the Varangian assassin wounds Boris and conveys him in a cart to Sviatopolk, who orders him killed. In the PVL, the Varangian assassin kills Boris immediately and brings him to Sviatopolk already dead. The Reading claims that Gleb did not know his brother had been killed when the Varangian assassin came to kill him, whereas the PVL says that he had been forewarned about this. In the Reading, Gleb is sent in war against some unknown enemies, but in the PVL they are the Pechenegs. According to Kostomarov, these and other contradictions are of such a nature that ‘they show that if the Reading was written by Nestor, then it is impossible to attribute the PVL to him’.41 In 1914, the philologist and composer Sergei A. Bugoslavskii (1888–1945) pointed out a number of specifics concerning how the style of the Life of Feodosii differs from the style of the PVL, such as being less concise, the inclusion of fewer factual details, more quotations and references to biblical events, and far more repetitions.42 In 1953, the medievalist Samuel H. Cross (1891–1946), in a posthumously published introduction to his translation of the PVL, asserted that other texts attributed to Nestor — the Reading (Chtenie) of the Life of Boris and Gleb and the Life of St Feodosii of the Caves Monastery — differ in style from the PVL and provide details that contradict those of the PVL. The Reading says Boris and Gleb were with their father, Volodimir, when he died, whereas the PVL says Boris hears news of his father’s death during his return from fighting 40 41 42

Die Nestorchronik, trans. by Müller, iv. Kostomarov, Lektsii po russkoi istorii, pp. 28–29. Bugoslavskii, ‘K voprosu o kharaktere’, p. 163.

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against the Pechenegs. According to the Reading, Volodimir assigns the town of Volodimir-in-Volhynia to Boris but kept Gleb with him, whereas, according to the PVL, Volodimir assigns Rostov to Boris and Murom to Gleb. According to the Reading, upon hearing of the death of his brother Boris, Gleb flees north pursued by Sviatopolk’s men, whereas, according to the PVL, Gleb comes south from Murom of his own accord when Sviatopolk summons him and is slain by Sviatopolk’s men near Smolensk. In Cross’s view, the PVL account and the Reading differ ‘in style and method’: the PVL account ‘supplies such factual details as geographical data and the names both of the brothers, servants, and of their murderers’ whereas the Reading ‘is a religious biography in the best manner of early Russian hagiography’, not supplying much in the way of detail.43 Likewise, the PVL account of the founding of the Kyivan Caves Monastery differs from that in the Life of Feodosii. According to the PVL, Antonii tonsured twelve monks and then retired, whereas the Life states that Antonii did not tonsure any monks for it was Nikon who tonsured them. In the PVL, Antonii named Barlaam his successor just before going into retirement, whereas in the Life he retired to a cell first, then named Barlaam his successor, and at some later point left for a new crypt that he dug on another hill. According to the PVL, Feodosii obtained the Studite monastic rule from a monk named Michael, who had come from Greece to Kyiv, whereas, according to the Life, Feodosii sent a messenger to Ephraim the Castrate in Constantinople to obtain it. Under s.a. 1073, the PVL describes briefly how Feodosii began building a stone church that was completed by Hegumen Stefan in 1075, whereas the Life goes into some detail how Prince Sviatoslav selected a new site for this church. Cross concluded that if Nestor wrote the Reading and the Life of Feodosii, then he could not have written the PVL. In 2007, Oleksiy Tolochko dismissed the Kyivan Caves Patericon evidence of Nestor as the chronicler for being later and recursive.44 Although acknowledging the mid-sixteenth-century date for the Khlebnikov copy of the PVL, Tolochko emphasized the seventeenth-century provenance of the Synopsis, which cites Nestor as the author, and of copies of the Kyiv Patericon, which mention Nestor as a chronicler, as instrumental in the spread of the notion that Nestor wrote the PVL. Tolochko added a couple more discrepancies between the PVL and the Life of Feodosii: in the PVL (s.a. 1051) the author states that he was admitted as a monk to the Caves Monastery by Feodosii while the lat43 44

Cross, ‘Introduction’, p. 7. Tolochko, ‘On Nestor’, pp. 38–40.

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ter was its hegumen. He also states that he was Feodosii’s disciple when he recounts the transfer of Feodosii’s relics (s.a. 1091). In the Life of St Feodosii, in contrast, the author states that he never met Feodosii and that he was admitted as a monk to the Caves Monastery by Stefan, a later hegumen. Tolochko wrote: ‘From the very beginnings of the Nestor myth no particular chronicle was understood as a work by Nestor, but rather the chronicle as a genre, or more broadly, any text on history’.45 Tolochko went on to point out that five of the eight copies of the Hustyn Chronicle state that it was written by Nestor (some with the date 1073 as the date of composition). This fictionalization was meant to give greater credence to that chronicle, which was compiled in the early seventeenth century. 4. Evaluation of the Evidence and Arguments for and against Nestor The evidence and arguments for Nestor as the author of the PVL are weak. It is less likely that the sixteenth-century scribe of the Khlebnikov copy had access to information about the twelfth-century authorship than that he made an educated guess, especially since no earlier PVL copyist was aware of the attribution. In text-critical terms, the interpolation of Nestor’s name in the heading of the PVL is a lectio singularis. As such it is to be rejected unless some good reason can be found for accepting it. In this case, no reason of sufficient power has been proposed; the references to ‘Nestor’ and ‘a chronicle’ in other works are inconclusive. Neither Polikarp nor his source for the story, Bishop Simon, were in a position to have known first-hand who wrote the PVL, and there is nothing to identify the ‘chronicle’ he mentions with the PVL. Indeed, Tolochko provides a list of a number of seventeenth-century sources that say they are citing the chronicle of Nestor but do not provide any information from the PVL.46 If any of the missing chronicles of Tatishchev that, like the Khlebnikov, mention Nestor as the author of the PVL could be found and could be shown to have a lineage independent from the Khlebnikov, then this would strengthen the evidence in favour of Nestor. Without them, the evidence remains flimsy. Both Shakhmatov and Likhachev claimed that a number of decades separated Nestor’s writing of the Reading and the Life of Feodosii, on one side, from his writing of the PVL, on the other. Recently, however, the historian Iurii A. Artamonov has argued that Nestor’s Life of Feodosii was writ45 46

Tolochko, ‘On Nestor’, p. 44. Tolochko, ‘On Nestor’, p. 44.

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ten primarily during the years 1107 and 1108, very close to the presumed time (1110) of his writing the PVL.47

B. Sil’vestr, (c. 1153–1123), Hegumen of St Michael’s Monastery in Vydubichi (1116), Bishop of Pereiaslavl’ (1118–1123) 1. Evidence for Sil’vestr The only evidence is a coda in copies of the Laurentian branch (LRA): In the hope of God’s grace, I, Hegumen Sil’vestr of St Michael’s, wrote down this chronicle [написахъ книгы си лѣтописець], hoping to receive mercy from God, during the time of Prince Volodimir who reigns in Kyiv, and to me, hegumen at St Michael’s in 1116, in the ninth year of the indiction; may whosoever reads this book remember me in prayers.

This coda appears following several blank folia after the end of the text (s.a. 1110). 2. Arguments for Sil’vestr Among the first after Tatishchev to attribute to Sil’vestr a hand in writing the PVL was Kostomarov. In 1861, he wrote that ‘the chronicle was written by various people’, including Sil’vestr and Vasilii.48 He attributed to Nestor only the writing of the local Caves Monastery chronicle, which was incorporated into the PVL. In 2008, Aleksei  A. Gippius dated the Nachal’nyi svod (Beginning Compilation) to around 1091. He proposed that the same person who compiled the Nachal’nyi svod also continued it with yearly entries to 1114. Then, in 1114–1115, the PVL was composed in the Kyivan Caves Monastery on the basis of the Nachal’nyi svod and its annalistic continuation. Like Shakhmatov, Gippius proposed that praise for Volodimir Monomakh was inserted into an already existing compilation. Gippius suggested that the translation of the relics of Boris and Gleb on 2 May 1115 provided the impetus for the composition of the PVL. At the same time, in Novgorod, another compiler used the 47 48

Artamonov, ‘Zhitie Feodosiia Pecherskogo’. Kostomarov, Lektsii po russkoi istorii, p. 27.

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Nachal’nyi svod to create the compilation of Mstislav Volodimirovich, which is reflected in both the Older and Younger versions of the Novgorod I Chronicle. In 1116, according to Gippius, Sil’vestr copied the PVL, but Gippius saw no reason to consider this copy a different redaction. In 1117, however, in his view, the text underwent a redactorial reworking, especially in the concluding part as well as in the story about Riurik (s.a. 862). Тhis reworking was what Gippius calls the ‘princely’ or ‘Mstislav’ redaction of the PVL, which became the protograph of the Hypatian group of manuscript copies. Gippius asserted that the ‘most significant of its additions were moved by replacing the insert folia in Sil’vestr’s manuscript’.49 In 2011, Savva M. Mikheev proposed that Sil’vestr compiled the PVL in 1116 by revising the Nachal’nyi svod (Beginning Compilation), dating this composition, as did Gippius, to 1091. According to Mikheev, Sil’vestr supplemented the Nachal’nyi svod with the introduction to Nikon’s Compilation of 1073, texts of Rus’‒Greek treaties, excerpts from Hamartolos’s Chronicle, various tales, such as those of Oleg’s death, the fourth revenge of Ol’ga against the Derevlians, and anecdotes about the Kyivan Caves Monastery, all of which Sil’vestr placed under the appropriate yearly entries. Thus, Mikheev eliminated Shakhmatov’s first (Nestor) redaction of 1110, proposing instead the Sil’vestrian text of 1116 as the first redaction. Then, in Mikheev’s view, that 1116 text was copied and added to in 1117 in the Vydubyts’kyi Monastery by an unknown copyist, the result of this being the basis of the Hypatian branch. Finally, Mikheev proposed that Sil’vestr returned to the text at some later point and revised parts of it, this becoming the basis of the Laurentian branch. It was at this later point in time, according to Mikheev, that Sil’vestr added the colophon with the information that he ‘wrote down’ (написах) the chronicle in 1116.50 O. Tolochko asserted, on the basis of the colophon that Sil’vestr was ‘the only person to have claimed the authorship of the Primary Chronicle’ and that ‘there is something very odd in this willingness to reject direct source evidence in favour of mere conjecture, as scholars had no special reasons for it then as now’.51 In a long footnote, he argued that the reasons for this ‘willingness to reject direct source evidence’ are ‘emotional, not factual’ and ‘ideological, not textual’.52

49 50 51 52

Gippius, ‘K probleme redaktsii Povesti vremennykh let. II’, pp. 22–23. Mikheev, Kto pisal ‘Povest’ vremennykh let’?, pp. 162–64, 276. Tolochko, ‘On Nestor’, p. 34. Tolochko, ‘On Nestor’, pp. 51–52 n. 10.

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3. Arguments against Sil’vestr Yet the matter is not as straightforward as Tolochko seems to imply. In 2002 and then again in 2008, Petr P. Tolochko acknowledged that the word написах could mean ‘copied’ or ‘edited’, as well as ‘wrote’. He argued that the placement of the colophon of 1116 without a further continuation of text beyond 1110 indicated that Sil’vestr did not edit the PVL, thereby creating a second redaction as posited by Shakhmatov, but that he simply copied the text to the year 1110.53 P. Tolochko questioned the justification that Shakhmatov gave for three redactions in such rapid succession. He also questioned Sil’vestr’s adding entries to chronicles while he was bishop of Pereiaslavl’, for which there seems to be no evidence. He concluded: we do not have sufficient basis to consider Hegumen Sil’vestr either the redactor of the PVL or in general the chronicler. At most, what is possible to argue is this: that in 1116 in the Vydubyts’kyi Monastery, work was completed under his supervision on a rewritten text composed by Nestor.54

4. Evaluation of the Evidence and Arguments for and against Sil’vestr The phrase ‘написахъ книгы си лѣтописець’ can mean either ‘I wrote [composed] this chronicle’ or ‘I copied [wrote down] this chronicle’. The coda bearing Sil’vestr’s name appears only in the Laurentian branch. As Cross pointed out, three redactions in eight years seems unlikely. One also notes that both the first and second redactions of Shakhmatov end with the entry for 1110, although Sil’vestr dates his entry 1116. One would expect that if Sil’vestr completed a new redaction by 1116, he would have brought the entries up to at the latest 1115 or 1116. That expectation has led to the conjecture that the final folia were missing in the protograph of the Laurentian branch (LTRA). If the Laurentian branch derives from an exemplar with a faulty ending, then we have no evidence that the hypothetical first redaction of the PVL ended with the entry for 1110. That last entry in the Laurentian branch refers to an event that occurred ‘in the following year’ (i.e., 1111). The Hypatian branch copies describe that subsequent event in full. It is therefore likely that the Hypatian branch better represents the conclusion of the PVL and that, as Istrin suggested 53 Tolochko, ‘Redaktiroval li igumen Sil’vestr’; and Tolochko, ‘Redaktsiia Povesti vremen­ nykh let igumena Sil’vestra’. 54 Tolochko, ‘Redaktsiia Povesti vremennykh let igumena Sil’vestra’, p. 139.

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and as Cross stated it, that ending was ‘also present in the prototype of the Laurentian redaction, but that several leaves were lost at the conclusion, while the colophon of Sylvester was on a separate leaf or on the binding, and was thus preserved’.55 It could have ended with the entry for as late as 1116 (but not 1117). It is also possible that Sil’vestr merely made a copy of PVLα up through 1110. The Hypatian branch, which Shakhmatov said represents the third redaction, does not derive from the Sil’vestrian version, which Shakhmatov said represents the second redaction. Otherwise, one would expect it to keep the coda, just as the other copies of the Laurentian branch did. Instead, it too derives from some copy of PVLα. Thus, one must conclude that Sil’vestr copied from the archetype of the PVL — the same archetype from which the HypatianKhlebnikov branch derives.

In other words, even if one accepts Shakhmatov’s proposal of three ‘redactions’, those ‘redactions’ do not proceed in the progression 1st redaction → 2nd redaction → 3rd redaction, as he saw it. Instead they proceeded:

Sil’vestr being rewarded for writing the PVL with his appointment as bishop of Pereiaslavl’ two years later is possible.56 But we have no evidence, as far as I know, that this was the reason he was chosen to be bishop or that it contributed to his being chosen in any way. Nor do I know of evidence of anyone else being made a bishop because they wrote a chronicle. One could just as easily speculate that Sil’vestr took credit for someone else’s work because he was higher 55

Cross, ‘Notes’, p. 284 n. 387. E.g., Oleksiy P. Tolochko, on p. 449 of ‘Creating Time, Forging Identity, Building a State’, in this volume. 56

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in the hierarchy (a hegumen) and could claim the work of Vasilii (a monk) under him, and that he did so in order to be made bishop. Both contentions are equally speculative and equally without any direct supporting evidence. Sil’vestr, as a hegumen of the Vydubyts’kyi Monastery, does not fit the description in the opening lines of the text of the PVL as having been written by a monk of the Feodosii Caves Monastery. Those who nonetheless argue in favour of his authorship have one of two arguments to draw on to preserve his candidacy. One is the suggestion that he began the PVL while still a monk of the Caves Monastery and completed it after he was made hegumen of the Vydubyts’kyi Monastery. The other argument is to deny the primacy of the phrase ‘a monk of the Feodosii Caves Monastery’ in the introductory words of the PVL, as O. Tolochko and Gippius have done. They see the phrase as an interpolation and a contamination of the Hypatian-Khlebnikov branch in the Radziwiłł-Academy sub-branch.57 If so, then that ‘contamination’ could represent a restoring of the text of PVLα, which Sil’vestr had tampered with by eliminating a phrase that was not true of him. Even if Sil’vestr meant that he ‘wrote’ the PVL, it was not uncommon for medieval writers to claim as their own a work they copied or only modified. As Anatole Mazour described it: ‘After the chronicler copied his predecessor’s text, he considered that he had a perfect right to attach his own name to the completed assignment, often without even mentioning the former author.’58 In addition, there is another claimant through what some scholars consider to be ‘direct evidence’ for authorship — a person who claims to have been an eyewitness to some of the events described in the chronicle.

C. Vasilii, a Monk of the Kyivan Caves Monastery 1. Evidence for Vasilii In the PVL s.a. 1097, the narrator seems to identify himself as Vasilii и мънѣ ту сущю, въ Володимири, въ едину нощь присъла по мя кънязь Давыдъ. И приидохъ къ нему, и посадивъ мя и рече ми: ‘[…] Да се, Василю, шьлю тя, иди къ Василькови, съ сима отрокома.’ (265,7–265,17)

57 58

Tolochko, ‘On Nestor’, pp. 37–41; Gippius, ‘O kritike teksta’, pp. 85–87. Mazour, Modern Russian Historiography, p. 2.

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(while I was myself there at Volodimir [Volynsk], Prince David [Igor’evich] sent for me during a certain evening and I entered his presence. […] he offered me a seat and said to me, ‘[…] I choose you, Vasilii, as my messenger. Go to your namesake Vasil’ko.’)

2. Arguments for Vasilii for All or Part of PVLα In 1836, the writer and philosopher Vasilii M. Perevoshchikov (1785–1851) proposed that Nestor wrote the text through the year 1074 and that Vasilii continued it from 1075 to 1113.59 He cited the evidence in the PVL of Vasilii’s self-identification s.a. 1097 concerning the blinding of Prince Vasilii. Perevoshchikov claimed to have detected a difference in verbal expression and style between the two sections. Nestor’s verbal expression, according to him, is ‘entirely incomprehensible to us’. He found it to be ‘older, more incorrect’ than Vasilii’s. He also considered Nestor’s part to be the ‘better composition of Russia and spirit of the time described by him’. In Vasilii’s part, the narrative is almost entirely about political transactions. Whereas Nestor in his part often speaks about the Rus’ progression from Byzantium, Vasilii in his part mentions it only once. The Nestor part has many monologues, but the Vasilii part has not one. Perevoshchikov acknowledged that both have a dramatic style. He saw Nestor’s style as being more expressive, while Vasilii’s is softer.60 In 1954, the linguist and philologist André Vaillant (1890–1977) independently proposed that Vasilii composed the PVL.61 Vaillant apparently was unaware of Perevoshchikov’s previous identification. But he went beyond Perevoshchikov’s argument in identifying Vasilii with Hegumen Sil’vestr (see below). In 2003, Vasilii was again independently proposed as the author of the PVL, this time by V. N. Rusinov.62 Rusinov was also apparently unaware of Perevoshchikov’s and Vaillant’s previous identification of Vasilii as the author (at least, he does not mention them). But, in contrast to Vaillant, who argued that Vasilii was Sil’vestr, and in contrast to Perevoshchikov, who argued that Vasilii wrote the part from 1075 to 1113, Rusinov argued that Vasilii wrote the narrative from 1051 to 1117. He used as evidence fifty-five passages in the text. He identified nine passages in the narrative between 1051 and 1114 where the 59 60 61 62

Perevoshchikov, O russkikh letopisiakh i letopisateliakh po 1240 g, p. 28. Perevoshchikov, O russkikh letopisiakh i letopisateliakh po 1240 g, p. 28. Vaillant, ‘La Chronique de Kiev’. Rusinov, ‘Letopisnye stat’i 1051–1117 gg.’.

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narrator refers to himself in the first person; fourteen passages between 1068 and 1115 that refer to personal Christian characteristics; eighteen passages between 1051 and 1114 where the course of the narrative is referred to, including six mentions of what was previously said, seven remarks about a previous passage, three remarks about reference to a previous theme, one remark about content of a legal narration, and one remark about an abbreviated narration on the given theme; seven passages between 1051 and 1115 where he refers to the time of the chronicler; and seven passages between 1068 and 1111 where the narrative describes military clashes between the Rus’ and the Polovtsians. In 2013, the historian Vadim Aristov accepted Rusinov’s claim that Vasilii wrote the narrative from 1051 to 1117.63 Aristov was aware of Perevoshchikov’s and Rusinov’s claims, but he did not mention Vaillant’s claim that Vasilii was Sil’vestr’s worldly name, Sil’vestr being the name he took when shorn a monk. Nonetheless, Aristov made the same claim, namely, that Vasilii and Sil’vestr were the baptismal and monastic names for the same person, asking what led Vasilii to choose ‘Sil’vestr’ as his monastic name. The scholar of early Rus’ onomastics F. B. Uspenskii advised Aristov that there were several ways for a monk to choose his name. One way was for an individual to choose a monastic name that begins with the same letter as their lay name. Another was to choose the name of the saint who was remembered on the day of that person’s tonsuring. A third way was for the monk to keep his lay name if a saint already carried that name. Aristov noted that underlying the three methods was an attempt ‘to create a certain continuity between names’.64 He suggested that adopting the name of a saint whose remembrance day occurred either the day before or after one’s own name day would have been completely in keeping with this strategy of maintaining continuity. He pointed out that the commemoration days of St Vasilii and St Sylvester are on adjoining days — 1 January for St Vasilii and 31 December and 2 January for St Sylvester. Aristov conjectured that 31 December was the date of St Sylvester’s death while 2 January was the date of the funeral.65 Aristov’s argument could have been strengthened with evidence of other monks adopting the name of a saint whose remembrance day occurred a day before or after the remembrance day remembrance day of the saint carrying the same name as the monk did when ‘in the world’. Moreover, Aristov could have ventured a reason or reasons for a monk choosing none of the three 63 64 65

Aristov, ‘Vasilii-Sil’vestr’. Aristov, ‘Vasilii-Sil’vestr’, p. 120. Aristov, ‘Vasilii-Sil’vestr’, pp. 119–20.

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options outlined by Uspenskii, including not adopting the name of the saint of one’s own name day, but choosing the name of a saint whose remembrance day occurs on an adjacent day. Finally, as Aristov himself noted, for this hypothesis to work, Sil’vestr would still have had to have been known as ‘Vasilii’ in 1097, when the chronicle narrator refers to himself as ‘Vasilii’.66 However, the firstperson references in the narrative, indicate an individual who had become a monk at the age of seventeen sometime between 1057 (when Feodosii became hegumen of the Caves Monastery) and 1074 (when Feodosii died), which information can be found s.a. 1051 (PVL 160,16–160,22): Феодосиеви же живущую въ манастыри, и правящю добродѣтельное житие и чьрньчьское правило, и приимающю вьсякого приходящаго къ нему, къ немуже и азъ придохъ, худыи и недостоиныи рабъ, и приятъ мя, дѣтъ ми сущю 17 отъ рожения моего. (While Feodosii lived in the monastery, following a virtuous life and the monastic rule, and receiving everyone who presented himself, I, a poor and unworthy servant, came to him, and he accepted me in my seventeenth year.)

Although Feodosii resided in the monastery while Antonii, the founder, still headed it, the wording that Feodosii had ‘accepted’ him implies that Feodosii was hegumen at that time of the writer’s acceptance. Cross took the ‘I’ in the passage to be a self-reference by the author of the PVL, and thus asserted that ‘this passage may be regarded as an essential bit of evidence that Nestor was not the author or compiler of the Primary Chronicle’.67 He did not, however, then conclude that the self-reference here was to Vasilii, or that any of the other first-person references later in the text (with the exception of the one s.a. 1097) were to Vasilii. 3. Arguments against Vasilii Shakhmatov proposed that the PVL author/compiler either was quoting a priest named Vasilii in this passage (s.a. 1097), or had incorporated Vasilii’s written account of the event.68

66

Aristov, ‘Vasilii-Sil’vestr’, p. 121 n. 16. Cross, ‘Notes’, p. 263 n. 190. 68 Shakhmatov, ‘“Povest’ vremennykh let”’, pp.  27–28; Shakhmatov, ‘Vvodnaia chast’’, pp. xxxi–xxxvi. 67

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In 1953, Cross wrote that he considered the ‘Vasilii’ material to be a later interpolation. Nevertheless, he kept it in his translation. In his ‘Introduction’, Cross discussed seven other first-person passages that appear in the PVL in the context of whether they point to Nestor as author of the narrative. One (s.a. 1091) concerns the narrator describing himself as an eyewitness to the discovery of the remains of Feodosii. Here Cross concluded that it demonstrated only that the narrator was not Nestor, because the style of the passage was ‘a consequent departure from Nestor’s ornate verbiage’.69 The second firstperson passage Cross discussed was also the passage s.a. 1097, in which David Igor’evich says, ‘I choose you, Vasilii, as my messenger. Go to your namesake Vasil’ko’. Cross commented: ‘The fact that the same events described in this section are covered again briefly under 1098–1100 leads naturally to the supposition that the Vasiliy account represents an interpolated episode.’70 Cross deemed the other three first-person usages to be ‘of more restricted interest’ and that these seven first-person passages ‘cast but little light upon the authorship of the Chronicle’.71 Cross did, however, consider the possibility that all the first-person passages belonged to one narrator: Even if we assume that the author of the narrative dealing with the beginning of the monastery joined that community about 1057, as soon as Theodosius [Feodosii] became prior, and, according to his own statement, was seventeen years old at the time, he would thus have been only seventy years old at the date upon which the Povest’ [PVL] concludes (1110). If we disregard for a moment the Sil’vestrian colophon, it is not intrinsically impossible that the entire Povest’ was written or compiled by one monk of the Crypt Monastery in the course of the second half of the eleventh century.72

His point would seem to suggest one person, such as Vasilii, as the author to the year 1110, and then Sil’vestr as the redactor of that text in 1116, but that is not the conclusion that Cross reached. A standard position in the scholarly literature is to limit Vasilii’s role to being a later redactor, who undertook his editing work in 1118/19.73 If so, then there 69

Cross, ‘Introduction’, p. 11. Cross, ‘Introduction’, p. 11. 71 Cross, ‘Introduction’, p. 11. 72 Cross, ‘Introduction’, p. 12. 73 See, e.g., Aleshkovskii, Povest’ vremennykh let: Sud’ba literaturnogo, pp.  32–52; and Rybakov, Drevniaia Rus’, pp. 274–79. 70

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is no way to tell what Vasilii had added or changed in the PVL besides adding his own eyewitness accounts. The presumption is that when Vasilii added those accounts, he left the rest of the text intact. It appears that the attempt is being made to explain away as editorial interpolations what others think is evidence for authorship. These ‘interpolated’ passages should not then be considered part of the PVL, which, nonetheless, all published editions of the PVL do. In the first part of a two-part article published in 2007–2008, Gippius rejected Rusinov’s claim of Vasilii’s authorship. He asserted: It is not clear why, for example, a rare use in the Kyiv or Novgorod chronicle of the twelfth century of an author’s remarks in the first person should result in anyone’s saying with certainty that all such remarks found in the PVL belong to one author.74

Gippius argued that because the composition of the PVL was a complex process with the incorporation of earlier materials, there is no way to tell whether the first person was from the author of the PVL, or from the author of earlier written materials and just not edited out. In addition, according to Gippius, the characteristics that Rusinov ascertained for Vasilii by examining the 1051–1117 part of the PVL were also characteristics in the pre-1051 part. So, Gippius argued, unless Rusinov wants to claim that Vasilii wrote the pre-1051 part as well, these characteristics tell us nothing about the author of the PVL. 4. Evaluation of the Evidence and Arguments for and against Vasilii Shakhmatov proposed that the PVL author/compiler was quoting a priest named Vasilii in this passage (s.a. 1097) or had incorporated Vasilii’s written account of the event in question. And Gippius considered whether the use of the first-person singular may not be a relic of an incorporated text. But elsewhere in the text, when the narrator quotes other eyewitness accounts such as those of Ian, son of Vyshata, s.a.  1071 (175,17–175,19) and Giuriata Rogovich of Novgorod s.a. 1096 (234,23–234,25), the editor/compiler puts in a marker or indicator, in these cases: ‘At that moment it happened that Ian, son of Vyshata, arrived from Sviatoslav to collect tribute’ or ‘I want to tell what I heard four years ago that Giuriata Rogovich of Novgorod told me’. In the passage in which Vasilii seems to be identifying himself, there is no such marker or indicator that another person is being quoted. Here the passage reads, ‘while I 74

Gippius, ‘K probleme redaktsii Povesti vremennykh let. I’, pp. 20–22.

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was myself there at Volodimir’ and ‘I entered his presence’, which would seem to indicate the narrator is referring to himself. The subsequent words of Prince David, ‘I choose you, Vasilii, as my messenger’, is a clear and direct identification of the name of the monk who is the narrator of this section of the PVL. This narrator, however, is probably not the ‘monk of the Feodosii Caves Monastery’ referred to in the introduction to the text. That introduction seems to have been an integral component of the first narrative (i.e., to 1037) and seems to have been written by someone else. This integrity of the opening lines with the first narrative diminishes the likelihood that a second narrator added that introduction to the first narrative as part of his reworking of it to create a unified text. The three questions posed in the introduction (about the origins of Rus’ land, who the first rulers were, and what the Rus’ land had become) are all answered in the first narrative. If Vasilii is the narrator of the section of the PVL from 1051 to 1117, then what significance does that have for historiography? Was Vasilii a monk when he was at the camp of Prince David in 1097? If he was not, then he could have changed his name when he became a monk. But if one accepts Rusinov’s argument that Vasilii was the author of the part from 1051 to 1117, then Vasilii was already a monk — he himself describes how he entered the Caves Monastery at the age of seventeen — then it is unlikely he would have changed his name when he became a hierarch, which makes it unlikely that Vasilii and Sil’vestr are the same person.

The Ur­PVL What does it mean to be the author of the PVL or of any chronicle or annal? Timberlake discussed four levels of work in the creation of a chronicle.75 At the most basic level is the scribe, who writes down yearly information, usually adding to an existing annal. A copyist copies such an original annal, which may have entries added by different scribes. At some point, a compiler may combine other annals and/or different works — such as documents, saints’ lives, tales, eyewitness accounts, and so forth — with the original annal, creating thereby a compilation (svod). A redactor not only edits, but reworks an annal or compilation. The work of the redactor can occur either before or after a compilation is 75

Timberlake, ‘Redactions’, pp. 196–97. Although I am in agreement with the fundamentals of Timberlake’s formulation, I have modified it somewhat to accord more with my understanding of the process.

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created. To be called a new redaction, such reworking should represent a significant change in outlook and/or presentation. Both compiler and redactor operate at the level of editing. The scribe and the copyist operate at the level of writing down a text. One person can fulfil more than one role. How does this process of chronicle/annal creation help us to determine the author of the PVL? The answer depends on whether we think the text we call the PVL was created by one author at a certain point in time, or by multiple authors and editors over a period of time. Another independent variable is whether the original form of the PVL (the ur-PVL) was only part of the text as it is extant today. I say this because the introductory words of the text — indicating that the narrator will relate ‘from where came the Rus’ land and who first began to rule in it and from where the Rus’ land became to be’ (PVL 0,1–0,4) — may not have been written by the ‘author’ of the text of the 1110s, that is by any of the three individuals who have been proposed as authors of the PVL. As I indicated in my description at the beginning of this article, the goal of answering the trinary set of questions of what the origins of the Rus’ land are, of who the first rulers were, and of how the Rus’ land came to be what it was by the time of writing seems to have been fulfilled either by the narrative from the biblical flood to the conversion of Volodimir (s.a. 988) or to the reign of his son Iaroslav (1019–1054). The subsequent narrative, especially after the entry for 1054, seems to have different goals and a different emplotment. Timberlake, following Aleshkovskii, claimed to discern two narrative points of view between the entries for 1089 and 1115. Although he accepted Shakhmatov’s notion of a Nachal’nyi svod (which Timberlake understood as ‘Base Compilation’), he thought it may have been ‘in 1090–1091’, that is, earlier than the 1093–1095 timeframe suggested by Shakhmatov. As a result, Timberlake asserted that ‘the chronicle was maintained continuously by one scribe from the beginning of [the] 1090s until the 1110s (as suggested by Aleshkovskii), more specifically from 1089 through 1109 or possibly 1112 (but not all the way to 1115, contrary to Aleshkovskii)’.76 In contrast, Rusinov sees one narrator, Vasilii, from 1051 through 1117. Others, as I have pointed out above, have seen other narrators and different divisions of the narration. 76

Timberlake, ‘Redactions’, p. 212, and further: ‘The annalist throughout [the] 1090s and the first decade of the 1100s was evidently the editor who inserted or modified entries of the 1060s and 1070s. Then later, in the PVL, a single individual was responsible for pairs of related entries, one he inserted, the other he composed and appended to the end of the chronicle: omens and military expeditions under 1102–03 and 1110–11; the northern entries of 1096 and 1114; and the prayer of 1015 and the homily of 1115’ (Timberlake, ‘Redactions’, p. 213).

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I had initially proposed that the earlier narrative (Narrative A) ended in 1054 (with the tale of the founding of the Caves Monastery being a subsequent interpolation into the entry for 1051).77 In part, I did so because of the chronology that appears s.a. 852 (mentioned above) includes the death of Iaroslav, which occurred in 1054. Both Istrin and Timberlake have used that chronology as a basis for concluding that the first redaction of the PVL must have extended to 1113. That may indeed help us date the later narrative (Narrative B), but the last line of the chronology, it seems to me, is an interpolation: А отъ пьрваго лѣта Святославля до пьрваго лѣта Яропълча лѣтъ 28. Яропоълкъ къняжи лѣт 8; а Володимеръ къняжи лѣтъ 37; а Ярославъ къняжи лѣтъ 40. Тѣмь же отъ съмьрти Святославля до съмьрти Ярославли лѣтъ 85; а отъ съмярти Ярославля до съмьрти Сятопълчи лѣтъ 60. (PVL 18,16–18,21) (From the first year of Sviatoslav to the first year of Iaropolk, 28 years [passed]. Iaropolk ruled 8 years. Volodimir ruled 37 years, and Iaroslav ruled 40 years. Thus, from the death of Sviatoslav to the death of Iaroslav 85 years [passed]. And from the death of Iaroslav to the death of Sviatopolk 60 years [passed].)

It is likely that the original form of the chronology ended with the calculation of the number of years from the beginning of Sviatoslav’s rule to the death of Iaroslav; it mentions specifically the duration of each of the ruler’s reigns included in that calculation — Sviatoslav, Iaropolk, Volodimir, and Iaroslav. It was probably inserted into the chronicle s.a. 852 before the death of Iaroslav’s successor, Iziaslav, in 1078. The final line, in contrast, appears to have been added later, after the death of Sviatopolk Iziaslavich in 1113, because the calculation does not specify any of the princely rulers between Iaroslav and Sviatopolk. The three questions of the introduction, however seem to have been answered in a coherent narrative ending with the entry for 1037. There then follow a number of annal entries from s.a. 1038 through s.a. 1042, which are in turn followed by a narrative s.a. 1043 of the unsuccessful campaign of Volodimir Iaroslavich against the Greeks. For those and other reasons I have revised my view to posit that Narrative A ended at 1037.78 My conceptualization of Narrative A should, however, be distinguished from Timofey V. Guimon’s conceptualization of an ‘Oldest Tale’ as underlying the text of the PVL.79 Nor is it the hypothetical work called the Nachal’nyi svod (‘Beginning 77 78 79

Ostrowski, ‘Pagan Past’, pp. 229–30, 252–53. Ostrowski, ‘The Povest′ vremennykh let: Ends and Means’, pp. 14–15. Guimon, Historical Writing of Early Rus, pp. 111–19.

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Compilation’), which Shakhmatov dated to the 1090s as a forerunner of the PVL.80 And although Likhachev does use the term ‘Oldest chronicle compilation’ (‘Древнейший летописный свод’) it is not what Likhachev was referring to as ‘The Tale of the Early Spread of Christianity in Rus’’ (Сказание о первоначальном распространении христианства).81 We are then led to the proposition that the ur-PVL, which I propose to call the Tale of Years and Time (Повѣсть врѣменъ и лѣт; to follow Lunt’s idea concerning the original title), was completed much earlier than the 1110s, and that the post-1054 narrative (Narrative B) was an add-on to an already existing chronicle text. That is, either the introductory words were already in a ‘tale’ that was then incorporated into the text that we call the Povest’ vremennykh let or they were an integral part of the ur-PVL itself. But all of these formulations indicate a sense that underneath the PVL as we have it lies a substratum narrative (or two) that was incorporated when PVLα was created. This is form criticism — the attempt to determine separate literary patterns within the corporate literary entity. Did Narrative A exist independently of the chronicle format or was it created specifically as a chronicle tale? Within the chronicle format it has other texts nested within it. For example, the ‘Philosopher’s Discourse’ (s.a. 986) is a long disquisition into the history of the world, beginning with God’s creation of heaven and earth and ending with the first Pentecost, 50 days after Christ’s ascension into heaven. Narrative A, in contrast begins with the Flood and ends, if my supposition is correct, with 1037. Their respective surveys are overlapping but not coincident. If the urtext of the PVL predated what we presently call the PVL, then when and by whom was it written? If the urtext ended in 988 or 1015 (the death of Volodimir Sviatoslavich), then we can suppose the ur-PVL was compiled in the early eleventh century. If Narrative A ended in 1037, it was more likely created towards the middle of the eleventh century. Shakhmatov proposed a Kyivan compilation of 1039 but did not suggest a compiler. 82 Four of the five main manuscript witnesses to the PVL contain the phrase ‘a monk of the Feodosii Caves Monastery’ to describe the author. The date that the monastery was founded is traditionally given as 1051, but that is mainly because the tale of its founding is inserted into that year entry in the PVL. It could have existed 80

See, e.g., Shakhmatov, ‘O Nachal’nom Kievskom letopisnom svode’; Shakhmatov, ‘Nachal’nyi Kievskii letopismyi svod i ego istochniki’; Shakhmatov, ‘Predislovie k nachal’nomu Kievskomu svodu i Nestorova letopis’’; and Shakhmatov, ‘Kievskii nachal′nyi svod 1095 goda’. 81 Likhachev, ‘‘Povest′ vremennykh let’ (Istoriko-literaturnoi ocherk)’, pp. 71–78. 82 Shakhmatov, Razyskaniia, p. vi.

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earlier. Nikon fits the description of being a monk of the Caves Monastery, as do Nestor and Vasilii. As I discussed above, Shakhmatov also proposed a compilation in the year 1073 by the monk Nikon of the Kyivan Caves Monastery. Mikheev has suggested the possibility that the word vremennyk was in the title of the compilation (svod) of 1073, but dismissed this as less likely than Sil’vestr having added it in 1116.83 I am also inclined toward the reign of Iaroslav’s successor Iziaslav Iaroslavich between 1054 and 1078 as the likely time for the composition of the Tale of Years and Time (the ur-PVL), because, among other reasons, the original form of the chronology that appears s.a. 852 (see above) ends with the death of Iaroslav in 1054 and does not include his successor Iziaslav, and thus could not have been part of Narrative A.

Conclusions The provisional results of my investigation of the authorship of the PVL are the following. 1. The PVL has two narrative emplotments that almost but do not quite adjoin being separated by some annalistic entries. a. The first narrative (to 1037) reflects the views of a monk of the Kyivan Caves Monastery of the mid-eleventh century and answers the three questions posed at the beginning of the text. b. The second narrative (from 1054) reflects the views of a different monk of the same monastery in the 1110s when Rus’ was being threatened by the Polovtsians. c. The exceptions to this division are the ‘Tale of the Founding of the Kyivan Caves Monastery’, which although composed by the author of the second narrative (from 1054), was inserted s.a. 1051, as well as a few other interpolations such as cross-referencing Vyshata (s.a. 1143) as Jan’s father (PVL, 154,5). 2. The author of the first narrative is an unnamed monk of the Kyivan Caves Monastery. a. It is he who is alluded to in the title of the work as ‘a monk of the Feodosii Caves Monastery’. b. Nikon’s part, as I see it, constitutes the composing of the ur-PVL, which 83

Mikheev, Kto pisal ‘Povest’ vremennykh let’?, p. 102 n. 143. He does not include the word in his ‘working reconstruction’ of the Svod Nikona. Mikheev, Kto pisal ‘Povest’ vremennykh let’?, p. 212.

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may be the same as a hypothetical compilation (svod) that Shakhmatov attributed to Nikon. I propose that it had the title the Tale of Years and Time (Повѣсть врѣменъ и лѣтъ). 3. The author of the second narrative is most likely Vasilii, who identifies and refers to himself in first-person eyewitness accounts in the text. a. It was Vasilii who wrote the ‘Tale of the Founding of the Kyivan Caves Monastery’ and inserted it s.a. 1051. b. Although Vasilii was also a monk of the Kyivan Caves Monastery, he is not the monk being referenced in the title. c. Vasilii ended his narrative with the entry for 1114. 4. When the hegumen of the Vydubyts’kyi Monastery Sil’vestr wrote the colophon of 1116, he may have meant only that he had copied the PVL. a. Even if he meant to claim credit for composing the PVL itself, it was not unusual for medieval scribes to claim authorship of a work they had merely copied. b. A  possible explanation for why the words ‘a monk of the Feodosii Caves Monastery’ does not appear in the Laurentian copy is that Sil’vestr deleted it in copying the text because he in fact was not a monk of that monastery. 5. The monk Nestor, although the author of other works of the time, is not the author of any part of the PVL.

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Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Moscow, Rossiiskaia gosudarstvennaia biblioteka (RGB), Moskovskaia dukhovnaia akademiia (MDA), MS 5/182 St Petersburg, Rossiiskaia natsional’naia biblioteka (RNB), MS F.IV.2 —— , MS F.IV.230 —— , MS Pogodin 1401 St Petersburg, Biblioteka Rossiiskoi akademii nauk (BAN), MS 34. 5. 30 —— , MS 16. 4. 4

Primary Sources Kyievo­Pechersʹkyi pateryk: Vstup, tekst, prymitky, ed.  by Dmytro Abramovych (Kyiv: Drukarnia Vseukraïnsʹkoï akademiï nauk, 1930) Die Nestorchronik, trans. by Ludolf Müller, in Handbuch zur Nestorchronik, iv, ed.  by Ludolf Müller, (Munich: Fink, 2001) The ‘Paterik’ of the Kievan Caves Monastery, trans. by Muriel Heppell (Cambridge, MA: Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University, 1989) Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei (PSRL), 43  vols (St  Petersburg/Leningrad/Moscow: Eduard Prats, Arkheograficheskaia komissiia, Arkheograficheskii tsentr, Nauka, et al., 1841–2009) The Povest’ vremennykh let: An Interlinear Collation and Paradosis, ed.  by Donald Ostrowski, associate editor David  J. Birnbaum, senior consultant Horace  G. Lunt, 3 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Series in Ukrainian Literature, 2003), http://pvl. obdurodon.org/pvl.html [accessed 1 August 2022] Shakhmatov, Aleksei A., Povest’ vremennykh let, i: Vvodnaia chast’, Tekst, Primechanie (St Petersburg: Izdanie Imperatorskoi Arkheograficheskoi Komissii, 1916)

Secondary Studies Aleshkovskii, Mark Kh., Povest’ vremennykh let: Sud’ba literaturnogo proizvedeniia v drev­ nei Rusi (Moscow: Nauka, 1971) ——  , Povest’ vremennykh let: Iz istorii sozdaniia i redaktsionnoi pererabotki,  ed.  by Timofei V. Gimon and others (Moscow: ‘Ves’ Mir’, 2015) Aristov, Vadim, ‘Vasilii-Sil’vestr (o lichnosti avtora “Povesti vremennykh let’”)’, Ruthenica, 12 (2013), 118–21 Artamonov, Iurii A., ‘Zhitie Feodosiia Pecherskogo: Problemy istochnikovedeniia’, in Drevneishie gosudarstva Vostochnoi Evropy, 2000 g.: Problemy istochnikovedeniia (Moscow: Vostochnaia Literatura, 2003), pp. 173–277

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Bolduc, Michelle, ‘The Author in the Middle Ages’, in Handbook of Medieval Studies: Terms — Methods — Trends, ed.  by Albrecht Classen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), pp. 1440–49 Bugoslavskii, Sergei A., ‘K voprosu o kharaktere i ob’’eme literaturnoi deiatel’nosti prep. Nestora’, Izvestiia Otdeleniia russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti, 19 (1914), no. 1, 131–89; no. 3, 153–91 Cross, Samuel H., ‘Introduction’, in The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text, ed. by Samuel H. Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953), pp. 3–50 ——  , ‘Notes to the Russian Primary Chronicle’, in The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text, ed.  by Samuel  H. Cross and Olgerd  P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953), pp. 231–84 Gippius, Aleksei A., ‘O kritike teksta i novom perevode-rekonstruktsii Povesti vremen­ nykh let’, Russian Linguistics, 26.1 (2002), 85–87 —— , ‘K probleme redaktsii Povesti vremennykh let. I’, Slavianovedenie, 5 (2007), 20–44 —— , ‘K probleme redaktsii Povesti vremennykh let. II’, Slavianovedenie, 2 (2008), 3–24 Guimon, Timofey V. Historical Writing of Early Rus (c. 1000–c. 1400) in a Comparative Perspective (Leiden: Brill, 2021) Istrin, Vasilii M., ‘Zamechaniia o nachale russkogo letopisaniia: Po povodu issledovanii A. A. Shakhmatov v oblasti drevne-russkoi letopisi’, Izvestie Otdeleniia russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti Russiiskoi Akademii nauk 1922 g., 27 (1924), 45–102, 207–51 Karamzin, Nikolai M., Istoriia gosudarstva Rossiiskogo, 2nd edn, 12 vols (St Petersburg: N. Grech, 1818–1929) —— , ‘Ob istochnikakh Rossiiskoi istorii do XVII veka’, in Istoriia gosudarstva Rossiiskogo, i, 2nd edn (St Petersburg: N. Grech, 1818), pp. xv–xvii Kloss, Boris M., Nikonovskii svod i russkie letopisi XVI–XVII vv. (Moscow: Nauka, 1980) ——  , ‘Predislovie k izdaniiu 1998 g.’, in Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei (PSRL), ii (St  Petersburg: Arkheograficheskaia komissiia, Nauka, Arkheograficheskii tsentr, 1998), pp. E–N Kloss, Boris M., and Vadim I. Koretskii, ‘V. N. Tatishchev i nachalo izucheniia russkikh letopisei’, in Letopisei i khroniki 1980 (St Petersburg: Nauka, 1980), pp. 5–13 Kostomarov, Nikolai I., Lektsii po russkoi istorii (St Petersburg: V. Bezobrazov, 1861) Likhachev, Dmitrii S., Russkie letopisi i ikh kul’turno­istoricheskoe znachenie (Moscow: Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1947) —— , ‘“Povest’ vremennykh let” (Istoriko-literaturnoi ocherk)’, in Povest’ vremennykh let, ed. by Varvara P. Adrianova-Perets, 2 vols (Moscow: Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1950), pp. 5–148 Lunt, Horace G. ‘Pověst’ vrěmennykh” lět”? or Pověst’ vrěmen” i lět”?’, Palaeoslavica, 5 (1997), 317–26 Luppov, Sergej P., Kniga v Rossii v pervoi chetverti XVIII v. (St Petersburg: Nauka, 1973) —— , Kniga v Rossii v poslepetrovskoe vremia, 1725–1740 (St Petersburg: Nauka, 1976) Lur’e, Ia.  S., ‘Problems of Source Criticism (with Reference to Medieval Russian Documents)’, trans. by Michael Cherniavsky, Slavic Review, 27 (1968), 1–22

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Mazour, Anatole G., Modern Russian Historiography, 2nd edn (Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1958) Mikheev, Savva M., Kto pisal ‘Povest’ vremennykh let’? (Moscow: Indrik, 2011) Milov, Leonid V., ‘Kto byl avtorom “Povesti vremennykh let”?’, in Ot Nestora do Fonvizina: Novye metody opredeleniia avtorstva, ed.  by Leonid  V. Milov (Moscow: Progress, 1994), pp. 40–69 Müller, Ludolf, ‘Die “dritte Redaktion” der sog. Nestorchronik’, in Festschrift für Margarete Woltner zum 70. Geburtstag am 4. Dezember 1967, ed. by Peter Brang, Herbert Bräuer, and Horst Jablonowski (Heidelberg: Winter, 1967), pp. 171–86 Ostrowski, Donald, ‘Pagan Past and Christian Identity in the Primary Chronicle’, in Historical Narratives and Christian Identity on a European Periphery: Early History Writing in Northern, East­Central, and Eastern Europe (c. 1070–1200), ed. by Ildar H. Garipzanov (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 229–53 ——  , ‘The Povest’ vremennykh let: Ends and Means,’ Russian Linguistics, 46/1 (April 2022), 1–22 Perevoshchikov, Vasilii M., O  russkikh letopisiakh i letopisateliakh po 1240 g: Materialy dlia istorii rossiiskoi slovesnosti (St Petersburg: V Tip. Imp. Rossiisskoi akademii, 1836) Peshtich, Sergei L., Russkaia istoriografiia XVIII veka, 3 vols (St Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Leningradskogo universiteta, 1961–1971) Rusinov, Vladimir N., ‘Poslanie inoka Polikarpa k igumenu Akindinu i ego istochniki’, in Problemy proiskhozhdeniia i bytovaniia pamiatnikov drevnerusskoi pis’mennosti i litera­ tury, ed. by G. S. Zaitseva and Vladimir N. Rusinov (Nizhny Novgorod: Izdatel’stvo Nizhegorodskogo universiteta, 1997), pp. 4–23 —— , ‘Letopisnye stat’i 1051–1117 gg. v sviazi s problemoi avtorstva i redaktsii “Povesti vremennykh let”’, Vestnik Nizhegorodskogo universiteta im. N. I. Lobachevskogo: Seriia istoriia, politilogiia, mezhdunarodnye otnoshenie, 1.2 (2003), 111–47 Rybakov, Boris A., Drevniaia Rus’: Skazaniia, Byliny, Letopisi (Moscow: Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1963) Schlözer, August Ludwig von, Nestor: Ruskie letopisi na drevle­slavenskom iazyke, 3 vols (St Petersburg: Imperatorskaia tipografiia, 1809–1819) Shakhmatov, Aleksei A., ‘Kievopecherskii paterik i Pecherskaia letopis’’, Izvestiia Otdeleniia russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti (IORJAS), 2.3 (1897), 795–844 —— , Kievopecherskii paterik i Pecherskaia letopis’ (St Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk, 1897) —— , ‘O Nachal’nom Kievskom letopisnom svode’, Chteniia v Imperatorskom obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh pri Moskovskom universitete, 183/3 (1897), 1–58 —— , ‘Nachal’nyi Kievskii letopismyi svod i ego istochniki,’ in Iubeleinyi sbornik v chest’ Vsevoloda Fedorovovicha Millera, ed. N. A. Ianuk (Moscow, 1900), pp. 1–9 ——  , ‘Predislovie’, in Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei (PSRL), ii (St Petersburg: Eduard Prats, Arkheograficheskaia komissiia, Nauka, Arkheograficheskii tsentr, 1908), pp. xv–xvi —— , ‘Predislovie k nachal’nomu Kievskomu svodu i Nestorova letopis’’, Izvestiia Otdeleniia russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti Impreratorskoi Akademii nauk, 13/1 (1908), 213–70 ——  , Razyskaniia o drevneishikh russkikh letopisnykh svodakh (St  Petersburg: M.  A. Aleksandrov, 1908)

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—— , ‘Nestor letopisets’, in Pryvit Ivanovy Frankovy v sorokaletie ioho pys’mens’koi pratsi: 1874–1914, ed. by Volodymyr Hrebeniak (Lviv: Chastyna naukovy, 1916), pp. 31–53 ——  , ‘Vvodnaia chast’’, in Povest’ vremennykh let, i: Vvodnaia chast’: Tekst; Primechanie, ed.  by Aleksei  A. Shakhmatov (St  Petersburg: Izdanie Imperatorskoi Arkheograficheskoi Komissii, 1916), pp. i–lxxx ——  , ‘“Povest’ vremennykh let” i ee istochniki’, Trudy Otdela drevnerusskoi literatury, 4 (1940), 9–150 ——  , ‘Kievskii nachal’nyi svod 1095 goda’, Trudy Kommissii po istorii Akademii nauk SSSR, no. 3: A. A. Shakhmatov 1864–1920: Sbornik statei i materialov, ed. by S. P. Obnorskii (Moscow/Leningrad: Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1947), pp. 119–60 —— , Istoriia russkogo letopisaniia, i: Povest’ vremennykh let i drevneishie russkie svody, bk 2: Rannee russkoe letopisanie XI–XII vv. (St Petersburg: Nauka, 2003) —— , ‘Nestor letopisets’, Zapysky Naukovohoto varystva im. Shevchenka (Lviv), 117–118 (1914), 31–53 (repr. in Aleksei A. Shakhmatov, Istoriia russkogo letopisaniia, i: Povest’ vremennykh let i drevneishie russkie svody, bk 2: Rannee russkoe letopisanie XI–XII vv. (St Petersburg: Nauka, 2003), pp. 413–28) Tatishchev, Vasilii N., Istoriia rossiiskaia, comp. by Mikhail  P. Iroshnikov and Z.  N. Sabel’eva, ed.  by Aleksandr  I. Andreev, Sigizmund  N. Valk, and Mikhail  N. Tikhomirov, 7 vols (Moscow: Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1962) Timberlake, Alan, ‘Redactions of the Primary Chronicle’, Russkii iazyk v nauchnam osveshchenii, 1 (2001), 196–218 Timkovskii, Roman F., ‘Kratkoe issledovanie o Paterike prepodobnogo Nestora, letopistsa rossiiskogo’, Zapiski i trudy Obshchestva istorii i devnostei rossiiskikh, pt  1, book 1 (1815), 53–74 Tolochko, Oleksiy P., ‘On “Nestor the Chronicler”’, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 29 (2007), 31–59 —— , ‘Christian Chronology, Universal History, and the Origin of Chronicle Writing in Rus’’, in Historical Narratives and Christian Identity on a European Periphery: Early History Writing in Northern, East­Central, and Eastern Europe (c. 1070–1200), ed. by Ildar H. Garipzanov (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 207–29 Tolochko, Petr P., ‘Redaktiroval li igumen Sil’vestr Povest’ vremennykh let’, Vostochnaia Evropa v drevnosti i srednevekov’e, 14 (2002), 221–25 ——  , ‘Redaktsiia Povesti vremennykh let igumena Sil’vestra: istoricheskaia real’nost’ ili uchenaia fiktsiia?’, Ruthenica, 7 (2008), 130–39 Vaillant, André, ‘La Chronique de Kiev et son auteur’, Prilozi za Knjizhevnost, jezik istorijy i folklor, 20 (1954), 169–83

Creating Time, Forging Identity, Building a State: The Primary Chronicle of Rus’ Oleksiy Tolochko The Times, the Work, its Author, and his Reader The Tale of Bygone Years, more commonly known as the Primary Chronicle, was written in St Michael’s Vydubychy Monastery near Kyiv in 1116.1 The place was an important one: St Michael’s was established in the late 1060s by Prince Vsevolod, son of Iaroslav the Wise, as a family patronage, and in 1070, on the occasion of his younger son’s birth, a great masonry cathedral was founded there. In 1088, when Vsevolod was the prince of Kyiv, the church was consecrated with great pomp by the metropolitan of Kyiv himself, assisted by other bishops of the realm.2 St  Michael’s ranked second among the Kyiv monasteries (right after the Caves) and its abbots were prominent members of the ecclesiastical establishment of the land: from their pool, bishops of Pereiaslavl (Vsevolod’s dynastic domain) were recruited. The place held special importance for Vsevolod, who established his country residence (called ‘The Elegant Court’) on the hill above the monastery.

1

On the competing medieval tradition of the Primary Chronicle as being written in the Caves monastery by its monk Nestor, see: Tolochko, ‘On Nestor “The Chronicler”’. 2 Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei, ii, pp. 164, 199. Oleksiy Tolochko is director of the Center for Kyivan Rus’ Studies at the Institute of Ukrainian History (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine). Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000–1300, ed. by Walter Pohl, Veronika Wieser, and Francesco Borri, celama 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp.  449–466 FHG 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.130270

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The Primary Chronicle was authored by Abbot Sylvester3 of St Michael’s when the throne of Kyiv was occupied by Vsevolod’s son Volodimer Monomakh,4 and in the colophon to his work Sylvester boasted of his and his establishment’s special bond to the ruling prince. One can even read Sylvester’s wording as a hint that his undertaking was not without the prince’s consent or, indeed, was his commission. In fact, Volodimer Monomakh was probably the only prince in his generation (and many to come) who could appreciate the importance of such an enterprise. Volodimer came from an educated family: his father Vsevolod allegedly spoke five languages, while his mother was a member of the Byzantine imperial family (hence the nickname ‘Monomakh’). Their son appears to be the only one in the vast dynasty of the Rurikids to have had literary ambitions of his own and several works penned by him survive, among them Admonition to the Sons, a ‘mirror of princes’ of sorts based on his autobiography.5 Monomakh clearly recognized the edifying value of the past — even if on the private plane of experiences that had been lived through — and would seem to be just the sort of person to acknowledge the value in writing history. The year before the Primary Chronicle was completed, an event of enormous importance took place. The relics of Sts Boris and Gleb, martyred sons of Volodimer the Baptizer (in whose honour, incidentally, Monomakh was named), were translated to a new cathedral. It was an affair of huge proportions: the dynasty came together, all of the church hierarchy assembled, headed by the metropolitan of Kyiv, while the multitude of common people who came to witness the festivities was such that the city of Vyshgorod would not contain all those willing to participate. Festivities lasted for three days; Sylvester was also listed among the abbots of the Kyiv monasteries. The event is minutely described in the collection of martyrs’ miracles and also in Sylvester’s Primary Chronicle, where it appears to be the last entry — thereby providing not only the climax to its own story, but giving the whole work a grand finale.6 The church itself was completed in 1112 by Monomakh’s cousin Oleg Sviatoslavich, who demanded the saints be moved there immediately. Yet Volodimer, who became the prince of Kyiv in 1113, had chosen to postpone 3

On Sylvester, see most recently: Aristov, ‘Vasilii-Silvestr’. For the process and stages in the chronicle’s production, see most recently: Gippius, ‘K probleme redaktsii Povesti vremennykh let. I–II’. 5 On Monomakh’s oeuvre, see: Gippius, ‘Sochineniia Vladimira Monomakha I–III’. 6 For the English translation of the Miracles, see: The Hagiography of Kievan Rus’, trans. by Hollingsworth; for the corresponding chronicle text, see: Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei, ii, pp. 280–82. 4

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its dedication and the translation of the relics for a few more years, so that the celebration would fall in 1115, the centenary of the martyrs’ death. The undisguised jubilee nature of the event,7 conspicuously stressed by the sources, was without precedent and manifested the newly emerged sense of living in history. The three-day celebrations of the drama that took place exactly one hundred years before would provide all those gathered there — the dynasty, its church, and subjects — with the opportunity to relive the past and to contemplate the concepts of history’s depth and continuity. It is probably not accidental that this display of historical awareness coincided with Sylvester’s project. The two may have been linked. In Volodimer Monomakh, Sylvester would find not only a patron but also his first reader. A reasonable body of circumstantial evidence can be amassed hinting at the prince’s interest in Sylvester’s work and probably his personal involvement in the project: Sylvester, for instance, was granted access to charters of the treaties with Byzantium and, even more remarkably, he made use of Monomakh’s personal and highly private correspondence with Oleg Sviatoslavich. Unlike the subsequent chroniclers, uniformly preferring anonymity, Sylvester boldly puts his name to the text, which betrays a developed sense of individual authorship but possibly also his pride in the achievement. It would seem that the Primary Chronicle emerged from the auspicious, never to be repeated, convergence of the two like-minded individuals. The prince liked what he read: not long after Sylvester had given his name in the colophon of the Primary Chronicle, he was rewarded with the appointment to the bishopric see of Pereiaslavl, Monomakh’s own domain.

The Primary Chronicle and its Structure The Primary Chronicle rested upon the tradition of annalistic record-keeping that must have existed in Kyiv through the greater part of the eleventh century.8 From it, the Chronicle inherited its basic structure of an uninterrupted procession of numbered years to which entries describing an event or events of a particular year are attached. In this, the Chronicle clearly followed the annalistic type of history writing. Yet the Primary Chronicle is a much more complex work than mere annals. It achieves more, even within this rigid and unyielding framework. It managed to develop rather complex stories within 7

On the notion of ‘Jubilee Years’ in Kievan Rus’, see: Gippius, ‘Millennialism’. For discussion of possible models of and influences on chronicle writing in Rus’, see: Tolochko, ‘Christian Chronology’. 8

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the entry of an individual year, but also to spread stories across several years, or more. Moreover, the general layout of the chronicle text suggests that it was conceived with an overarching ideology in mind, which its author tried to convey to the reader by placing particular stories in certain strategically important spots and providing some links between them. Yet there were limits to what could be done within the confines of the genre. Not every story could be told as a year entry and not every idea could be projected using this vehicle. By its very nature, an annal is firmly anchored in a specific moment in time. It is far too keen on ‘what’ and ‘when’ and not so much on ‘why’: where there were no dates, nothing could be said. The Primary Chronicle was conceived as a general chronicle and thus had to cover the totality of time, from its onset to the present-day events. Sylvester was able to trace his chronology back to 6360 am, that is ad 852. That was his starting point,9 and from there he devised his uninterrupted chronological grid leading onwards up to his own times. But beyond that point lay an undivided stretch of time, whose principal junctures (the Creation, the Deluge, the captures of Jerusalem, the Incarnation, etc.) were known from the Bible, but how these stories related to the fortunes of the Rus’ nation was unclear or else completely unknown. Sylvester had attempted to write the first comprehensive account of his nation’s history and thus had to answer the usual set of questions of ‘whence’, ‘how’, and ‘why’ his race came about, took possession of its land, and received its rulers.10 The answers lay largely outside of chronology. Sylvester therefore needed an opening to the history. Here another influence on the Rus’ historywriting came in useful: Byzantine world chronicles that offered a template of how to integrate national, as it were, stories into the general plan for mankind. They also provided a model of how to write about the past in a narrative mode. These determined the second component of the Primary Chronicle: the strictly chronological part is preceded by a sizable prologue lacking any dates, where the author explicated the prehistory, as it were, of the peoples who later became the nation of Rus’. This section of the Chronicle is often referred to in literature as an ‘ethnographic’ introduction. It is this inaugural part in its relation to the earliest history that will be the focus of the following discussion. 9

In Sylvester’s own words: ‘Hence we shall begin at this point and start recording the dates’ (‘The Russian Primary Chronicle’, ed. and trans. by Cross, p. 144). 10 The task manifested in the work’s title: ‘These are the narratives of bygone years regarding the origin of the land of Rus’, who first began to rule in Kiev, and from what source the land of Rus’ had its beginning’ (‘The Russian Primary Chronicle’, ed. and trans. by Cross, p. 136).

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The Wandering Tribes An introductory part of the Chronicle was needed to answer two crucial questions, in fact, two puzzles.11 First, how the Slavs, migrating from their southern homeland on the Danube, became the Rus’, a people whose origins were in the north. Second, how the princely clan which, since the dawn of history, was based in southern Kyiv, happened to be of Scandinavian extraction. To explain these puzzles the chronicler constructs two stories of directionally opposed migration: that of the Slavic people and that of the royal house. At the point where the two meet, the history of the Rus’ nation begins. To endow one’s nation’s past with a Christian meaning was to synchronize it with universal Christian history. The chronicler, accordingly, starts his story following Byzantine models, that is with the Old Testament (although not always tapping directly into Scripture). Two episodes were of fundamental importance for him: the story of Noah’s sons and their offspring’s division of the Earth, and the story of Babel. The first would account for what can be termed the beginning of the peoples’ ethnic diversity; the second, of linguistic diversity. Together, the two stories spelled out why the Slavs are not only a separate race, but also are distinguished by their own speech. Two reasons compelled Sylvester to expound on these seemingly obvious matters. The first one lies in semantics: peoples, belonging to which could be expressed only in terms of kinship (от рода, от племени (ot roda, ot plemeni)), are in fact divided based on the way they speak. Slavic языкъ meant both ‘language, tongue’, and also ‘people, nation’. Origin and language were the essential aspects of the people. These remained the same, no matter how the external attributes, such as the names of the people or their places of residence, changed. The second reason was much more important. As the chronicler knew, in the case of the Slavs, the language was associated in a special way with the letters, writing, and language of worship, that had been especially invented for the Slavs by Sts Cyril and Methodius. In the expression словенский языкъ (slovenskii iazyk) the chronicler sensed a unique confluence of the origin, the language, and the faith. The initial bearings for the Slavs (later to become the Rus’) as determined by the Primary Chronicle were as follows: they were the scions of Noah’s youngest son Japheth, whose lot it was to populate the ‘northern and western’ realms of the Earth with his progeny; and they were among the seventy-two nations 11

What follows is based, to a large extent, on a more detailed discussion, see my Ocherki nachal’noi rusi.

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of Babel when languages were first created at the moment of its destruction.12 From that point on, the Slavs had to endure several permutations (changing places and names) in order to become the Rus’. The end result reads almost as a riddle: The Slavs and the Rus’ are the same people. For it is because of the Varangians that they took the name of Rus’, though originally they were Slavs. Although they used to call themselves Polyanians, still they spoke Slavonic; and they were known as Polyanians because they lived in the plains, but the Slavonic tongue is common to all of them.13

The author here clearly exploits the ambiguity (largely lost in translation) of terms associated with territory, ethnicity, naming, and language in order to explain the metamorphosis. Yet by the time his readers reached this particular passage, they would already have been introduced to the principal actors and their movements and thus provided with the clues to work out the message. This was the culmination of a long journey that had begun on the Danube, where the chronicler placed the ancestral home of the Slavs. From here, the still united Slavic people began, in three successive waves, to ‘spread over the Earth’ and ‘acquire names’ which were given ‘in accordance to the new places where they were settled’. They did so in neatly arranged files of five factions each, grouped according to the river that served as their final destination. Thus, the Moravians, the Czechs, the Croats, the Serbs, and the Carantanians set out toward the Morava River; the Poles, the Polish Polianians, the Lutichis, the Mazovians, and the Pomorians went in the direction of the Vistula River; while the third group of the Polianians, the Drevlianians, the Dregovichis, the Polochans, and the Severians proceeded toward the Dnieper. It is this last group that was of special interest to the chronicler and he would return to them repeatedly, compiling five more catalogues based on various criteria.14 None of 12

‘The Russian Primary Chronicle’, ed. and trans. by Cross, p. 137. ‘The Russian Primary Chronicle’, ed. and trans. by Cross, p. 149 (with my corrections). 14 Thus, for example, the existence of the princely authority is stated for six: the Polianians, the Drevlianians, the Slovenians, the Polochans, and the Severians; the Slavic language is noted for seven: the Polianians, the Drevlianians, the Novgorodians, the Polochans, the Dregovichis, the Severians, the Buzhanians (the Volynians); Slavic origin (‘of the Slovenian stock’) is claimed for four: the Polianians, the Drevlianians, the Radimichis, and the Vyatichis; the ‘Great Scythians’ who attacked Constantinople include nine: the Polianians, the Drevlianians, the Severians, the Radimichis, the Vyatichis, the Croats, the Dulebs (Volhynians), the Ulichis, and the Tivertsis; and folkways are described for six: the Polianians, the Drevlianians, the Radimichis, the Vyatichis, the Severians, and the Krivichis. 13

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the lists is exhaustive but, in total, the chronicler names twelve Slavic ‘nations’15 that had settled on the lands that later formed the territory of the Kyivan state. Together, the lists draw a collective portrait of the ‘tribes’: they call themselves different names but are of Slavic stock and speak the same Slavonic tongue, they have their own territory and know an institution of princely authority, while each practises its own (pagan) customs.

Academic Tradition In the nineteenth century, the emerging discipline of academic history took this medieval story of Slavic migration and acquisition of new homeland for the authentic tradition and, without deeper reflection, translated the chronicle catalogues of ‘tribes’ into the language of ethnography and cartography. Since the story is placed in the introductory and undated part of the chronicle, that is, literally before the beginning of history, it was assumed that the chronicle ‘ethnography’ reflects the prehistoric state of the East Slavic population, times of migration, and settlement (from the sixth to the eighth centuries). When archaeology was added to the file of university disciplines dealing with Slavic antiquities toward the late nineteenth century, it seemed that the Chronicle’s ‘ethnographic map’ would easily match the spatial distribution of the ‘archaeological cultures’ of Eastern Europe, seen as the material remains of the Chronicle’s ‘tribes’. However, the efforts of generations of scholars have failed to yield incontestable results. To find a clear correlation between the picture drawn by the Chronicle and the material culture proved not an easy task. Archaeological research invariably reveals different divisions of Eastern Slavdom into larger communities that do not coincide geographically with the ‘tribes’. Attempts to split these large areas up into smaller pieces which would correspond to the Chronicle’s ‘tribes’ do not proceed from the actual archaeological evidence and, moreover, it is all but impossible to achieve without the helpful hints provided by the map drawn from the written sources.16 ‘Tribes’, however, proved to be elusive not only in Eastern Europe, which leaves archaeologists to speculate whether the equipment of their discipline is inadequate for the task,17 15

An explanatory note would be appropriate here. The Primary Chronicle has no special term for these ethnic groups preferring to simply label them by name. The established historiographic tradition calls these bands ‘the tribes’ and for the lack of a better one, we will follow suit. 16 For the survey of archaeological identification of ‘tribes’, see most recently: P. Tolochko, Drevnerusskaia narodnost, pp. 65–81. 17 Bálint, ‘A Contribution to Research on Ethnicity’.

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or to conclude that ‘tribes’ as stable social and ethnic bodies are merely an invention of the modern mind and not the realities of pre-state development.18

The First Slavophile In traditional interpretations, it has been tacitly assumed that the story of Slavic migration and settlement in Eastern Europe as told by Sylvester represents the ‘collective memory’ of various ‘tribes’ that survived in some form or another until the early twelfth century, when it was finally collected, processed, and put into writing. Yet the idea of the ‘collective memory’ of Slavdom is vulnerable. It would be quite without parallel in a medieval setting. Of course, ‘migration myths’ are known and many of them are, quite possibly, based on some kind of lengthy oral transmission. But traditions of this kind deal with specific peoples; it is the birthplace and travels of this particular people and the etymology of its individual name that the ‘migration myth’ is called to explain. In our case, one can imagine some kind of ‘migration myth’, say, of the Polianians or the Severians, but of all of Slavdom at once? Folk traditions do not deal with abstractions like ‘the Slavs’. The ‘Slavs’, meaning the grouping of peoples into a certain category based on their linguistic affinity, is the product of a learned mind. Indeed, how would the chronicler of the twelfth century come up with the idea of such a broad identity, ‘Slavic’, encompassing a great number of peoples living in the huge territories stretching from the Adriatic to the Baltic Sea and from the Vistula to the Volga River? He could not do it by asking around or questioning local sages, these notorious ‘custodians’ of tradition. Note that Sylvester writes not only about his local Slavs but about the totality of Slavic migrations, Western and Southern as well. Would Eastern Slavs cultivate alien peoples’ migration myths? No inquiry or ‘field research’ would produce a popular ‘Slavic’ identity. Such sweeping categorizations (‘the Germans’, ‘the Varangians’, ‘the Franks’) are normally the result of an outsider’s perspective; those within a particular group prefer lesser and more practical designations. As Florin Curta has shown, in historical times no given group of the Slavs used this name for self-denomination. ‘Slavs’ is a label invented by Byzantine authors in their attempt to impose order on the ‘world of barbarians’, ‘an identity formed in the shadow of Justinian’s forts, not in the Pripet marshes’, and 18

Urbańczyk, ‘Before the Poles’. See, however, a balanced discussion of the problem in: Curta, ‘Medieval Archaeology and Ethnicity’.

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‘more a pedantic construction than the result of systematic interaction across ethnic boundaries’.19 Throughout the Middle Ages, ‘the Slavs’ remains, if not completely ‘learned’, then definitely a bookish term. They live only in Byzantine (Σκλαβηνοί) and Latin (Sclavene) historical and geographical literature. This is a category imposed from the outside, a ‘rubric’ under which a certain type of barbarian is registered in the Byzantine mind. ‘Slavs’ themselves, even those who live in the so-called sclavinias within the empire (Slavonic-speaking enclaves in Macedonia, Thessaly, Thrace, Peloponnesus), prefer to shy away from such a definition, standing by their ‘tribal’ names.20 The Primary Chronicle is the first work to adopt this Byzantine label as a self-name and Sylvester was the first to embrace and promote a Slavic identity. This was a demonstration of his erudition for one could only learn about the Slavs from a text created within the circle of Byzantine ideas. Sylvester’s persistent association of the Slavs with language and literacy allows us to unmistakably identify his source.

Slavonic Homeland and Time of the Migration The Byzantine texts that inspired Sylvester have long been established among the immediate sources of the Primary Chronicle. These are the so-called Pannonian Lives that tell of the mission to the Slavs by Sts Constantine and Methodius. The Pannonian Lives were not just authoritative, they were the only available texts that talked about the ‘Slavs’. Only there did the ‘Slavs’ figure, and only where Constantine and Methodius discovered them. The story about the mission of two Byzantine teachers sent to the ‘land of the Slavs’ provided Sylvester not only with the very idea of Slavdom, but also with the necessary geographical reference points and historical background that allowed him to create the 19

Curta, The Making of the Slavs, p. 350. The extent to which the ‘Slavonic idea’ was a learned and bookish one at the time, can be demonstrated by the example of Sylvester’s two contemporaries, Gallus Anonymus and Cosmas of Prague, writing, as he was, the first histories of their nations. In his The Deeds of the Princes of the Poles (1112–1118) Gallus Anonymus, a foreigner and an outsider, in his own words ‘an exile and a sojourner’ among the Poles, talks about the geography of ‘Slavonia’ or ‘Slavonian land’ (Gesta principum, trans. by Knoll and Schaer, pp. 13, 15). Remarkably, Cosmas of Prague (d. 1125), a native Slav, describes the same space as ‘Germania’, of which his own Czech land is a part (The Chronicle of the Czechs by Cosmas of Prague, trans. by Wolverton, p. 34). Neither Gallus nor Cosmas, however, talk about the Poles or the Czechs as belonging to the ‘Slavonic race’ or ‘Slavonic tongue’. 20

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story of Slavic migration from their Danube homeland. Sylvester summarized the Pannonian Lives in a rather lengthy account about the invention of literacy for the ‘Slavonic Land’ under the year 6406/898. He took advantage of this occasion to remind his readers of themes and topics put forward in the ‘ethnographic introduction’: of the origin of the Slavs, of their subsequent movements and settling down, as well as of the relationship of the present nations, who retain their Slavic nature but have acquired new names, to the Slavs of old. These explanations frame the story of invention of the script and translation of Scripture for the Slavs proving that the whole theory has been developed in relation to the Slavonic mission. Let us look more closely at the entry of 6406/898. The chronicler declares that: There was a single race of the Slavs. The Slavs dwelled along the Danube river […] as were the Moravians, the Czechs, the Poles and the Polianians who nowadays are called the Rus’. It was for these that the writing was first invented in the Morava [land].21

Then follows the story of the mission by Sts Constantine and Methodius culminating in the report that St Methodius was installed as the first bishop for the Slavs in Pannonia in the see of St  Andronicus, one of the Seventy, a disciple of the holy Apostle Paul […] Now Andronicus is the apostle of the Slavic race. He travelled among the Moravians, and the Apostle Paul taught there likewise. For in that region is Illyricum, whither Paul first repaired and where the Slavs originally lived. Thus Paul is the teacher of the Slavic race, and from this race we, the Rus’, too are sprung. The Apostle Paul is similarly the teacher of us the Rus’ since he preached to the Slavic race.22

Note that in all these combinations two principal ‘tribes’ of the Rus’ are present: the Slovenes (later to settle Novgorod) and the Polianians (soon to settle Kyiv and become the Rus’). Sylvester implies that at the moment of the Slavonic mission both the Slovenes and Polianians were still living on the Danube and were among those who received Scripture in the Slavonic language. Where was this ‘Land of the Slavs’ to which Sts Constantine and Methodius travelled? We are not concerned here with the actual location of the Great Moravia whose princes issued invitations to Byzantine teachers23 but with how 21 22 23

‘The Russian Primary Chronicle’, ed. and trans. by Cross, p. 147. ‘The Russian Primary Chronicle’, ed. and trans. by Cross, p. 147. For the discussion of the Great Moravia problem in its connection to the Slavonic mis-

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Sylvester imagined this space. Two rivers, the Danube and the Morava, and two former Roman provinces, Pannonia and Illyricum, are mentioned in his story. Except for Illyricum, this is essentially the geography of the Pannonian Lives. Thus, in Sylvester’s mind, all the events took place in a relatively compact zone of the middle Danube. That was where the ‘Land of the Slavs’ was located and it was from here that they started their migrations. When did it happen? Sylvester provides us with two chronological indications: it happened during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Michael III (840–867) and in the wake of the Moravian mission of Sts Constantine and Methodius (early 860s). Of course, he would not know those precise dates, having instead only a vague idea of the ‘age of emperor Michael’, which was also when ‘the land of Rus’ first came to be known’.24 It turns out that Sylvester never intended his ‘ethnography’ to suggest a very distant past. Within the Chronicle’s timeframe, the Slavonic migration and settling in Eastern Europe was not the event of ancient ‘prehistory’, but had rather happened immediately before ‘the history’ began.

Ethnography of Eastern Europe The above observations should demonstrate that the picture of Slavic migration from the ‘Danube Homeland’ and subsequent settlement in Eastern Europe is an entirely bookish construction. There are no vestiges of the actual ‘tribes’’ movements in it, nor does it reflect some ‘collective memory’ transmitted from the migratory period. How, then, would Sylvester come up with such a broad panorama of East European ethnographic groups? What exactly are his ‘tribes’ and how would he learn their names and establish their territories? The chronicler’s list of Slavonic tribes is probably not entirely without substance. Writing in the mid-tenth century, the Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus in his De administrando imperio, speaks of certain ‘sclavinias’ subjected to the Ruses of Kyiv and names some of them: ‘vervians’, ‘druguviti’, ‘krivichi’, ‘severii’.25 The emperor’s list is much shorter, however, and, intriguingly, Constantine does not mention the two most important ‘tribes’ of the Primary Chronicle: the Poliane of Kyiv and the Slovene of Novgorod. sion, see: Boba, Moravia’s History Reconsidered and more recently: Lunt, ‘Cyril and Methodius’; Curta, ‘The History and Archaeology of Great Moravia’. 24 ‘The Russian Primary Chronicle’, ed. and trans. by Cross, p. 144. 25 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, trans. by Jenkins, 9, p. 63.

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The manner in which Sylvester settles his twelve tribes in Eastern Europe, specifying for each a territory and identifying its markers (rivers, towns, etc.) echoes biblical models ( Joshua 13.15–19). But there is little doubt that his ‘ethnographic map’ mirrors the state of the ethnographic composition of Eastern Europe contemporaneous with the Primary Chronicle. From twelfth-century sources we know that what Sylvester presents as ‘tribes’ of old were actual popular identities which, by that time, however, had mostly been transformed into territorial designations. The chronicler only knew numerous ‘tribal’ names and easily indicated their place on the ‘map’ because this was his daily reality. East Slavs are not the only ones whose ethnic division is noted in the Primary Chronicle, and in all such cases the information is of rather recent provenance. Sylvester lists the ‘tribes’ of future Poland naming the ‘Polians’, the ‘Lutichis’, the ‘Mazovians’, and the ‘Pomorians’.26 As Przemysław Urbańczyk has noted, there is no evidence to support the view that this could be a ‘tribal division’ between the Carpathian ridge and the Baltic in the pre-state period.27 In general, the entire ethnic nomenclature of the Primary Chronicle is no older than the late eleventh century. This is best evidenced by Sylvester’s list of Scandinavian peoples, supposedly of the early ninth century, whom he describes under the blanket label of the Varangians. We would be surprised to learn that the English are included among the Varangians, which, of course, reflects the condition in the wake of the Norman Conquest of 1066. Similarly, another Norman conquest, of southern Italy and Sicily in the 1060s and 1070s, affected Sylvester’s ideas about the geographical distribution of Scandinavians as reaching to Italy and Muslim lands.28 Against this background, there is no reason to believe that it was only in the East Slavic department that Sylvester’s ‘ethnography’ was ‘historic’ and dated, while in other sections it appears to be modern and up-to-date. To conclude: Sylvester converted the observable ethnographic groups of the contemporaneous population, whose regional and folk identities he probably deemed archaic compared to the elite Rus’ identity, into historic ‘tribes’.

Heathen Tribes vs Christian Nation At a certain point in the Chronicle story ‘tribes’, so prominent in the early history of the Kyivan state, exit the scene. In their stead other actors appear: 26 27 28

‘The Russian Primary Chronicle’, ed. and trans. by Cross, p. 138. Urbańczyk, Trudne początki Polski, p. 89. ‘The Russian Primary Chronicle’, ed. and trans. by Cross, pp. 137, 145.

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those who used to be the Polianians turn into the Kyivites, the Slovene into the Novgorodians, the Severians into the Chernigovites, and so on. The population of Rus’ suddenly and completely loses its former ‘ethnicity’, merging into one people, and former ‘tribal’ identifications give way to territorial ones. No meaningful explanation (and only one has been suggested: the fusing role of the newly emerged state formation) can account for such an effective melting pot that stripped the population of its traditional identity and invested it with a new one within the lifetime of a generation or two. What happened? The intrinsic characteristic of ‘tribes’, from Sylvester’s point of view, the principal aspect that sets them apart from the succeeding populations of the Rus’ state, was the diversity of their ‘laws’ and ‘customs’. Every ‘tribe’ adhered to the ‘laws of its forefathers’, and for the most part these were gross, almost beastly ways (the Drevlianians ‘existed in bestial fashion and lived like a cattle’, the Radimichis, the Viatichis, and the Severians ‘lived in the forest like any wild beast’, and the Radimichis did likewise).29 The ‘tribes’ allowed the killing of fellow men, ate impure food, converged for repellent amusements, they did not enjoy the institution of marriage, they celebrated the dead in the form of pagan festivals and had them cremated on a pyre. They lived like beasts, because each tribe followed its own customs. In this they were similar to all pagans in general and, in particular, to the nomadic Cumans of the modern day, who also ‘maintain the customs of their ancestors’ in shedding the blood and enjoying it, in eating every unclean thing, and in engaging in promiscuous sexual practices.30 But the only source of the law must be the Christian God, and this law is one for all Christians. In other words, the ‘ethnicity’ of the tribes was rooted in the diversity of their own laws, which had been invented and cultivated because of ignorance. Had they learned of the true, unified law, they would have turned into a single people. Thus, for the chronicler, the most significant factor is the contrast between the diverse paganism of the ‘tribes’ and the uniform Christianity of modern times: [The ‘tribes’] did not know the law of God, but made laws unto themselves […] But in all lands we Christians who believe in the Holy Trinity, in one baptism, and in one faith, have but one law inasmuch as we have been baptized in the Lord and have put on Christ.31

29 30 31

‘The Russian Primary Chronicle’, ed. and trans. by Cross, pp. 141–42. ‘The Russian Primary Chronicle’, ed. and trans. by Cross, p. 143. ‘The Russian Primary Chronicle’, ed. and trans. by Cross, pp. 142, 143.

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We will therefore not be particularly surprised to discover that the moment when all these ‘tribes’ disappear is the day they were baptized by Prince Volodimer. After 988, the Chronicle prefers not to mention their names. Having been baptized, they shed their mores and were reborn. For Sylvester, the new Christian identity erases tribal differences. ‘Ethnicity’ turns out to be a sign of heathen ways and thus remains in the pagan past. The ‘Christian Rus’’ emerged as one unified nation, created by the fact of baptism.

Slavonic Tongue and Slavonic Nation: Conversion, Territorial Expansion, and State Building It might seem that theories developed by a medieval ideologue, even one working on the ruling prince’s advice, are only of academic value vis-à-vis realpolitik. What is written into history does not necessarily match what had occurred in the past. Explanations of how it happened are not, as a matter of course, the real motives for past actions. In our case, the two are corresponding vessels, and one might read Sylvester’s ideas as something to do with authentic experience. Toward the mid-tenth century, all of the Rus’ possessions consisted of two forts, Kyiv and Novgorod, the two gateways on the route between the Baltic and the Black Sea. This structure stemmed from the nature of the Rus’ organization as a commercial, mostly slave-trading, enterprise based on long-distance trade and concerned with control over its infrastructure rather than over territories or populations. The only probable addition to the set, by the 970s, was the single outpost in the land of the Drevlianians, although how much of their ‘tribal’ territory Kyiv commanded remains unclear. With these humble possessions the princes of Rus’ entered the light of history, accepting baptism from Byzantium in 988. The central figure in bringing about this change was Prince Volodimer. His lengthy reign (978–1015), it turns out, was a pivotal moment when the Kyivan state suddenly emerged as the largest territorial polity of Europe. When he died, Volodimer was able to hand over the state territory as it would remain for another two and a half centuries. His successors were able to make only small corrections, adding here and losing there. Unfortunately, the Chronicle is too scant on real events from Volodimer’s term in office, filling the pages with anecdotes and fables about the prince, so we are largely left in the dark about how he achieved such an impressive territorial expansion and what made it possible. We understand that he was driven by the general tendency of transition from long-distance trade towards exploitation of the agrarian population and hence domination over the terri-

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tories it occupied. One would expect, too, that the tools were the usual ones: military subjugation and coercion. The principal questions, however, remain unanswered. What made the growth so rapid and how come the resulting territorial expanse matched, almost exactly, the Slavic-speaking population of Eastern Europe? How was it determined who gets ‘in’ and who stays ‘out’? How were the ‘natural’ boundaries decided upon and why was it deemed unnecessary to cross them? It has been noted that state formation on the European periphery correlates with the process of Christianization: only the regions whose elites accepted Christianity of their own choice were able to develop territorially contiguous polities, while those unaffected by Christianization or the regions of ‘late Christianization’ became objects of foreign military intervention and colonization.32 Their different fortunes suggest that conversion played a significant role both in the introduction of the notions of ‘state’ and ‘statehood’ and in the structuring of the population now subjected to the state. From an ecclesiastical point of view, the reign of Volodimer was a missionary period when the population was being converted to the new religion while the church structures were being set up in the major urban centres. In Eastern Europe, state formation and church formation went hand in hand as concurrent and mutually supporting processes. Rus’ adopted the Eastern version of Christianity with Slavonic as the language of liturgy and writing. Church Slavonic was based on a Southern Slavic dialect and was alien yet comprehensible to the East European population. Its choice was dictated by practical considerations: speeding up popular catechization and ease of mastering the church service and grasping the sermon. The population speaking different closely related dialects was defined as ‘Slavic’ and hence Slavonic-speaking, that is, linguistically homogeneous and bound inside this language specifically devised for missionary purposes. We have seen the repeated, tautological even, avowals of the Primary Chronicle that the East European population, forming the nation of Rus’, is of the Slavic race and hence is Slavonic-speaking (‘there is only the Slavic race in Rus’: the Polianians, the Drevlianians, the Novgorodians, the Polochanians, the Dregovichis, the Severians, the Buzhanians’). This Slavic race was the object of Christianization by means of the Slavonic language. The scope of this ‘Slavonic race’ determined the missionary zone in Eastern Europe, as well as the stretch of the Christian prince’s authority. That may account for the rapid formation of the territory 32

Bagge, From Viking Stronghold to Christian Kingdom.

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subjected to the prince of Kyiv during the initial and most vigorous stage of Christianization. Having defined the theoretical dimensions for catechization, the choice of liturgical language also imposes limits on expansion and inclusion. Where the ‘Slavonic tongue’ would not reach, the mission ends and so the state territory ends. Only the ‘Slavic race’, then, gets to form part of the ‘inside’ group. Other, linguistically and ethnically alien peoples of Eastern Europe, were not granted the privilege and were left ‘out’. They were classified as gentiles, good only for extortion: The following are other tribes which pay tribute to Rus’: Chud, Merya, Ves, Muroma, Cheremis, Mordva, Perm, Pechera, Yam, Litva, Zimegola, Kors, Narva, and Liv. These tribes have their own languages and belong to the race of Japheth, which inhabits the lands of the north.33

In practice, the state territory of Kyiv would not be defined by so clear-cut an opposition between alien tongues and the ‘Slavonic-speaking race of Slavic origin’. In many cases, the political space would follow Slavic colonization in other ethnic areas. Yet it is also true that in all of the pre-Mongol period no serious efforts were attempted to undertake missionary work among the Baltic or Finno-Ugric-speaking peoples. Of course, what we read in the Primary Chronicle was written more than a hundred years after the conversion and may present an afterthought, a sort of rationalization made after the fact. Yet one is left to wonder if, when developing his theories, Sylvester had not revealed some of the actual toolkit of Christianization and state building that had been achieved a couple of generations before his times.

33

‘The Russian Primary Chronicle’, ed. and trans. by Cross, p. 140.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, trans. by Richard  J. Jenkins (Budapest: Egyetemi Görög Filológiai, 1949) Cosmas of Prague, The Chronicle of the Czechs by Cosmas of Prague, trans. with an introduction and notes by Lisa Wolverton, Medieval texts in Translation (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009) Gallus Anonymus, Gesta principum Polonorum  = The Deeds of the Princes of the Poles, trans. and annotated by Paul W. Knoll and Frank Schaer; with a preface by Thomas N. Bisson, Central European Medieval Texts, 3 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2003) The Hagiography of Kievan Rus’, trans. with an introduction by Paul Hollingsworth, Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature: English Translations, 2 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992) Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei, ii: Hypatian Codex (Saint Petersburg, 1843) ‘The Russian Primary Chronicle’, ed. and trans. by Samuel H. Cross, Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, 12 (1930), 77–297

Secondary Studies Aristov, Vadym, ‘Vasilii-Silvestr (O lichnosti avtora “Povesti vremennykh let”)’, Ruthenica, 12 (2014), 169–72 Bálint, Csanád, ‘A Contribution to Research on Ethnicity: A View from and on the East’, in Archaeology of Identity: Archäologie der Identität, ed. by Walter Pohl and Mathias Mehofer, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 17 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010), pp. 145–82 Bagge, Sverre, From Viking Stronghold to Christian Kingdom: State Formation in Norway, c. 900–1350 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010) Boba, Imre, Moravia’s History Reconsidered: A Reinterpretation of Medieval Sources (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971) Curta, Florin, The Making of the Slavs: History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region c. 500–700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) —— , ‘The History and Archaeology of Great Moravia: An Introduction’, Early Medieval Europe, 17.3 (2009), 238–47 ——  , ‘Medieval Archaeology and Ethnicity: Where Are We?’, History Compass, 9.7 (2011), 537–48 Gippius, Aleksei A., ‘Millennialism and Jubilee Tradition in Early Rus’ History and Historiography’, Ruthenica, 2 (2003), 154–71 ——  , ‘Sochineniia Vladimira Monomakha: Opyt tekstologicheskoi rekonstruktsii. I–III’, Russkii iazyk v nauchnom osveshchenii, 2.6 (2003), 60–98; Russkii iazyk v nauchnom osvesh­ chenii, 22.8 (2004), 146–71; Russkii iazyk v nauchnom osveshchenii, 2.12 (2006), 186–203

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——  , ‘K probleme redaktsii Povesti vremennykh let. I–II’, Slavianovedenie, 5  (2007), 20–44; Slavianovedenie, 2 (2008), 3–24 Lunt, Horace G., ‘Cyril and Methodius with Rastislav Prince of Moravia: Where Were They?’, in Thessaloniki Magna Moravia: Proceedings of the International Conference Thessaloniki 16–19 October 1997, ed.  by Anthony-Emil  N. Tachiaos (Thessaloniki: Hellenic Association for Slavic Studies, 1999), pp. 87–112 Tolochko, Oleksiy, ‘Christian Chronology, Universal History and the Origin of Chronicle Writing in Rus’’, in Historical Narratives and Christian Identity on a European Periphery: Early History Writing in Northern, East­Central, and Eastern Europe (c. 1070–1200), ed. by Ildar Garipzanov (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 205–28 —— , ‘On Nestor “The Chronicler”’, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 29.1–4 (2011), 1–31 —— , Ocherki nachal’noi rusi (Kyiv: Laurus, 2015) Tolochko, Petro, Drevnerusskaia narodnost (Saint Petersburg: Aletheia, 2005), pp. 65–81 Urbańczyk, Przemysław, Trudne początki Polski (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2008) —— , ‘Before the Poles: Problems of Ethnic Identification in Polish Archaeology of the Early Middle Ages’, in Archaeology of Identity: Archäologie der Identität, edited by Walter Pohl and Mathias Mehofer, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 17 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010), pp. 203–09

Historiography of the New Europe: Comparative Perspectives Walter Pohl

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e tend to conceptualize the history of historiography as a continuous flow of greater and lesser works of history, perhaps meandering in different branches and cultural traditions, but on the whole progressing from distant beginnings (archaic myths, basic record-keeping) through the great classical works and eventually to the achievements of the modern discipline of history. As often with historical narratives, this is a reasonable way to make sense of a complex development. Yet it can be misleading if we take it for granted. Several problems arise from a unified concept of the development of historiography. First, this perspective risks being Eurocentric, concentrating on the descent and emergence of Western standards of historical research. The exemplary studies collected in volume 4 of the Historiography and Identity series, devoted to comparison on a Eurasian level, have demonstrated some of the multiplicity of forms and intentions in the global writing of history.1 Second, narratives of the history of historiography tend to gloss over lacunae in production and losses in transmission, and instead weave the lines that connect the texts that we do have into meaningful genealogies. And third, these grand narratives often set off national or other sectoral historiographies from each other, each with a tradition of their own, such as Roman, British, Western, Slavic, or Islamic historiography — certainly a legitimate approach, 1

Pohl and Mahoney, eds, Historiography and Identity, iv.

Walter Pohl is Professor Emeritus of Medieval History at the University of Vienna and former Director of the Institute for Medieval Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000–1300, ed. by Walter Pohl, Veronika Wieser, and Francesco Borri, celama 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp.  467–484 FHG 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.130271

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but also one that may obscure the more particular or more transversal strands in the transmission of historiographic genres. Many of the works discussed in the chapters of this volume have long been regarded as foundational texts in an unbroken chain of evolving national master narratives: the Primary Chronicle for Russia (and Ukraine), Cosmas for the Czechs, Master P. and Simon of Kéza for Hungary, Gallus for Poland, or Saxo Grammaticus and Snorri in Scandinavia. And indeed, most of them had a tremendous impact on much later history writing — similar to the influence of Bede on later English chronicles, or of the Merovingian histories on those in France. Later, romantic intellectuals sought the authentic soul of their people in its first histories, while nationalist historians built claims of superiority for their nations on them.2 Critical assessments of such claims only gradually became mainstream in the later twentieth century. This is a delicate task. As has already been argued in the Introduction, deconstructing national master narratives does not necessarily require claiming that these texts had no relevance for the identities of the peoples and realms.3 They were and/or became scripts for identity of the new polities and their successors. Calling them ‘national histories’ may be a useful shorthand classification.4 Yet we should take care that the overwhelming metaphor of ‘the nation’ does not obscure the more delicate distinctions. The ways that these histories constructed identities were by no means natural and straightforward. This has several reasons. The first is the role of the author in creating these identities. The prevalent form in which the deconstructivist impulse reached Medieval Studies in the 1980s and 1990s was only half postmodern: it mostly eschewed ‘the death of the author’ that postmodernists had proclaimed.5 In many cases, it may in fact have been a wise decision not to eliminate the author in the interpretation of the work; it is indeed the author who is our closest partner in the strange dialogue with the dead that 2

Leerssen, National Thought; Berger and Lorenz, eds, Contested Nation. Walter Goffart is often cited for his groundbreaking critique of regarding early medieval histories as ‘national’. However, his polemic only regards Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon. Goffart voiced a different opinion on some other histories: ‘Isidore celebrated the Spanish Goths, Gregory’s continuators provided the Franks with the history he had eschewed, and an anonymous Italian briefly narrated the origin of the Lombards. In other words, the century that brought papal history to fruition also generated the first “national” histories’. Goffart, Narrators, p. 432 and p. 245. 4 Cf. Kersken, Geschichtsschreibung; Innes, ‘Historical Writing’. 5 Pohl, ‘Debating Ethnicity’. That was, again, not least due to the influence of Walter Goffart, and happened in spite of some more theoretically informed work, for instance by Spiegel, Past as a Text. 3

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our own history writing requires from us. It has almost become a topos to state that medieval works of history tell us more about the authors and their time than they do about the times they wrote about.6 However, that tends to put too much weight on authors about whom we, more often than not, only know from the pages of their work. ‘Authorial intent’ is a valuable category of source critique. Yet under the conditions of academic competition, in which a strong hypothesis put forward in a publication may generate greater attention than a balanced interpretation, this may lead even well-argued analyses astray. Too many medieval writers are presented as dummy authors strictly geared to one overriding purpose. In older scholarship, this intention was often supposed to be ‘writing the nation’.7 In more recent works, however, it was believed to be anything but that. I would argue that many medieval historians had several interlocking, and sometimes even contradictory concerns, and they could put on different personae in different parts of their work.8 Second, the notion of the strong author so paradoxically shared by romantic and nationalist scholars of the nineteenth century and by post-postmodern individualist scholars of the twenty-first century has its limits in the material that medieval historiographers used. Twentieth-century philology has tended to regard early medieval Western (and high medieval Eastern European) historians as mere compilers with poor Latin and little sense of structure, and we owe to Walter Goffart a critical revision of this condescending assessment. Cosmas, Saxo, or Simon of Kéza knew what they were doing. Yet they did not create their histories in a vacuum where no historical information had existed before. In many cases, debates revolved around the thorny question of whether they were indeed inspired founders who created a history of the people and the realm out of the blue, or whether they just compiled previous works which are now lost. The disagreement between Donald Ostrowski and Oleksiy P. Tolochko about the authorship of the Russian Primary Chronicle, in their chapters in this volume is just such an example. It is clear, in any case, that a tradition of monastic annals must have been available to the author/s of the Primary Chronicle. In many cases, written sources dating to before the great chronicles are still preserved today, mostly hagiography.9 For the Czechs, the accounts of the tenth-century martyr saints St Wenceslas (in the Legenda 6 7 8 9

Again, this was pioneered by Goffart, Narrators, p. 437. For an overview, Berger, ed., Writing the Nation. See, for instance, Pohl, ‘Historical Writing’; Pohl, ‘Paul the Deacon’. Klaniczay, ed., Saints of the Christianization Age.

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Christiani) and St Adalbert are central. 10 In Hungary, we have the lives of St Stephen, the Admonitiones ascribed to St Stephen’s time, or the laws of the early kings.11 Eleventh-century hagiography is also known from the Rus’ and in Scandinavia.12 It should be noted that many of the early hagiographic texts concern dynastic saints: Wenceslas, Stephen, Olaf, or Wladimir/Volodimer I remained central for the identity of the realms. Most of these earlier texts are, however, preserved in much later manuscripts. In the Czech and Hungarian cases, the first chronicles seem to constitute alternative narratives of identity as compared to the earlier lives: both Master P. and Cosmas say surprisingly little about St Stephen and St Wenceslas.13 Third, the extent to which the narratives of the great ‘foundational’ chronicles remained uncontested in their time and soon after seems to vary. What many historical works in the eastern parts of Europe have in common is their late or patchy manuscript tradition. Master P.’s work survives in only one manuscript from the mid-thirteenth century.14 Simon of Kéza’s chronicle is only preserved in eighteenth-century copies based on a lost late thirteenth-century codex.15 Cosmas has a relatively rich transmission history, with fourteen textual witnesses and the oldest one written around 1200.16 The earliest of three late medieval copies of the Gesta principum Polonorum by Gallus was written in the 1380s.17 Saxo’s Gesta Danorum is attested in a fragment close to the time of writing, but the complete text is now known only from an early print.18 The problem of transmission of the sagas, mostly produced in Iceland on the basis of supposedly oral lore, is particularly thorny, as Rosalind Bonté exemplifies with the case of the Orkneyinga saga, put into writing in the thirteenth cen10

See the chapter by Pavlína Rychterová, in this volume. Legenda maior s. Stephani regis, ed. by Bartoniek; Hartvic, Vita S. Stephani regis, ed. by Bartoniek; trans. by Berend; see the chapter by László Veszprémy, in this volume. 12 The Hagiography of Kievan Rus, trans. by Hollingsworth; DuBois, ed., Sanctity in the North. 13 Anonymus, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by Rady and Veszprémy, 57, pp. 127–29; Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Bohemorum, ed. by Bak and Rychterová, i.15, p. 65: ‘All these things we would rather omit than bore the reader, since we can now read work by others’; i.17, p. 67. 14 Anonymus, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by Rady and Veszprémy, p. xvii. 15 Simon of Kéza, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by Veszprémy and Schaer, pp. xv–xvii. 16 Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Bohemorum, ed. by Bak and Rychterová, pp. xv–xvi. 17 Gesta principum Polonorum, ed. by Knoll and Schaer, p. xx. See the chapters by Zbigniew Dalewski and Jacek Banaszkiewicz, in this volume. 18 Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, ed. by Friis-Jensen and trans. by Fisher, i, pp. li–lxii. 11

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tury.19 Six manuscripts from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries transmit the Russian Primary Chronicle.20 Of course, the networks of cultural production and transmission were still under construction in their countries of origin when these texts were written, so we should not conclude that their impact was negligible in the period after their composition. Yet they catered to a limited public. Cosmas probably comes closest to having an immediate influence and an unbroken chain of transmission, in which his narrative was also continued on several occasions. In retrospect, they represent beginnings of a loose series of similar chronicles, whose historiographic plots and agendas differed more or less from the foundational histories. At various stages in the later Middle Ages, the early narratives were copied, reworked, and at the same time, fixed in the canon. In Bohemia, the age of Emperor Charles IV (1346/48–78) was such a node of historiographic collection and canonization. In Hungary, the humanists at the court of King Matthias Corvinus in the late fifteenth century had an impact on historiographic production, styling the Hungarians as the dreaded Huns of ancient literature.21 Thus, we observe a gradual emergence of a ‘national’ historiographic canon in the course of the Middle Ages, which reaches a further step of diffusion with the early modern printed editions. As with post-Roman historiography, we can assume, or sometimes reconstruct from dialogic or polemical passages in the preserved works, that alternative versions of origin narratives were available. There was a multiplicity of — and as it seems, sometimes a competition between — different genres of constructing a foundational past of the realm. Notably, historiography and hagiography offered rather different, although complementary approaches to what mattered for the identity of the realm. They came quite close to each other in the Russian Primary Chronicle, which was written (or copied) on the occasion of the translation of the relics of dynastic saints in Kyiv. There was much greater distance between Hungarian hagiography centred on St Stephen, and the early chronicles that focused on the pagan period of the Hun/Hungarian steppe riders. In the later Middle Ages, such divergences were usually bridged by more inclusive chronicles. On the whole, writing the histories of the new powers in Eastern and Northern Europe was a long process. Although many realms arose and were Christianized within a surprisingly short period around the year 1000, the first transmitted histories that relate or glorify the process took three centuries to 19 20 21

See the chapter by Rosalind Bonté, in this volume. Die Nestorchronik, ed. by Müller, pp. xi–xix. Klaniczay and Jankovics, Matthias Corvinus.

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appear in all countries. Cosmas, Gallus, and the Russian Primary Chronicle were written shortly after 1100. Saxo Grammaticus, the Orkney Saga, Master P., and the Chronica Livonorum can be dated to the early thirteenth century, Thomas of Spalato’s History and Snorri’s Heimskringla to the mid-thirteenth century, and Simon of Kéza to the 1280s. Large-scale chronicles — most of them in Latin, only the Rus’ and some Scandinavian authors (mostly from Iceland) began their history writing in the vernacular — were not among the primary devices used to construct the identity of the new peoples and polities. They put the past in perspective, mostly in the service of long-standing dynasties, at a later date. Of course, in Eastern and Northern Europe, where Rome never ruled, history had not been written before, and even outside reports by Latin and Greek authors were rare. That was not only a question of reconstructing the history of these lands in a distant past; most authors had sources about the early period of their realms to rely on. Perhaps more importantly, it affected the conceptualizing of the new countries, peoples, and kingdoms. Where did they come from? What legitimized them? Gaul had been Gaul and Britain Britain since time immemorial when their early medieval historians wrote. The Poles, Hungarians, Livs, or the Rus’ and their countries had not existed in the classical or even Carolingian periods, and had to be connected to other lines of identification: biblical or ethnographic peoples or even narrative patterns from Roman history (as in Cosmas or Henry of Livonia). On the other hand, difference was mostly maintained, and the new countries were not simply embedded in a Western historiographic matrix. This also opened spaces for the creative selection and adaptation of literary models. The new countries only gradually became part of a well-established framework of Christian realms. As in the western and southern parts of the continent, they were distinguished by their ethnonyms and united by their shared Christian and Latin (or Greek) cultural habitus. This historiographic frame remained basically unquestioned in the Northern/Eastern European chronicles, in spite of all the minor divergences. We should, of course, regard the histories written in the new realms in context. The events in the north and east of Europe were of interest in the Christian countries of the West, particularly in the German lands. In the present volume, the view from the outside on landscapes that were gradually becoming familiar is exemplified by the works of Regino of Prüm, Adam of Bremen, and Helmold of Bosau.22 Henry of Livonia is a special case, being a foreigner living in a country where the pagan population had come under pressure by crusaders based 22

See the chapters by Max Diesenberger, Ian Wood, and Jan Klápště, in this volume.

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in their vicinity.23 Although these works are the result of close communication between Christian countries and those in which missionaries were at work, their impact on the historiographical perspectives in the new countries was initially limited. Regino of Prüm, who had much less information on the neighbouring regions to the east than later authors, was used most (for instance, by Cosmas), but not for his insights into eastern (in that case, Bohemian) history.24 A problem for the writing of history in the new Europe certainly lay in the availability of texts. Western historians could rely on long-standing traditions of literacy in their countries, established in the Roman period, and on institutions that had diligently kept or acquired relevant manuscripts. Byzantine historiography had noted (perhaps invented) the Slavs in the sixth century, over five hundred years before the Russian Primary Chronicle was written. Yet its author/s did not have access to all these texts. Their first substantial information came from the ninth century, in the Slavic lives of the great missionaries Cyril and Methodius. Consequently, they saw the Middle Danube region as the Slavic homeland, and could easily gloss over the pagan past of the Slavs. The great chroniclers of eastern Central and Northern Europe generally had better access to Latin historiographical literature; some of them (Gallus, Master P.) may have come from the West, others (Cosmas, perhaps Saxo Grammaticus) studied there. They had access to important books (for instance, Cosmas at Liège). They may have taken home some copies and excerpts, but they were hardly able to carry an adequate supply of manuscripts to the countries where they worked. As the Legenda Christiani complains about the general ignorance concerning Bohemian saints, if the remains of such and so distinguished saints and dignified witnesses of Christ, thriving with honour of miracles of virtues, were contained in the lands of Lotharingians or Carolingians and other Christian peoples, these stories would be already long ago depicted in gold letters.25

Only in the thirteenth century did centres of learning in some northern and eastern countries gradually acquire a dynamic of their own. Many of the early historians who wrote in ‘non-Roman Europe’ appropriated older narrative models. Thus, the Russian Primary Chronicle relied heavily on Old Testament genealogies and lists of peoples, which were only vaguely 23

See the chapter by Donecker and Fraundorfer, in this volume. See the chapter by Pavlína Rychterová, in this volume. 25 Legenda Christiani, ed. by Ludvíkovský, p. 10; quoted after the translation in the chapter by Pavlína Rychterová, in this volume, p. 143 . 24

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linked to the Cyrillo-Methodian horizon that followed, and to the Kyivan perspective of the main text. Similarly, Henry of Livonia built on biblical models to make sense of the history of the Baltic lands. Cosmas invented a classical-style Golden Age of the Bohemians, inhabited by a soothsaying woman (phitonissa, as the manuscripts render the Greek pythonissa), Amazons, and a pristine leader who left his plough for a higher mission. Master P. and Simon of Kéza tapped into the rich lore about Scythians and Huns, which corresponded both to the Hungarians’ roots in the Pontic Steppes and to the Hunnic and Avar precedent in what was now Hungary. Saxo Grammaticus offered several options to connect the Danes, who could already boast a conspicuous history when he wrote, to ancient Scandinavian lore, to the exploits of the Angles, or to the Danai (Greeks) as in Dudo of St Quentin’s Norman history, and even incorporated the exodus of the Longobards from Paul the Deacon’s History.26 Saxo’s Danes did not arrive in their country from a far-away homeland, but were the source of other notable peoples’ exploits, the Angles and the Longobards: a pattern that was to have a great future in the German view of the ‘Great Migrations’. Early medieval historians had appropriated stories of distant ethnic origins, such as the Frankish descent from Troy or the Longobard migration from Scandinavia.27 Yet these were mostly rather linear tales of migration from a previous homeland culminating in the conquest of a piece of Roman territory. The new homeland — Italy, Gaul, Britain — had well-known histories, and did not require much explanation. The Hungarian chroniclers built on such a late antique migration story which told about the Huns coming to Pannonia; but they (as several Western authors before them) had to duplicate this east– west migration narrative by a second, Hungarian conquest of the same country. Saxo implied that the Danes had always lived in their country. Cosmas gave no details about the primordial immigration of the Czechs into an empty Bohemia. The supposed origin of the Kyivan Slavs from the Middle Danube region in the Russian Primary Chronicle is just mentioned, without an attempt to resolve the tension between Slavic, Polyanian, and Rus’ identity by narrative means. Only the historians along the Adriatic, Thomas of Spalato in Dalmatia, 26

Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, ed. by Friis-Jensen and trans. by Fisher, i, i.1–2 and viii.13.2, p. 20 and p. 596; Dudo of St Quentin, Gesta Normannorum, 2, ed. and trans. by Lifshitz, ii, online: : ‘Igitur Daci nuncupantur a suis Danai uel Dani, glorianturque se ex Antenore progenitos’; Engl. [accessed 12 April 2022]. 27 Pohl, ‘Narratives of Origin’.

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John the Deacon in Venice, or the Chronicon Gradense, could claim a direct Roman origin, threatened but not obliterated by foreign immigrants, Huns, Goths, Longobards, or Slavs. Eventually, however, Roman origins would be appropriated for ruling dynasties and aristocratic families in remote regions of North-Eastern Europe.28 The relevance of origin narratives for the identity of the post-Roman peoples was controversially debated, as sketched in the Introduction. Were these ‘ethnic’ origins or not? In a different context, this was also an issue for the chronicles discussed in this volume. Did ethnicity matter in medieval Eastern and Northern Europe? Alheydis Plassmann has posited a shift from early medieval identity constructions based on the gens, the people, to high medieval identification with the terra, the land, based on a comparison between the post-Roman histories and the chronicles of Cosmas and Gallus.29 This follows a model developed by the German ‘Nationes’ group in the 1980s, according to which the ninth and tenth centuries mark the passage from the ‘gentile’ identity of tribes to the more complex and territorially circumscribed medieval nations.30 Unlike the ‘Nationes’ group, and commendably, Plassmann did not insist on the ‘national’ character of the tenth- to twelfth-century realms in eastern Central Europe.31 However, the chapters of the present volume do not confirm the assumption that the patria and terra are the most prominent features of the histories of the new realm, while the gens loses its importance. Rather, these histories diverge in the relative importance given to identifications with people, country, kingdom, dynasty, or ecclesiastical institutions. Did the focus of identifications really shift from the post-Roman histories to the chronicles of non-Roman Europe? The ‘narrators of barbarian history’32 had not in fact created a coherent model, just a set of options for identification. The historiography of the first wave of new realms had been far from homogeneous, and the various levels of identification played rather different roles in them. The Getica of Jordanes (c. 550) concentrated on the origins and fates of the Goths, enlarging their role by incorporating Scythians, Getae, and Dacians 28

Donecker, Origines Livonorum; Donecker, ed., Abstammungsmythen; see also the chapter by Donecker and Fraundorfer, in this volume. 29 Plassmann, Origo gentis. 30 e.g. Schneidmüller, Nomen patriae; for a revised version of the model, Schneidmüller, Begegnung der Könige. 31 See the brief review of the debate about the medieval nation in the introduction to this volume. 32 Goffart, Narrators.

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into Gothic identity.33 The Histories of Gregory of Tours (c. 590) focused on the church of early Merovingian Gaul, and in recounting the history of the Frankish kingdoms practically elided Frankish identity.34 Bede (c. 735) wrote a ‘Church History of the English People’ in which the process of Christianization of the Angles played a key role.35 By modelling an often-precarious synthesis of church, kingdom, and people, he prepared the ground for an increasingly resilient shared discourse of Englishness. And Paul the Deacon (c. 790) balanced his ‘History of the Lombards’ with a wider profile of the post-Roman world, in which the multiplicity of peoples and powers had become without alternative.36 At the height of the Carolingian Empire, this was a clearly non-imperial history, in which good and bad could be found on all sides in the many conflicts he related. These and other histories of the period between 500 and 800 were not simply ‘national’, they had more than one aim, and more than one identity to affirm. Still, they contributed much to establishing their subject as a new default option in the political landscape: Christian kingdoms and their territories named after the dominant people among a plurality of analogous polities. Many of the works discussed in the present volume roughly follow the precedent of the ‘first wave’. They recount the history of a kingdom or duchy from its origins through its formative phase, and often up to the time when the author wrote. They define the realm by its people, the gens, by whose name it is generally known. They account for the establishment of its key institutions: the rule of kings or dukes, the origins of a dynasty, the promulgation of its laws or habits, the conversion of its leaders and the populace to Christianity, the building of ecclesiastical institutions, and the rise of central places or regions. They describe the landscape in which the patria, the fatherland, was now evolving. They relate the new polity to ‘the’ Roman Empire (of the Greeks or Germans) and its traditions, and often legitimize its rulers within a sub- or post-imperial constellation. They also describe the relations with neighbouring powers, and often recount primordial conflicts or battles. And as with the first-wave histories of post-Roman realms, they find rather divergent ways to balance these various forms of identification — the polity, the people, the country, the dynasty, the church of the land. 33 Jordanes, Getica, ed. by Mommsen. See the respective contributions in Reimitz and Heydemann, eds, Historiography and Identity, ii. 34 Gregory of Tours, Historiae, ed. by Krusch. Reimitz, History, Frankish Identity. 35 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. and trans. by King. 36 Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed.  by Bethmann and Waitz. See Pohl, ‘Historical Writing’.

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The relative importance of all these elements differs in the chronicles of the ‘new Europe’. In the Hungarian chronicles of Master P. and Simon of Kéza, the pre-Christian history of the Hungarian kingdom is what matters most. Master P. focuses only on the ‘land-taking’ period, deriving the legitimacy of the Arpad dynasty and of the leading families of the country from their heroic deeds when appropriating the land, and from the oath of the seven leaders to remain loyal to the dynasty.37 Simon of Kéza extends his history to include Attila’s Huns, and taps even more strongly into the ‘Scythian’ background of the Hungarians. The Christianization and the foundation of the kingdom are in the focus of other texts, supposedly written in the eleventh century, such as the lives of St Stephen. Biblical origins, a golden-age fantasy, and Amazon imagery give the beginnings of Cosmas’s chronicle a much more peaceful flavour as the Bohemians settle in an empty land. Then, he proceeds with a narrative that covers Czech history up to his own day, the early twelfth century. Gallus, on the other hand, has little interest in Polish history before the advent of the Piast dynasty; like in Cosmas’s Chronicle, the dynasty is proudly derived from humble origins. In all three countries, the early chronicles affirm the exclusive right to rule of the founding dynasties that were still in power when they were written. That is also the case in the Russian Primary Chronicle, which blends Slavic language, Orthodox Christianity, Kyiv and its hinterland, and an originally foreign dynasty into a seemingly coherent Rus’ identity. In comparison to the post-Roman centuries, dynastic continuity and the centrality of these dynasties to many historical accounts is remarkable in eastern Central Europe. Only Jordanes makes much of the Amals, at a point when the Ostrogothic dynasty had already fallen. The Frankish Merovingians ruled for over 250 years, in spite of their notorious internal struggles, but none of the Frankish histories puts the focus on their dynastic identity. There are further differences in structure and historical context between the early medieval and the high medieval histories, which prompted different narrative strategies. The post-Roman kingdoms were founded in places with a strong imperial tradition and much of the imperial infrastructure still in place. Apart from Britain, the gentes that had come into power were small dominant minorities among a persistent provincial population. The new polities of the tenth and eleventh centuries could represent their peoples in a much more inclusive sense, in spite of their more or less hybrid population.38 Furthermore, the realms of the fifth and sixth centuries were imposed on an established ecclesiastical organization, and the bishops acted as representa37 38

See the chapter by Dániel Bagi, in this volume. Cf. Berend, At the Gates of Christendom.

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tives of the subject population. The bishoprics in the Gothic, Frankish, or Lombard kingdoms eventually formed churches of the realm, and used the frame it offered to maintain their autonomy from imperial interference, which could be reflected in church councils.39 There were some sees in the Frankish kingdoms which enjoyed extraordinary spiritual capital, such as Tours, the see of St Martin, or Reims where Clovis had been baptized. Yet (with the partial exception of Britain, where a new ‘English’ Church was built in the seventh century) it took a long time until identifications with the regnum and with its ecclesia merged, a synthesis which was only achieved in the Carolingian period.40 The symbolic function of the episcopal sees of Lund, Prague, Gniezno, Esztergom, or Kyiv for the respective realms was much more straightforward, as each of them was connected to saintly or political founding figures of the church and kingdom, and most were located in the centres of power. Among the cases treated in this volume, the ancient ecclesiastical centres along the Adriatic such as Salona/Split or Aquileia/Grado/Venice preserved (or recuperated) older, Roman traditions, so that episcopal and urban chronicles have remained as witnesses of more regional strategies of identification, in which barbarian conquerors remain the ‘others’.41 At the time when Cosmas or Gallus wrote, they had a long-established Christian political discourse at hand, which had still been in the making in Late Antiquity. This allowed them to use more refined techniques to modulate their message and to hint at meanings which could only be deciphered by a few, highly educated clerical colleagues, as is also indicated in Cosmas’s prefaces. Gregory of Tours, Isidore of Seville, or Bede were still involved in attempts to adapt Christian teachings to their political environment, and vice versa. On the other hand, their efforts to interpret the ambivalent situation in which former barbarians with a precarious Christian creed were their masters created models which could be useful for eleventh- and twelfth-century authors describing Christian rulers whose pagan and ‘barbarian’ backgrounds were no more remote than those of Merovingian or Anglo-Saxon kings. Unlike their colleagues who wrote half a millennium before them, however, the historians of the ‘new Europe’ had the opportunity to propagate model figures of saintly rulers, such as St Stephen, St Wenceslas, or St Olaf, whose spiritual credit could reflect favourably on less saintly rulers of their day.42 Clovis had received praise 39 40 41 42

Brown, Rise of Western Christendom. De Jong, ‘Empire and ecclesia’. See the chapters by Neven Budak, Peter Štih and Francesco Borri, in this volume. Klaniczay, Holy Rulers.

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for his conversion from Christian authors, but none of them would have styled him as a saint. This change was surely due to previous hagiographic exercises that authors of the second millennium could rely on or refer to. As the passage in the Legenda Christiani quoted above shows, the appropriation of Western hagiographic models was a conscious step to propagate model saints for one’s own people.43 It could help to extol the dynasty and admonish its less-cooperative rulers within a narrative that was palpably their own. Often, outside representations of the new countries and peoples predate the historical narratives produced by courtiers or clerics in the new kingdoms, such as the works of Regino of Prüm, Adam of Bremen, Helmold of Bosau and Henry of Livonia discussed in this volume.44 However, the distinction between the own, ‘national’ historiography of the new realms in Northern and Eastern Europe and the ‘outside’ sources is not straightforward. On the one hand, as Wood and Klapště show, Adam and Helmold also include inside information and perceptions. On the other hand, the first histories of Denmark, Poland, Bohemia, or Hungary were written by clerics and/or courtiers with a baggage of literary education, and a selective knowledge of foreign sources. Thus, the Bible, classical and ‘Western’ texts such as Paul the Deacon or Regino of Prüm could be appropriated for self-identification. The story of the Tower of Babylon, the genealogy of the sons of Noah, ethnographic stereotypes about steppe peoples, Northmen or Amazon motifs could become fundamental for the foundational narratives of the new polities. These narratives were not closed circuits of praise of one’s own people and country, and of prejudices against foreigners, as a narrow concept of identity could suggest. One problem with the current concepts of identity is that many scholars still imagine it as a very restrictive frame of affiliation, based on shared origin, past, culture, language, beliefs, customs, and costumes: in short, a straitjacket of belonging, protected against otherness by frontiers of prejudice and misunderstanding.45 In this form, canonized by many rather extensive sociological definitions, the term ‘identity’ would not be very helpful in research about medieval historiography. What we have seen in this volume, and in the other five of the series, are much more open forms of identification. It is a dream (or perhaps nightmare) of modern nationalism to make all these criteria coincide within a single, powerful collective identity. In reality, that rarely hap43

See above, n. 25. See the chapters by Max Diesenberger, Ian Wood, Jan Klapště, and Stefan Donecker and Peter Fraundorfer, in this volume. 45 Pohl, ‘Introduction: Strategies of identification’. 44

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pens. Even the powerful French nation never managed to create a unified brand of Gallic origin, French language and culture (whatever that meant), political unison, Catholic religion, and a recognizable French habitus. The medieval ‘nations’ were far from that idea. In fact, to an extent, some of the chronicles discussed in this volume attempt to harmonize a variety of identifications, such as the Russian Primary Chronicle when it enumerates the criteria for Rus’ identity: Slavic origin and language, Polyane descent and homeland, and Orthodox creed. The groups defined in that way can never match, only coincide at the centre, in the authors’ monastic perspective from Kyiv.46 Attempts to trace ‘identity building’ in a text are hampered by a second, related misunderstanding: we expect authors to create a positive model and an affirmative history of the people in question, otherwise they are not ‘constructing identity’. Few of the chronicles addressed in this or the other volumes of the Historiography and Identity series would meet that standard. These texts are full of good and bad Bohemians, Danes, or Poles, of victories and defeats, success and failure. Lisa Wolverton has pictured Cosmas as a pessimist writing the history of rulers misusing their power.47 Not a good basis for an identity, it would seem. An extreme example of an outspoken critic of his people is discussed in the third volume of Historiography and Identity: Erchempert, the Longobard, who professed to relate in his history of his people ‘not their rule but their undoing, not happiness but misery, not triumph but ruin’.48 His dreary history is only transmitted in one manuscript and may not have been a great success among his fellow citizens. However, that does not mean that it was not concerned with Longobard identity. On the contrary, his often-desperate tone proves the inescapability of his ‘identification in the negative mode’. On the whole, even the most successful histories of the Middle Ages did not only account for the bright side of the story of their country and people. They balanced praise and blame, pride and ironic distance, empathy and scathing critique of rulers and other actors.49 This is also what the arguably most successful historical narrative ever written does, the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, in which even the model rulers David and Salomon display fatal weaknesses. The Old Testament was also the most influential model that helped our authors 46

See the chapters by Oleg Tolochko and Daniel Ostrovsky, in this volume. Wolverton, Cosmas. 48 ‘Non regimen eorum sed excidium, non felictatem sed miseriam, non triumphum sed perniciem’, Erchempert, Historiola, ed. by Waitz, i, p. 235; Pohl, ‘Historiography of Disillusion’. 49 For the role of ‘praise and blame’ in Chinese historiography, Hartman, ‘Chinese Historiography’, p. 43; Pohl, ‘Mapping Historiography’. 47

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to make sense of their narratives, from Cosmas to ‘Nestor’. When Cosmas has Libuše warn the people who asked her to choose a husband as their first male ruler that they ‘will regret this too late and in vain’, this echoes Samuel relating God’s own words of warning to the people of Israel which had required a king, culminating in the sentence: ‘When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day’.50 The histories of the new realms try to create aggregates of identification on several levels, but they do not create simple, affirmative standards of what it means to be Czech, Hungarian, or Rus’. They offer models for many situations. They empower their readers by making the past comprehensible for the present, and useful for the future. What many of the histories discussed in this volume have in common is their eventual success. The narratives they constructed became fundamental for a series of further histories, and had an impact on modern historiography. In that sense, they certainly became national histories. They still pose a challenge to scholarship, in spite of many critical approaches to their value as sources. In each case, it is debatable to what extent they convinced their contemporaries, or were only codified by later generations. They did not construct social and political identities by simply glorifying the common past. In all of this, they resembled their post-Roman predecessors. Their scripts for identity provided models for many contexts and uses.

50

Cosmas, Chronica Bohemorum, 5, ed. by Bak and Rychterová, p. 27; i Samuel 8.18.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Anonymus, Gesta Hungarorum, ed., trans., and annotated by Martin Rady and László Veszprémy, Anonymus, Notary of King Béla: The Deeds of the Hungarians, Central European Medieval Texts, 5 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2010) Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. by J. E. King, Loeb Classical Library, 246 and 248, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930) Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Bohemorum / The Chronicle of the Czechs, ed. by János Bak and Pavlína Rychterová, trans. by Petra Mutlová and Martyn Rady with Libor Švanda, introduced and annotated by Jan Hasil with Irene van Renswoude (Budapest: CEU Press, 2020) Dudo of St Quentin, Gesta Normannorum, ed. by Felice Lifshitz (1996) ; [accessed 12 April 2022] Erchempert, Historia Langobardorum Beneventanorum, ed.  by Georg Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Langobardorum (Hanover: Hahn, 1878), pp. 234–64 Gesta principum Polonorum, ed. by Karol Maleczyński, trans. by Paul W. Knoll and Frank Schaer, Central European Medieval Texts, 3 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2003) Gregory of Tours, Historiae, ed.  by Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison, in Gregorii Turonensis opera, i: Libri historiarum X, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, 1.1, 2nd edn (Hanover: Hahn, 1951), pp. 1–537 The Hagiography of Kievan Rus, trans. by Paul Hollingsworth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992) Hartvic, Vita S. Stephani regis, ed. by Emma Bartoniek, in Scriptores rerum Hungaricarum tempore ducum regumque stirpis Arpadianae gestarum, ii, ed.  by Imre Szentpétery (Budapest: Acad. litt. Hungarica, 1938), pp. 411–40; trans. by Nora Berend, in Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology, ed. by Thomas Head (New York: Garland, 2000), pp. 375–98 Jordanes, Getica, ed.  by Theodor Mommsen, in Iordanis Romana et Getica, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Auctores antiquissimi, 5.1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1882), pp. 53–138 Legenda Christiani: Vita et passio sancti Wenceslai et sancte Ludmile ave eius / Kristiánova legenda: Život a umučení svatého Václava a jeho báby svaté Ludmily, ed. and Czech trans. by Jaroslav Ludvíkovský (Prague: Vyšehrad, 1978) Legenda maior s. Stephani regis, ed. by Emma Bartoniek, in Scriptores rerum Hungaricarum tempore ducum regumque stirpis Arpadianae gestarum, ii, ed.  by Imre Szentpétery (Budapest: Regia Universitas, 1938), pp. 377–92 Die Nestorchronik, German trans. by Ludolf Müller, in Handbuch zur Nestorchronik, iv, ed. by Ludolf Müller (Munich: Fink, 2001) Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Ludwig Bethmann and Georg Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum (Hanover: Hahn, 1878), pp. 12–187

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Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, ed. by Karsten Friis-Jensen and Engl. trans. by Peter Fisher, Saxo Grammaticus: The History of the Danes, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 2015) Simon of Kéza, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. and trans. by László Veszprémy and Frank Schaer, with an introduction by Jenő Szűcs, The Deeds of the Hungarians by Simon of Kéza, Central European Medieval Texts, 1 (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999)

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484

Walter Pohl

Leerssen, Joep, National Thought in Europe: A  Cultural History, 3rd updated  edn (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018) Plassmann, Alheydis, Origo gentis: Identitäts­ und Legitimitätsstiftung in früh­ und hoch­ mittelalterliche Herkunftserzählungen, Orbis mediaevalis: Vorstellungswelten des Mittelalters, 7 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2006) Pohl, Walter, ‘Paul the Deacon — between Sacci and Marsuppia’, in Ego Trouble: Authors and their Identities in the Early Middle Ages, ed.  by Richard Corradini and others, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 15 (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010), pp. 111–24 —— , ‘Introduction: Strategies of Identification: A Methodological Profile’, in Strategies of Identification: Early Medieval Perspectives, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 1–64 ——  , ‘Narratives of Origin and Migration in Early Medieval Europe: Problems of Interpretation’, Narratives of Ethnic and Tribal Origins: Eurasian Perspectives, ed. by Walter Pohl and Daniel Mahoney, special issue, Medieval History Journal, 21.2 (2018), 192–221 —— , ‘Debating Ethnicity in Post-Roman Historiography’, in Historiography and Identity, ii: Post­Roman Multiplicity and New Political Identities, ed. by Gerda Heydemann and Helmut Reimitz (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 27–70 —— , ‘Historical Writing in the Lombard Kingdom: From Secundus to Paul the Deacon’, in Historiography and Identity, ii: Post­Roman Multiplicity and New Political Identities, ed. by Gerda Heydemann and Helmut Reimitz (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 319–49 —— , ‘Historiography of Disillusion: Erchempert and the History of Ninth-Century Southern Italy’, in Historiography and Identity, iii: Carolingian Approaches, ed. by Helmut Reimitz, Rutger Kramer, and Graeme Ward (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 319–54 —— , ‘Mapping Historiography: An Essay in Comparison’, in Historiography and Identity, iv: Writing History across Medieval Eurasia (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 307–68 Pohl, Walter, and Daniel Mahoney, eds, Historiography and Identity, iv: Writing History across Medieval Eurasia (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021) Reimitz, Helmut, History, Frankish Identity and the Framing of Western Ethnicity, 550–850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) Reimitz, Helmut, and Gerda Heydemann, eds, Historiography and Identity, ii: Post­ Roman Multiplicity and New Political Identities (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020) Bernd Schneidmüller, Nomen patriae: Die Entstehung Frankreichs in der politisch­geo­ graphischen Terminologie (10.–13. Jh.), Nationes, 7 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1987) ——  , ‘Die Begegnung der Könige und die erste Nationalisierung Europas (9.–11. Jahrhundert)’, in Le relazioni internazionali nell’Alto Medioevo, Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 58 (Spoleto: Fondazione CISAM, 2011), pp. 561–94 Spiegel, Gabrielle M., The Past as a Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997) Wolverton, Lisa, Cosmas of Prague: Narrative, Classicism, Politics (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2015)

Index

Aachen: 262–63 treaty of: 327 n. 28, 341 Abodrites, confederation of West Slavic tribes: 16, 206–12, 218, 220–25 Abraham, biblical figure: 167 Absalon, bishop of Roskilde, archbishop of Lund: 65–66, 68 Adalbero, bishop of Augsburg: 274, 281 Adalbert, archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen: 45–46, 48, 51, 55, 57–58 Adalbert, bishop of Prague, saint: 146–47, 155–58, 164, 470 Adaldag, archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen: 53 Adalward, bishop of Sigtuna: 58 Adam of Bremen, chronicler: 59 Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum: 6, 10–11, 15–17, 45–60, 122, 206–07, 211, 219, 222, 472, 479 Ademar of Chabannes, chronicler: 6 Adomnán, abbot of Iona, Vita Columbae: 88 Adriatic: 1, 27, 368, 372, 374, 382–83, 395–96, 456, 474, 478 eastern: 8, 322–23 nn. 9–10, 327 n. 28, 352, 389, 390–91, 397, 407 northern: 339–40 western: 371 Aegean: 2 Aelnoth of Canterbury, monk: 71–72 Aeneas, mythical Trojan hero: 167

Æthelbert, king of Kent: 12 Æthelweard, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: 49–50 Aethicus Ister, Cosmographia: 56–57 Agilmund, king of the Lombards: 381 Agilulf, king of the Lombards: 348 Aimery of Narbonne, legendary hero: 256 Akindin, Archimandrite of the Kyivan Caves Monastery: 420 Albert, bishop of Livonia: 119–20, 134 n. 102 Alamans: 7 Alboin, king of the Lombards: 347, 380 Aldephus, saint: 274 Alamannia: 274 Alexander the Great: 280 Alexander Romance: 22–23 Alexander III, pope: 351 Alexandria: 344–45, 370, 372 Alexios I, Byzantine Emperor: 396–97, 399 n. 42 Álmos, Hungarian duke and founder of the Arpad dynasty: 21–22, 289, 309 Alps: 2 Altinum, see of: 374–75 Amazons: 23, 55–58, 474, 477, 479 Amals, Ostrogothic dynasty: 477 Anastasia, relative of Constantine IX Monomachos and mother of Volodimir II Monomakh: 418 Anastasius of Persia, martyr: 356–57 Anatolia: 378

486

Ancona: 328–29 Anders Sunesen, Danish archbishop: 65 Andrea Dandolo, Venetian chronicler: 314, 325 n. 20, 346, 404–05 Andrew, apostle: 426 Andrew, son of Andrew II: 311 Andrew II, king of Hungary: 289–90, 293, 311, 330 n. 48, 393 Andrew III, king of Hungary: 314 Andronicus, saint: 458 Angevins, noble family: 294 n. 35, 305, 314 Angles: 6, 380, 474, 476 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: 98 Angul, the mythological first king of Denmark and brother of Dan: 68 Anlaf Sihtricsson, ruler of York: 83 Anna Porphyrogenita, Byzantine princess: 417 Annales Alamannici: 278 n. 27, 279 Annales Bertiniani: 273–74 Annales Fuldenses: 281 Annales regni Francorum: 377–78 Annales Sangallenses maiores: 278 Annalista Saxo, Chronicon: 279, 307 Annals of the Cracow Chapter: 242 Annals of Saint-Vincent: 274 Anne, wife of Stefan Nemanja: 396 Anskar, archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen: 10, 46, 49, 60; see also Rimbert, Life of Anskar Antenor, legendary Trojan: 371, 474 n. 26 Antonii of Kyiv, founder of the Kyivan Caves Monastery: 427, 436 Antioch: 258, 354 Antoninus, patriarch of Grado: 349–50 Anund Jacob, king of Sweden: 52, 54, 58–59 Anund, son of king Emund: 55, 57 Aquileia: 25–26, 337, 339–54, 359, 371–72, 379, 383, 478 St Mary: 352 Aquileians: 342, 344 Aquitanians: 7 Arabs: 380 Arechis II, prince of Benevento: 19, 254–57, 260 Arkona: 215 Arians: 325 Arnulf, duke of Carinthia, king and emperor: 147, 278–79, 281–82

Index Arpads (Árpáds), Hungarian royal dynasty: 22–23, 289–90, 293, 295, 300, 309, 312, 314, 477 Asia: 56 Assen, Bulgarian dynasty: 392 Atlantic: 2 Attila, ruler of the Huns: 22–23, 25, 299, 307–09, 312–13, 340, 346–47, 372, 477 Auctarium Garstense: 279 Augustine, church father and saint: 128, 147, 165 Augustus, Roman emperor: 27, 68, 327 n. 29, 368 Avars: 2, 8, 20, 23–24, 255, 341, 353, 372, 474 Babel see Babylon Babylon: 15, 30, 125, 166, 453, 479 Babylonia: 14, 124 Babylonians: 126 Bactrians: 32 Balaton, lake: 8 Balkans: 3, 389 Baltic: 3, 47, 56–57, 68, 72, 122, 126, 460, 474 eastern: 13, 119, 121–22 Sea: 456, 462 southern: 52 western: 207 Bar: 391 n. 7, 395 n. 92, 397, 402, 406–07 Bardanes, patrician from the Byzantine theme Anatolikon: 378 Bari: 376 Barlaam of Kyiv, abbot of the Kyivan Caves Monastery: 427 Basel: 274 Bavaria: 168, 274 Bavarians: 7–8, 281 Beatus, doge of Venice: 346 Bede the Venerable, monk and scholar: 468, 478 Chronica maiora: 378–80 Historia ecclestiastica gentis Anglorum: 10, 33, 476 Béla III, king of Hungary: 21, 288–89, 294 Béla IV, king of Hungary: 297, 310 Benedict of Nursia, founder and abbot of Montecassino: 169

Index Benedict I, pope: 346–47 Benedict IX, pope: 343, 350 Benedictines: 254, 331 Benevento: 254 Bergamo: 328 Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux: 128 Berta/Bertrada, mother of Charlemagne: 307 Berthold, bishop of Livonia: 119, 131 Bezprym, stepbrother of Mieszko II: 241 Bílina: 190 Billug, king of the Abodrites: 209 Birka: 46–48, 53, 58, 101 n. 99 Birsay: 100, 103 Brough of: 83 Black Sea: 1–3, 20, 462 Bodin: see Constantine Bodin Bohemia: 8, 15–16, 143–44, 146–53, 156, 159 n. 41, 161–62, 164, 168–70, 173, 181–98, 212, 224–25, 325 n. 22, 471, 474, 479 central: 16, 184, 186–87, 189–92, 195–97, duchy of: 8, 15–16, 31, 143, 171, 173, 192–93 eastern: 184, 188–89, 192 north-west: 189, 192 southern: 189–91 western: 184, 189–90 Bohemian Basin: 147, 165, 167, 224–25 Bohemians: 3, 17, 31, 182–83, 474, 477, 480 Bohemi: 15, 144, 148, 159, 165–68, 182 n. 5, 299 n. 59 Bohemus: 15, 144, 165–66, 182–83; see also Czech Bojana: 389 Boleslav I, Bohemian duke: 154 n. 29, 157, 172 n. 73 Boleslav II, Bohemian duke: 159 n. 41, 189 Boleslav III, Bohemian duke: 160 n. 44 Bolesław I Chrobry, king of Poland: 19, 60, 160 n. 44, 238–41, 253, 260 Bolesław II Szczodry, duke of Poland: 244–45 Bolesław III the Wrymouth, duke of Poland: 18–19, 231, 232 n. 3, 233–38, 242–45 Boncompagno da Signa, scholar: 307 Boniface, legendary king of the Lombards: 256

487

Bonus, Venetian tribune: 370 Borc (Boricus), Cuman duke: 310 Boris, son of Volodimir I Sviatoslavich, saint: 29, 418, 426–27, 450 Bořivoj I, duke of Bohemia: 16, 146–48, 150–51, 162, 185 Bosau: 205, 207, 213 n. 41 Bosnia: 306, 325 n. 22, 326, 389 Bosnians: 326 n. 23, 332 Bovo I/II (?), abbot of Corvey: 50 Brač, Croatian island: 24, 25, 322, 329–31 Bračani, inhabitants of Brač: 331 Branimir, Dalmatian duke: 378 Bratislava, battle of: 281 Brennu Njáls saga: 96 Břetislav I, Přemyslid prince: 169 Bretons: 21, 278 Bridei, king of the Picts: 88, 90 n. 38 Britain: 472, 474, 477 British Isles: 87 Brittany: 280 Brough of Deerness: 82–84, 92, 97, 101–04 Bruno/Brun, bishop of Querfurt: 59–60 Vita S. Adalberti: 155 Brunswick: 205 Buckquoy: 83, 92, 98, 100, 102, 104 Buda: 22, 310 Budeč: 187, 195–96 Bulgaria: 20, 165, 169 Bulgarian Empire: 169, 392 Bulgars/Bulgarians: 2–3, 8, 165, , 377, 389 Volga: 311 Burgundians: 6–7 Burgundy: 274 Buthue, son of Gottschalk leader of the Abodrites: 209 Buzhanians (Volynians): 454 n. 14, 463 Byzantine Empire: 27–28, 327 n. 28, 263 n. 43, 294, 327 n. 28, 341, 377, 379–80, 390–91, 457 Byzantium: 27, 258, 263 n. 43, 341, 395, 415, 434, 451, 462 Caesar: 218, 262 Cadmus the Greek, legendary hero: 329 Caithness: 84 Callixtus II, pope: 160 Candidianus, patriarch of Grado: 340, 342, 344, 348–49, 352

488

Carantanians: 454 Carinthia: 8, 20, Carmen de Aquileia numquam restauranda: 344, 348 Carnutum: 168 Carolingian Empire 6–8, 20–21, 153, 166–67, 205, 254, 273, 280, 341, 476; see also Frankish Empire Carolingians, dynasty: 1, 8, 26, 152, 192, 165, 473 Carpathian Basin: 23, 290–94, 300, 308 Cassiodor(us): 9, 27, 368–69 Castello, Sestiere of Venice, S. Pietro: 369 Cathars: 326 Catilina, Roman politician: 172  Catla, daughter of Frideburg: 47 Caupo, Liv chieftain: 123, 130–31, 135 Cetina: 389 Chansons de geste: 307 Charlemagne, Carolingian king and emperor: 7–8, 19, 68, 167, 205, 254, 256–58, 260–63, 280, 307, 341, 367 Charles the Younger, Carolingian king: 167 Charles I, king of Hungary: 306 Charles III the Fat, Carolingian king and emperor: 21, 280–82 Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor: 147, 171, 471 Chazars: 2 Cheb: 191 Chernigovites: 461 Chinese: 32 Chýnov: 190 Chioggia: 369 Christianus: 146, 155–57, 165; see also Strachkvas Legenda Christiani: 14, 146–57, 162–65, 167–68, 184, 186 n. 17, 196 n. 51, 469–70, 473, 479 Chronica de singulis patriarchis nove Aquileie: 25, 339, 345, 348 Chronici Hungarici compositio: 288, 298–99 Chronicle of the Monk of Sázava: 169 Chronicle of the Priest of Dioclea: 391, 394 Chronicon Altinate: 25, 339, 346–47 Chronicon Gradense: 25, 339, 346–47, 475 Chronicon Pictum: 305, 314 Chronicon Salernitanum: 19, 254–57, 259, 261

Index Chrudim: 190 Cicero: 152 De inventione: 143 Cincinnatus, Roman patrician: 151 Cividale del Friuli: 340–41, 348–49 Clement III, anti-pope: 406 Cleph, king of the Lombards: 381 Clontarf, battle of: 96, 108 Clovis, Merovingian king: 7, 12, 478–79 Cnuba, brother of Gurd and joint-ruler of region of Denmark around HedebySchleswig: 50 Cnut the Great, king of Denmark, England, and Norway: 51–52, 71–72, 74, 98 Cnut IV, king of Denmark, saint: 66 Coloman, son of Andrew II: 311 Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum: 147, 148 n. 14 Concordia Sagittaria: 369 Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor: 241, 343 Constantine I the Great, emperor: 12, 344, 417 Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos, Byzantine Emperor: 347 De Administrando Imperio: 328, 372, 382, 390, 459 Constantine/Cyril, missionary: 8, 30, 147, 163–64, 169, 453, 457–59, 473–74 Constantine Bodin, son of Mihailo, king of Dioclea: 390, 392, 394 n. 18, 395, 405–07 Constantinople: 207, 258, 263 n. 43, 330, 344, 347 n. 38, 369, 374, 377, 379, 392, 427 Cordova: 260 Cormons: 340, 350 Corvey: 206 Cosmas of Prague, chronicler: 156, 164, 189, 193, 473, 480 Chronica Bohemorum: 5–6, 14–18, 20, 30–31, 143–48, 150–52, 157–62, 165–73, 179, 181–85, 187–95, 197–98, 203, 212, 457 n. 20, 468–75, 471, 477–78, 481 Cosmas, bishop of Prague: 193 Courland, region in western Latvia: 47, 122 Crescente fide: 186 Croatia: 323 n. 11, 326 n. 25, 327 n. 28, 331 n. 53, 353, 357–58, 368, 378

Index Croats: 3, 9, 322, 324 n. 20, 325, 332, 389, 454 Cruto, ruler of the Abodrites: 208, 218 Cumania: 309–11 Cumans: 22, 297–98, 299 n. 59, 300, 305, 309–12, 399, 461 Cyrcipani (Circipani): 223 Czcibor, Polish prince, brother of Mieszko I: 239 Czech, legendary leader of the Czechs: 144, 182 n. 5; see also Bohemus Czech Republic: 145 n. 5, 184 n. 14, 191, 195 Czechs: 5, 8–9, 15–16, 31, 164, 182, 194, 236, 454, 457 n. 20, 458, 468–69, 474, 481 Dąbrówka, Bohemian princess: 238 Dacians: 475 Dalmatia: 24, 232, 322–23, 324 n. 20, 326–27, 328 nn. 31–32, 331, 346, 353–54, 357–58, 374–75, 394, 395 n. 91, 396–97, 399–400, 402–05, 407, 474 Dalmatians: 325, 327–28, 332, 390 Dan, the mythological first king of Denmark and brother of Angul: 68 Danes: 3, 5, 8–9, 50–51, 53–54, 66–67, 69, 71–72, 76–77, 98, 474, 480 Daniel, priest mentioned by Henry of Livonia in his chronicle: 126 Danube: 1–2, 30, 56, 297, 341, 371, 453–54, 458–59, 473–74 Dares Phrygius, Historia Troiana: 22 Darius, Persian king: 262 David, biblical king: 118, 127 n. 67, 262, 480 David Igor’evich, grandson of Iaroslav I, prince: 434, 437, 439 Dead Sea: 125 Denmark: 11, 18, 45–46, 49–52, 57, 60, 66, 68–69, 71, 76, 224, 479 Desa, son of grand župan of Rascia Uroš II: 394 Desiderius, king of the Lombards: 262–63 Desislava, wife of Mihailo: 396 Diocletian, emperor: 354–55, 357 Dioclitia (Dioclea): 27, 389–92, 394–407; see also Zeta

489

Dnepr/Dnieper: 418, 454 Dolní Břežany: 196 Domagoj, Dalmatian duke: 378 Domažlice: 188 Domenicus Flabianico, duke of Venice: 373 Domenicus Monegarius, duke of Venice: 378 Domentian, Athonite monk: 393, 406 Life of St Simeon: 392 Life of St Sava: 392, 404–05, 407 Dominicans: 310–11 Dominicus III Bulzano, patriarch of Grado: 351 Dominicus IV Marango, patriarch of Grado: 352  Domnius, martyr: 26, 354–55, 323 n. 11, 354, 358–59 Domnius, bishop of Split: 327 n. 31, 354–59 Domnius de Cranchis, priest from the island of Brač: 322, 330 Chronicle of Brač: 24, 322, 329–32 Don: 56 Dorestad: 47, 101 n. 99 Doudleby: 190 Douglas, place on the Isle of Man Drava: 341 Dregovichis: 454, 463 Drevlianians: 454, 461–63 Dublin: 81 Dubrovnik (Ragusa): 323, 328, 352, 395, 406 Dudo of St Quentin, Gesta Normannorum: 474 Dvůr Králová/Königinhof: 144, 149 Eadred, Anglo-Saxon king of England: 83 Edgar the Peaceful, Anglo-Saxon king of England: 82 Edmund, Anglo-Saxon king of England: 100 Edom, biblical land: 14, 125, 127 Edward the Confessor, Anglo-Saxon king of England: 74 Eðna, Irish princess: 101 Eger: 184, 188 Egino, bishop of Dalby: 58–59 Egypt: 4, 125, 276, 372 Egyptians: 275 Eigg Island: 90 Einarr klíningr, Orcadian nobleman: 93

490

Einhard, Vita Karoli: 46, 49, 56 Ekkehard of Aura, Chronicon: 207 Elasa, biblical battle of: 131 Elbe: 1–3, 16–17, 222 Elbe Valley: 184, 191 Elisha, biblical prophet: 151  Emeric (Emery), Hungarian prince and son of king Stephen I: 295, 398 Emund, king of Sweden: 55 Encomium Emmae reginae: 98 England: 7, 72, 74 English: 72, 460 Ephraim the Castrate, Byzantine official: 427 Epetion: 330 Epidaurus: 328 n. 33, 329 Erchempert, Historiola: 480 Eric, semi-legendary king of Sweden: 47–48 Erik, king of Sweden: 53 Ermengarda, legendary figure: 256 Esau, biblical figure: 125, 127 n. 67 Estonia: 57, 132 n. 91 Estonians: 13, 123–24, 128, 132 Estrid Svensdattir, daughter of Sven Forkbeard and mother of Sven Estridson: 51–52 Esztergom: 310, 478 Eudokia, Byzantine princess and daughter of Alexios III: 392, 397, 405 n. 61 Eugippius, Vita Severini: 371 Europe: 1–5, 69, 76, 206, 221, 295, 298, 300, 308, 313, 462, 473, 475, 478 Central: 2, 173, 205, 287, 305 Eastern: 2–3, 287, 296, 455–56, 459, 463–64, 471–72, 475, 479 eastern Central: 2–3, 6, 8, 145, 173, 179, 198, 287, 296, 473, 475, 477 North-Eastern: 119 Northern: 45, 135 n. 105, 173, 471–73, 475, 475, 479 South-Eastern: 28 Southern: 472 Western: 3, 6, 19, 21, 152–53, 173, 274, 296, 299, 472–73 Ezekiel: 129 Faroe Islands: 97 Felicianus, martyr: 345 Feodosii, founder of Caves Monastery and saint: 427–28, 436–37

Index Findan of Rheinau, hermit: 90 Flamingi: 210 Flanders: 232 Flavius Nicetius, Gallo-Roman scholar: 161 Fornjótr, legendary king of Finland and Kvenland: 88–89 Fortunatus, martyr: 345 Fortunatus II, patriarch of Grado: 378 France: 232, 259, 261, 274, 468 Francia: 7 Franciscus of Prague, Chronicle: 147 Franks: 6–7, 12, 165, 256, 258–60, 342, 372, 456, 468 n. 3, 474 Frankish Empire: 6–7, 12, 221; see also Carolingian Empire Fredegar Chronicle: 28 Frederick Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor: 28, 68, 307, 392, 400 Fricco, god: 11, 48, 59–60 Frideburg, Frisian matron: 47, 101 n. 99 Friuli: 341, 346, 351, 368 Frisians: 56–57 Frotho, legendary king of Denmark: 68 Frosti, son of Fornjótr: 88–89 Gaius, pope: 327 Galicia: 311 Gallus Anonymus, chronicler: 20, 232–33, 473 Gesta principum Polonorum: 5–6, 18–19, 28, 232–39, 242–46, 253, 255, 257, 263 n. 44, 457 n. 20, 468, 470, 472, 475, 477–78 Ganuz Wolf, Danish leader: 56 Gargano de Arscindis, ruler of Split: 328–29 Gauja, river: 125, 127 Gaul: 20, 161, 472, 474, 476 Gealu, Hungarian nobleman: 290–91 Geoffrey Grisgonelle, fictional standardbearer of Charlemagne: 260 George (Đorđe), son of Vukan Nemanja and ruler of Zeta: 399 George Hamartolos, Chronicle: 30, 415 Germans: 123 n. 37, 132–33, 148, 162, 204, 296, 307, 456, 476 Germany: 3, 68–71, 120, 161 n. 46, 233, 295 Gerold, bishop of Oldenburg: 205, 214–16, 218–19, 224

Index Gerzike: 132–34 Gesta Anglorum: 49 Getae: 475 Gideon, biblical figure: 118 Gisulf, prince of Salerno: 254 Gisulf, Friulian duke: 348 Giuriata Rogovich of Novgorod: 438 Gizurr hvíti, Icelandic chieftain: 105 Gleb, son of Volodimir I. Sviatoslavich, saint: 29, 418, 426–27, 450 Gniezno: 18, 253, 478 God: 70, 130, 155, 164, 185, 213, 216, 244, 263 n. 44, 324, 400–01, 403, 418, 429, 461, 481 Godfred, king of Denmark: 46 Godfrey of Viterbo, chronicler: 21, 311–12 Gog, biblical people: 22 Golden trail: 194 Gomorraha: 127 Gorm, semi-legendary Danish king: 70 Gostivit, legendary father of Bořivoj I: 146 Goths: 6, 9, 24, 31, 58, 276, 324–25, 329–32, 353, 468 n. 3, 475 Gottschalk/Godescalcus, leader of the Abodrites: 208–09, 211 Grado: 6, 25–26, 337–53, 359, 369, 371–72, 478 as new Aquileia: 26, 346–47, 350–52 St Euphemia: 351 St Mary: 351 synod of: 340, 342, 344–46, 347 n. 38 Greci: 122, 299 n. 59 Greece: 122, 327 Greeks: 122, 276, 306, 329, 342, 415, 417, 474, 476 Gregory II, pope: 349–50 Gregory III, pope: 349–50 Gregory, archbishop of Bar (Antivari): 395–96 Gregory, bishop of Tours, historiographer: 10, 152, 468 n. 3, 476, 478 Grimoald, king of the Lombards: 255 Gross Raden: 215 Gubanus, mercenary: 399 Gumpold, saint: 186 Gurd, brother of Cnuba and joint-ruler of region of Denmark around HedebySchleswig: 50 Gyalu see Gealu Habsburgs, dynasty: 310

491

Hagar, biblical figure: 278 Haithabu: 54 Håkon IV, king of Norway: 11, 65–66 Hákon Pálsson, Norwegian Jarl: 97 Hálfdan háleggr, son of Haraldr I hárfagri: 93 n. 51, 94 Halfdan Ragnarsson, son of Ragnar Lodbrok: 98 Hamburg-Bremen, archbishopric: 10, 45–48, 50, 53, 55, 59–60, 68 Harald/Haraldr I hárfagri, king of Norway: 87, 88 n. 30, 89–90, 92, 94–95 Harald II, king of Denmark: 52 Harald Bluetooth, king of Denmark: 51–53, 60 Harald Finehair (or Fairhair), first king of Norway: 69, 91 Harald Hardrada, king of Norway: 52, 54–56 Harald Sigurdsson, king of Norway: 74  Haraldr Hákonsson, Jarl of Orkney: 97 Haraldr Maddaðarson, Jarl of Orkney: 82, 85, 87 Hartvic, bishop of Győr, Legenda maior s. Stephani regis: 308 Harz, mountain range: 204 Hatto I, archbishop of Mayence/Mainz: 281 Hebrews: 130, 417 Helena, mother of Constantine I: 344 Helias, patriarch of Aquilieia: 340, 342, 344–46, 347 n. 38 Helmold of Bosau: 203–05 Chronica Sclavorum: 6, 16–18, 203–25, 472, 479 Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor: 59–60, 160 n. 44, 240 Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor: 160, 181 n. 3 Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor: 231 Henry Dandolo, patriarch of Grado: 351 Henry Dandolo, doge: 405 n. 61 Henry of Livonia, Chronicon Livoniae: 13–14, 118–36, 472, 474, 479 Henry of Flanders, Latin emperor of Constantinople: 393 Henry, ruler of the Abodrites: 208, 218–21, 223 Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria: 206, 216

492

Heracleos, Byzantine Emperor: 344–45 Herigar, Swedish prefect: 47 Hermagoras, first bishop of Aquileia: 339 n. 9, 341, 343–45, 349, 351–52, 359, 372 Hermann Billung, duke of the Saxons: 206  Hermann, bishop of Prague: 160 Herod, biblical figure: 118 Herodotus, historiographer: 20 Hesse: 274 Hilandarion (Hilandar), monastery: 396, 398, 402, 404 Hilarius, bishop of Aquileia, saint: 345 Historia Norwegie: 68, 91 Historia Salonitana maior: 338 Hjalti skeggjason, Icelandic chieftain: 105 Hlǫðvir, Jarl of Orkney, father of Sigurðr: 92, 101 Hodo, margrave of the Northern March: 239 Hollandri: 210 Holstein, German region: 205 Holy Roman Empire: 120, 192, 210 Honorius III, pope: 399, 404 Hont, Hungarian nobleman: 296 House of Orseolo, Venetian dynasty: 376 House of Candianus, Venetian dynasty: 376–77 Hradec Králové: 190–91 Hugh of Provence, king of Italy: 367 Hugo the Strong, fictional Byzantine emperor: 258–60 Hum (Zachloumia): 389 Hungarians: 2–3, 6, 8–9, 20–23, 31, 207, 273–81, 288, 294, 297–300, 305–08, 311–14, 471–72, 474, 477, 481 Hungary: 21–23, 28, 233, 287, 289–94, 296–300, 305–07, 310–11, 313, 392, 405, 468–71, 474, 479 Hundi see Hvelpr Huns: 2–3, 22–23, 31, 298–99, 307, 312–13, 340, 347, 353, 371, 471, 474–75, 477 Hvar, Croatian island: 329 Hvelpr, son of Sigurðr: 95–96 Hvosno, region of Kosovo: 396 Ian Vyshatich, Kyivan noble: 438 Iaroslav I the Wise, grand prince of Kyiv: 417, 440, 449

Index Ibrahim Ibn Ya’qub, Arab geographer: 58 Iceland: 11–13, 65–66, 76, 86, 104–06, 107 n. 116, 108, 470 Icelanders: 87, 105–07 Idumea/Ydumea: 14, 125–27 Idumeans/Ydumei/Ydumeans: 14, 125–26, 134 Igor’, Varangian ruler of the Kyivan Rus, son of Ol’ga: 417 Île de France: 7 Illyricum: 459 Indians: 32 Innocent III, pope: 397–98, 405 Innocent IV, pope: 326 Ioakim: 421 Ireland: 90 Ishmaelites: 297, 299 n. 59  Isidor of Seville: 9, 277, 478 Etymologiae: 166, 327 Ísendingabók: 105 Israel: 125, 132, 481 Israelites: 125, 128, 132, 263 n. 44 Istria, peninsula: 340–42, 345–48, 350–52, 354, 368 Italians: 296 Italy: 20, 25, 27, 278–79, 328, 339, 347, 355, 368–71, 374, 474 Central: 379 Northern: 274, 367, 379 Southern: 19, 136 n. 107, 460 Ivarr the Boneless, son of Ragnar Lodbrok: 98 Izanacius, dux of Dalmatia and Dioclea: 395 James Cook, English explorer: 218 Jan IV of Dražice, bishop of Prague: 147 Japheth, biblical figure: 309, 312, 453, 464 Jarla saga: 85 Jaromír, bishop of Prague and brother of Vratislav II: 158–59 Jerome, church father: 313 n. 34, 327 Jerusalem: 134, 207, 258, 452 Jesus Christ: 47, 68–69, 128–29, 132, 152, 159 n. 41, 160, 165, 219, 417, 461, 473 Jews: 297 Job, biblical figure: 13, 403 John IV, pope: 354–55 John VIII, pope: 378 John XIX, pope: 343, 345–46

Index John, duke of Venice: 377  John, patriarch of Aquileia: 340, 342, 344, 348 John of Casamari, papal legate: 397 John Malalas, Chronographia: 416 John Orseolo, son of Peter II Orseolo: 374 John of Plano Carpini, missionary and archbishop in Bar: 407 John of Ravenna, papal legate: 357–58 John of Thurócz, chronicler: 313 John Sagornino, Venetian smith: 373 John the Deacon, historiographer: 344–45, 347, 373 Istoria Veneticorum: 25–27, 338–39, 348–50, 368–70, 373–83, 475 John, metropolitan bishop of Split: 358 Jordanes, historiographer: 9, 27, 313, 382, 468 n. 3 Getica: 475, 477 Judas Maccabaeus, biblical figure: 131 Judith, daughter of Vratislav II of Bohemia: 235 Justin, Epitome: 20–21, 275–77, 280 Justinian I, Byzantine Emperor: 329, 345, 380, 456 Kabinet: 421 Kaloyan, ruler of Bulgaria: 398–99 Kanutus Lawardus, king of the Abodrites: 209 Kari, son of Fornjótr: 88–89 Karlovy Vary: 190–91 Kazimierz the Restorer, duke of Poland: 239, 243–45 Kicini (Kycini): 207, 223 Kyiv: 29, 30–32, 60, 417–18, 422, 449–52, 458–59, 462, 464, 471, 477, 478, 480 Feodosii Caves Monastery: 29, 416–21, 423–25, 427–30, 433, 436, 439, 441–44, 449 St Michael’s Monastery: 29, 419, 423, 429–31, 433, 444, 449–50 Kyivites: 461 Klecany: 196 Knútr see Cnut Koribanti: 324 Kotor (Cattaro): 395 St Lucas: 396 St Tryphon: 395

493

Kouřim: 187, 195–96 Královice: 196 Kurland see Courland Kurs: 132 Kvarner Gulf: 327 n. 28, 352 Labe/Elbe: 16, 196 Ladislas IV, king of Hungary: 22, 288, 297, 311–13 Langobards see Lombards Laithlinn see Lochlainn Lateran: 354 synod of: 343, 350–51 Lauro Ziani, Venetian citizen and comes: 398 Lawrence, saint: 186  Legendary Saga: 72–73 Lembit, Estonian leader: 135 Leo VI, pope: 357 Leo IX, pope: 350 Leszek, duke of Poland: 237 Letts: 9, 13, 120, 123, 128 n. 71, 129, 133 Levý Hradec: 187, 195–96 Libellus de institutione: 295–96 Liber historiae Francorum: 33 Liber Pontificalis: 354, 373 Liberec: 190–91 Libice nad Cidlinou: 190–91 Libuše, legendary ancestor of the Přemyslids: 15, 144, 171, 481 Libušin: 196 Lido di Venezia: 232 Liège: 14, 161 n. 47, 189, 192, 473 Life of Methodius: 415–16, 457 Lisbon: 207 Lithuanians: 13, 123–24, 128–29, 132–33 Liutpald, Bavarian dux Liudprand, king of the Lombards: 349 Liudprand, bishop of Cremona: 7, 21 Livonia: 118–20, 123, 125, 135 n. 105 Livonians/Livs: 9, 13, 122–24, 126, 128–29, 130–33, 135 n. 105, 472 Livy: 14 Ab urbe condita: 151 Logi, son of Fornjótr: 88–89 Lochlainn: 90 Lochovice: 196 Lombards: 6–7, 25, 27, 256–57, 339–40, 343–44, 347, 349, 353, 369, 371, 381, 468 n. 3, 474–75, 480

494

Lombardy: 368 Lorraine: 274 Lothar I, Carolingian king and emperor: 344 Lothar III, Holy Roman Emperor: 209–10 Lotharingians: 7, 152, 165 Louis II the German, king of East Francia: 367 Louis II, Carolingian king of Italy: 344, 347, 371 Louis the Child, king of the Franks: 21, 281–82 Louis the Great, king of Hungary: 305–06 Louis the Pious, Carolingian king and emperor: 377 Luka/Luca: 183–84 Lucius, Johannes: 332 Lucko, legendary Czech people: 182 Ludmila, grandmother of Wenceslaus I: 15, 146–49, 182, 185–88, 196–97 Lübeck: 16, 205 Alt Lübeck: 218–21 Lund: 68, 478 Lutici see Luticians Lutichis: 454, 460 Luticians, federation of West Slavic Polabian tribes: 218, 223 Luxembourgs, dynasty: 147 Lyon: 161 Macedonia: 457 Mälaren, lake: 47 Magnus Olafsson, king of Norway and Denmark: 74 Magnús III berfœttr, king of Norway: 87 Magnus Severus, patrician of Salona: 356–57 Magog, biblical figure: 22, 289 n. 15, 308 n. 17, 309, 312 Magog, biblical people: 23 Magyars: 309 Mainz: 157 synod of: 161, 193 Malamocco, Italian island: 370 Malcolm, king of the Scots: 96 Mantua: 193 synod of: 341–45, 348, 351 Manuel I Komnenos, Byzantine Emperor: 392, 395 Marcellinus, patriarch of Aquileia: 25, 346 Marcin, archbishop of Gniezno: 233

Index Maria Agira: 374 Mark the Evangelist: 132, 323, 339, 341, 343–45, 352, 359, 370, 372, 383 Mark, provost of Prague Cathedral: 157 Marsilian, fictional king of the Saracens: 261 Martianus Capella, Latin poet: 56 Martin, abbot and future Pope Martin I: 354–55  Mary, queen of Naples and sister of Ladislas IV: 314 Master P., notary of Bela (III): 5–6, 20–21, 288–89, 473 Gesta Hungarorum: 20–22, 288–94, 297, 300, 307–11, 468, 470, 472, 474, 477 Master Vincent Kadłubek, chronicler: 19 Matilda of Essen, abbess: 50 Matthathias, leader of the Maccabees: 121 n. 20, 133–34 Matthew, evangelist: 129, 132 Matthias Corvinus: 21, 471 Maurice, duke of Venice: 377  Maurus, bishop of Kraków: 233 Maxentius, patriarch of Aquileia: 341–42  Maximian, emperor: 355 Mazovians: 454, 460 Mediterranean: 2, 69, 121, 380 Meinhard, bishop of Livonia: 119 Mělník: 187, 190, 196–97 Ménmarót, Hungarian duke: 290 Merovingians, Frankish dynasty: 477–78 Methodius, archbishop of Nitra: 8, 30, 147–48, 154 nn. 27 and 29, 169, 326, 453, 457–59, 473–74 Methodius, bishop: 404–05 Metz: 274 Michael I, Byzantine Emperor: 377  Michael III, Byzantine Emperor: 459 Michael Komnenos Doukas, ruler of Epirus: 403 Michael, monk: 427 Michael, nobleman from Split: 331 Michał, Polish chancellor: 234 Mieszko I, duke of Poland: 238–40 Mieszko II, king of Poland: 238–43, 245 Mihailo, Dioclean king: 390, 394–96, 405–07 Milko (Milcov): 310 Miroslav, prince of Hum and brother of Stefan Nemanja: 391–92, 395, 400 n. 46

Index Mojmír, Moravian ruler: 150 Moldavia: 306 Morača: 400 Morava: 454, 458–59 battle of: 28, 392 Moravia: 20, 145 n. 5, 147, 165, 171, 278, 186 n. 17, 189, 195, 458 Moravians: 263 n. 44, 454, 458 Mongols: 22, 24, 289, 297, 322, 324, 328, 407 Montenegro: 27, 389 Mosapurc: 8 Moses, biblical patriarch: 125, 155, 167, 263 n. 44 Moselle: 274 Mount Athos: 396, 401 Mutina, head of the Vršovci: 172 Nakonids, noble Slavic family: 208 Naples: 306, 313–14, 369, 374 Narenta: 389–90 Narentanians: 330–31 Narses, Eastern Roman general: 380 Nemanjić, Serbian royal dynasty: 28, 393, 396, 399 Nestor, monk: 28–29, 416–17, 419–31, 434, 436–27, 443–44, 449 n. 1 Nestor Chronicle see Russian Primary Chronicle Netolice: 190 Newark Bay: 83–84, 97, 101–02, 104 Nicephorus, Byzantine Emperor: 377 Nicaea, council of: 358 Nicholas, saint: 232 Niclotus (Niklot), ruler of the Obodriti: 209, 216, 223 Nikola, metropolitan of Kyiv: 418 Nikon, priest and monk: 29, 418, 421–22, 427, 430, 443–44 Nimrod, biblical figure: 312, 313 n. 34 Niš: 400 Noah, biblical figure: 30, 166, 313 n. 34, 453, 479 Nordalbingi: 212 Noricum: 340 North Sea: 54, 207 Northmen (Norsemen/Normanni): 3, 72, 88, 90–92, 98–99, 101–03, 167 n. 62, 263 n. 44, 280, 460, 479

495

Norway: 11–12, 45, 50, 52, 54, 66, 69–72, 76, 81, 84, 87, 89, 92, 94, 96–97, 104–05, 107 n. 116 Norwegians: 3, 8–9, 69–70, 75, 77 Notker of Saint Gall, Gesta Karoli imperatoris: 19, 261–62, 367 Novgorod: 31, 126, 429–30, 438, 458–59, 462 Novgorodians: 454 n. 14, 461–63 Nuremberg: 194 Obadiah, biblical book: 127 Obelerius, duke of Venice: 370, 378 Obotriti see Abodrites Oda, daughter of margrave Theodoric: 239 Oddi: 85 Oddr Snorrason, monk: 70 Oder: 222 Oderzo: 369 Odin (Óðinn), god: 11–12, 69, 93–95, 103, 106–08 Ösel (Saaremaa): 119–20, 124 Östergötland: 58 Olaf II Haraldsson (Óláfr helgi), king of Norway: 12, 50, 66, 70–76, 86–87, 97, 103, 470, 478 Olaf/Óláfr I Tryggvason, king of Norway: 12–13, 70, 81–82, 86, 92, 95–97, 100, 103–05, 108 Old Church Slavonic Legend: 186 Oldenburg: 16, 52, 205, 207–08, 212–15, 218–24 Oleg, Varangian ruler of the Rus: 417, 430 Oleg Sviatoslavich, cousin of Volodimir II. Monomakh: 450–51 Ol′ga, regent of the Kyivan Rus: 417 Olivier, fictional figure: 260 Olof Skötkonung, king of Sweden: 59 Olt: 310 Omiš: 323, 329, 330 n. 49 Ondřej, bishop of Olomouc: 193 Orkney Islands: 6, 12–13, 81–85, 87–95, 97–108 Orkneyinga Saga: 12, 82–89, 92–98, 100–01, 103–08, 470, 472 Orléans: 232, 338 n. 7 Orosius: 56 Osilians: 120, 123–24 Osmundswall: 81

496

Otker, legendary figure: 262 Otranto: 369 Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor: 7, 50, 58, 161 Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor: 50 Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor: 19, 158–60, 162 n. 51, 239–40, 253–55, 257, 373, 376 Otto, bishop of Bamberg: 233 Otto, bishop of Freising, chronicler: 21 Otto Orseolo, duke of Venice: 373, 374–75 Otto, stepbrother of Mieszko II: 241–42 Ottonian Empire: 7–8, 221, 273 Ottonians, German royal dynasty: 374 Paleia: 416 Pannonia: 20–21, 309 n. 17, 339–41, 381, 383, 458–59, 474 Pantino, village in Kosovo: 192 Paolino da Venezia, chronicler: 314 Papil, place on the island of West Burra: 102 Pardubice: 190–91 Parthians: 21, 276–77 Passio Olavi: 72 Passio sancti Canuti: 71 Paul, apostle: 107, 154, 404, 458 Paul the Deacon, historiographer: 27, 347, 468 n. 3 Historia Langobardorum: 20–21, 33, 255, 275–76, 341, 344, 348, 368, 371, 374, 378–83, 474, 476, 479 Historia Romana: 379–80 Liber de episcopis Mettensibus: 339 n. 9, 373 Paul/Paulinus I of Aquileia, archbishop: 339–42, 344–46, 350–51, 371–72 Paulicius, first duke of Venice: 381 Paulinus II, patriarch of Aquileia: 341 Pavia: 256, 262, 367 Paweł, bishop of Poznań: 233 Pázmány, Hungarian nobleman: 296 Pazt, legendary ancestor of the Piasts: 18 Pechenegs: 20, 297, 310 Pelagius II, pope: 344–45, 347–48 Pèlegrinage de Charlemagne: 19, 257–60 Peloponnesus: 457 Pereiaslavl: 449, 451 Peter I Orseolo, duke of Venice: 376, 382 Peter II Orseolo, duke of Venice: 27, 322, 351–52, 373–74, 376, 382

Index Peter III, patriarch of Antioch: 352 Peter Damian, cardinal: 376 Peter the Apostle: 131, 240, 323 n. 11, 339, 352–55, 358 Peter Tradonicus, duke of Venice: 370 Perun: 418 Philistines: 118, 130 Piasts, Polish royal dynasty: 5, 18, 221, 234, 236–45, 477 Picts: 88, 91–92, 102–03 Pierowall: 83, 99 Plzeň: 191 Plön: 205, 213 Polabi: 16, 203–07, 209–10, 212, 214–15, 219, 223, 225 Polonia: 18, 236 n. 29 Poland: 18–20, 161, 231–38, 240–41, 308, 324, 325 n. 22, 460, 468, 479 Poles: 3, 5–6, 8–9, 16–18, 299 n. 59, 454, 457 n. 20, 458, 472, 480 Polochans/Polochanians: 454, 463 Polovtsians: 418 Polians/Polyane: 30–31, 454, 456, 458–59, 460, 463, 474, 480 Polikarp, monk: 420–21, 425, 248 Pomerani see Pomeranians Pomerania: 48 Pomeranians: 236, 263 n. 44 Pompeius Trogus, Historiae Philippicae: 20, 275 Pomorians: 454, 460 Popiel, legendary ruler of Poland: 18, 237 Poppo, missionary in Denmark: 53–54, 60, 69 Poppo, patriarch of Aquileia: 343, 352 Povest’ vremennykh let see Russian Primary Chronicle Prades, monastery: 376 Prague: 150, 164, 173, 184–87, 190–91, 194–95, 196–97, 203 Basin: 16, 186 episcopal see of: 15, 146, 159, 161–62, 170, 193, 478 St Vitus: 15, 156, 159 Přemysl the Ploughman, legendary founder of the Přemyslid dynasty: 15, 144, 150–51, 183–84, 474 Přemyslids, Bohemian royal dynasty: 14–15, 147, 150, 151 n. 21, 153, 156, 171, 173, 182 n. 8, 186, 188–89, 192, 195–96, 221

Index Přibik Pulkava, historiographer: 171 Pribizlaus, ruler of the Wagiri, Polabi, and Obodriti: 209–10, 217, 223 Primogenius, patriarch of Aquileia: 345 Probinus, patriarch of Aquileia: 342 Procopius, saint, legendary founder of Sázava monastery: 168–69 Prove, Slavic god: 16, 208, 212–14, 224 Provence: 232 Pruci: 210, 212 Prüm: 280 Pula: 342 Pyrenees: 382 Rachel, biblical figure: 132 Radoslav, prince and Dioclean ruler: 394, 399 n. 44 Radigast/Redegast, Slavic god: 16, 212, 213 n. 39, 215 Radimichis: 454 n. 14, 461 Raetia Secunda: 340 Rahab, biblical term: 14, 124–25 Rama: 132 Rani: 57, 217, 223 Ras (Arsa): 390, 396, 398, 401, 403, 407 St Peter and Paul: 399, 401 Rascia (Serbia): 27, 390–92, 394, 404 n. 61 Raskol’nik: 421 Rassa (Serbia): 390 Ravenna: 354, 369, 374 Regino of Prüm, chronicler: 20–22, 298 Chronicon: 167, 273–82, 472–73, 479 Reims: 478 Reinbern, bishop of Kołobrzeg: 48 Remiremont, monastery: 274 Rethre: 215 Revelations of Pseudo-Methodios of Patara: 416 Rhine: 7, 274 Rhiphean Mountains, legendary mountains: 55–56, 58 Rialto: 372 Ribe: 54 Ribnica: 400–01 Richeza, niece of emperor Otto III: 240 Riga: 117, 119, 126–27, 129, 131–32, 134 Rimbert, archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen: 10, 46, 48, 50, 58, 60 Life of Anskar: 46–49, 101 n. 99

497

Říp, mountain: 16, 183–84, 186 Remus, mythological first king of Rome and brother of Romulus: 68 Radulf Glaber, chronicler: 21 Rhos see Rus Robert, monk: 59 Rochel, pagan leader: 208 Rogerius, archbishop of Split: 322 Rǫgnvaldr Mœrajarl, Norwegian jarl: 91–92 Rokytka: 187 Roland, fictional figure: 260 Roman Empire: 1–2, 153, 160 n. 44, 161 n. 46, 380 Eastern see Byzantine Empire of the Germans: 68–69, 476 Western: 6 Romans: 1, 16, 69, 328–29, 371, 383, 475 Romanus I Lacapenus, Byzantine Emperor: 377  Rome: 11, 27, 68, 164, 308, 313, 326, 328, 339–41, 346, 347 n. 38, 349, 351, 354–55, 357, 369, 378–80, 404, 472 St Venantius Chapel: 354 synod of (731): 349 synod of (1053): 352 Romuald of Camaldoli, abbot: 376 Romulus, the mythological first king of Rome and brother of Remus: 68 Rostislav, ruler of Moravia: 148 n. 12, 150 Rostislav Vsevolodovich, son of Vsevolod I of Kyiv: 449 Rostov: 246–27 Rotalia: 133 Rotalians/Rotalienses: 132–33 Rousay: 98 Rügen, German island: 206 Rugiani: 16, 206, 213–15 Rumanians: 291 Rummel: 129 Rurikids, Rus royal dynasty: 3, 450 Rus: 3, 8–9, 17, 28, 30–33, 58, 241, 377, 415–17, 423, 426, 452–54, 458–63, 472, 474, 480–81 Russia: 18, 422, 468 Russian Primary Chronicle: 8, 28–33, 166, 415–34, 436–44, 449–64, 468–72, 474, 477, 480–81 Russians: 122, 129, 132 Rusticus, Venetian tribune: 370

498

Sæmundr Jónsson, Icelandic chieftain: 85 Saint-Denis, monastery: 258 Saint-Gilles, monastery: 232–33 Salan, Hungarian duke: 291 Salerno: 19, 254, 257, 259–60 St Mary and Benedict: 254 Sallust: 14, 152, 172 Salme: 47 Salona: 24–26, 323, 330–31, 353–59, 478 Salonitans: 323, 356–57 Salvian, De gubernatione Dei: 371 Samland: 57 Samo, rex Sclavorum: 8 Samuel, biblical figure: 481 Sanday: 98 Santiago de Compostela: 207 Saracens: 261, 278, 299 n. 59, 307, 376, 377 Sava I of Serbia, son of Stefan Nemanja, archbishop: 28, 392, 396, 399, 404–05 Vita Simeonis: 28, 392–93, 396, 400–03, 407 Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum: 5, 11–12, 16, 60, 65–72, 74–77, 121–22, 211, 468–70, 472–74 Saxoni see Saxons Saxonia: 274 Saxons: 6–7, 10, 205, 207–10, 217, 219, 263 n. 44, 297, 299 n. 59, 380 Saxony: 48, 120, 208 Sázava, monastery: 168–69 Scandinavia: 1–3, 11, 45, 49, 52–53, 60, 101 n. 99, 381, 468, 474 Scandinavians: 3, 460 Schleswig: 54 Sclavonia: 18 Scotland: 81, 84, 90, 99 Scythia: 20–21, 275, 309 n. 17 Scythians: 3, 20, 22–23, 31, 275–78, 280, 309–10, 474–75 Segeberg: 120, 205, 210 Seleucids: 128 Semgalls: 128, 132 Senj: 326 Seraphim, archbishop of Esztergom: 193 Serbia: 27–28, 391–92, 396, 398–99, 405–06 Serbs: 3, 9, 389–90, 406 Serenus, patriarch of Aquileia: 349–50 Seret: 310

Index Severus, patriarch of Grado: 340, 342, 348  Severians: 454, 456, 461, 463 Sheba, biblical queen of: 19, 251–53, 257, 258 n. 26 Shetland Island: 82, 84, 93 n. 51, 97, 102 Siberia: 422 Sicily: 460 Sidonius Apollinaris, Gallo-Roman aristocrat: 161 Siemomysł, duke of Poland: 237 Siemowit, legendary first duke of Poland: 18, 237–38, 243 Sigtuna: 55–56, 58 Sigualdus, patriarch of Aquileia: 342  Sigurðr, Danish bishop: 76 Sigurðr, first Orcadian jarl, brother of Rǫgnvaldr: 92 Sigurðr inn digri Hlǫðvisson, Orcadian jarl: 12, 81, 92, 95–98, 101, 106–08 Silvestr (Sil′vestr, Sylvester), abbot of St Michael in Vydubichi: 29–30, 419, 422–26, 429–37, 443–44, 450–53, 456–62, 464 Simeon, Stefan Nemanja’s name as monk: 396, 399, 400, 403 Simon, bishop of Vladimir and Suz’dal: 421, 428 Simon of Kéza, chronicler and notary of Ladislas IV king of Hungary: 22, 297 Gesta Hungarorum: 21–23, 288, 297–300, 307, 311–14, 468–70, 472, 474, 477 Siwa, Slavic goddess: 16, 212 Sylvester, saint: 435 Scar: 83, 98–100 Skadar, lake: 389 Skara: 59 Skitten Moor: 95 Skule Bårdsson, Icelandic earl (later duke): 65–66 Slavs: 2–3, 16, 18, 24, 30–31, 49, 52, 56–57, 150, 162, 164–66, 167–68, 203–05, 207, 209, 212–13, 216–17, 221, 223, 324 n. 20, 325, 332, 353, 405, 453–54, 456–58, 460, 473–75 Slovaks: 291 Slovenia: 368 Slovenes: 31, 458–59, 461

Index Smaragdus, exarch of Ravenna: 342 Snær, son of Fornjótr: 88–89 Snorri Sturluson, Icelandic chieftain and historiographer: 12, 65–66, 468 Edda: 88–89 Heimskringla: 11, 65–71, 73–77, 85, 87, 89, 90 n. 37, 105, 472 Sodom: 127 Solinus, Latin grammarian: 55–56, 277 Solomon, biblical king: 19, 51, 251–53, 257, 258 n. 26, 480 Solund Sea: 91 Somogyvár, monastery: 233 Song of Roland: 260–61 Spain: 122 Spalatians: 324 n. 17, 328 Split: 6, 24–26, 321–25, 329, 331–32, 353–57, 359, 396, 478 palace of: 26, 330, 354, 356, 358 St Mary: 357 synod of (925): 323 n. 11, 354, 357–58 synod of (928): 323 n. 11, 357–58 Splićani, inhabitants of Split: 331 Stadice: 183–84 Stará Boleslav: 187, 196–97 Starigard see Oldenburg  Steirische Reimchronik: 306 Stenkil Ragnvaldsson, kind of Sweden: 58–59 Stefan, hegumen of the Kyivan Caves Monastery: 427–28 Stefan Vojislav, grand župan of Dioclea: 390 Stefan Nemanja, grand župan of Serbia: 28, 392–98, 400–04, 407 Stefan Nemanja II, son of Stefan Nemanja: 28, 392–93, 396–99, 404–05, 407 Vita Simeonis: 393, 395, 400–03, 405, 407 Stephen I, king of Hungary: 295–96, 308, 470–71, 477–78 Stephen V, king of Hungary: 297, 310 Stiklestad, battle of: 72–74, 76 Strachkvas, son of Boleslav I, monk, and bishop of Prague: 157–58 Stracimir, brother of Stefan Nemanja: 391–92 Strojmír, Bohemian duke: 148, 162–63 Studenica, monastery: 393, 396, 399, 401 Sturlunga saga: 65

499

Suabians: 7 Suedia: 59 Sumer: 4 Suigia: 59 Svantevit (Zwanthevith), Slavic god: 206, 212–14, 215 n. 46 Svatopluk, king of Moravia: 147–48, 150 Sviatoslav I of Kyiv, grand prince of Kyiv Sven Aggesen, Danish historian: 60 Sven Estridsen, Danish king: 10, 50–53, 55–60 Sven Forkbeard, son of Harald Bluetooth and king of Denmark: 51–53 Sveinn brjóstreip, Orcadian nobleman: 97, 103 Sverrir Sigurdsson, king of Norway: 82, 87, 93, 107 Sviatopolk II Iziaslavich, grand prince of Kyiv: 423–24, 426–27, 441 Swantewit, Slavic god: 16 Sweden: 10, 45, 49, 52, 54–55, 69, 76 Swedes: 3, 48, 53, 55, 57, 59–60 Symeon of Durham, Historia regum: 49–50 Székesfehérvár: 328 Szeklers: 305, 310, 313 Szymon, bishop of Płock: 233   Tacitus: 218 Tamdrup: 54 Taranto: 377  Tarbata (Tartu): 123 Tartars: 310 Tazianus, bishop of Aquileia, saint: 345 Tetín: 187, 196–97 Teutonic Knights, military order: 252 n. 6, 296–97, 310 Thegdag, bishop of Prague: 158–61, 163 Theoderic, grandson of Mieszko I: 241 Theodoric, margrave of the Northern March: 239  Theodericus Monachus, monk: 72 Theodosius, Byzantine patrician: 377  Thessaly: 457 Thessemar, Wendish chieftain: 224 Thietmar, bishop of Merseburg: 6, 16–17, 162 Chronicon: 48, 50, 53, 211, 239 Thomas of Spalato see Thomas of Split Thomas of Split, archdeacon: 10, 321, 326, 474

500

Historia Salonitana: 24–25, 321–29, 331–32, 338, 354–59, 404–05, 472 Thomas the Archdeacon see Thomas of Split Thor, god: 11, 48, 60 Thorkel Adelfar: 70 Thrace: 457 Thuringia: 274 Thuringians: 263 n. 44, 299 n. 59 Tiber: 380 Tiberius, deacon: 342 Tihomir, brother of Stefan Nemanja: 391–92 Tisza: 297 Torcello, Italian island: 370 Torf-Einarr, son of Rǫgnvaldr: 93–95, 104, 108 Torfinn, earl of Orkney: 74 Tory Island: 90 Toplica, region of Serbia: 396 Tours: 232 St Martin: 478 Trajan, emperor: 26, 354  Translatio S. Alexandri: 10 Translatio sancti Marci: 25, 338, 344, 350, 372, 380, 382 Transylvania: 297, 310 Travounia: 389, 391, 394, 396, 398, 405 Trieste: 328 Trogir: 323, 327 n. 28, 356 Troy: 22, 89, 306, 329, 331, 371, 474 Trsat, part of modern Rijeka: 377–78 Turchis, tyrant: 377 Tursko: 183–84  Ukraine: 468 Ulf Jarl, brother-in-law of Cnut the Great: 51–52, 54, 56 Unni, archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen: 48, 53, 58, 60 Uppsala: 11, 48–49, 58–59 Uroš I, grand župan of Serbia and son of Stefan Nemanja: 407 Ursus, patriarch of Aquileia: 341, 350 Ursus, bishop of Olivolo: 369–70 Ursus, son of Peter II Orseolo, bishop of Altinum: 374–75 Ústí nad Labem: 190–91 Västergötland: 58 Valdemar, king of Denmark: 68 Valhalla (Vallhǫll): 93

Index Vallonians: 296 Varangians: 31, 454, 460 Vasilii, monk of the Kyivan Caves Monastery: 29, 419, 423, 429, 433–40, 443–44 Vasilii, saint: 435 Vatnsdœla Saga: 85 Veleti: 239 Veletians: 222–23 Veneto: 368, 371 Venetia: 27, 340–41, 344–46, 348, 350–51, 368–69 Venetians/Venetici: 27, 367–70, 372–76, 380–83 Venice, city: 6, 24, 26–27, 164, 232, 306, 322–23, 339, 343, 346, 348, 353, 359, 367–68, 478 Venice, duchy: 369–70, 372–73, 375–76, 381 Viatichis: 461 Vicelinus, bishop of Oldenburg: 205, 208, 218–20 Vicko Prodić, Chronica dell’Isola della Brazza: 332 Vineta, legendary city: 206 Vinland: 54 Vinoř: 196 Virgil, Roman poet: 152 Aeneid: 55 Virgin Mary, biblical figure: 357 Vistula: 2, 454, 456 Vita sancti Findani: 90, 104 Vita Willehadi: 46 Vitalius IV Candidianus, patriarch of Grado: 352 Vitus, saint: 206 Vlachs: 310 Vladislav, duke of the Czechs: 160 Vlastislav, legendary leader of the Czechs: 183–84 Vltava: 185–87 Volga: 456 Volhynia: 311 Volodimir Iaroslavich, prince of Novgorod: 441 Volodimir I Sviatoslavich, grand prince of Kyiv: 417–18, 426–27, 440–41, 450, 461–63, 470 Volodimir II Monomakh, grand prince of Kyiv: 29, 416, 418, 423, 450–51 Admonition to the Sons: 450

Index Volodimir-in-Volynia: 426–27 Volynians see Buzhanians Vosges: 274 Vratislav II, duke of Bohemia: 159, 161 Vršovci, noble Bohemian family: 172 Vsevolod of Gerzike, Russian prince: 132–34 Vsevolod I of Kyiv, prince and son of Iaroslav I the Wise: 418, 449–50 Vukan Nemanja, son of Stefan Nemanja, ruler of Zeta and king of Dioclea and Dalmatia: 394, 396–99, 403, 406–07 Vyšehrad: 184, 195 Vyshgorod: 450 Vysočina, Bohemian region: 189, 191 Wagiri see Wagrians Wago, bishop of Oldenburg: 206 Wagrians: 57, 205, 207, 209, 214, 216, 218–21, 223 Wa(l)lachia: 306, 309 Wenceslas I, duke of Bohemia: 15, 74, 146–48, 157, 182, 185–88, 196–97, 469–70, 478 Wends: 3, 210 Westfali: 210 Wessex: 97 Westness: 83, 98–99, 102–03 Wichmann Billung, Saxon count: 239 Widukind of Corvey, Res gestae Saxonicae: 50, 53, 239 Willehad, bishop of Bremen: 46 Willeric, bishop of Bremen: 46 William of Malmesbury, chronicler: 6 William of Modena: 120 William II the Good, king of Sicily: 395 Wilzi see Veletians Winuli: 215 Władysław I Herman, duke of Poland: 231, 233, 235–36, 244 Wrocław: 215 n. 49, 233 Wodan/Woden, god: 11, 48, 60 Ymera: 120, 131 Ynglingatal: 68 York: 83 Zachloumia: 389–91, 394, 405 Zadar: 232, 323, 325 n. 22, 327 n. 28, 356  Zalavar see Mosapurc

501

Žatec: 184, 190–91 Zavida, father of Stefan Nemanja: 394, 400 n. 46 Zbigniew, Polish prince and son of Władysław I Herman: 18–19, 231, 233–36, 244 Zdeslav, Dalmatian duke: 378 Zelená Hora/Grünberg: 144, 149 Zeta (Dioclea): 27–28, 389, 394, 396, 398–402 Žiča, monastery: 405 Zips: 297 Žitije Konstantina Filosofa: 163–64 Zittau: 194 Żyrosław, bishop of Wrocław: 233

Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages All volumes in this series are evaluated by an Editorial Board, strictly on academic grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned by virtue of their specialism in the appropriate field. The Board ensures that the screening is done independently and without conflicts of interest. The definitive texts supplied by authors are also subject to review by the Board before being approved for publication. Further, the volumes are copyedited to conform to the publisher’s stylebook and to the best international academic standards in the field. Titles in Series De Sion exibit lex et verbum domini de Hierusalem: Essays on Medieval Law, Liturgy, and Literature in Honour of Amnon Linder, ed. by Yitzhak Hen (2001) Amnon Linder, Raising Arms: Liturgy in the Struggle to Liberate Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages (2003) Thomas Deswarte, De la destruction à la restauration: L’idéologie dans le royaume d’Oviedo­ Léon (VIIIe­XIe siècles) (2004) The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages (Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries): Proceedings of the Inter­ national Symposium held at Speyer, 20–25 October 2002, ed. by Christoph Cluse (2004) Christians and Christianity in the Holy Land: From the Origins to the Latin Kingdoms, ed. by Ora Limor and Guy G. Stroumsa (2006) Carine van Rijn, Shepherds of the Lord: Priests and Episcopal Statutes in the Carolingian Period (2007) Avicenna and his Legacy: A Golden Age of Science and Philosophy, ed. by Y. Tzvi Langermann (2010) Writing ‘True Stories’: Historians and Hagiographers in the Late Antique and Medieval Near East, ed. by Arietta Papaconstantinou, Muriel Debié, and Hugh Kennedy (2010) Carolingian Scholarship and Martianus Capella: Ninth­Century Commentary Traditions on ‘De nuptiis’ in Context, ed. by Mariken Teeuwen and Sinéad O’Sullivan (2011)

John-Henry Clay, In the Shadow of Death: Saint Boniface and the Conversion of Hessia, 721–54 (2011) Ehud Krinis, God’s Chosen People: Judah Halevi’s ‘Kuzari’ and the Shī‘ī Imām Doctrine (2013) Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (2013) Post­Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (2013) Between Personal and Institutional Religion: Self, Doctrine, and Practice in Late Antique Eastern Christianity, ed. by Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony and Lorenzo Perrone (2013) D’Orient en Occident: Les recueils de fables enchâssées avant les Mille et une Nuits de Galland (Barlaam et Josaphat, Calila et Dimna, Disciplina clericalis, Roman des Sept Sages), ed. by Marion Uhlig and Yasmina Foehr-Janssens (2014) Conflict and Religious Conversation in Latin Christendom: Studies in Honour of Ora Limor, ed. by Israel Jacob Yuval and Ram Ben-Shalom (2014) Visual Constructs of Jerusalem, ed. by Bianca kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai, and Hanna Vorholt (2014) The Introduction of Christianity into the Early Medieval Insular World: Converting the Isles I, ed. by Roy Flechner and Máire Ní Mhaonaigh (2016) Motions of Late Antiquity: Essays on Religion, Politics, and Society in Honour of Peter Brown, ed. by Jamie kreiner and Helmut Reimitz (2016) The Prague Sacramentary: Culture, Religion, and Politics in Late Eighth­Century Bavaria, ed. by Maximilian Diesenberger, Rob Meens, and Els Rose (2016) The Capetian Century, 1214–1314, ed. by William Chester Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Phillips (2017) Transforming Landscapes of Belief in the Early Medieval Insular World and Beyond: Con­ verting the Isles II, ed. by Nancy Edwards, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, and Roy Flechner (2017) Historiography and Identity I: Ancient and Early Christian Narratives of Community, ed. by Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser (2019) Inclusion and Exclusion in Mediterranean Christianities, 400–800, ed. by Yaniv Fox and Erica Buchberger (2019) Leadership and Community in Late Antiquity: Essays in Honour of Raymond Van Dam, ed. by Young Richard Kim and A. E. T. McLaughlin (2020) Pnina Arad, Christian Maps of the Holy Land: Images and Meanings (2020) Historiography and Identity, II: Post­Roman Multiplicity and New Political Identities, ed. by Helmut Reimitz and Gerda Heydemann (2020) Historiography and Identity, III: Carolingian Approaches, ed. by Helmut Reimitz, Rutger Kramer, and Graeme Ward (2021)

Minorities in Contact in the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. by Clara Almagro Vidal, Jessica Tearney-Pearce, and Luke Yarbrough (2021) Historiography and Identity IV: Writing History Across Medieval Eurasia, edited by Walter Pohl and Daniel Mahoney (2021) Political Ritual and Practice in Capetian France: Essays in Honour of Elizabeth A. R. Brown, ed. by M. C. Gaposchkin and Jay Rubenstein (2021) Yossi Maurey, Liturgy and Sequences of the Sainte­Chapelle: Music, Relics, and Sacral Kingship in Thirteenth­Century France (2022) Les transferts culturels dans les mondes normands médiévaux (viiie–xiie siècle): objets, acteurs et passeurs, ed. by Pierre Bauduin, Simon Lebouteiller, and Luc Bourgeois (2022) Civic Identity and Civic Participation in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Cédric Brélaz and Els Rose (2022) Matthew Paris on the Mongol Invasion in Europe, ed. by Zsuzsanna Papp Reed (2022)

In Preparation From Sun­Day to the Lord’s Day: The Cultural History of Sunday in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Uta Heil