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Old East Slavic literature,[1] also known asOld Russian literature,[2][3] is a collection of literary works ofRus' authors, which includes all the works of ancient Rus' theologians, historians, philosophers, translators, etc., and written inOld East Slavic. It is a general term that unites the common literary heritageof Belarus,Russia, andUkraine of the ancient period. In terms of genre construction, it has a number of differences frommedieval European literature. The greatest influence on the literature of ancient Rus' was exerted byold Polish andold Serbian literature.
Most of the monuments of Old East Slavic literature have been preserved in the form ofmanuscripts. The most common type of manuscript was literary collections. Notebooks written by a single scribe could then be bound by the scribe or binder himself. Such collections can be of a certain ("Zlatostruy", "Izmaragd", "Solemn", etc.) or indefinite content, reflecting the individual tastes and interests of one or another scribe who selected materials for himself or for his customer.
Unlike other traditionalist literatures, the Old East Slavic literature is characterized bysyncretism, lack of clearly expressed poetological reflection, conscious rejection ofrationalism and specification of theoretical knowledge. It differs fromByzantine literature by its emphasized irregularity, the blurring of genres and boundaries between the prosaic and the poetic, and the lack of a clear conceptual apparatus.[4]
Voluminous works could be copied and intertwined into separate books: someletopises, works on world history,paterics, works of a liturgical nature, prologues, etc. Small compositions, for example, "Praying of Daniel the Immured" or theTale of the Destruction of the Rus' Land did not make up separate books, but were distributed in collections.[5]
The early examples of pre-Christian Old East Slavic Rus' literature should primarily include the oral epic:legends,myths andfairy tales. Most of the Old East Slavic oralfolklore was recorded only in the 18th and 19th centuries.[citation needed]
Among the oral works, stories about the meeting of a person with an otherworldly force were particularly distinguished. Such a story by genre was divided into abailichka, where a meeting with evil spirits is told on behalf of an "eyewitness", and abyvalschina, an oral story about a case that allegedly took place in reality, without focusing on the personal testimony of the narrator.bylichka andbyvalschina were often told in the villages to friends or children in order to wean them to walk far from home, and, according to Yevgeny Meletinsky, they became the prototype of "scary fairy tales".[6]Later, a special type ofdruzhina poetry began to take shape –bylina, Rus' epic poems about heroic or mythological events or remarkable episodes of national history. In some ways, bylina are similar toskaldic poetry: both are divided into songs of praise and blasphemy and glorify some historical event. Bylina, as a rule, are written intonic verse with two or four accents.[citation needed]
Almost all the literature of Rus' – original and translated – was handwritten. Handwritten works were distributed by copying by scribes or ordinary people.[citation needed]
In Rus', the apocrypha about theLast Judgment was especially popular. Among such works, a special place was occupied by the life ofBasil the Younger, the second part of which (scenes from the vision of Vasily Gregory's pupil about the Last Judgment and a lengthy story about Theodore) spread as independent works.[citation needed]
Later, the original Old East Slavic apocrypha began to be created, the most famous of which is "The Walking of the Virgin through the Torments". Its plot is similar to the Greek "Revelation of the Most Holy Theotokos", but it also has many original features: for example, pagans who worshipTroyan [ru;de],Veles andPerun are in the first circle of hell, and there are a number of anti-Semitic statements in the text itself.[citation needed]
According to the philosopherSergei Bulgakov, the special popularity of apocryphal literature in Rus' is indicated by the fact that of the seven most important monuments of the Jewish apocalyptic (except for thebooks of the prophet Daniel), three were preserved exclusively in Old Slavonic translations.[7]
Presumably, both epics and folk tales were not recorded by contemporaries for the reason that Rus' inherited from theByzantine Empire a ban onliterary fiction and the presence of a purely artistic function in the works. Back in 1073, the compilers of theIzbornik Svyatoslav warned against worldly writings based on artistic imagination.Fiction developed only in the late period.[citation needed]
However, despite some limitations, scientific and artistic works had to answer questions related to natural history (the origin of the world,cosmology) and the development of human society (the settlement of peoples, the origin of power, the state, the meaning and purpose of human history).[citation needed]
The first original works in Kievan Rus' were instructive collections, which are the most common type of manuscripts (even after the beginning of printing in Russia in 1569, manuscripts have not lost their popularity). Thescribe copied various works according to some attribute or genre in a notebook. Notebooks written by one scribe could then be bound by the scribe himself or the bookbinder into a separate book. The bookbinder could collect notebooks of different times and different scribes and connect them because they were of the same format or were combined by them according to content. Such collections are currently calledconvolutes. Such collections of teachings asIzmaragd, Golden Chain, Bee, Solemn, Zlatostruy (origins), Pchela (of Byzantine origin) were originally intended for home andmonastic cell reading. Included in these is thePalea, a collection of several interconnected ancient Rus' works that set out Old Testament history, with additions fromapocryphal monuments, as well as with theological reasoning.[8]
Already in the early period of the development of Rus' literature, one can trace the understanding of Rus' not only as an ethno-political and religious community, but also as the Kingdom of Christ. In theSermon on Law and Grace of the middle of the 11th century (the future Metropolitan,Hilarion of Kiev), the newly baptized Rus' people are called new. The perception of the people who were baptized in the "last times" (before theLast Judgment) as new, endowed with special grace, was characteristic of Rus'. The widespread idea of an imminent dreadful judgment was strongly reflected in the Old East Slavic literature of that period; ascetic creations and instructive literature became an introduction tosoteriology (the doctrine of the salvation of the soul).[citation needed]
As most modern researchers note, there is no clear division of literature into genres in ancient Rus'. There were only a few authors who clearly defined the genre of their works (among such were the monk Phoma,Nil Sorsky,Metropolitan Macarius, and the nameless author of "The Tale of Mikhail Tverskoy"). Thus, thelexemeWord (Old East Slavic:Слово,romanized: Slovo, also translatable asTale,Lay orDiscourse[a]) often perceived as the name of a genre, could mean a didactic teaching, a chapter of a book, a conversation, a speech, articles of various content, etc.[14][15]
Nevertheless, Nikita Tolstoy made an attempt to classify ancient Rus' literature;[16] later, the classification was edited by Evgeny Vereshchagin (the latter version is somewhat different from Tolstoy's):
This classification does not distinguish between primary genres (for example, hagiographies) and unifying genres that include small works as source material (prologue, menaiat-chets, etc.). This difference is taken into account in the classification based on the systematics ofDmitry Likhachev, who distinguished between monumental and small genre forms.[15] Nikolai Prokofiev gave the following classification:
The most important feature of epic genres is the object of the image and lyrical purpose.[19]
In the early period after theChristianization of Kievan Rus', there was no special church calendar, and the Old Slavic calendar was not suitable for calculating church holidays. Therefore, many authors had to make their own calculations in their works, which ranked their works among not only Paschal, but also mathematical treatises. For complex calculations,schoty was often used.[citation needed]
The earliest mathematical work of Kievan Rus' is considered to be "the doctrine of numbers" byKirik the Novgorodian, a treatise on the calculus of time, combining an essay onmathematics,chronology andPaschalistics.[citation needed]
However, later mathematical treatises did not receive a proper development in Kievan Rus'. Among the works equal to the "doctrine of numbers", scientists include the "Charter of military Affairs" created in the 15th and 16th centuries, which set out the tasks oftriangulation on the ground, and the "Book of soshny writing", dedicated toland surveying. Later works include an extensive manuscript entitled "Synodal No. 42", the first textbook in Rus' on theoreticalgeometry.[citation needed]
The early cosmological works of Kievan Rus' were partially influenced by apocryphal writings, mixed with pre-Christian ideas about the structure of the world.[citation needed]
Thus, much attention is paid to the creation and structure of the world in two of the most significant early works: theDove Book and "About the whole creation". Both works have a complex structure and are probably based on Old East Slavic apocryphal legends that existed for the early period after theChristianization of Kievan Rus'.[citation needed]
It is also interesting that in the "Depth Book", as in two other ancient Rus' monuments – "The Conversation of the Three Saints" and "The Conversation of Jerusalem" – for some reason,whales are endowed with supernatural power. In the "Conversation of the Three Saints", the Earth floats on top of the great sea on three large whales and 30 small whales; the latter cover 30 sea windows; "The Conversation of Jerusalem" and "Depth Book" connect the movement of the whale with the end of the world. According to the "Depth Book" — "The Whale-fish is the mother of all fish. On the Whale-fish the earth is founded; when the Whale-fish turns, then our white light is finished (the end of all things will come)".[citation needed]
The so-called "fortune-telling books" (also "divinatory books") can probably also be attributed to cosmological works, which are currently not officially assigned to any of the genres of Kievan Rus'.[20] Fortune-telling books (Volkhovnik,Gromnik,Kolyadnik,Trepetnik,Enchanter, etc.) were mainly distributed secretly: they were copied, sewn into other books, and passed on by inheritance. Officially, the distribution of such literature was persecuted by the church; lists of forbidden (so-called renounced) books of Kievan Rus' were compiled, in which divinatory literature was equated withapocrypha.[21]
Very popular in ancient Rus' were the lives of saints (zhytie), a kind of genre ofhagiography that describes the life, deeds and miracles of ancient Rus' saints, martyrs and miracle workers.
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The scientistAlexander Panchenko refers to the earliest forms of Old East Slavic versification as the so-called "penitential poems" (the metrical nature of which is not yet clear),[22] single poetic texts written by the monk of the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery Efrosin, as well as separate chaptersThe Tale of Igor's Campaign and theTale of the Destruction of the Rus' Land containing a metric constant.[citation needed]
Despite this, versification in Kievan Rus' was most often not approved, because was considered inherent only in "Latins". This position was most consistently expressed by ArchpriestAvvakum: “Do not look for rhetoric and philosophy, or eloquence, but live with a sound true verb.[b] Therefore, а rhetorician and philosopher cannot be a Christian. Alexander Panchenko pointed out that the Old East Slavic church poetry was strongly influenced by West Slavic, especiallyPolish literature.[22]Simeon Polotsky, releasing his "Rhymed Psalter" (1680), wrote that in Moscow they loved "the consonant singing of the Polish Psalter".[citation needed]
Some of the earliest representatives of Old East Slavic syllabic poetry are such poets asKarion Istomin,Simeon of Polotsk,Theophan Prokopovich,Antiochus Kantemir,Sylvester Medvedev andMardary Khonykov [ru]. The principle of syllabic symmetry was dominant. A twelve-syllable verse with acaesura after the fifth or sixth syllable was used; there are, for example, such complex schemes as: 5-6-8|8-6-5|7-7-4-5-3-5 (12 verses of Irmos "Земьнъ къто слыша таковая"...) or 8|5-5-5|8-8|5-5-5 (9 verses of Irmos "Вьсъ еси желание"...) There were also schemes where the number of syllables in each verse was a multiple of three (from St. Trinity, the sacred number "three" for Christians).[22]
The detailed life in the monastery can be judged by the syllabic poem by Karion Istomin "About speaking from people, how monks live in the monastery":[23][full citation needed]
Мънози глаголют, что монахи деют,
где в монастыре дела не имеют.
Бутто так сидят, ничего не знают,
како ли Богу честь, поклон взношают.
Надобно кому себе искусити
и в монастыре хоть время прожити.
Узнает, как кто в кельи пребывает,
како помыслы, страсти отвергеет ...
Many say that monks are idle
that they have no tasks in a monastery.
As if they are just sitting so, knowing nothing,
only how to honor God, how to bow down to Him.
Test yourselves with the experience
and at least live in a monastery for a while.
Then you will learn how someone stays in a cell,
how they reject thoughts, passions ...
The acrostic form became very popular in Ancient Rus' poetics. It was also widely developed there. The earliest work in the genre of acrostic in ancient Russia is considered to be theAzbuchna Prayer [ru], translated from Old Bulgarian. The acrostic in the Old East Slavic book poetry was also known in later times. Thus, the acrostic is found in one of the "greetings" of Karion Istomin toTsarevich Alexey Petrovich:[citation needed]
Аминь буди слава,
Любовь чиста, права
Единому Богу,
К себе в слогах многу.
Исраиль нелестный,
Избранный и честный
Царев сын, царевичь
Алексий Петровичь,
Радуйся блаженно,
Емли жизнь спасенно,
В Господе изрядствуй,
Излестно отрадствуй,
Человеком в ползе,
В златых летах долзе.
Езди умне в книгах,
Чти мудрость в веригах:
Ности она златы,
Общит в любовь браты.
Жити с нею благо,
Имство всем предраго.
Взрасти тя Бог в славе,Имети ю здраве!
Here the acrostic is "Alexy Tsarevich live forever" (Алексий царевич вечно живи; in the fourth verse in the original, the first letter is the Slavic "xi").[22]
In Kievan Rus', there were a number of canonical and legal statutes and rights. The special charters, judicial books, contractual, spiritual certificates and contribution certificates were common for the people and for the church. Most collections of Kievan Rus' law are strictly divided into civil and ecclesiastical. The exception is theMerilo Pravednoye, which is both a collection of church-canonical and civil legal legal nature.[citation needed]
The legal basis of the Kievan Rus' state[24][25] was theRusskaya Pravda,Lithuanian statutes andMoscow Sidebniks.[c] In 1649, theSobornoye Ulozheniye was added to these written laws.[citation needed]
The so-calledRusskaya Pravda ("Rus' Justice") is of great importance for the study ofKievan Rus' law. TheRusskaya Pravda is a collection of legal norms of Rus', dated from various years, starting from 1016, the oldest Rus' legal code.[26] TheRusskaya Pravda contains the norms ofcriminal,compulsory,hereditary,family andprocedural law. It is the main source for studying the legal, social and economic relations of Kievan Rus'.[citation needed] TheRusskaya Pravda is similar to earlier European legal collections, such asGermanic law (the so-calledLeges Barbarorum, "laws of the barbarians"), for example, theSalic law, a collection of legislative acts of the Frankish state, the oldest text of which dates back to the beginning of the 6th century.[citation needed]
The short version consists of the following parts:
As many researchers have noted, the most ancient part of theRusskaya Pravda (the oldest pravda) preserves the custom ofblood feud, characteristic of the laws of pre-Christian Kievan Rus', although it limits it to the circle of closest relatives.[citation needed] The lengthy version includes about 121 articles and consists of two parts-the Charter of Yaroslav Vladimirovich and the Charter ofVladimir Vsevolodovich Monomakh. According to most researchers, the Lengthy Truth is based on the Short text, which was amended and supplemented, including those adopted during theKiev reign ofVladimir II Monomakh.[27][28]
With theChristianization of Kievan Rus', church law arose. The most important source of church law in Kievan Rus' was thesudebniki, the most famous of which is theZakon Sudnyi Liudem (the South Slavic legal Code of the 9th and 10th centuries, although some scholars consider it a reworking of some Byzantine andJewish laws). However, most often in the ecclesiastical sphere of Kievan Rus', they usedkormchaia books, legal collections that contained both church rules and the decisions of the Roman and Byzantine emperors on the church.[citation needed]
From the translated Byzantine collections of ecclesiastical law in Kievan Rus',nomocanons,Eclogue [sr;de;fr],Proheiron [sr;de;fr], and Zanon books (translation of Byzantine laws) were used. However, despite the widespread existence in the written tradition, Byzantine law did not have a significant application in legal practice, and its full reception did not occur. Rus' ecclesiastical law was based primarily on the ecclesiastical statutes issued by the knyazes, based on local law and only limited borrowing of Byzantine law.[29]
Later, in 1551, the comprehensive religious collectionStoglav was created, combining the norms ofjudicial,criminal andecclesiastical law. Stoglav tried to solve the following pressing issues:[citation needed]
"Books of law" and "Merilo Pravednoye", one of the first Kievan Rus' collections of acivil and ecclesiastical-legal nature, contain both excerpts from Byzantine legislation and identical articles of Rus' origin, probably included in collections from an older one that did not come down to us of the collection of Kievan Rus' law.[30]