Literacy and literary knowledge of the ancient Russians

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

On July 26, 1951 in Veliky Novgorod, a birch bark letter No. 1 was discovered. Today, more than a thousand of them have been found; there are finds in Moscow, Pskov, Tver, Belarus and Ukraine. Thanks to these findings, we can say with confidence that the overwhelming majority of the urban population of Ancient Rus, including women, was literate.

Widespread literacy implies the presence of literature - after all, not only birch bark letters were read by our ancestors! So what was on the bookshelf of the ancient Russian? To get to the bottom of the truth, you will have to lift the historical layers.

The first logical step is to take an inventory of the surviving book heritage. Alas, little has survived. From the pre-Mongol period, less than 200 books and manuscripts have come down to us. According to historians, this is less than 1% of everything that happened. Russian cities burned during internecine wars and nomadic raids.

After the Mongol invasion, some cities simply disappeared. According to the chronicles, even in peacetime, Moscow burned to the ground every 6-7 years. If the fire destroyed 2-3 streets, such a trifle was not even mentioned. And although the books were appreciated, cherished, the manuscripts still burned. What has survived to this day?

The overwhelming majority is spiritual literature. Liturgical books, gospels, biographies of saints, spiritual instructions. But there was also secular literature. One of the oldest books that have come down to us is "Izbornik" of 1073. In fact, this is a small encyclopedia based on the historical chronicles of Byzantine authors. But among more than 380 texts there is a treatise on stylistics, articles on grammar, logic, articles of philosophical content, parables and even riddles.

Chronicles were copied in large numbers - the Russian people were by no means Ivans who did not remember their kinship, they were keenly interested in “where the Russian land came from”. In addition, individual historical chronicles are akin to modern detective literature in terms of plot twist.

The story of the death of princes Boris and Gleb is worthy of adaptation: brother against brothers, deception, betrayal, villainous murders - truly Shakespearean passions boil on the pages of The Tale of Boris and Gleb!

The murder of Gleb. Miniature Legends of Boris and Gleb from the Sylvester collection

There was also scientific literature. In 1136, Kirik Novgorodets wrote The Teaching About Numbers, a mathematical and astronomical treatise devoted to the problems of chronology. Four (!) Lists (copies) have come down to us. This means that there were a lot of copies of this work.

"The Prayer of Daniel the Zatochnik" with elements of satire, directed against the clergy and boyars, is nothing more than journalism of the 13th century.

And, of course, "The Lay of Igor's Campaign"! Even if the "Word" was the only creation of the author (which can be doubted), he probably had both predecessors and followers.

Now we will raise the next layer and proceed to the analysis of the texts themselves. This is where the fun begins.

2nd layer: what is hidden in the texts

In the X-XIII centuries, copyright did not exist. Authors, scribes and compilers of selections, prayers and teachings everywhere inserted fragments from other works into the texts, not at all considering it necessary to give a link to the original source. This was a common practice.

It is very difficult to find such an unmarked fragment in the text, for this you need to know perfectly the literature of that time. And what if the original source has been lost long ago? And nevertheless, there are such finds. And they just give a sea of information about what they read in Ancient Russia.

The manuscripts contain fragments of the "Jewish War" by the Jewish historian and military leader Josephus Flavius (1st century), the Greek chronicles of George Amartolus (Byzantium, 9th century), Chronographies of John Malala (Byzantium, 6th century). Found quotes from Homer and the Assyrian-Babylonian story about Akira the Wise (VII century BC).

On July 26, 1951 in Veliky Novgorod, a birch bark letter No. 1 was discovered. Today, more than a thousand of them have been found; there are finds in Moscow, Pskov, Tver, Belarus and Ukraine. Thanks to these findings, we can say with confidence that the overwhelming majority of the urban population of Ancient Rus, including women, was literate.

Widespread literacy implies the presence of literature - after all, not only birch bark letters were read by our ancestors! So what was on the bookshelf of the ancient Russian? To get to the bottom of the truth, you will have to lift the historical layers.

A birch bark letter, which says about the purchase of a slave by a vigilante

Of course, we are interested in how widespread these primary sources were among the reading population. Was not that unknown author-monk the only one in Russia who fell into the hands of this or that precious tome? In one of the teachings criticizing the remnants of paganism, explaining the essence of a pagan deity, the author calls him an analogue of Artemis.

He not only knows about the Greek goddess, moreover, the author is sure that the reader is also aware of who she is! The Greek Artemis is more familiar to the author of the teaching and readers than the Slavic goddess of the hunt Devan! Hence, knowledge of Greek mythology was ubiquitous.

Prohibited literature

Yes, there was one! Taking care of the spiritual health of its flock, the Church issued indexes in which it listed books classified as "renunciates." These were fortune-telling, witchcraft, magic books, legends about werewolves, interpreters of signs, dream books, conspiracies and liturgical literature recognized as apocryphal. The indexes indicate not just topics, but specific books: "Ostrologer", "Rafli", "Aristotle's Gates", "Gromnik", "Kolednik", "Volkhovnik" and others.

All these "godless scriptures" were not just forbidden, but were subject to destruction. Despite the prohibitions, the renounced books were kept, read and rewritten. The Orthodox Russian people have never been distinguished by their religious fanaticism; Christianity and pagan beliefs have peacefully coexisted in Russia for centuries.

Layer 3: textual coincidences

Borrowing plots was never considered reprehensible among authors. A. Tolstoy, for example, did not hide that his Pinocchio was a copy of Pinocchio Collodi. The great Shakespeare practically does not have a single “own” plot. Both in the West and in the East, borrowing plots was used with might and main. And in Russia too: in the biographies of princes, the lives of saints there are plot lines from Greek chronicles, Western literature ("Songs of Guillaume of Orange", France, XII century) and even ancient Indian literature.

In the Visions of Elder Matthew, the monk sees a demon, invisible to others, throwing petals at the monks. To whom they stick, he immediately begins to yawn and, under a plausible pretext, seeks to leave the service (he did not break his connection with the world). The petals do not stick to true companions. Replace the demon with the Heavenly Maiden, the monks of the Caves, with Buddhist monks - and you will receive the Mahayana sutra of the 2nd century BC, which was brought to Russia by some incomprehensible wind.

And then the next question arises: how did the books get to Ancient Russia?

Digging further

It has been established that a number of manuscripts from the 10th-11th centuries are copies of the Bulgarian originals. Historians have long suspected that the library of the Bulgarian tsars ended up in Russia. It could have been taken out as a trophy of war by Prince Svyatoslav, who captured the capital of Bulgaria, Veliki Preslav in 968.

It could be taken out by the Byzantine emperor John I Tzimiskes and subsequently transferred to Vladimir as a dowry for the princess Anna, who married the Kiev prince.(This is how, in the 15th century, together with Zoya Palaeologus, the future wife of Ivan III, the library of the Byzantine emperors came to Moscow, which became the basis of Ivan the Terrible's "Liberia".)

In the X-XII centuries, the Rurikovichs entered into dynastic marriages with the reigning houses of Germany, France, Scandinavia, Poland, Hungary and Byzantium. The future spouses traveled to Russia with their retinue, confessors, and brought little books with them. So, in 1043, the Code of Gertrude came to Kiev from Poland together with the Polish princess, and in 1048 from Kiev to France together with Anna Yaroslavna - the Reims Gospel.

Something was brought by the Scandinavian warriors from the princely entourage, something by merchants (the trade route "from the Varangians to the Greeks" was very busy). Naturally, the books were "in overseas" languages. What was their fate? Were there people in Russia who could read in foreign languages? And how many such people were there?

Basurman speech

Vladimir Monomakh's father spoke five languages. Monomakh's mother was a Greek princess, his grandmother was a Swedish princess. Surely the boy who lived with them until adolescence knew both Greek and Swedish. Proficiency in at least three foreign languages was the norm in the princely environment. But this is a princely surname, now let's go down the social ladder.

In the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, one demon-possessed monk spoke in several languages. The monks standing nearby freely defined the “non-Sermenian yazytsi”: Latin, Hebrew, Greek, Syrian. As you can see, knowledge of these languages was not a rarity among the monastic brethren.

In Kiev, there was a significant Jewish diaspora, one of the three gates in Kiev (trade) were even called "Jews". Plus mercenaries, merchants, the neighboring Khazar Kaganate - all this created the most favorable conditions for the development of multilingualism.

Therefore, a book or manuscript that came to Ancient Russia from the West or the East did not disappear - it was read, translated and rewritten. Practically in Ancient Russia all the world literature of that time could walk (and it certainly was). As you can see, Russia was neither dark nor downtrodden. And they read in Russia not only the Bible and the Gospel.

Waiting for new finds

Is there any hope that someday unknown books of the X-XII centuries will be found? Kiev guides still tell tourists that before the capture of the city by the Mongol-Tatars in 1240, Kiev monks hid the library of Prince Yaroslav the Wise in the dungeons of the Sophia Monastery.

They are still looking for the legendary library of Ivan the Terrible - the last searches were carried out in 1997. And although there are few hopes for the "find of the century" … But what if?