ByzantinoslavicaRevue internationale des études byzantines

Datum publikování: 2024

Autor: Gardner-Thorpe, Amelia

Abstrakt: This paper examines and explains the inclusion and omission of marriage alliances between boyar women and Novgorod princes in the twelfth century within Rus’ian and Moscow chronicle texts composed between the fourteenth and sixteenth century. Though minor and sporadic entries, they reveal their place and significance within a much wider political narrative that encompasses relationships between Novgorodian boyar clans, boroughs of Novgorod which could function as political factions, and “outsider” princes looking to claim the Novgorodian throne. Moreover, they unmask the socio-political dispositions guiding or even proscribing the composition of chronicle texts in Rus’ and Moscow – from distrust and dislike for Vladimirian-Suzdal’ian princes in the First Novgorod Chronicle to the praise and legitimization of those same princes (direct ancestors of the Danilovich line) in the Nikonian Chronicle and Illuminated Chronicle Codex of the Sixteenth Century. This article proposes that even the most unassuming entry in the Novgorod and Moscow chronicles can reveal truths about the socio-political relationship between princes of the same or separate family lines, between boyars and princes, and the social contract of marriage and its relationship to Novgorod politics at large. Historians may weave these small threads, if cautiously, into a much larger picture of well-studied Rus’ chronicle narratives to better understand how medieval chroniclers understood and conveyed personal relationships and political alliances throughout their texts over time.

Rozsah stran: s. 57–95

Status recenzování: recenzovaný článek

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0