Kievan Chronicle


The Kievan Chronicle or Kyivan Chronicle is a chronicle of Kievan Rus'. It was written around 1200 in Vydubychi Monastery as a continuation of the Primary Chronicle. It is known from two manuscripts: a copy in the Hypatian Codex, and a copy in the Khlebnikov Codex ; in both codices, it is sandwiched between the Primary Chronicle and the Galician–Volhynian Chronicle. It covers the period from 1118, where the Primary Chronicle ends, until about 1200, although scholars disagree where exactly the Kievan Chronicle ends and the Galician–Volhynian Chronicle begins.

Composition

When historian Leonid Makhnovets published a modern Ukrainian translation of the entire Hypatian Codex in 1989, he remarked: 'The history of the creation of this early-14th-century chronicle is a very complex problem. Equally complex is the question of when and how each part of the chronicle appeared. There is a vast literature on this subject, different views are expressed, and discussions are ongoing'.
Among the sources used by the anonymous chronicler of the Kievan Chronicle were:
There is evidence that a redactor added material from the Galician–Volhynian Chronicle in the 13th century. Because its sources, save for the monastic chronicle, are secular and were probably not written by monks, the Kievan Chronicle is a politico-military narrative of the disintegration of Kievan Rus', in which princes are the main players. It contains a historiographical account of the events celebrated in the epic Tale of Igor's Campaign, in which the basic sequence of events is the same. It also contains a passion narrative of the martyrdom of the prince Igor Olgovich in 1147.
Jaroslaw Pelenski pointed out that the Kievan Chronicle has a length of 431 columns, describing a period of about 80 years; a much higher information density than the Primary Chronicle, which describes as many as 258 years in only 283 columns. Nevertheless, at the time, the Kievan Chronicle had received far less attention from scholars than the Primary Chronicle. The text of the Kievan Chronicle shows strong similarities with that of the Suzdal'–Vladimirian Chronicle found in the Laurentian Codex and elsewhere, but also some remarkable differences.

Authorship

Based on the 1661 Paterik of the Kievan Caves Monastery, 17th-century writers started to assert that Nestor wrote many of the surviving chronicles of Kievan Rus', including the Primary Chronicle, the Kievan Chronicle and the Galician–Volhynian Chronicle, even though many of the events described therein were situated in the entire 12th and 13th century. From the 1830s to around 1900, there was fierce academic debate about Nestor's authorship, but the question remained unresolved, and belief in Nestorian authorship had persisted.

Contents

Structure

Lisa Lynn Heinrich divided the Kievan Chronicle into the following chapters:
  1. Last years of Vladimir II Monomakh; reign of Mstislav Vladimirovich
  2. Reign of Vsevolod Olgovich
  3. Reign of Iziaslav Mstislavich
  4. Reign of Iziaslav Mstislavich
  5. Reign of Yuri Vladimirovich
  6. Reign of Yuri Vladimirovich
  7. Reign of Yuri Vladimirovich
  8. Reigns of Rostislav Yuryevich, Yuri Vladimirovich, and Iziaslav Davidovich
  9. Reign of Rostislav Mstislavich
  10. Reigns of Mstislav Iziaslavich, Gleb Yurievich, Vladimir II Yaroslavich, and Roman Rostislavich
  11. Reign of Yaroslav Iziaslavich
  12. –15. Reigns of Sviatoslav Vsevolodovych, and Rurik Rostislavich

    Style and events

The Kievan Chronicle is a direction continuation of the text of the Primary Chronicle. The original text of the Kievan Chronicle has been lost; the versions preserved in the Hypatian Codex and Khlebnikov Codex are not copied from each other, but share a common ancestor that has not been found.
The Kievan Chronicle contains 72 announcements of princely deaths, 60 of which are about men who died as princes, and 12 of them are about women who died as princesses.
Unlike the Primary Chronicle, in which the Lithuanians were portrayed as a people which had been subdued by Yaroslav the Wise, and paid tributed to Kievan Rus' until at least the early 12th century, the Kievan Chronicle narrates about a 1132 campaign in which a Rus' army burnt down Lithuanian settlements, only to be ambushed by Lithuanians on the way back and taking heavy losses.
The Kievan Chronicle contains references to the fall of Jerusalem in 1187 and the death of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa on the Third Crusade in 1190, considering the former—and the failure of the crusade—divine punishment for sin and the latter a martyrdom.

Ending

The ultimate entry of the Kievan Chronicle is the year 1200, which contains a long panegyric praising Rurik Rostislavich, ending with "Amen". However, in the Khlebnikov Codex, the text of the Kievan Chronicle ends in the year 6704.
There is some disagreement amongst scholars whether the entry of the year 6709, which is not found in the Khlebnikov Codex or the Pogodin text, should be considered the final sentence of the Kievan Chronicle, or the first sentence of the Galician–Volhynian Chronicle. Perfecky stated: 'I believe that and not Roman's quarrel with his father-in-law Prince Rjurik of Kiev under 1195–96 is the last information about Roman in the Kievan Chronicle, of which it is an integral part.'

Primary sources

;Translations
  • English:
  • ''Ukrainian:''

    Literature

  • Reprinted in Pelenski, The Contest for the Legacy of Kievan Rus.
  • Reprinted in Pelenski, The Contest for the Legacy of Kievan Rus.
Category:13th-century history books
Category:Old East Slavic chronicles
Category:Old Church Slavonic literature
Category:Slavic history
Category:Church Slavonic manuscripts