Sunday, February 16th, 2014
Russian Culture Lexicon
Russian Primary Chronicle, The
▪ Russian literature
also called Chronicle of Nestor or Kiev Chronicle , Russian Povest vremennykh let (“Tale of Bygone Years”)
medieval Kievan Rus historical work that gives a detailed account of the early history of the eastern Slavs to the second decade of the 12th century. The chronicle, compiled in Kiev about 1113, was based on materials taken from Byzantine chronicles, west and south Slavonic literary sources, official documents, and oral sagas; the earliest extant manuscript of it is dated 1377. While the authorship was traditionally ascribed to the monk Nestor, modern scholarship considers the chronicle a composite work.
▪ Russian monk
born c. 1056, Kiev [now in Ukraine]
died Oct. 27, 1113, Kiev
a monk in Kievan Rus of the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev (from about 1074), author of several works of hagiography and an important historical chronicle.
Nestor wrote the lives of Saints Boris and Gleb, the sons of St. Vladimir of Rus, who were murdered in 1015, and the life of St. Theodosius, abbot of the Monastery of the Caves (d. 1074). A tradition that was first recorded in the 13th century ascribes to him the authorship of the Povest vremennykh let (“Tale of Bygone Years”; The Russian Primary Chronicle (Russian Primary Chronicle, The)), the most important historical work of early medieval Rus. Modern scholarship, however, regards the chronicle as a composite work, written and revised in several stages, and inclines to the view that the basic (though not final) version of the document was compiled by Nestor about 1113. The chronicle, extant in several medieval manuscripts, the earliest dated 1377, was compiled in Kiev. It relates in detail the earliest history of the eastern Slavs down to the second decade of the 12th century. Emphasis is laid on the foundation of the Kievan state—ascribed to the advent of Varangians (a tribe of Norsemen) in the second half of the 9th century, the subsequent wars and treaties between Rus and Byzantium, the conversion of Rus to Christianity about 988, the cultural achievements of the reign of Yaroslav the Wise of Kiev (1019–54), and the wars against the Turkic nomads of the steppe.
Written partly in Old Church Slavonic (Old Church Slavonic language), partly in the Old Russian language based on the spoken vernacular, The Russian Primary Chronicle includes material from translated Byzantine chronicles, west and south Slavonic literary sources, official documents, and oral sagas. This borrowed material is woven with considerable skill into the historical narrative, which is enlivened by vivid description, humour, and a sense of the dramatic.
Old Church Slavonic language
also called Old Church Slavic
Slavic language based primarily on the Macedonian (South Slavic) dialects around Thessalonica (Thessaloníki). It was used in the 9th century by the missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius (Cyril and Methodius, Saints), who were natives of Thessalonica, for preaching to the Moravian Slavs and for translating the Bible into Slavic. Old Church Slavonic was the first Slavic literary language and was written in two alphabets known as Glagolitic (Glagolitic alphabet) and Cyrillic (Cyrillic alphabet) (the invention of Glagolitic has been ascribed to St. Cyril). Old Church Slavonic was readily adopted in other Slavic regions, where, with local modifications, it remained the religious and literary language of Orthodox Slavs throughout the Middle Ages.
The language as it appeared after the 12th century in its various local forms is known as Church Slavonic; this language has continued as a liturgical language into modern times. It continued to be written by the Serbs and Bulgarians until the 19th century and had significant influence on the modern Slavic languages, especially on the Russian literary language that grew out of a compromise style incorporating many Church Slavonic elements into the native Russian vernacular.
Cyril and Methodius, Saints
▪ Christian theologians
Respectively,
born c. 827, Thessalonica, Macedonia
died Feb. 14, 869, Rome
born c. 815, Thessalonica
died April 6, 884, Moravia; feast day for both, Western Church February 14; Eastern Church May 11
brothers who for christianizing the Danubian Slavs and for influencing the religious and cultural development of all Slavic peoples received the title “the apostles of the Slavs.” Both were outstanding scholars, theologians, and linguists. They were honoured by Pope John Paul II in his 1985 encyclical Slavorum Apostoli.
In 860, Cyril (originally named Constantine), who had gone on a mission to the Arabs and been professor of philosophy at the patriarchal school in Constantinople, worked with Methodius, the abbot of a Greek monastery, for the conversion of the Khazars northeast of the Black Sea. In 862, when Prince Rostislav of Great Moravia asked Constantinople for missionaries, the emperor Michael III and the patriarch Photius named Cyril and Methodius. In 863, they started their work among the Slavs, using Slavonic in the liturgy. They translated the Holy Scriptures into the language later known as Old Church Slavonic (or Old Bulgarian) and invented a Slavic alphabet (Cyrillic alphabet) based on Greek characters that in its final Cyrillic form is still in use as the alphabet for modern Russian and a number of other Slavic languages.
The brothers accepted Pope St. Nicholas I's invitation to Rome (867) to explain their conflict with the German archbishop of Salzburg and bishop of Passau, who claimed control of the same Slavic territory and who wanted to enforce the exclusive use of the Latin liturgy. Cyril and Methodius arrived in Rome (868), where the new pope, Adrian II, took their side, formally authorizing the use of the Slavic liturgy. When Cyril died, Adrian sent Methodius back to the Slavs as his legate and archbishop of Sirmium.
Methodius' ecclesiastical province included all of Moravia. When Rostislav's nephew and successor, Svatopluk, failed to support Methodius, he was tried in 870 by the German clergy, brutally treated, and jailed until liberated by the intervention of Pope John VIII. In 880 Methodius was again summoned to Rome about the Slavic liturgy, obtaining once more papal approval of his use of the vernacular.
When Methodius' suffragan bishop, Wiching, continued to make trouble, Methodius tried to strengthen his position in the Eastern Church by visiting Constantinople in 882. After Methodius' death, Pope Stephen V forbade the use of the Slavonic liturgy; and Wiching, as successor, forced the disciples of Cyril and Methodius into exile. The posthumous influence of Cyril and Methodius reached distant Kiev in Russia and left traces among the Slavs of Croatia, Bohemia, and Poland. Soon canonized by the Eastern church, they were celebrated by the Roman Catholic church in 1880.
Cyrillic alphabet
writing system developed in the 9th–10th century AD for Slavic-speaking peoples of the Eastern Orthodox faith; it is the alphabet currently used for Russian and other languages of the republics that once formed the Soviet Union and for Bulgarian and Serbian. Based on the medieval Greek uncial script, the Cyrillic alphabet was probably invented by later followers of the 9th-century “apostles to the Slavs,” St. Cyril (or Constantine), for whom it was named, and St. Methodius. As the Slavic languages were richer in sounds than Greek, 43 letters were originally provided to represent them; the added letters were modifications or combinations of Greek letters, or (in the case of the Cyrillic letters for ts, sh, and ch) they were based on Hebrew. The earliest literature written in Cyrillic was a translation of the Bible and various church texts.
The modern Cyrillic alphabets—Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and Serbian—have been modified somewhat from the original, generally by the loss of some superfluous letters. Modern Russian has 32 letters (33, with inclusion of the soft sign—not strictly a letter), Bulgarian 30, Serbian 30, and Ukrainian 32 (33). Modern Russian Cyrillic has also been adapted to many non-Slavic languages, sometimes with the addition of special letters.