Examples of the second type of vita, the martyria (the story of a martyred saint), are the Lives written about the death of Boris and Gleb at the hand of their brother Svyatopolk. One of them (The Reading Concerning the Life and Murder of SS Boris and Gleb), like The […]

There is another feature that is characteristic of hagiographical literature. It is seen most clearly in later hagiographical works of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but can already be found in the vitae of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This feature is abstractness. The author deliberately avoids being definite, precise, […]

A patericon is a collection of stories about the life of monks in a particular area or monastery. The oldest Russian patericon is that of the Kiev Crypt Monastery. The monastery was founded in the middle of the eleventh century, and already in The Tale of Bygone Years there is […]

The word pilgrimage (khozhdenie) in Old Russian literature was used for works describing pilgrimages to the holy places in the Near East and Byzantium. The earliest specimen of this genre is The Pilgrimage of Abbot Daniel.102 Very little is known about Daniel himself. He was the abbot of a Russian […]

The Lay of Igor’s Host was discovered by the well-known collector of Old Russian manuscripts, Count Alexei Musin-Pushkin, at the end of the eighteenth century. The intensive study of this outstanding monument of Old Russian literature dates from that period. Today the list of books and articles about The Lay […]

The Historical Basis of the Subject of The Lay of Igor’s Host. The events forming the basis of the subject of the Lay are set out in the chronicles in the following form.134 On April 23, 1185 Igor, Prince of Novgorod-Seversky,[1] set off on a campaign against the Polovtsians. He […]

1                The earliest surviving Old Russian manuscript book, the Ostromir Gospel transcribed in 1056-1057, was prepared at the request of posadnik (mayor) Ostromir of Novgorod. The rich Miscellany of 1073 was copied for Prince Izyaslav of Kiev (the later dedication was re-addressed to Prince Svyatoslav). The Mstislav Gospel was copied […]