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The Liturgical Past in Byzantium and Early Rus

The Liturgical Past in Byzantium and Early Rus

The Liturgical Past in Byzantium and Early Rus

Sean Griffin , Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
August 2020
Available
Paperback
9781108814843

    The chroniclers of medieval Rus were monks, who celebrated the divine services of the Byzantine church throughout every day. This study is the first to analyze how these rituals shaped their writing of the Rus Primary Chronicle, the first written history of the East Slavs. During the eleventh century, chroniclers in Kiev learned about the conversion of the Roman Empire by celebrating a series of distinctively Byzantine liturgical feasts. When the services concluded, and the clerics sought to compose a native history for their own people, they instinctively drew on the sacred stories that they sang at church. The result was a myth of Christian origins for Rus - a myth promulgated even today by the Russian government - which reproduced the Christian origins myth of the Byzantine Empire. The book uncovers this ritual subtext and reconstructs the intricate web of liturgical narratives that underlie this foundational text of pre-modern Slavic civilization.

    • Includes English translations of all primary sources, including many published here for the first time
    • Provides a major contribution to the study of the written history of East Slavic civilization
    • Demonstrates how these chronicle stories were later used for political as well as religious purposes

    Awards

    Winner, 2020 W. Bruce Lincoln Book Prize, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

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    Reviews & endorsements

    ‘It is hard to over-emphasize just what a tour de force this is.’ Nadieszda Kizenko, The Russian Review

    ‘… Sean Griffin’s excellent new study, The Liturgical Past in Byzantium and Early Rus, reveals just how complex, vital, revolutionary, and central this particular event - the Christianization of the Eastern Slavic peoples - was to the self-understanding and self-representation of Kiev’s ruling elite.’ Patrick Lally Michelson, Slavic Review

    ‘The focus of Sean Griffin’s book is a medieval chronicle and its sources. However, the subject resonates beyond its time.’ Simon Franklin, Los Angeles Review of Books

    ‘… there is no doubt that this book brings fresh insights and a powerful approach to the understanding of history writing in Rus’. This is a sharply argued contribution to Byzantine and Rus cultural and intellectual history that will deservedly be cited for decades to come.’ Florin Curta, Medieval Encounters

    ‘Griffin’s contribution has definitively inserted liturgy into the list of core sources for future studies of the medieval Slavic world, and provides a solid methodological starting point for future reflection on the topic.’ Nina Glibetić, Speculum

    ‘… an excellent study of specific aspects of liturgy in early Rus, and, in particular, the role of worship in the development of a myth of East Slavic Christian origins. Sean Griffin demonstrates a solid command of the most recent scholarship in the field and does so with an engaging style.’ Peter Galadza, Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies

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    Product details

    August 2020
    Paperback
    9781108814843
    285 pages
    229 × 152 × 16 mm
    0.425kg
    Available

    Table of Contents

    • Introduction
    • 1. Liturgy and history in Early Rus
    • 2. The Rus Primary Chronicle
    • 3. Vespers at the Kiev Monastery of the Caves
    • 4. The dayspring before the sun: Princess Olga of Kiev
    • 5. A new Constantine in the North: Prince Vladimir and the Baptism of Rus
    • 6. A rational sacrifice: the martyrdom of Princes Boris and Gleb
    • Conclusion: the making of royal saints in Early Rus.
      Author
    • Sean Griffin

      Sean Griffin is a junior fellow in the Society of Fellows at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. His interdisciplinary research focuses on both the most ancient and the most recent periods of Russian and Ukrainian history. He has previously been a Visiting Professor at Stanford University and was a VolkswagenStiftung fellow at Westfälische Wilhems-Universität in Münster, Germany from 2016 to 2017.

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