Literature of Ancient Rus’: Genre Characteristics #
The literature of Ancient Rus’ is divided into translated and original works. Translated literature appeared in Kievan Rus’ with the adoption of Christianity and had Byzantine and South Slavic (Bulgarian) origins. First and foremost, this included the biblical books of the Old and New Testaments, apocrypha, lives of the saints (hagiographic literature), religiously infused historical chronicles, writings about the structure of the universe and the creation of the world, collections of aphorisms, sayings of the wise, and the like.
The Bible is considered the most translated book throughout the entire course of human development. By the end of the 20th century, it had been translated into nearly 2,000 languages. The total number of copies, taking all editions into account, reaches nearly a billion.
Slavic writing had two variants: Cyrillic and Glagolitic. The question arises as to which of these two alphabets is older, but both originated from the Greek alphabet: Glagolitic from Greek cursive, Cyrillic from the Greek liturgical script. The name “Cyrillic” arose because the appearance of this alphabet is associated with the brothers Cyril and Methodius of Thessalonica, the first Christian teachers. This script came to Rus’ in the Cyrillic form and, having undergone various modifications over the course of nearly a millennium, remains the traditional writing system to this day.
Education in Rus’ began simultaneously with the introduction of Christianity, which awakened in Russian society the first need for book learning and brought with it the first books. Book learning was needed first of all to prepare Russian pastors; then, the desire to study the Holy Scripture inevitably arose among the best of the laity.
The Slavic Bible is a monument to the shared Slavic Christian religion and the foundation of the culture of Slavic peoples. Before the advent of printing in Rus’, the Holy Scripture was represented by numerous manuscript editions, the most well-known of which are the translation of the Bible by Saints Cyril and Methodius (9th century), the Kiev (Reims) Gospel (mid-10th century), the Novgorod Psalter (late 10th century), the Ostromir Gospel (mid-11th century), the Evgeniev Psalter (mid-11th century), the Spasskoe Gospel (mid-13th century), the Kiev Psalter (14th century), the Khitrovo Gospel (15th century), the Gennadiev Bible (15th century), and others. It is worth noting that the complete manuscript text of the Gennadiev Bible later became the basis for the printed edition of the Holy Scripture. The Gennadiev Bible is “the first complete compilation of biblical books of the Old and New Testaments in the history of Slavic Cyrillic writing, and it became the foundation for printed Bible editions in the East Slavic lands.”
The Bible contains the fundamental moral concepts about man’s place in the world and his social and personal responsibility. The development of culture cannot proceed without the study of this Book. The Bible is a majestic monument of all human culture.
The Bible has influenced our society through its impact on our language and the words we use. Many words and expressions have their roots in the Bible. These roots are deeper than those of Greek, Latin, or any other languages. The Bible is quoted more often than any other literature in history and has had a greater influence on our language, culture, and laws than any other book or idea ever published.
As one of the most important collections of religious texts, this Book is characterized by immense thematic diversity. It contains expositions of Christian dogma, historical narratives, religious essays, lyric poetry, and religious mysticism. This led not only to the direct use of biblical texts in Christian liturgical practice, but also to the enrichment of the entire Christian culture by the life experience recorded in the Bible.
The Bible is rightfully considered the most popular book in the world. It precedes all world literature in general and every national literature in particular. It reveals the worldview, moral, aesthetic, legal, and other foundations of social life — the relationship between people and their attitude toward the surrounding world.
Liturgical reading of the Bible, the necessity of preserving and reproducing its texts, and the inclusion of commentaries determined the great role of biblical and theological literature in the life of the Christian Church, and the role of monasteries as centers of literary culture. The biblical text demonstrates a whole range of literary genres and specific methods of artistic expression. Among them are forms common to other ancient literatures, as well as unique ones that define the distinctive character of the Bible as a religious and sacred text.
If we turn to the Sacred Text itself, we will see that all the sacred objects and rites of the temple, the arrangement and order of the church’s interior space, its architectural forms—in short, everything that we can see in an Orthodox church—has its foundation in the Word of God: the holy icons and the cross are nothing other than Holy Scripture, but conveyed through the means of church art; the divine services consist of spiritually transfigured elements. In Scripture we also find the division of temple space into the outer court, the holy place, and the Holy of Holies; the burning of incense, lamps, the veil, and the royal doors. And this concerns only the external forms of the Church’s liturgical life, within whose symbols and signs the Word of God thus becomes a source of spirituality.
We encounter Holy Scripture even more directly during the services: at Vespers and Matins it is primarily Old Testament texts—excerpts from the prophetic and didactic books. The Gospel is read at every Divine Liturgy. During the Liturgy, passages from the Book of Acts, the Apostolic Epistles, and the Gospels are read. But a large part of the service consists of special poetic texts—stikhery, tropars, kondaky, ikosi—written specifically for church worship as early as the first millennium of the Christian era.
Holy Scripture is, in a sense, the cornerstone, for “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1); and at the same time, it is the manifestation of the power of the Holy Ghost in the life of the Church and of believers. That is, in the life of each believer, Holy Scripture has its own spiritual power. This is inevitable. It is tied, first and foremost, to a person’s convictions, aspirations, and inner spiritual seeking.
The holy Apostle Paul reflects on this extensively. He divides people into two categories: spiritual and carnal. A person striving to seek true, inward righteousness is a person in search of the spiritual. But a person consumed by the sensual, the external, and not aiming his gaze toward an inner search, belongs to the category of the carnal man.
Holy Scripture is, figuratively speaking, the foundation laid for the building of the Church, which has been formed under the guidance of the Holy Ghost. The canon was not established by any one individual, but was formed through the consensus of the entire Church concerning which books of Scripture—those that now constitute the Bible—were chosen and deemed most important and sufficient for reading by Christians. These texts, artistically shaped, are meant to draw the listener into the world of Holy Scripture, to make him a participant in the events of sacred history and a sharer in the dogmas of the Christian faith contained in the Gospel. Between the faithful worshipper and the sacred truths of Scripture stretches a thousand-year tradition of the Church, rooted in Byzantine culture. Paradoxically, this also became an obstacle to the full comprehension of Orthodox doctrine by the Russian people. In the early period of their ecclesiastical history, what most attracted the Russian people to Orthodoxy was the external beauty of the liturgical rite and the splendor of Byzantine art. And though all of these liturgical, artistic, and architectural forms were only a means of expressing lofty Christian truths, the ability to rise to the height of their understanding was granted only to a few—the most educated classes of Russian society: princes, boyars, clergy, and monks.
Among the books of Holy Scripture in Ancient Rus’, the Psalter and Proverbs of Solomon were the most widely distributed. The Psalter was used for centuries as a tool for teaching reading. Hagiographic literature enjoyed the greatest popularity. The author of a vita presented the saint as an ideal Christian, choosing morally edifying events from his life in order to offer the reader a model of behavior. In their more accessible form, translated vitae were compiled into the Lives of the Saints Arranged by the Months (Chet’yi-Minei)—books intended for daily reading according to the days of the month. Collections of short stories and episodes from the lives of Christian ascetics were known as Paterikon (“The Book of the Fathers”), and told of ascetics, hermits, and others.
Church-historical literature in Kievan Rus’ was represented by historical chronicles, which interpreted world history from a religious perspective (such as the Chronicles of John Malalas of Antioch, George the Hamartolos, Symeon Logothetes, and others). Natural science literature was presented in translations of the Hexaemeron and the Physiologus, which were brought from Byzantium and recounted the creation of the world by God.
In the Physiologus, stories were told about flora and fauna, offering information about both real and mythical animals, as well as stones and trees. The Christian Topography by Cosmas Indicopleustes (who sailed to India) described the structure of the universe and criticized the teaching that the earth is round. Also widespread in translation were the works of the Church Fathers, or patristic literature. These included the writings of Saints John Chrysostom, Gregory the Theologian, John of Damascus, and others. In the 12th century, translated collections titled Pchela (“The Bee”) and Izmaragd (“The Emerald”) also circulated in Kievan Rus’. These works contained aphoristic sayings, legends, and moral teachings about wisdom and folly, generosity and stinginess, good and evil, and so on. The sayings were taken from the Bible and from the works of ancient writers and philosophers such as Socrates, Diogenes, Pythagoras, Aristotle, and others. The authors of Old Russian literature used these collections as source material, and many of their sayings and aphorisms entered into popular folklore.
Among translated works, the apocrypha occupy an important place—religious writings not recognized by the Church that speak about biblical persons and events (apokryphos in Greek means “secret,” “hidden”). They tell of the struggle between God and Satan, of the first humans Adam and Eve, of the kings David and Solomon, of the God-bearer (Mother of God), of the torments of sinners in hell, and more. The apocrypha greatly interested Ivan Franko, who compiled five volumes of such texts from Ukrainian manuscripts under the title Apocrypha and Legends from Ukrainian Manuscripts (Lviv, 1896–1910).
The Paterik of the Kiev Caves is one of the most valuable monuments of early Russian literature. It arose within the walls of the Kiev Caves Lavra in the first half of the 13th century, based on the monastery chronicle—a series of stories about the holy fathers. Composed during the flourishing of the Pechersk monastery, it glorifies its sanctity and attracts the attention of both authorities and the faithful. At the foundation of the work is a letter by Bishop Simon of Vladimir and Suzdal to the Pechersk monk Polycarp, who, dissatisfied with his position in the monastery, complained of being underappreciated. Bishop Simon reproached Polycarp for his discontent, pride, and ambition, and advised him to endure offenses humbly and forgive those who wronged him. The bishop persuaded the disobedient monk that simply dwelling in the holy monastery is already an honor and a glory, and that a quiet and peaceful life is pleasing to God. In his letter, Bishop Simon included many edifying examples and stories from the lives of Pechersk monks, recounting the miracles that occurred in the monastery. The heroes of these tales include both holy and sinful monks: Eustratius the faster, Kuksha the martyr, Prince Svyatosha, Saints Anthony and Theodosius of the Caves, Erasmus the black-robe monk, and others. Shamed by his teacher’s example, Polycarp also took up the pen. He decided to write down the lives and deeds of the blessed fathers of the monastery so that future generations of monks might learn about them and recognize the holiness of the place where they serve God. Polycarp told of Saint Agapitus the healer, Prochorus the Lebednik, Mark the gravedigger, and others. The Paterik of the Kiev Caves does not follow a single, continuous plot. It consists of individual novellas, with miracles and spiritual feats of the renowned monks serving as the central and unifying theme, alongside their struggles against temptations and passions. The work is valuable for its insight into the everyday life and relationships of the monks, presented within the broader context of the reality that unfolded outside the monastery walls. The authors truthfully and without embellishment describe human imperfection, weakness, and passion, the vanity of earthly life, and the eternal temptations that hinder the path to salvation.
The literary monuments of the princely era of Rus’, in addition to their high artistic and aesthetic value, possess enduring educational and cultural significance. Even today, they continue to resonate with readers, addressing timeless issues of humanism, social cohesion, and national unity.
The Ostromir Gospel is the oldest dated manuscript monument of the Church Slavonic language in the Kievan state. It was created in 1056–1057. It is a translation from a Bulgarian original, made by the deacon Gregory for the Novgorod posadnik (mayor) Ostromir, after whom the Gospel is named. The Ostromir Gospel contains selected Gospel readings. Although the work is written in Old Church Slavonic—the language of liturgical worship—it includes elements of the living spoken language of Rus’. The manuscript comprises 294 large-format folios, richly decorated with colorful uncials, ornamental headpieces, and three miniatures depicting the Evangelists John, Luke, and Mark.
The second most important dated monument of Old Russian writing is the Svyatoslav’s Izbornik (1073). It is an archaic handwritten anthology containing a variety of expressions and excerpts from theological writings. The book has an encyclopedic character, addressing topics in Christian theology and offering information on astronomy and astrology, mathematics and physics, history, philosophy, grammar, zoology, botany, logic, and ethics. The Izbornik was copied by the deacon Ivan and other scribes for the Kievan Prince Svyatoslav Yaroslavich from a Bulgarian source originally compiled in the early 10th century for the Bulgarian Tsar Simeon. The Svyatoslav’s Izbornik contains more than 380 articles by 25 authors (mostly Byzantine).
The third written monument, the Izbornik of 1076, was compiled from manuscripts belonging to the princely library of the St. Sophia Cathedral. This book contains a wide variety of spiritual and philosophical material—reflections on true faith, teachings directed at children, and similar content.
Altogether, 33 books from the 11th century have come down to us, and in the following three centuries—1,460 books. In ancient Rus’, the Bible was not only a book for the elite and the noble, but through the clergy, their sermons, writers, and statesmen, it spoke also to the common people. Drawing on biblical themes and images, the literature of ancient Rus’ expressed a religious worldview while simultaneously creating models of refined literary style.
One of the important theological and morally instructive genres in Rus’ became hagiographic collections, or lives of the saints. This type of literature gained mass popularity thanks to the widespread interest in the lives of those devoted to the faith—lives that exemplified selfless service to the Lord and inspired readers to examine their own thoughts and deeds in the light of such devotion.
Every vita contains a certain religious, canonical idea or moral maxim. The most common form of this idea was expressed through quotations from Holy Scripture, which filled the text of the vita and often brought each episode to a meaningful conclusion. At times, theological and moral teachings were constructed entirely upon such biblical maxims, sanctified by Scripture’s authority. The imagery of the vita often included symbols—above all, persons and events from Sacred History, as presented in Scripture and Holy Tradition, and figures from Church history: martyrs, venerables, hierarchs, and others, whose lives are recounted in hagiographic literature.
Almost every saint’s life includes a symbolic and figurative sequence of characters whose lives unfolded outside the specific time and place of the saint being commemorated. Among the original vitae of Kievan Rus’ are The Life of Boris and Gleb, The Life of Vladimir, The Life of Olga, A Homily to Prince Vladimir, and The Life of Theodosius of the Caves. The Paterik of the Kiev Caves, compiled in the early 13th century, included fragments from The Primary Chronicle, as well as stories by Nestor the Chronicler that recount certain historical events. The Paterik itself portrayed the lives of saints as majestic examples of service to God and man, worthy of imitation. The authors of these vitae made wide use of didactic rhetoric borrowed from the New Testament, interpreting Old Testament texts as the fulfillment of certain prophecies. The goal of these writings was to cultivate moral and ethical Christian virtues in the believer and to strengthen the faith.
A separate variety of the biblical chronicle genre were the letopisi—chronicles. Though considered original compositions, their format of chronological narration was modeled after the historical and chronological books of the Bible, which present facts in a set order describing historical events. Following the example of biblical chronicles, Russian chroniclers recorded events of state and public life. The Bible was often used by these chroniclers, who frequently inserted biblical narratives into their works.
In the Primary Chronicle, we find excerpts from Old Testament books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Kings, Proverbs, Job, and the prophetic books of Daniel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Micah, Amos, as well as New Testament texts—the Gospels and the Epistles of the Apostles. Chroniclers did not merely quote Scripture, but sought to interpret and explain it.
A study of the Bible’s influence, as reflected through theological literature, on the popular culture of Kievan Rus’ shows that ancient literary works often contain transformed texts from nearly every biblical book. Writers, when creating their works, constantly relied on biblical texts and supported their conclusions with references to the authority of Holy Scripture.
The multi-genre theological literature of Kievan Rus’ provided worthy examples for emulation, corrected human behavior and conduct, and promoted the personal growth of individuals and the development of social thought. For in these works, eternal human values were brought to the fore—values that cannot be devalued by time, power, or force. Theological literature offered symbolic and allegorical interpretations of Holy Scripture.
In the figurative theological literature of Kievan Rus’ from the 11th to the 13th centuries, there is embodied a system of ideas that shaped the Christian worldview. This literature is imbued with artistic parallels to the books of the Bible, reinforcing a Christian concept of statehood in the collective consciousness of the people.
Thus, the literature of Ancient Rus’ is divided into translated and original works. Translated literature emerged in Kievan Rus’ with the adoption of Christianity and had Byzantine and South Slavic (Bulgarian) origins. In examining the principal genre collections of books in Rus’, we have identified the special role of Holy Scripture as a source of spirituality. Holy Scripture provides answers to all questions of the Christian life. A person exists in interaction with the surrounding spiritual, cultural, and material traditions, which are interrelated. Therefore, in the development of the history of Old Russian book culture, the books of Holy Scripture hold the central place. The collection itself constitutes the central genre form of Old Russian written tradition.
Sources
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