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• BC 510:BC 44; ROME, from Republic to Empire
•    ---(SAC coverage of Russian and World History actually begins here = )
• 453:988; BYZANTINE STEPPE FRONTIER
• 576:966; Khazars vied for dominance in the Pontic Steppe [LOOP on "Khazar"]
• 632:1018; Beginnings of great Bulgarian medieval tsardom [LOOP on "Bulgar" NB! distinction from "Bolgar"]
• 632je:1029; Beginnings of massive Muslim Arabic Empire [LOOP on "Arab"]
• 789: Frankish king Charlemagne launched religious/military "crusade" against NE Slavs
• 839:+; Warrior merchants (popularly called "Vikings") plied the seas and rivers of Europe and western Eurasia
• 862:980; Beginnings of Russian history, establishment of Kievan Rus'
• 980:1223; KIEVAN RUS, from grandeur, through decline, to utter destruction
• 1029:Seljuk Turks irrupted into Persian and Arabic territories
• 1066:Normans conquered the English Island
• 1223:1328; THE GOLDEN HORDE (Mongol [Tatar] Dominion)
• 1328:1462; MUSCOVITE RUSSIA phase #1 = Agent & Enemy of Golden Horde
• 1462:1533;         Phase #2 = Independence & Grandeur: Ivan III "the Great"
• 1533:1587;         Phase #3 = IVAN IV "THE TERRIBLE"
• 1587:1612no19; Phase #4 = TIME OF TROUBLES
• 1612no19:1652; Phase #5 = ZEMSKII SOBOR and LAW CODE
• 1652:1682;         Phase #6 = RASKOL [Schism] and NATIONAL CRISIS
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<>BC 800,000 (approximately) "Homo erectus" had the ability to sail in open seas. Early-early humanity crossed large stretches of water (12 miles or more), probably on bamboo rafts, to reach the Indonesian island Flores. Archaeologist Mike Morwood at University of New England in Armidale, Australia, has studied and dated stone tools found on Flores. This evidence vastly expands the earlier presumptions about human culture, particularly human capabilities on the open seas. Earlier it was presumed that the first such adventures were across the waters between modern-day Indonesia and Australia, 40-60,000 years ago [1998:Nature].

<>BC 510:390; Roman aristocratic republic lasted 120 years In these early years what would eventually be known as “The Twelve Tables” served as a powerful “constitutional” foundation of Roman law. At the end, Rome was captured and burned by Gauls. Stoic old senators were massacred as they sat in their homes.

<> BC 390:270; Roman Republic, over the next 120 years, recovered and was transformed as it established its authority over the surrounding “frontier”. Rome finally had administrative, military and economic control over the whole Italian peninsula, but at the same time its civilization was overwhelmed. Roman culture was “Hellenized” from the East by Greek thinkers, artists craftsmen. Should we call this “Easternization” of Rome? 

<>BC 270:120; Roman republic’s final grand epoch lasted 150 years. It expanded beyond Italy to Spain, North Africa (Carthage), the Balkan Peninsula (Macedonia), and into the lands of its cultural tutors, the Greeks. This happened in a series of three “Punic Wars” against Carthage and campaigns into regions washed by the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
*--Roman constitution and imperial expansion were described by Greek-born historian Polybius. He emphasized the “mixed” quality of the Roman state and extolled the positive virtues of balanced and solidly institutionalized government. Three powers “checked and thwarted one another” -- Consuls (military leaders), Senators (civilian elites) and Tribunes (elected representatives of the people, the Plebeians or “Plebs”). In his view, these three powers prevented any one faction from dominating public life in the republic. The result, in his ideal model, was “mutual interdependency of all the three”. Polybius had reason to be nervous about trends in his own time.
*--Unprecedented wealth poured in as imperialist tribute and booty were collected from subdued peoples. Slavery expanded, independent small holdings (farms) declined. The power of a Senatorial oligarchy was increasingly unchecked.  The force of "The Twelve Tables" faded with the decline of the republic. The tables were put aside as empire came to replace republic.
*--Orator, author and Censor Cato (the Elder) resisted loss of old “Roman virtues” and objected to excessive luxuries and intensified cultural “Easternization”, but ended by learning Greek himself.

<>BC 133:Roman Tribune Tiberius Gracchus launched political campaign to restore balance to Roman political life. He worked against insiders who privatized vast public lands, impoverished the masses, and threatened to dominate the republic. A group of Senators killed Tiberius.

<>BC 123: Roman Tribune Gaius Gracchus took up his brother’s cause, trying to expand citizenship beyond the city Rome and broaden public participation. He stabilized grain prices and weakened Senatorial power.  Gaius’ enemies attacked and massacred his supporters. He asked a faithful servant to kill him so as to avoid being taken himself. His reforms were scuttled. Senatorial power was restored.

<>BC 102:86; Roman army, now a professional rather than a citizen’s force, defeated Germanic invaders, propelling their successful and popular commander Marius onto center stage.
*--Equites [Equestrian order, the non-Senatorial commercial elite] grew in wealth and power, cashing in on military aggression. Insider bankers, money-lenders, government “procurement” contractors, executives in corporations [societates] became very wealthy, while general prosperity languished. Equites fortunes were increasingly tied to military imperialism, as was the economic misery of the wider population.
*--Military dictatorship was replacing civilian rule at the end of this 16 year period. Marius assumed power and massacred his enemies.

 <>BC 82:79; Rome soon ruled by a second military dictator, Sulla [Sylla], a bitter rival of Marius but with much the same meaning for the republic. Sulla introduced “proscriptions” [enemy lists] and authorized anyone to kill those on the lists. The price of political “checking and thwarting” was going up. The ethos of the battlefield was being applied to social and political life. The Roman republic was doomed. The myth and many of the forms survived, but the spirit was near death. Senatorial power was restored after Sulla’s harsh dictatorship, while the power of the Tribunes continued to be curbed.
*--The next phase of “Easternization” began to supplant the first phase. Sober Greek trends of thought were being replaced by astrology, magic and other Asian religious or mystery cults. 

<>BC 70:30; Rome gripped in ruinous civil war as all factions were at one another’s throats, seeking to destroy rather than “check and thwart” one another. In the last century of the republic the Equites, in commercial alliance with growing ambition of the army, promoted mounting indebtedness among Romans and ruthless exploitation of the provinces. Together, the commercial/military elites undermined the venerable republic.
*--This was, however, a period of cultural brilliance, “The Age of Cicero”. Roman civilization produced Lucretius, Catullus, young Virgil and the great writer, orator and politician Cicero.

<>BC 48:44; Rome fell under the personal autocratic military dictatorship of Julius Caesar who had returned with his armies from successful imperial wars of aggression against Germanic “barbarians” in north-central and western Europe. Caesar was soon assassinated.
*--In the brutal struggle among dictatorial factions (some of them Senatorial and elitist, some of them democratic and just plain despotic) Cicero learned the futility of what he called contra arma verbis [words against weapons]. When he criticized Marcus Antonius in the public forum, he was chased down in the woods and beheaded by three clumsy sword strokes. Antonius put Cicero’s head and severed writing hand on display at the public forum where something approaching free speech had reigned for centuries. Antonius thought to teach a lesson to those who would express views contrary to militarist powers.
*--Four centuries of mixed republican life was now at an end. No more “mutual interdependency” of major social and political factions, no more authentic give and take for the public good, defined in social or civilian terms. Politics were now blood sport or, more apropos, war. Factions conspired with one another for complete annihilation of opponents. Military Imperial autocracy and dictatorship, vicious governmental insanity and extreme depravity of public life followed. It worked for a long-long while, four centuries, and it benefited well-to-do Romans. But it put the wider population into a bound relationship to power, and it destroyed all but the myth of Roman virtue, even as it built big cities, good roads, and sumptuous hot baths. [MAP]
*--The Empire finally destroyed itself when Germanic peoples, erstwhile subjects and trainees of the powerful western Roman Empire, captured Rome.
*--The Roman Empire in the East, Byzantium, survived yet a thousand more years, until Constantinople too fell to invaders in 1453

 

 

-------NEARLY 4 CENTURIES SEPARATE CICERO'S MURDER & THE NICAEAN COUNCIL =

 

 

<>0325:Nicaean Council (First Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church). This "ecumenical" or "universal" council (inclusive of all Christian churches) dealt with Arianism, a popular doctrine taught by a priest in Alexandria (Egypt), Arius. He taught that Jesus Christ was neither God nor man but was a particular creation of God, something of a demigod. Orthodox doctrine preferred to describe Jesus as a sacred and mystical combination of God and man. Arianism was declared a heresy
*--This council also created the first three Patriarchal Sees (central administrative "thrones" of the universal church) = Alexandria, Antioch (in modern-day Turkey) and Rome
*0330:Constantinople was founded and named the co-capital of a Roman Empire. The Christian Emperor Constantine named the new capital Constantinopolis, after himself.  The Roman Empire now sported an official ideology = Christianity. Emperor Constantine was much influenced by Arianism, but the new capital became an official Patriarchal See, the fourth
*0398:Constantinople | John Chrysostom became Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church [Eastern Church website W#1]. Chrysostom was a brilliant orator and author of a sermon on Christ's Beatitudes [TXT] Notice the simplicity and easy colloquial eloquence. He also wrote against popular heresies of his day, e.g., Manichaeans [ID]
*--Constantinople now eclipsed Rome as the central Patriarchal See of the  Universal Christian Church
*0451:Jerusalem was designated the fifth Patriarchal See
*--The highest level institutional administrative structure of the Christian Church remained unchanged for more than a millennium, until the Metropolitan of Moscow became the Moscow Patriarchate in 1589

<>0453:988; BYZANTINE STEPPE FRONTIER

<>0453:Hun commander Attila died. Black Sea or Pontic steppes entered another in a long series of disordered epochs or simple flux, sometimes a gentle milling of peoples and sometimes forceful movement of violent nomadic warriors. We know very little about these early epochs in the history of the Pontic Steppes [the open steppes west, north and east of the Black Sea] and of Eurasia
*--The famous Enlightenment historian Edward Gibbon, in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, described these as eras of "obscure calamities". In this extended period of wandering peoples, the western capital of the Roman Empire (Rome) fell, while Constantinople, the Eastern capital of that empire since the year 330, survived another thousand years, until 1453. The Eastern Roman Empire is known as the Byzantine Empire [W]
*--Here is a contemporary aerial photo of Constantinople [called Istanbul in the Turkic epoch] =

The Blue Mosque (foreground) and St.Sophia Cathedral (background)
in contemporary Istanbul [Constantinople]
[Source: website#2 above]
St.Sophia Cathedral was the intellectual-cultural center of Christian life in the Constantinople epoch (now a museum)
Blue Mosque is the spiritual center of Muslim [Islamic] life in the current Istanbul epoch

*--In the confused centuries up to the 800s, Slavic peoples lived originally as village-based farming folk along the Pomeranian shores of the Baltic Sea [the name "Pomerania" comes from a Slavic expression for "at the seashore", po more]. Under pressure from migrating Germanic or Gothic peoples, these Slavs shifted Eastward and Southward along the Eastern slopes of the Carpathian Mountains out into the cold Valdai savannahs [mixed woods and prairies where the Volga, Dnepr, western Dvina, and Volkhov rivers rise], into the woodsy farm lands of present-day northern European Russia.
*--Slavs and other peoples migrated in response to the pressures of something like a demographic Rubic's Cube. As one people or "tribe" moved, others moved perforce and/or were absorbed. The movements of Gothic peoples, both Visigoths [West Goths] and Ostrogoths [East Goths] were a powerful cause of demographic flux. Slavs shifted westward and southward in rhythm with the pan-European flux, a phenomenon the Germans call Volkerwanderungen, the wandering of peoples.

Three distinct Slavic cultures emerged from this process =

• West Slavic villagers settled down in territories roughly equivalent to where modern-day Lithuanians, Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks live
• East Slavs settled where today we find Belarusians, Ukrainians and Russians
• South Slavic peoples, in the centuries prior to the 9th, found themselves extruded into the boiling cauldron of demographic change in the lower Danube valley, along the vital defensive frontier of Byzantium, northwest of Constantinople. These Slavs were pressured in all directions, but the most important force was the first great epoch of Turkic expansion into eastern Europe =
  *--Under the command of Bulgar [Turkic] boyars [Slavic word for military commanders or leaders] or Hunnic chieftains, they drifted even further southwest, forming what was to become a great Christian tsardom "Bulgaria". In the two centuries up to about 700, the south Slavic villagers in the lower Danube valley "Slavicized" their Turkic boyars, filled the countryside of what is modern-day Bulgaria, and founded a powerful Christian Bulgarian tsardom [W] and [MAP]
  *--The Turkic Bulgars who did not move into the Danube valley, who held to the wild eastern steppes, eventually were pushed by Khazar expansion northward up the Volga valley in the lands around the city Kazan where they formed a significant Islamic or Muslim Bolgar khanate [W] =
  *--Bolgar khanate is here spelled with an "o" to distinguish Danube Bulgars from Volga Bolgars on SAC
  *--Similar movements were under way in the Balkan Peninsula, "Yugoslavia" and Greece
  *--Hundreds of years after the Bulgar/Bolgar migrations, a second epoch of Turkic expansion poured out of the Altai highlands
  *--Eurasia in outline [MAP]
  

In a process of remarkable cultural syncretism, West, East and South Slavic peoples filled the countryside from the eastern Baltic to the Adriatic and Black sea coasts. They were the rural platform over which generations of warrior nomadic peoples passed, sometimes recruiting Slavs into their service, often becoming absorbed into these Slavic cultures.

To the south of all this flux, the Byzantine Empire evolved a subtle and complex diplomatic, military and commercial network of relations designed to protect itself from the destructive potential of nomadic instability and to profit from it. Byzantium was forced to play with fire.
\\
*--A summary history of Byzantium
*--Obolensky:42-61
*--Paul M. Barford, The early Slavs: Culture and society in early medieval Eastern Europe (2001)
*--Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (2005)
*--Julia M. H. Smith, Europe After Rome: A New Cultural History, 500-1000 (2005)

<>0494:Rome| Pope Gelasius's "Letter" [TXT] on spiritual and temporal power outlined the "two-swords" concept of western Christendom, suggesting a degree of separation of church and state such as eastern Christendom never knew
*--Eastern Orthodox Christian institutional traditions differed from those being developed in Rome ("the western patriarchate" of the universal Christian Church) precisely in the definition of church/state relations. One of the most dramatic demonstrations of the "Western" aberration occurred in 1076

<>0540:Balkan Peninsula settled by Bulgarian Kutrigurs and Slavs

<>0550c:Byzantine Empire| Procopius of Caesarea on Slavs [VSB,1:7]

<>0550c:Gothic Jordanes on Slavs [VSB,1:7-8]

<>0576:Turkomen of Central Asia turned against Byzantium, forcing the Empire to pull back to more proximate positions in the northern Caucasus and Crimea in order to protect themselves from Avars, then Khazars out on the Pontic steppes

<>0600c:Byzantine Empire| Basileus [Emperor] Mauricius described Slavs [VSB,1:8-9]

<>0626:Constantinople seiged by Avars and Slavs

<>0632:651; Bulgar khan, the Turk Kubrat, created independent Bulgar khanate along northern watersheds flowing into the Danube

<>0632je:Islamic Prophet Mohammed died, marking the beginning of one of the world's most dramatic cultural/political explosions, the spread of the Muslim Arabic Empire [W]
*--Note dominant role of Arabia in chronology that follows, to 777, then follow links
\\
*--Barnaby Rogerson, The Heirs of the Prophet Muhammad: The Two Paths to Islam (2006) accounts how the Arabic empire spread rapidly. However, two of Mohammed's heirs became symbolic patrons of two warring factions that continued over the following 13 centuries to split Islam into fatally hostile camps. Mohammed's son-in-law Ali inspired the Shia; Mohammed's wife Aisha the Sunni

<>0674:678; Byzantine capital city Constantinople sieged by Muslim Arabs

<>0680:681; Constantinople Council (Sixth Ecumenical [universal] Council). Monophysite Heresy condemned. Alexandria, Jerusalem and Antioch were now all under Moslem rule. Rome was in the grip of barbarian rustication. For all practical purposes, the Patriarch of Constantinople was the sole independent head of the universal Christian Church

<>0689:Bulgar khan Asparukh [W] moved with his people over the Danube to the south, thus breaching one of the most important Roman/Byzantine defensive lines against nomadic incursion. Now the Bulgars would have to be co-opted into close alliance with Byzantium or crushed

<>0695:Dnepr River delta city Kherson, a key trading point in the Crimean area, was under the khagan [khan, kagan, kahan; ruling monarch] of Khazaria, but soon Byzantium achieved joint authority with them

<>0711:712; Spain conquered by Arabic forces

<>0717:718; Constantinople under siege by Arabs but received significant support from Bulgar khan Tervel and his warriors [boyars]
*--Bulgaria an increasingly important power west of Constantinople
\\
*--Obolensky:61-68

<>0718:732; France under Arabic invasion

<>0737:Lower Volga territories of Khazar authority [W] subject to Arabic attack, but without any long-term success. Soon Khazars held the middle-Dnepr city Kiev. Khazar khaganate became the dominant power throughout the European steppes. Khagan Bulan accepted Judaism and over the next century it spread among the Khazar elite, functioning as something like an official religion, a counterpoise to Byzantine Orthodox Christianity and Arabic Islam

<>0750:Islam split = Sunni and Shie branches of the Muslim faith. Sunni khalif [Caliph, Kalif] established in Damascus [capital of modern-day Syria]

<>0754:Constantinople| Church Council condemned the worship of images (icons) [W]
*--Attack on icons was called "iconoclasm" [TXT]
*--The Church called the last great Ecumenical Council to deal with this crisis

<>0763:Baghdad founded [capital of modern-day Iraq], Shie khalif

<>0777:Spanish holdings of Arabs attacked by Frankish King Karl. The Germanic king Karl consolidated his predecessor's authority over folks who would later be called "French" (a distortion of the Germanic name "Frank" with its core meaning "free" never completely lost). Karl was encouraged by a growing closeness with the western Patriarch (Pope) in Rome to think of himself as a possible new Caesar of a reviving Roman Empire. This required freeing the Spanish holdings of the old Rome from Islamic cultural, political, and economic control
*--Great epic poem commemorated heroism of Frankish commander Roland [W]
*--Eurasia [MAP]

<>0787:Nicaea| Seventh Ecumenical Council restored worship of icons, on the initiative of Byzantine Empress Irene. Imperial power in church affairs was consolidated. Thus the reciprocal role of the Church in imperial politics consolidated. The church/state relationship in Byzantium has been called "symphonia", and the action flowed in both directions between Church and state
*--Church councils website presents main substance of all seven of the great ecumenical councils
*--As conflict between east and west intensified, the "Patriarch of the West" [Pope in Rome] was at a distinct disadvantage: He had no emperor -- not yet, at least (see just below) -- nor did he want his Church under the authority of an emperor like that of Byzantium.

<>0789:Baltic Sea, southeastern Pomeranian shores | Slavs (largely what would later be known as Poles) and Esti [Estonians] subdued by Frankish King Karl, a campaign inspired by more than a little bit of the crusader or proselytizing spirit, bringing Christianity to the pagans of NE Europe
*--0800:814; Germanic speaking King Karl became Karlus Magnus (Charles the Great; better known later by the French name Charlemagne). The Patriarch of Rome (Pope) crowned him Emperor. The western half of the great Roman Empire was reviving itself under the leadership of the Pope and in league with the heirs of the very nomadic invaders who earlier destroyed the western Empire [ID]
*--Einhard's "Life of Charlemagne" [TXT]
*--Charlemagne and the Pope at first pretended to imperial authority over the whole Empire (east and west, Constantinople and Rome), but reality soon prevailed. By 812, Emperor Constantine's nearly 500-year-old division of the old Roman Empire into east and west [ID] was once again recognized back in the now rusticated city Rome
*--Western Europe under Charlemagne and just after his death [MAP]
*--King Karl's achievements and ambitions were quickly followed first by decline, then revival of the western imperial idea under German King Otto I, to be designated the Holy Roman Empire. For the next 800 years a German dominated imperial power, sometimes a fiction or pretense, loomed on the western borders of the "Byzantine Commonwealth", in eastern Europe, in the Balkan Peninsula and Russia
\\
*--Dmitri Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth, 500-1453
*--Albert Brackmann, "The Beginnings of the National State in Medieval Europe and the Norman Monarchies", Medieval Germany,2:281-99 (an example of how narrow nationalist history found some compatibility with Nazism. See Gasiorowski below).
*--Z. J. Gasiorowski, "The conquest Theory of the Genesis of the Polish State"| 1955:Speculum#30:550-60. Cf. Brackmann above
*1937:As WW2 loomed, English author Rebecca West traveled through the Balkan territories of the old Byzantine Commonwealth and wrote a lengthy and still-inspiring travelogue which drew together the medieval history of the region with mid-20th-century events

<>0803:831; Bulgar khans Krum and Omurtag ruled in an epoch of great ethnic and religious diversity in Bulgaria

<>0827:843; Sicily and southern Italy conquered by Arabic forces

<>0839:German source Annales Bertiniani [W] reported on warrior merchants who passed through German-speaking territories on their way to and from western Eurasian markets. This company called themselves collectively "Rhos". At this time they lived in the northern regions of modern-day Russia, probably around the fortress city Novgorod. They were commanded by a "chacanus" [an effort in Latin to capture the common Pontic-Steppe political term for commander/leader, "khan"]. They said they were originally from the Baltic shores of the lower Scandinavian peninsula. In their new homeland, these Rhos were variously called Rus' or Variagi or Dany [?Danes] [VSB,1:11]
*---In other areas of Europe, other warrior merchant companies, originally from the Baltic shores of the Scandinavian peninsula, were beginning to make their appearance [EG].  They have collectively come to be known as Vikings or Norsemen
 \\
*--Jones

<>0846:Ibn-Khurdadhbih [W] on Rus merchants and their fabulous routes. He identified them as "a kind of Slav", suggesting that these boats contained some sort of mixture of Scandinavian/Slavic crews and captains [VSB,1:9 | RRH,1:63-4]
*--Viking routes [MAP] suggest that warrior merchants related to the Rus' encircled all of Europe, along seacoasts in the north, west and south, and over river passages in the east

<>0852:First dated entry in Laurentian text (written long after this year) of the Russian Chronicle [CPC:58]
*--CPC:59-205 covers origins of Russian history from 852 to 1116]
*--For account of who wrote the chronicles and when, see CPC:3-50.
\\
*--Nora Chadwick, The Beginnings of Russian History: An Inquiry into Sources

<>0852:Bulgarian khan Boris I [W] played Germans off against Byzantium in order to protect Bulgarian independence

<>0855c:Constantinople University the center of a Byzantine intellectual/spiritual renaissance
*--Scholar and future apostle to Slavs Constantine [Kiril or Cyril] sent by Patriarch Photius of Constantinople on mission to Arabs

<>0859:First dated entry in the Nikonian Chronicle (written long after this year) [ZNC,1:15]
*--ZNC,1 covers the years 867-1130s
*--ZNC,2--1132-1240 (decline of Kievan Rus)
*--ZNC,3--1241-1381 (Mongol dominance)
*--ZNC,4--1382-1425 (Moscow consolidated power)
*--ZNC,5--1425-1520 (Muscovite grandeur, Ivan "the Great")

<>0860:Byzantine Patriarch of Constantinople Photius sent scholar-monk Constantine [Kiril] on mission to Khazars

 

<>0862:980; Beginnings of Russian history
Origins of Kievan Rus'

<>0862:Slavs and Finns by this time paid tribute to "Viking" warrior-merchants, sometimes called "Norsemen" in western Europe and "Variagi" [Varangians], "Dany" [Danes], and Rus' in eastern Europe [W#1] [W#2]
*--Norse Chronicles [TXT]
*--Saxo Grammaticus' Danish History [TXT]
*--In this year around the fortress city Novgorod, Slavic farming people "invited" Varangian Prince Rurik to rule, described in Chronicle [TXT] [Also in CPC:59-60| Jones:244-6| ZNC,1:16| KRR:11 | RRH,1:11-12]
*--Rurik and two brothers considered Novgorod, Beloozero and Izborsk reliable strong points along a secure "route of the Rus" to the Bolgars on the middle Volga and beyond them to the trading centers of Arabia and Asia. Soon they found portages to the upper drainage of the Dnepr river in the Valdai Hills and moved straight south toward Constantinople, via Kiev
*--Viking routes [MAP]
*--Viking ship [pix] provided swift transport and ample room for freight as these warrior-merchant Rus' plied their routes
\\
*--Omeljan Pritsak, The Origin of Rus' (1981)
*--Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, "The Norman Theory and the Origin of the Russian State"| 1947:RRe#7:96-110
*--Vernadsky,2:1-18 offers a general assessment of early Russian history
*--Gwyn Jones, A History of the Vikings
*--Michael Rostovtzeff, "The Origin of the Russian State on the Dnieper". Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1920:163-71; reprinted in  HRR,1:121-7
*--Joseph L. Wieczynski, The Russian Frontier: The Impact of Borderlands upon the Course of Early Russian History
*--Alexander S. Vucinich, "The First Russian State: An Appraisal of the Soviet Theory"| 1955:Speculum#28:324-44; reprinted in Cyril Black, ed., Rewriting:123-142. Here we learn more about the political-ideological uses of this early history
*--Michael Rostovtzeff, Iranians and Greeks in South Russia. (1922)
*--S. Runciman, History of the First Bulgarian Empire (1930)
*--Aleksandr A. Vasiliev, The Goths in the Crimea (1936)
*--Henryk Paszkiewicz, The Origin of Russia (London:1954) Polish view

<>0863:+; Moravian (Czech) lands [W] | Prince Rastislav asked Byzantine Emperor Michael III to send "bishop and teachers" of the Christian faith, to preach in native Slavic language. Patriarch Photius dispatched Cyril and his brother Methodius (Kiril i Mefodii) among the Slavs [VSB,1:12-13]
*--The two missionary brothers, emissaries of the Byzantine Church and Emperor, were from Salonica and native speakers of "Slavonic". They were well suited to bring the Eastern Orthodox liturgy to the Slavs. They were already experienced emissaries having earlier been on mission to the Arabs and to the Khazars
*--Cyril devised for the Slavs an alphabet called the Glagolitic, supplanted soon by the Greek-based alphabet, named the "Cyrillic" alphabet in honor of the scholar-diplomat-monk. Very soon the Rus entered into the picture of Byzantine religious or Church diplomacy. For examples of Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets, see Obolensky:136-53 & HML, which is a "duo-page" edition, Russian-English. Check this replica of the oldest surviving use of Cyrillic alphabet
\\
*--Paragraph on Cyril and Methodius [TXT]
*--Imre Boba, Nomads, Northmen and Slavs: Eastern Europe in the Ninth Century
*--Dimitri Obolensky, Byzantium and the Slavs, ch.9 and/or ch.10
*--C. A. Macartney, The Magyars in the 9th Century. Cambridge:1930

<>0865se:Bulgarian khan Boris [W] baptized by Byzantine missionaries, but continued to court Rome. Pagan reaction followed, led by the old Bulgar  military elites, the Turkic boyars
\\
Obolensky:84-94

<>0866:Byzantium | Varangians or Rus' launched their first attack on Constantinople, led by Viking warrior-merchants Askold and Dir
*--On the way to Byzantium, they took the vital strong-point Kiev from the Khazars
*--The attack is described in the Chronicle [TXT] Patriarch Photius also left a description [VSB,1:11] Do these two accounts reinforce one another?
*--Photius described how these warrior merchants, these Rus' and their Slavic crews, abandoned their pagan faith(s) and became Christian [VSB,1:11-12]

<>0867:1056; Byzantium's 189-year "Golden Age", the "Macedonian Epoch"| Summary [TXT]
<>0867:886; Byzantine Emperor Basil I (Vasilii), the Macedonian [ZNC,1:14,20]

<>0867:869; Rome | Byzantine scholar/diplomatic and priest, Cyril, celebrated mass in St.Peter's Cathedral in Slavonic language

<>0874:Byzantine treaty with Rus in which an Orthodox archbishop was posted in Kiev

<>0879:Patriarch of Rome (Pope John VIII) issued Bull against use of Slavonic language in Christian liturgy. Rome/German and Byzantine/Slavonic factions entered a stormy period, and the diplomat/scholar and priest Cyril served as a "lightning rod"
*--The European Christian Church in crisis; Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy splitting
*--One of the "hotspots" in this struggle, Croatia came under secure authority of Rome and German imperial power

<>0880:912; Kiev became headquarters of Varangian Prince Oleg, who ruled there for 32 years [CPC:60-71| ZNC,1:29-49]
*--Earlier Rus' chiefs Askold and Dir took Kiev from Khazars, but now the prince moved down from Novgorod to be closer to the action
*--Oleg's move down from Novgorod was an important sign that Rus' power felt increasingly secure in relationship to the unstable Pontic Steppes
*--Novgorod became something of a backwater for almost two centuries
*-- Kievan Rus' taking shape, moving closer to Byzantium and making inroads on Khazar power, while all were vexed by Pecheneg marauders
\\
*--Boris A. Rybakov, Early Centuries of Russian History
*-------------------------,. Kievan Rus (1989)
*--Vernadsky,2:22-28
*--Boris Grekov, Kiev Rus (Several editions of old Soviet history)

<>0895:959; Magyars [Hungarians] for six decades pressured westward and northward by Pecheneg marauders from out of the Pontic Steppes, along the lower Danube. Magyar horsemen in their turn ravaged Bulgaria and moved northwestward into Slavic Moravian [Czech] lands, eventually clashing with the Franks. Finally settled in lands which included territory now known as Hungary
\\
*--Obolensky:153-63

<>0903:913; Ibn-Rusta on Rus' [VSB,1:9-10]

<>0911se02:Constantinople | Byzantine Empire-Russia Commercial treaty (after Rus' Prince Oleg's raids, near the end of his long reign)
*--Chronicle TXT [Other locations = VSB,1:20-1| WAL,1:41-4 | RRH,1:15-18]
*--Scandinavian names characteristic still of these warrior-merchants, Varangians and Slavs, as well as other ethnic groups clearly living, working, doing business, and fighting together as Rus'
\\
*--Obolensky:184-7

<>0912:945; Kievan Prince Igor’s reign (33 years!) [ZNC,1:49-52]
*--Notice how "Ingvar" was now Igor; his wife "Helgi" now Olga; their son was given the hyper-Slavic name Sviatoslav
*--These erstwhile Scandinavian princes were now melted into a "Russia" best thought of as a  mélange of "East Slavic" peoples (proto-Russian, proto-Ukrainian, proto-Belarussian, undifferentiated by modern "national consciousness" and probably not  much different in language or culture), thoroughly intermixed with Finnish genes of the northern hunter-gatherer folks they had lived among for eons
*--Kiev (the old Khazar stronghold) was being Slavicized at a rapid rate in the time of Prince Igor
*--It was a long process, but agrarian Slavic tribal populations took to the warrior-commercial ways of Scandinavian Varangians or the Rus'. And the Rus', for their part, were by now thoroughly absorbed into the culture of native Slavic peoples whom they had originally menaced and dominated, then came by alleged invitation to rule over the previous century or more
*--The cultural assimilation of the Rus' can be compared with the English experience under Norman rule
\\
*--Vernadsky,2:28-58

<>0917au19:Bulgarian tsar Semeon [W] defeated Byzantine army, built vast Bulgarian Christian tsardom
*--0927:treaty with Byzantium ratified gains

<>0922:Bolgars along the middle Volga accepted Muslim faith

<>0922:Arab on mission to Khazaria, Ibn-Fahdlan, described the Rus' [VSB,1:11| Jones:164 and 425| DMR2:11-16]
*--Many Arab sources described the Rus' and Slavs

<>0941:Constantinople attacked by Prince Igor, but Greek fire repulsed the Rus'

<>0944:Byzantium | Prince Igor's treaty w/Constantinople in the last year of his long reign [CPC:72-3| VSB,1:21-2]

<>0945:962; Kievan Grand Princess Olga reigned (17 years). She was the wife of the treacherously slain Prince Igor [CPC:78-84 | ZNC,1:54-63 | DMR2:30-4 | DMR3:22-5 | RRH,1:18-21 | ZMR2:54-8]
*--Kievan Rus' was assuming a critical role in the northern frontiers of the Byzantine "commonwealth"
\\
*2004wi:SlR#63,4:771-93| Francis Butler, "A Woman of Words: Pagan Ol'ga in the Mirror of Germanic Europe"

<>0950s:Bulgaria | Bogomil "heresy" flourished (religious views unacceptable to conventional Christian theologians). These were followers of the Slavic priest Bogomil who combined Gnostic [W] concepts of salvation through knowledge [gnosis = knowledge] with Manichaean doctrines of struggle between evil and goodness. (Third century Persian visionary Mani revived traditions of Zoroastrianism [W], which continued to influence Christian churches for centuries) The Bogomils were intensely "Slavic-minded" [maybe we would say "nationalistic" in our time] and therefore both anti-Turkic and anti-Byzantine, and far from friendly to Rome. The Bulgarian home was the center of their attentions
 \\
*--Obolensky:119-27

<>0956:Baghdad | Arabian scholar Masudi on Slavs [VSB,1:10-11]
*1000:Arabic description of Baghdad [W]
*2003mr21:Photo [pix] of palatial Baghdad neighborhoods described in the first paragraph of the document above, now under the spell of US "shock and awe"
*--Month later: Satellite image [pix]

<>0957:Byzantium | Kievan Grand Princess Olga traveled with a large diplomatic delegation to Constantinople and Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus. She was baptized (probably for the second time) [Chronicle account in RRC2,1:6]
*--Constantine Porphyrogenitus described the Rus in De administrando imperio [English translation plus original Greek| Excerpts = VSB,1:23-4 | DMR2:27-9| DMR3:19-21 | RRH,1:64-6]
*--In his account, Constantine gave Slavonic and "Russian" [i.e., Scandinavian] names to the Dnepr rapids, indicating that both languages were in use among the Kievan Rus
\\
*--Kimball, Olga and Anna & Christianization of Rus’
*--Obolensky:189-91

<>0961:German King Otto sent Catholic missionaries to Kievan Princess Olga
*0962:973; Otto became "the Great" as he restored Charlemagne's grand regime and, in league with the Papacy in Rome, created the Holy Roman Empire. Western Slavs (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks) came under German Catholic rule
*--Olga played German Catholics off against Greek Orthodox power, as her 17-year reign entered its last year

<>0962:972; Kievan Prince Sviatoslav [ZNC,1:57-71 | DMR2:34-8 | DMR3:26-30 | ZMR2:58-65| ZMR1:59-65]
*--0966:969; Sviatoslav campaigned against and destroyed the Khazar khaganate, for over three centuries a powerful force in the Pontic Steppes
*--Sviatoslav's campaign possibly coordinated with Byzantine invasion of Arabic Syria, suggesting close Byzantine/Russian diplomatic relations
*--Byzantine/Arabic relations deteriorated [W]
*--0967:971; Sviatoslav invaded lands of Bulgaria in ambiguous alliance with Byzantine struggle to reestablish its authority in Bulgaria
*--0968:969; Kiev sieged by Pechenegs, who served Byzantine interests by providing counter-balance to the growing power of Byzantium's own ally, Kiev. Here we see an example of what Europeans came to call "Byzantine diplomacy"
*--0971:Constantinople. Sviatoslav and Byzantine Emperor Johannes Tsimiskes signed treaty. Sviatoslav traveled in "a kind of Scythian boat" in which he manned an oar like the other Rus. He was blue-eyed and wore a bushy moustache. He shaved his head, except for a lock on one side of his head, a sign of his nobility. He wore one golden ear-ring with two pearls and a ruby set between them. He, like all the Rus' wore white garments, but his were cleaner than the rest. [As described by Leo Diaconus in Jones:261-2]
*--0972: Pechenegs ambushed and killed Prince Sviatoslav at the Dnepr rapids, ending his 10-year reign. The Pechenegs fabricated a cup from his skull and drank from it [ZMR2:62-5 | DMR3:56-7]
\\
*1961de:SEER#40:44-57| A. D. Stokes, "The Background and Chronology of the Balkan Campaigns of Svyatoslav Igorevich"
*1962je:SEER#40:466-96| A. D. Stokes, "The Balkan Campaigns of Svyatoslav Igorevich"
*--Vernadsky,2:42-48
*--Tamara T. Rice, The Scythians

<>0976:1025; Byzantine Emperor Basil II reigned 49 years (jointly with his brother Constantine VIII)
*1018:Basil's successful campaigns (aided on and off by Kiev) devastated Bulgaria. Basil was dubbed "The Bulgar Slayer" [W]

 

<>0980:1223;KIEVAN RUS
FROM PEAK THROUGH DECLINE

<>0980:1015; Kievan Grand Prince Vladimir reigned (35 years!)
*--At the beginning of his reign he sponsored a vigorous pagan revival, in direct opposition to about two decades of noble interest in Christianity which followed his mother Olga's conversion. Grandson Vladimir created pagan pantheon on hill near his palace, including monument to the Slavic god of stormy heavens, Perun, the Russian version of the Scandinavian god "Thor"
*--But Vladimir's destiny lay elsewhere =
*0986:Kievan prince Vladimir received delegations representing the religions of other powerful rulers = Bolgars and their Islamic faith, Germans and their Catholicism, Khazars and their Judaic beliefs, Byzantium and its Orthodox Christianity [RRH,1:27-8]. Then he sent out his own emissaries to make enquiries [RRH,1:29-32]
*0988:989; Kiev Prince Vladimir sent 6000 Rus to help Byzantine Emperor Basil II and demanded his sister Anna's hand in marriage. Basil promised because he needed Kievan help. Constantinople threatened by rebel general Bardas Phocas from Asia Minor. Prince Vladimir captured Kherson in the Crimea, perhaps because Basil balked on his promise. Kiev was now the major power north of Constantinople. Negotiations continued, resulting in Vladimir's diplomatic decision to be baptized a Christian and to declare the Orthodox Church official in his realm
*--Christianization described in Chronicle TXT [Other locations = CPC:110-19 | ZNC,1:74-122 | KRR:63-7 | VSB,1:25-6 | DMR2:38-44 | DMR3:30-5 | ZMR1:65-71 | ZMR2:43-83 | WAL,1:65-71]
*--Vladimir promulgated a statute protecting the interests of the newly established Russian Orthodox Church and defining its independence from interference. Does this statute suggest separation of church and state? [W] [VSB,1:39]
*--Orthodox websites: [W#1] [W#2]
*--Russian/Byzantine relations were now very close, now both diplomatically and institutionally. Kievan Rus mirrored Byzantine church/state relations
\\
*--Kimball, Olga and Anna & Christianization of Rus’
*--Florovsky,5:2-9 [includes Father Georges Florovsky's critique of paganism]
*--Vernadsky,2:56-74 on Vladimir and Christianization
*--Vernadsky,2:48-56 on Russian paganism
*--Florovsky and Nikolai Andreev debate about paganism in TDU| Continue the pagan LOOP
*--Florovsky, "The Problem of Old Russian Culture" [TDU with full discussion:125-166]
*--Obolensky:191-201
*----------------. "Russia's Byzantine Heritage" in RRC1:201-15 [also in CSH and HRR]
*----------------.  Byzantium and the Slavs
*--Albert Leong, ed., The Millennium:Christianity and Russia (A.D. 988-1988)
*--Boris A. Rybakov, et al., Christianity and Russia
*--Henrik Birnbaum, ed., CSS#12 (1984).
*--George P. Fedotov, Russian Religious Mind (1946, reprint 1960)
*--Eve Levin, Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700
*--Konrad Alexander, Old Russia and Byzantium: The Byzantine and Oriental Origins of Russian Culture
*--Georg Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State  (1956)
*--I. Shevchenko, "Byzantine Cultural Influences". In Black, ed., Rewriting:143-91.
*---------------------, "Byzantine Source of Muscovite political ideas" [CSH]
*--Aleksandr A. Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire

<>0987:1697; New World, Central America, Mexico, Yucatan, for 700 years the site of a great Mayan civilization

<>0993:Bulgarian Tsar Samuel [W] had commemorative tablet inscribed to the memory of his family. This table is the earliest surviving document in the "Cyrillic" alphabet

*--The first great epoch of Bulgaria was at its end

<>1015:Martyrdom of Boris and Gleb the most traumatic moment in a series of internecine struggles among Rus' princes [DMR3:47-56]
*--These two peaceable brothers were victims of the increasingly frequent, violent disputes that broke out over right of succession up and down the hierarchy of Kievan princely cities [CPC:126-30 | ZNC,1:123-8 | KRR:22-4 | ZMR1:87-91 | ZMR2:101-5]
*--The hierarchical political system established the rank of ruling princes and their city-states. It had evolved over the 150 years since the "invitation to the Rus'" [ID]. But the system was always prone to instability as ambitious and impatient princes frequently tried to "cut into the line" ahead of turn, at a level or into a "place" [mesto] which their seniority or rank in the system "mestnichestvo" did not qualify them
*--Boris and Gleb were sons of Prince Vladimir and one of his wives, maybe Byzantine Princess Anna. They occupied a position of high esteem among native Russians elevated to Christian sainthood =

Icon depicted martyred saints Boris and Gleb

<>1018:Pechenegs described by German missionary among them as omnium paganorum crudelissimi, and the Chronicles lamented their constant threat to Kiev [DMR3:56-7]
*--But the pagan Pechenegs were at the end of their 15 decades of fame. The Polovtsy briefly but famously replaced them as steppe bred menace. And then a fresh wave of warrior nomads washed over the Pontic Steppes and left an imprint on the course of history that remains strong to this day. The Turks were coming =
\\
*--Obolensky:180

<>1029:Out of Turkmen/Bukhara steppes, Seljuk Turks irrupted into Arab/Persian [Iranian] world. This marked the beginning of the end of the great four-century long Arabic era
*--These Turks adopted the Muslim or Islamic faith and initiated a long era of first Seljuk then Ottoman Turkish grandeur. Particularly after they seized hold on the administrative and physical infrastructure of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 [ID], they assured that the Arabic legacy lived on as a great world civilization
*--Thus opened the second large epoch of Turkish influence on eastern European history. [Remember the first epoch]

<>1036:1054; Kievan Prince Yaroslav Vladimirovich, known as Yaroslav Mudryi (the Wise), reigned (18 years) [CPC:136-42| ZNC,1:129-51| VSB,1:26-7| ZMR2:71-3]
\\
*--Vernadsky,2:79-83

<>1035:Kiev Cathedral of St. Sophia built

<>1037:Kiev became the Metropolitan See (headquarters of Russian Orthodox Church). The office "Metropolitan" was the Byzantine equivalent of the "Bishop" in the Roman church
*--Prince Yaroslav Mudryi issued statute in support of the Kievan Orthodox Church [VSB,1:39-40 | DMR2:51-4 | DMR3:41-5]
*1037:1118; Three generations of Kievan scholar-monks composed the original and most substantial primary source on early Russian history, "The Tale of Times Gone By"  [Povest’ vremennykh let] more often simply The Russian Primary Chronicle [Nachal’naia letopis’]

<>1050s:Viking saga of Harald Hardradi and Viking runes [KRR:11-13]

<>1051:Kievan Princess Mariia (Yaroslav Mudryi's daughter) married French King Henry I. The Russian princess signed the nuptial documents twice, once in Cyrillic script and once in Latin. The French monarch scrawled his illiterate "X"

<>1051:Kiev-Pechersk Lavra [Great Monastery] founded [ZMR2:105-16]
*--Ilarion [Hilarion] was 1^st Russian Metropolitan (Bishop) of Orthodox Church. Delivered "Sermon on Law and Grace" [ZMR1:79-81 ZMR2:85-8]
*--Ilarion also delivered a "Eulogy of Prince Vladimir and Prince Yaroslav" [VSB,1:27-8 | DMR3:45-7 | WAL,1:45-8]
*--"Lives of the Saints" became major expression of Kievan civilization =
 Feodosii’s life of Nestor and sermon ‘On Patience and Love" [FTS:11-49 | ZMR2:116-34]
 Life of Feodosii [KRR:67-71]
*--170 years after the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra was founded, the greatest Kievan cultural masterpiece was completed there, "The Paterik". Even as the political system of princely cities in hierarchical relationship to Kiev deteriorated and up to the very eve of Mongol invasion, the Russian Orthodox Church stood at the center of Kievan high culture ["civilization"]
\\
*--Hubert Faenson, Early Russian Architecture (1975)

<>1054:1073; 1st Russian law code, Pravda Russkaia [W#1] [W#2] [Some printed excerpts = VML:26-56 | KRR:26-9 | RRC2,1:24-5 | VSB,1:35-6,36-8 | DMR2:44-50 | DMR3:36-41 | WAL,1:45-8 | RRH,1:43-6]
*--The law code of Yaroslav Mudryi [W] -- [KRR:50-4]

<>1054:1237; Kievan political disorder (for over 180 years!) [ZNC,1:151-255 and ZNC,2:all!!| KRR:24-6| VSB,1:29-30| DMR2:55-63]
*--Feudal disintegration of Kiev. Earlier a coherent hierarchical association of princely city-states, a confederation held together by what is called "mestnichestvo", functioned in beneficial client or vassal relationship to Byzantium. Now Kiev was becoming a fragmented network of feudal principalities. At the same time, ties with Byzantium were weakening
*--Kievan Rus' at the end of Yaroslav Mudryi's reign and the beginning of disorder [MAP]

<>1054:Great Schism of Byzantine Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholic churches, a profound split of European Christian civilization into big blocs, "East" and "West", with a serious cultural "fault line" running through the Balkan peninsula where Slavic national groups became divided along confessional lines, as in the most consequential example of "South-Slavic" [Yugoslav] peoples, Croats and Serbs, Catholic to the west, Orthodox to the east
*1521:Second great split in the history of western European Catholicism
*--The 189-year Byzantine "Macedonian Epoch", the Golden Age was coming to a close

<>1061:1091; Sicily taken by Normans

<>1063:1060; Novgorod Metropolitan [Bishop] Luka Zhidiata gave instructions to brethren [WAL,1:55-5]
*1071:Novgorod revolt of pagan believers [VSB,1:30]
*--Robert Mitchell and Nevill Forbes, eds., The Novgorod Chronicle, 1016-1451 [noUO]

<>1066:England taken under power of Norman King William the Conqueror, scion of a powerful Norseman or Viking tribe [ID]
*--These Normans had settled a century or so earlier on the Atlantic coast of modern-day France (Normandy) [W]. They were now a long-assimilated French-speaking feudal dukedom
*--In the decades after conquest of the English Island, the Normans in turn Frenchified the vanquished Germanic Anglo-Saxon elites there and laid the foundations for the evolution of a hybrid Romance/Germanic language today called "English"
\\
*--Hugh M. Thomas, The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation and Identity, 1066-c1220

<>1067:Polovtsian raids began [DMR2:64-72 | DMR3:59-64] Polovtsy were fierce nomadic warriors. Of Turkic-Altaic origins, they were also known as Cumans, Kumany, and Kipchaki. Their appearance on the Pontic steppes destabilized the region and contributed to the decline of Kiev
*--Polovtsy were a continuation of the sort of Pontic disorder represented by Pechenegs over the previous years
*--A larger Turkish onslaught scattered the Polovtsy before them, pushing them out of the way and northward across the Pontic Steppes. For Kiev, the Polovtsy were a premonition of the Golden Horde two centuries later

<>1071au19:Armenian frontier battle at Manzikert. Seljuk Turks led by Alp Arslan humilitated Byzantium
\\
*--Two paragraph TXT on the significance of this. Then came the threat to Byzantium from the "The West" =

<>1076fe22:Rome | Pope Gregory VII deposed Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV [TXT] This was a great symbolic moment in the history of church/state relations in the regions under the authority of the Roman Church

<>1095no27:France, at Clermont | Pope Urban II delivered a sermon [TXT] which appealed for a western European Crusade to save the Holy Land from infidel Turks (and anyone else)
*1095:1204; Over a century, Catholic lands launched four great crusades into eastern Mediterranean territories and even into northeastern Europe in an increasingly disfocused aggressive mission. The Crusades were epochal examples of "mission creep"
*--Europe and the Mediterranean world in the time of the crusades [MAP]
*1097:1150; Near Eastern Holy Lands occupied for a half century by West European Crusaders, aristocratic adventurers seeking plunder where ever they could find it
*--The actions of the Crusaders eventually lost contact with both the western Catholic Church and the fledgling western Empire. Increasingly crusaders lent their sacrificial energies to causes controlled and manipulated by sordid and opportunistic "business" interests of various Italian merchant city-states
*1146:Crusade#2
*1189:Crusade#3
*1200:1204; the Fourth Crusade did nothing to liberate the Holy Land, but had especially dolorous consequences for eastern Europe. Byzantium entered into decline, never fully recovering from assaults from "The West"
*1212:A fifth--usually unnumbered--tragic and foolish crusade, the "Children's Crusade" marked the end of the crusades, as such [MAP]
*--Toward the end of the crusading era of western European expansion, in the early 1200s, Teutonic Knights, a military/religious order, since the third crusade settled in the Holy Lands, began to move northward into the pagan or heathen frontiers of eastern Europe. They settled eventually in the lands of Germanic (Prussian) and Slavic (Polish) farming people along the south-eastern Baltic coast. Beginning as allies of German-speaking Austrian Holy Roman imperial monarchy, they took advantage of the disordered lines of authority within that empire and soon secured a certain independence from Vienna by shifting allegiance directly back to their Church superior, the Pope
*--Teutonic impact on the regional economy was mixed. Looking back at medieval practices, they bound local villagers in an unusually harsh version of serfdom. Looking forward toward the early modern European world, they encouraged development of relatively independent market-city economies [GO Hanse]. Teutonic Knights  spawned and were closely allied with a similar order =
*--The Livonian Order was made up of Catholic warrior merchants who pushed further east of Teutonic territories where they enserfed the rural, indigenous Estonian and Latvian peoples, in a period when serfdom was beginning to disappear among central and west European peoples and long before Russian serfdom was codified. The Livonian Order did not foster market-city independence in their territories. Together, Livonian and Teutonic Knights brought constant military pressure to bear on pagan Lithuanians. This was the last big moment in the nearly half millennium-long Christian/pagan confrontation among the Slavs. The future did still hold in store the massive incursion of the Golden Horde, those "merciless heathens"
*--Together, Livonian and Teutonic Knights also introduced a hyper-feudal/aristocratic order to eastern Europe, an order that insisted on sharp, almost "racial" distinctions between those nobles who ruled and those commoners who worked for those who ruled. In eastern Europe, titles, privileges and exemptions had not been so prominently distributed according to birth
*--The crusades mark the end of a half-millennium-long era of warrior-nomadic movement from east to west, out of the Eurasia steppes into that "peninsula of peninsulas" called Europe. Now began a thousand-year era of European colonial and imperialist expansion in the other direction, over the whole globe
*--Nonetheless, "The East" had still two powerful challenges for "The West" before the tables were turned altogether = The Golden Horde and the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks

<>1097:Kievan princes assembled to define for each his "portion" [udel] of the unraveling Kievan princely hierarchy
*--In Kievan Rus' a system of feudal authority, recognizable throughout much of Christendom [Europe] was evolving among princely rulers. Various princes now acknowledged the liege lord superiority of a "grand prince", though each vassal prince retained his own subordinate udel [a portion of heritable land, wealth and authority, especially his own administrative apparatus, military and (soon, in time of Tatar overlordship) his own monetary system]
*--This Russian variety of udel feudalism lasted 250 years in actual practice, and it surviving legally for 500 years
*--In far SW Rus' (Galich-Volyn) signs of unraveling Kievan order were clear (to those who could still see) = prince Vasilko was blinded in an internecine struggle for power  [ZMR1:73-6]. Vasilko's SW Russian domain was comprised of Halych or Galich or Galicia, plus Volyn or Volhynia, the right-bank Dnepr region of modern-day Ukraine bordering on historic frontiers with Hungarian (Magyar) and Romanian peoples
*1100:Kievan princes again conferred among themselves in the hopes of easing fractiousness. Kievan prince Vsevolod and his son Vladimir were active partners in the evolution of this informal inter-princely assembly, an acknowledgment of the abiding usefulness of the unraveling old princely hierarchy [mestnichestvo]
\\
*--Vernadsky,2:173-214 on Kievan administration and governance| 214-241 on federated relationship of Kievan thrones

<>1103:Kievan princes from various princely city-states yet again conferred, but this time in order to address "foreign policy", the defense of their combined borders from nomadic encroachment, particularly that of the Polovtsy
*1111:Salnitsa| Vladimir Vsevolodovich [Vladimir son of Vsevolod] commanded a Russian victory over the Polovtsy

<>1108c:From Constantinople to the Holy Land, a pilgrimage of South Russian Abbot Daniel [WAL,1:56-62]

<>1113:1125; Kievan Prince Vladimir Vsevolodovich, better known as Vladimir "Monomakh", reigned (12 years) [ZNC,1:235-48| VSB,1:32-3| DMR2:73-80]
*1097:1113; As seen above, Prince Vladimir was for more than a decade an active partner on the throne beside his father, Kievan prince Vsevolod. Vladimir shaped the destiny of Kievan Rus (as far as any prince can do such a thing) for a combined total of 27 years
*--Letter to Oleg Sviatoslavich [CPC:216-18]
*--His Prayer [CPC:218-19]
*1113:1118; Kiev. Monk Nestor gave final form to his version of the Russian historical chronology, the "Nestorian" Chronicle [CPC:3-23| RRC2,1:1-11| DMR2:3-10,17-26,etc]
*--No physical specimen of the Chronicle produced earlier than 1377 has survived [ZMR1:43-76] First dated entry is the year 852
*--Kiev was in a state of near constant military confrontation in Finnish lands of Livonia, on the middle Volga in Bolgar territories, and in left-bank Danube valleys near the Black Sea coast. Monomakh's Testament describes 83 major campaigns
*--Vladimir Monomakh thought of himself in terms defined by the emerging feudal European concept of "the good prince", ruling in close harmony with the Church and promoting its Christian ideals, but at the same time actively involved in the detailed everyday life of his people. In his Testament [ZMR2:92-100 | DMR3:65-72 | CPC:206-15 | WAL,1:50-6] he described himself = "I fell from my horse many times, fractured my skull twice, and injured my arms and legs in my youth. I was reckless with my life and did not spare my head. Making war or on the hunt, night or day, hot or cold, I worked just as my servant worked, and gave myself no rest. Without relying on stewards and agents, I did whatever had to be done. I dealt with all problems that arose in my household. On the hunt, I posted the hunters, and I looked after the stables, the falcons, and the hawks. I did not allow the powerful lords to abuse the poor peasant or the unfortunate widow. And I myself managed ecclesiastical matters and Church service."
*--The years of Vladimir Monomakh were but a momentary relief in a long period of Kievan decline

<>1136:Novgorod Veche [deliberative assembly of urban elites] elected princes [VSB,1:34-5,62-3] Expelled Prince Vsevolod from Novgorod and composed laws about merchants [VSB,1:69,74-5]
*--The veche might have been the original local institution of public deliberation among Slavic tribal people before and (in subordinate role) after the invitation to the Rus. Its derivation is from the old-Russian verb "to speak" [veshchati], much as the English word "parliament" derived from the old-French word "to speak" [parler]. However "original" the institution, there is no historical record of the veche prior to 1016 or anywhere but in Novgorod until 1068:Kiev. The importance of veche authority grew as the Kievan system of princely mestnichestvo weakened. In Novgorod it became an even more elaborate instrument of local deliberation and even self-regulation when it branched out into the various districts [kontsy] of the city and positioned its authority over the Church and against that of the prince
*1128:1193; Chronicles described life in Novgorod, including how bishops were also elected and how princes were moved around to suit desires of Novgorodians or in order to fill vacant positions in the hierarchy of urban thrones that made up the old Kievan system of princely mestnichestvo [ZMR2:78-83 | RRH,1:54-8] Was mestnichestvo falling apart everywhere in Kievan Rus', except in Novgorod where it was reinforced by a newly active veche?
*1136:Novgorod Cathedral of St. Sophia received charter from Novgorod prince Sviatoslav [W]
*1156:Novgorod veche elected Archbishop [VSB,1:70] Illustrated [KRR:36]
*--Several important cities in the Kievan period were governed/administered by veche. Veche illustrated [KRR:36] Could we say that veche election of princes in its own way undermined mestnichestvo?
*--Everyday life in medieval Novgorod [DMR3:119-32]
*--Women in Novgorod [KRR:54-9]
*--Novgorod Birchbark charters etc [KRR:71-3 | RRH,1:54]
\\
*--M. N. Tikhomirov, Drevnerusskie goroda| Translated as The Towns of Ancient Rus| Tikhomirov wrote much on Novgorod
*--V. Sergeevich, Veche i kniaz': Sovetniki kniazia| Vol. 2 of Drevnosti russkogo prava
*--M. W. Thompson, ed., Novgorod the Great: Excavations

<>1147jy24:jy28; Damascus attacked by Second Crusade, then abandoned, a debacle for Catholic Crusaders

<>1150c:Kiril of Turov "Sermon on the First Sunday after Easter" [ZMR2:90-2| WAL,1:62-5| ZMR1:83-6]
*--Popular apocryphal text which circulated in these years, about the Holy Virgin’s descent into Hell [WAL,1:96-100]

<>1169:Vladimir-Suzdal (two linked fortress cities) | Local feudal Prince Andrei Bogoliubskii led attack from this remote northern principality  and sacked distant Kiev [ZNC,2:140-2]
*--Vladimir is located about 600 miles northeast of Kiev (120 miles east-northeast of modern-day Moscow) [W]. Be alert to the fact that the city might be confused with the personal given name Vladimir
*1139:1169; Kiev | Over the previous 30-year period, seventeen different princes occupied the unstable Kievan throne [ZNC,2:11-140]. And now victorious Bogoliubskii showed no interest in assuming that devalued position. He stayed in Vladimir-Suzdal
*--In the middle of the 12th century, still a half century before the Golden Horde invaded Russian lands, Bogoliubskii's disinterest in the Kievan throne was a sign of Kievan decline. The shift of power northward to Vladimir and Suzdal was also a sign of mounting insecurity in relationship to those Pontic steppes that stretched away to the Kievan south and east. The stirring of Polovtsy and Seljuk Turks was a premonition of coming Tatar [Golden Horde] assaults. Kievan Rus was nearing the end of its time as an independent system of city-states
*--The old Kievan seniority system known as mestnichestvo [hierarchy of princely cities] was breaking down. Bogoliubskii's growing power north of Kiev, in Vladimir and Suzdal, signaled the rise of "votchina" [heritable] feudal lordship. The votchinnik thought of his titles and properties as settled birthrights, his udel, not a temporary assignment to govern a certain location. As Kievan state disintegrated, a votchinnik land-owning elite of a more recognizably feudal European type replaced the coordinated military-administrative authority of Kievan princes and their hierarchical system. Local interests of local landholders displaced the regional interests of princes subordinated to Kiev
*--Kievan mestnichestvo had been in serious disorder almost from the very beginning of its history
*--But there were clear signs that the new trend toward independent patrimonial (heritable) votchinnik rule had its self-destructive faults as well.  Over the next four centuries the votchina aristocracy was transformed by Muscovite grand-princely power into a service-bound pomest'e [territorially assigned] aristocracy. By the 1600s, the only votchinnik (in the feudal tradition we see emerging here in the 12th century) was the Moscow tsar. Along with this process, a new and very different Muscovite notion of "mestnichestvo" came into usage
*--Visit northeastern fortress cities in the Vladimir-Suzdal area = northeastern Russian cities in what is called "The Golden Ring". For some excellent photos, F/Kliazma/ and F/Suzdal/ on this [W]

Suzdal, the Church of the Putting on of Vestments, 1688 [source]

<>1174:Vladimir-Suzdal Prince Bogoliubskii assassinated [ZNC,2:157-61 | DMR3:72-5]
*--Vladimir city veche functioned in these years [VSB,1:43]
*1175:Vladimir the site of popular disturbance [DMR3:75-6]

<>1185:Novgorod-severskii Prince Igor Sviatoslavich's lamentable campaign against Polovtsy [ZNC,2:186-9| WAL,1:71-80]
*--A great epic poem described the tragic Polovtsian adventure of Igor. Slovo o polku Igoreve has been translated often: "Song of Igor's Campaign" (translated by Vladimir Nabokov), "The Song of Prince Igor: Russia's Great Medieval Epic" (translated and edited by Robert Mann; see also Mann's Lances Sing: A Study of the Igor Tale); and "Tale of the Host of Igor" [Excerpts in DMR2:81-96 | DMR3:77-92 | RRH,1:22-23 | ZMR1:139f ]
\\
*1952:Speculum#27:43-66| Roman Jacobson, "The Puzzles of Igor's Campaign on the 150th Anniversary of its First Edition"

<>1187:SW Rus' (Galich-Volyn in right-bank Dnepr River region) racked by disturbances and princely feuds [VSB,1:44]

<>1190:Novgorod treaty w/German city [VSB,1:69-70]
*1193:Novgorod elected Archbishop of its Russian Orthodox Church [VSB,1:70]

<>1204:Constantinople captured and sacked by Crusaders from western Europe (first successful attack on the city by sea). Erico Dandolo (1192:1205; Doge of Venice) co-opted the crusade for his own economic purposes. Whatever there might have been of religious or idealistic motive in crusader hearts, the action was very this-worldly and acquisitive. The crusaders became sailors and soldiers for international projection of the Doge's mercantile power. The crusades had become simple acts of western aggression against eastern rivals, and Byzantium was weakened beyond recovery
\\
*--Four paragraph TXT summarizes impact of crusades on Byzantium

<>1206:Altai plateau, near Lake Baikal | Mongol [W] tribesmen elected Genghis Khan
\\
*--Stanley Stewart wrote very fine modern travel accounts which describe these times and this place

<>1211:1216; Mongol invasion of China

<>1220:Bukhara [modern-day Uzbekistan] fell to Mongols as the Golden Horde moved westward into the Pontic Steppes
*--Eurasia [MAP]

<>1220c:Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. The Paterik of the Kievan Caves Monastery [a 1989 translation of Kievo-Pecherskii paterik] Covers the years 1073 to 1156 (summary of text = xviii-xx) [Excerpt ZMR1:92f ZMR2:134f]
*--More on the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra
*--On the eve of its destruction at the hands of the Golden Horde, Kievan Russia was in one sense already in decline, as a result of internal developments, but it was still capable of great cultural achievements, such as the Paterik
*1220c:A subject's plea to Prince Yaroslav Vsevolodovich reveals much about high secular culture in these years of Kievan decline [DMR3:93-7]
*--For nearly four centuries, the city Kiev held a strong position on the northern edge of the Pontic steppes. In that long period, in the late 10th and 11th centuries, Kiev was one of the greatest cultural and political centers of Christendom [in later, more secular times, that huge and complex geo-cultural space has been called "Europe"]. Russian power was dominant throughout the region and, for the first time, the challenge of stability out on the Pontic Steppes was successfully met. But now the 350-year epoch known as "Kievan Rus" was over

<>1223:1328; THE GOLDEN HORDE (Century-long Era of Mongol [Tatar] Dominion in Russia)
*1223:Kalka River. Tatars defeated Russian forces in probing attack; beginnings of the dominance of the Golden Horde ("Mongol Yoke", rule of the "Tatars") [ZNC,2:285-90 | VSB,1:45-6 | ZMR2:193-21 1| RRH,1:75-80]
*--As the Golden Horde projected its unstoppable cavalry armies and established its remarkably stable tribute-gathering political authority in the east (China) and south (Islamic lands of Central Asia, eventually even into India), it also moved without relent into western territories (crushing and controlling Kievan Russia, and menacing central Europe) [MAP#1]  [MAP#2]
*--This invasion also brought an end to the century and a half of the Polovtsy as an independent force on the Pontic Steppes
*--Phase one = 1223:1328; A century of Mongol dominion in all Kievan territories (except the Novgorod north) [ZNC,3 (whole volume)]
*--Phase two =  1328:1462; A century and a half in which grand princes of Moscow were ambitious subordinates and agents of the Golden Horde while striving also for independence and Moscow-centered dominance over neighboring Russian centers [ZNC,5 (whole volume)]
*--Great Yasa [constitution of the Golden Horde] [VSB,1:47-8]
*--The bejeweled summary of the origin of khans (1967)
*--Russian prince paid tribute [VSB,1:49-50]
*--"Discourse Concerning the Ruin of Rus Land" [DMR3:97-9]
\\
*--John Fennell, The Crisis of Medieval Russia, 1200-1304
*--George Vernadsky on the impact of the Tatars on Russian history, in RRC1,1(14) and RRC2,1(15)
*--Charles J. Halperin, Russia and the Golden Horde: The Mongol Impact on Medieval Russian History (1985)
*--Donald Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols..., pp. 36-63 on significant institutional influences; pp. 85-107 refutes "Oriental" interpretation
*--Aleksandr Presniakov, The Formation of the Great Russian State, pp. 1-29
*--Leo de Hartog, Russia and the Mongol Yoke (1996)
*--Charles J. Halperin, The Tatar Yoke (1986) [DK90.H29]
*--Dmitrii Pokotilov, History of the Eastern Mongols
*--Valentin Riasanovskii, Fundamental Principles of Mongol Law

<>1225:East Persia wrecked by Golden Horde

<>1228:1230; Novgorod city disturbance [ZNC,2:290-1| VSB,1:71]
*--Birchbark documents illustrate everyday life [KRR:129-30]
*--:Novgorod elected Archbishop of Orthodox Church [VSB,1:70-1]

<>1230:1241; SW Rus', the remote "right-bank Dnepr River" region, in disorder and drifting away from the Kievan world as it was smashed by Mongol invasion [DMR3:105-114 | KRR:85-7]

<>1231:1243; Azerbaidjan and Armenia fell to Golden Horde

<>1236:Volga River, below the confluence with the Kama River | Bolgar administrative capital taken by Tatar warrior Subutai at the head of the new Golden Horde [ZNC,2:307-8]. Remaining Volga Bolgars absorbed into Kipchak Horde. But Volga Bolgar urban government and social structure survived. Furthermore, Bolgar Muslim culture absorbed by the Tatars
*--Bolgar prince got Yarlyk [charter from the Golden Horde, a "license" to exercise designated authority subordinate to the Tatar khan]
*--Bolgar prince functioned more nearly as an agent of Tatar power than would the Moscow princes later. For example, the Moscow Yarlyk retained for Russian princes the right to strike their own coins

<>1237:Riazan destroyed by Golden Horde as it turned its attentions northward from SW Rus' and Bulgarian territories  [ZNC,2:308-17 | DMR2:107-13 | DMR3:146-9 |  KRR:99-101 | VSB,1:44-5 | ZMR1:176-85]
*--Russia under assault by the Golden Horde [MAP]

<>1240:Kiev captured by Golden Horde [DMR3:151-2]

<>1240:Aleksandr Nevskii defeated Swedes
*--"A Biography of prince Alexander Nevskii" [ZNC,3:1-39| ZMR2:224-42 | DMR3:99-105]

<>1240:1255; Golden Horde commanded for 15 years by Batu Khan [Lord, prince; successor to the great Genghis Khan] [ZNC,2:319-23]

<>1243je26:Central Anatolia [central Turkey today] | Seljuk Turks defeated by Golden Horde

<>1245:Golden Horde. Pope Innocent IV sent John of Pian de Carpine as ambassador [VSB,1:46| DMR2:114-28 | DMR3:153-67 | RRH,1:85-8]
*--Carpine's account later published with that of Rubruck

<>1247:Vladimir (city) grand prince Yaroslav Vsevolodovich died
*--A letter of appeal to him from Daniel, a member of his druzhina [closest military servitors, retinue] [DMR3:93-7 | WAL:100-4]

<>1250:SW Rus' | Galician prince Daniel and his brother had to learn to deal with the Golden Horde [VSB,1:51-2 | DMR3:171-4]
*--After a century and a half of growing internal disorder in SW Rus', Galich-Volyn area came under Tatar power and found itself isolated from old Kievan networks

<>1252:1263; Novgorod and Vladimir prince Aleksandr Nevskii reigned 11 vital years in the early phase of Tatar dominance
*--Novgorod Chronicle account [VSB,1:64-5| DMR2:137-50| ZMR1:162f | RRH,1:88-90]
\\
*--Aleksandr Presniakov, The Formation of the Great Russian State, pp. 60-98 on Vladimir city in the 13th century

<>1253:Sarai, in the lower Volga valley, a great nomad metropolis was founded by Batu Khan as center of Golden Horde
*--Over the next century this nomad metropolis grew in size and importance. Visitors reported that it took a half day to ride by horse from one outskirt to the other [BrE,56:399]. Sarai served as a central point for caravan routes from Africa to China, and south to Persia and India. Sarai included several suburban neighborhoods with caravan rest points [caravan-sarai] for tradesmen of ethnicities from three continents
*1253:1255; French King Louis IX sent the Ambassador William of Rubruck to Sarai. He published a colorful and informative account, Journey... [Excerpts = VSB,1:46| DMR2:129-31 | DMR3:168-70]
*--Especially instructive were Rubruck's observations about how eastern European captives were thriving in Tatar lands. Frenchwoman Paquette was captured and forced to walk from Budapest to the Mongol capital, but was now settled in and happily married to a Russian carpenter
*--Rubruck, a Catholic Friar, was allowed to offer spiritual service to Catholics and Orthodox subjects of the khan. He also took part in great religious debates between Buddhists, Muslims and Nestorian Christians, sponsored by the delighted and curious khan Moengke himself. Rubruck reported that the khan said to him, "God has given you [Christians] the Scriptures and you do not obey them; whereas to us he has given soothsayers, and we do as they tell us and live at peace"
\\
*--Thomas T. Allsen, Mongol Imperialism: The Policies of the Grand Qun Möngke in China, Russia, and the Islamic Lands

<>1257:1266; Golden Horde | Berke, a Muslim, was khan. He issued an early decree on free trade [VSB,1:48-9]
*1258:Baghdad sacked by Golden Horde as Berke turned his swift armies against the Turks
*1260:Damascus taken by Golden Horde; Mongols stopped north of Jerusalem
*--In the more than century-long relief from Mongol power that followed, Ottoman Turkish power waxed strong

<>1261:Russian Chronicles mention Sarai, the capital of the Golden Horde, for the first time in connection with the establishment there of a Russian Orthodox diocese, following agreements reached between Novgorod prince Aleksandr Nevskii and Berka khan
*--Novgorod flourishing as Tatar dominance destroyed old Kievan hierarchy of cities, and this is probably the most important legacy of Novgorod prince Aleksandr Nevskii's 22-year career
*1264 or 1265: Novgorod treaty with Tver helped consolidate regional power [W] -- [KRR:84-5]
*--Russia drifted out of its Byzantine orbit as the Golden Horde consolidated its grip on the Eurasian steppe and as Novgorod developed ties with the newly independent commercial city-states of the Baltic and North-Sea regions

<>1267au01:Kievan Metropolitan of Orthodox Church received favorable Yarlyk from new Khan Mengu-Temir [DMR3:175-6] [VSB,1:49 dates this 1308]
*--Eurasia [MAP]

<>1270:Novgorod treaty with Hanse (pronounced and sometimes spelled "Hansa"; later formally the Hanseatic League) [DMR2:132-7 | DMR3:114-19]
*--City also maintained treaty relationship w/ its prince [ZNC,3:46-9| VSB,1:65-6]
*--Novgorod Charter described aspects of its urban independence from traditional Kievan ways in the years after the Mongol invasion [RRH,1:47-54]
*1282:London office of Germanic traveling merchants first used the word "Hansa" [association or group] to describe themselves

<>1274:Naples [Italy] | Thomas Aquinas died, having brought the new "Western" Christian philosophy and theology -- called “scholasticism” -- to its highest perfection. The Catholic Church later sainted him. He capped a marvelous century of theological speculation=
*1109:Anselm, “the father of scholasticism”, died. He devoted himself to proving faith by reason
*1142:Peter Abelard died. He sought to identify and address the chief logical contradictions in Christian faith
*--This "Western" achievement would not have been possible if it were not for a serious dose of "Easternization". Arabic scholars provided the Western Church Aristotelian texts, preserved until this time only in the Islamic world. New translations and new discoveries of Aristotle’s writings ushered in a new era of Catholic religious philosophy. And Muslim philosophers on their own influenced this process =
*--Translations of Averröes were read widely in "The West". Two Islamic-Aristotelian principles were influential and were formidable challenges to traditional medieval Christianity. “Averroism” preached “double truth”, allowing room for both faith and reason. Here the immortal soul and the anima mundi are the same, a principle that can undermine the notion of distinct human individuality. And what is true in the light of faith may be untrue in the eyes of reason, and vice versa, a principle that can undermine either intellectual or spiritual absolutism
*--Struggles between faith (Duns Scotus) and reason (William of Occam [1349c:dth]) gripped the Church of Rome
*--In the meanwhile, the Eastern Orthodox Church, in Russia and elsewhere, was little affected by all this
\\
*--A mid-twentieth-century source [CDE(1940):1586] had this to say = “The 15^th-century scholasticism was at best a sorry thing, and it produced in its contemporaries, especially in Italy and France, a great detestation for the whole system...”. Re. Francis Bacon= His “ignorance of scholasticism almost surpassed his dislike for it”

<>1274 and 1281:Mongols under Kublai Khan twice failed in effort to invade Japan. Heavy storms at sea contributed to the rescue of Japan from the overwhelming Mongol power. These came to be called "divine winds" [kamikaze]

<>1275:Lithuania the target of attack by allied Russia and Golden Horde, but the Tatars backed away from their furthest incursions into the Baltic river drainages. Lithuania thrived

<>1275:Vladimir (city) | Death of Abbot Serapion, author of sermons "on the Merciless Heathens" [Tatar assault as punishment for Russian sins] and "on Omens" [ZMR2:243-6| ZMR1:199-204| WAL:104-6]

<>1290:1312; Golden Horde. Tokhta Khan

<>1290s:Marco Polo, who claimed to travel the legendary "Silk Road" [W] Reported on Russia (cold and much drinking) [VSB,1:52]
*--Asia in the era of Marco Polo and the great empire of the Golden Horde -- [MAP]

<>1300:Vladimir (city) became the Metropolitan See of the Russian Church
*--GO 1313

<>1303:1325; Moscow prince Yurii III
*--Yurii married Tatar bride, sister of the khan of the Golden Horde
*1300:1553; Russia [MAP]

<>1313:Vladimir Metropolitan of the Orthodox Church Peter received Yarlyk from khan Uzbek [KRR:101-2]

<>1313:1326; Uzbek-Khan spread Muslim faith, which had been found by Tatars already among the Bolgar people of the middle-Volga

<>1316:1341; Lithuanian grand prince Gedimin [Gediminas] extended his authority to the east and south, into the partial vacuum created by the strategic withdrawal of the Golden Horde

<>1320s:Central America, Mexico, north of the Mayan city-states | Nomadic Aztecs settled and began to build great new urban center, their "capital", Tenochtitlán [site of Mexico City]. The second great New World civilization grew, but no wheel, no iron, and a famously ferocious religion

<>1327:Tver rebelled against Golden Horde [ZNC,3:124-6 | DMR2:151-2 | DMR3:179-82]
\\
*--Aleksandr Presniakov, The Formation of the Great Russian State, pp. 98-121 on medieval city-state Tver

<>1328:1462; MUSCOVITE RUSSIA, phase #1 –More than One Century,
Moscow was both Agent & Enemy of the Golden Horde. Moscow did not altogether free itself from Mongol dominion until the reign of Ivan III
*--Medieval Moscow, the Kremlin
*--Moscow architectural sites [W#1] [W#2]
*--Other Medieval Russian cities, "The Golden Ring" [W]
*1328:1341; Moscow prince Ivan Danilovich ruled 14 years as Ivan I Kalita [Moneybag],1^st Muscovite grand prince [velikii kniaz'] [ZNC,3:127-47 | DMR2:153-8 DMR3:190-5]
*--Golden Horde sponsored his coronation; he made nine journeys to Sarai
*--Ivan I used the power gained through closeness to the Horde to expand his authority to neighboring princely cities where he stripped local elites of their positions and power, and substituted his own servitors. For example, in Rostov Velikii [g] a prominent boyar family (one young member of which was the future St. Sergius) was forced to flee to Radonezh. The Official "Life of St. Sergius" tells this story in unexpected and explicit detail [TXT]
*--Moscow began the process of "re-gathering Russian lands" in earnest
*--Russia in the time of Ivan I Kalita [MAP]
\\
*--Aleksandr Presniakov, The Formation of the Great Russian State, pp. 121-138 on Moscow in the time of Ivan I Kalita

<>1328:Moscow became Metropolitan See of Orthodox Church, relocated from Vladimir (city). This event can be said to mark the end of Vladimir (city) feudal grandeur (since 1169) and the rise of Moscow from among the Russian cities under the direct dominion of the Golden Horde
*--Moscow worked to protect itself from, but also to benefit from, the Golden Horde and the Byzantine Empire
\\
*--John Meyendorff, Byzantium and the Rise of Russia

<>1337:Trinity-Saint Sergius Monastery [Troitse-Sergieva Lavra] founded
*--This great fortress monastery became a central institution of the Muscovite Orthodox Church
\\
*--St. Sergius-Trinity Lavra VIDEOTAPE

<>1339c:Moscow | Testament of Ivan I [HTP:182-7 | VSB,1:53-4 | DMR3:195-8]

<>1341:1353; Moscow grand prince Semyon Gordyi [the proud] confirmed by Golden Horde. Semyon sojourned with family five times in Sarai

<>1347:Novgorod granted independence to commercial/fortress city Pskov, though Pskov church remained subordinate to Novgorod
*1342:1359; Novgorod city disturbances [VSB,1:72]

<>1353:Moscow grand prince Semyon's Testament [HTP:189-92] Semyon was taken by the black death
*1348:1350; The Black Death spread westward through the Mediterranean Sea coastal ports, northward to England and the lowlands, then in a big circle back eastward through the Baltic Sea along Hanseatic League trade routes to Novgorod and Moscow under the Golden Horde

<>1353:1359; Moscow grand prince Ivan II the Meek or Krasnyi [Red]
*--His Testament [HTP:195-202]

<>1354:Ottoman Turkish power crossed the straits just south of the Byzantine imperial capital city Constantinople and entered Europe for the first time, moving westward over the next few years all the way to Kosovo. The Turks crushed the medieval sovereignty and absorbed under their administration territories of modern-day Hungary, Serbia, and Bulgaria (once a great feudal state). Two paragraphs of TXT describe Ottoman Turkish expansion into south-eastern Europe
*--Byzantium would not fall to the Ottoman Turks for one more century, but the handwriting was on the wall....

<>1354:1368; Moscow | Russian Orthodox Church Metropolitan Aleksei was a powerful supporter of Muscovite throne and the actual ruler in Dmitrii’s youth [See below]

<>1355:1389; Moscow grand prince Dmitrii [after 1380 dubbed Donskoi] ruled for 34 years [ZNC,3:185-305]
*--Russia in the time of Dmitrii Donskoi [MAP]
*--The dramatic developments in Dmitrii's time =
   Rise of  Novgorod and Hanseatic League
   Expansion of Italian city-states in Mediterranean markets
   Slippage of Mongol power
   Lithuanian aggression and consolidation of a huge Lithuanian-Polish unified monarchy
*--Consider the broad European setting [MAP]

<>1357no:Moscow | Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church Aleksei received favorable Yarlyk from khan Berdibek of the Golden Horde [DMR3:176-7]

<>1359:Novgorod elected Archbishop [VSB,1:71]
*--Novgorod merchants controlled Bolgar city Zhukotin, a sign of eastward expansion of Novgorod's commercial empire and of constant interchange with Golden Horde

<>1361:Bolgar territories spawned Tatar pretenders to the throne of the Golden Horde
*--After a series of executions, Khidei became khan. Bulaktemir briefly ruled Bolgar land

<>1367:Moscow stone Kremlin began

<>1368:1372; Lithuania attacked Moscow frequently

<>1368:Moscow treaty w/Tver [VSB,1:54-5]

<>1367:Germanic trade center Köln [Cologne] hosted Confederation of the Hanseatic League
*1358:At this earlier date the Germanic trade center Lübeck was the site of the second Hansetag and the formation of the League
*1370:Denmark. Stralsund Treaty with King Waldemar IV opened great century in the life of the Hanseatic League. About seventy Baltic coastal cities and several inland markets
*1374:1375; Novgorodians plundered the great tent-city on the lower Volga, Sarai, capital of the Golden Horde [BrE,56:399] Novgorod became the eastern anchor of the Hanseatic League (as London became its western). Novgorod opened to the great Asian markets along the Silk Road. Delicate diplomatic relations with the Horde, the hallmark of Aleksandr Nevskii's reign, had now become tense competition. Novgorod entered its most glorious "Era of Gosudar Novgorod velikii" [Lord Novgorod the Great] [W] Russian power now sometimes challenged the Golden Horde
G/1380 below for economic developments in the Mediterranean world parallel with Hanse in the Baltic world
*1371:Novgorod settled a treaty with its prince [VSB,1:66-7]
*1384:1388; (and again in 1418) Novgorod city disturbances [VSB,1:72-3]
\\
*--Henrik Birnbaum, Lord Novgorod the Great: Essays in the History and Culture of a Medieval City-State (1981), pp. 40-54 covers the political history of this remarkable city-state; pp. 82-100 covers the institutions of city-state rule
*--Henrik Birnbaum, Novgorod in Focus, pp. 153-166 deal with Novgorod & the Hansa

<>1375:Moscow | First testament of Dmitrii Donskoi [HTP:204-6]

<>1377:Lithuanian grand prince Wladislaw Jagiello [Jagellon] created a great Polish/Lithuanian dynasty

<>1377:Suzdal | Lavrentian edition of the Chronicles; Hypatian monastery ("Ipaty" [pix] in Kostroma, about 80 miles east-northeast of Yaroslavl [g]) edition dates from around this time, covering Russian history from the year 852

<>1380:1500s; Venice, a commercial city-state, defeated arch-rival, the city-state Genoa, and assumed dominance over Mediterranean trade. The power of Venice was rooted in the successful exploitation of European crusader zeal a century and a half earlier. Now, defeat of Genoa marked the beginning of a commercial transformation (more famous but similar to the Hanse economy of Baltic/North-Sea Europe)
*--The Hanse and Venice signaled the rise of market economics at odds with medieval tradition. The Hanseatic League was a loose federation, vulnerable to waxing centralized national monarchies. Venice was an independent city-state, itself a center of trade and for centuries invulnerable to growing authority of European centralized national monarchies
*--Along Mediterranean shores a cultural transformation, traditionally labeled "Renaissance", accompanied economic transformation

<>1380se08:Kulikovo battle, prince Dmitrii ("Donskoi") defeated khan Mamai of the Golden Horde [ZNC,3:264-305| VSB,1:55-6| DMR2:165-8]
*--Epic poem commemorated the great battle, "Zadonshchina" by Sofony of Riazan [ZMR2:211-23 | ZMR1:186f | DMR3:202-9 | WAL:106-11]
*--"Hagiographic" biography of prince Dmitrii [ZMR2:315-22 | DMR3:198-202]
*--Four decades later, "The Life of St.Sergius" described how the exemplary monk Sergius of Radonezh inspired this victory [TXT]

<>1382:Moscow burned by Tokhtamysh Khan (1380fa:1395) leading armies of the Golden Horde [ZNC,4:2-12| VSB,1:56-7]

<>1385:Poland-Lithuania in Krewo Union, a personal union based on the fact that Lithuanian grand prince Jagellon accepted Catholic Christianity and adhered to its Church. He married the Polish Queen Jadwiga, and thus became also King of Poland [background, see