S. V. Cyb: Drevnerusskoe vremjaisčislenie v „Povesti vremennych let“. S.-Peterburg: Bulanin, 2011. 317 S., Tab. ISBN: 978-5-86007-630-3

S. V. Cyb: Drevnerusskoe vremjaisčislenie v „Povesti vremennych let“. S.-Peterburg: Bulanin, 2011. 317 S., Tab. ISBN: 978-5-86007-630-3.

The first three chapters of this work consist of close analysis of the chronology of entries in the Povest’ vremennykh let, starting with those for the early twelfth century. In the Chronicle’s entry for the year 6615 from the Creation, Tsyb discerns the use of “at minimum” (p. 24) three yearly cycles: the Ultra-March (beginning on the first day of the March preceding the January Year of the Gregorian calendar); the “September or March” (beginning, respectively, on 1 September before the January Year and on 1 March after the start of the January Year); and the Post-March Year (beginning on 1 March of the year following the January Year). The earliest ‘layers’ of source-material for this and other entries for the early twelfth century reckoned events by the Ultra-March and the Post-March Years, but successive redactors introduced their own preferred calendars in adding information. An adherent of the March Year redacted the Chronicle’s text, occasionally changing dates reckoned by the Post-March Year, but without realigning them systematically, or even being aware of the different calendars in play in the text. This, Tsyb supposes, occurred “around the years 1122–1124” (p. 51). No less intricate are the chronological schemes proposed for the other sections of the Povest’. Tsyb detects a basic layer reckoned by the September-Year in the section from the death of Iaroslav the Wise (1054) until the opening years of the twelfth century, but with overlays of material that used other calendars. The emerging pattern of layers leads him to query A. A. Shakhmatov’s dating of the Nachal’nyi Svod of the Chronicle to the early 1090s. He favours re-dating this text to the mid-1080s or the beginning of the twelfth century. Tsyb also devotes a chapter to the earliest section of the Povest’ to contain year-dates, from the beginning of Michael III’s reign until the eve of Iaroslav’s death. He suggests that the erroneous date 6360 (852) for the start of Michael’s sole rule derives from a Rus’ version of the Short Chronicle of Patriarch Nikephoros wherein the translator had rounded up the lengths of individual emperors’ reigns in such a way as to yield 6360 for the start of Michael’s. Tsyb proceeds to set the diverse calendars detectable in the Chronicle within the broader context of Rus’ pagan yearly cycles. He endorses N. V. Stepanov’s view that these began with the spring season, while arguing strongly for a connection in early Rus’ thinking between this pagan New Year and the first week in Lent. Yet another form of calendar was the Paschal Year, used not only for church services but also for some historical record-keeping. Thus the Povest’’s contents register three main forms of calendar: the pagan mode of reckoning time’s passage, conveyed orally; the Eastern Christian liturgical calendar revolving around Easter; and the modes used in Greco-Bulgarian texts, which Rus’ record-keepers copied.

Tsyb’s undertaking is exceedingly ambitious, given our lack of manuscript witnesses for the Povest’ from the pre-Mongol era. His hypothetical layers of dating systems presuppose multiple compositions of chronicles and kindred records in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, and this is the true domain of the discipline known as “textology”. Whether the cat’s cradle of texts whose existence Tsyb postulates will withstand textologists’ verification is open to question. For example, his postulation of a family chronicle of the Vsevolodovichi upon which Vladimir Monomakh drew for his Pouchenie does not take account of A. A. Gippius’ examination of the sources, purpose, and process of composition of that work. Gippius’ careful reconstruction renders any recourse by the prince to a narrative source regarding his own exploits implausible. (See A. A. Gippius: Sochineniia Vladimira Monomakha: opyt tekstologicheskoi rekonstruktsii. I–III, in: Russkii iazyk v nauchnom osveshchenii 2 (6) (2003), pp. 60–99; 2 (8) (2004), pp. 144–169, esp. 164–165; 2 (12) (2006), pp. 186–203). One must also question Tsyb’s handling of non-Russian sources. For example, he ascribes the clear indication in the Povest’ of two successive expeditions of Sviatoslav Igorevich to the Balkans to the influence of “some Byzantine chronicle of the second half of the tenth century” (p. 128). In support of his claim that Sviatoslav launched only one expedition, in the summer of 969, he adduces Leo the Deacon’s evidence which does indeed recount only one expedition. However, Tsyb mistranslates the start of Leo’s main account of the Byzantine embassy to Sviatoslav, misrepresenting the embassy as subsequent to all the activities of Nikephoros II Phokas recounted earlier. In fact, Leo states that the embassy “arrived in Scythia” … “while [my italics] the emperor was accomplishing these things in Syria and Byzantium” (Leo Diaconus: Historiae libri decem et liber de velitatione bellica Nicephori Augusti. Ed. C. B. Hase. Bonn 1828, p. 77, ll. 3-4; tr. A.-M. Talbot / D. E. Sullivan: The History of Leo the Deacon. Washington, DC, 2005, p. 128). Although he does not give a precise date for the embassy’s arrival in Rus’, Leo has already, with his first mention of the despatch of the embassy to Rus’ (Historiae Libri Decem, IV. 4, 6, pp. 60–61, 63) signalled that Nikephoros incited Sviatoslav to attack Bulgaria fairly soon after the capture of Tarsus in 965. This is what one might expect if there were, in fact, two discrete Rus’ expeditions to the Balkans in the 960s, as the Povest’ and John Skylitzes’ chronicle (independently of one another) attest. And this, in turn, casts doubt upon the elaborate reconstruction of the events and chronology of Sviatoslav’s campaigning on offer from Tsyb. More generally, and for all the ingenuity and enterprise of this investigation, one may hesitate to abandon the more traditional approaches to the chronological make-up of the Povest’ Vremennykh Let, even while recognising that firm handholds are far and few between.

Jonathan Shepard, Oxford