Dmitry Donskoy and the Heroes of the Battle of Kulikovo Era in the Ancestral Legends of Russian Nobility (Based on the Materials of Genealogy Record Collections of the Second Half of the 19th Century)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the consideration of the ancestral legends of the Russian nobility contained in the genealogy record collections of the second half of the 19th century. An attempt was made to identify noble families, the origin of which is associated with the era of Dmitry Donskoy and the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380. The most famous genealogy record collections compiled by A. Bobrinskii, V. Arsen'ev, P. Dolgorukov, A. Lobanov-Rostovskii, V. Rummel', M. Yablochkov, and V. Chernopyatov are used as sources for the analysis. Ancestral legends of Russian noble families are considered as part of family memory. Special attention is paid to the reflections of famous historical figures of the Battle of Kulikovo era, such as Metropolitan Cyprian, Prince Dmitry Olgerdovich, Prince Andrei Olgerdovich, and Sergius of Radonezh, in the family legends of the Russian nobility. The introduction presents the characteristics of ancestral memory and analyzes the approaches to it by individual researchers. The main part of the article deals with ancestral legends preserved in genealogy record collections of the second half of the 19th century, with special emphasis on the historical figures of the 12th – 15th centuries, mentioned therein. In the final part of the article, a conclusion is made about the great popularity of the name of Prince Dmitry and his associates, participants in the Battle of Kulikovo, among the Russian nobility of the 18th – 19th centuries. The preferences of the people of the 19th century could not but tell on the legends that existed in the second half of the 19th century, which is also reflected in the diversity of legends about the origin of one and the same noble family. The analysis of the ancestral legends of the Russian nobility presented in the genealogy record collections makes it possible to understand the mechanisms of formation and transformation of the ancestral memory of Russian nobles over several centuries and also gives a vivid description of the worldview of the Russian nobility in the second half of the 19th century.

Keywords

• russian empire
• dmitry donskoy
• genealogy record collections
• historical memory
• battle of kulikovo
• legends
• genealogy
• ancestral memory