Studia Litterarum (Mar 2018)
Sacred Land –Roman Empire – Byzantium — Rus’: The Concept of Heredity in Old Russian Literature
Abstract
The article examines the history of the idea of connection, succession, and hereditybetween Old Rus’, on the one hand, and such ancient political and spiritual centers ofthe Christian world as Jerusalem, Rome, and Constantinople on the other, within theOld Russian political thought. This idea was never documented in particular treatisesbut was nonetheless present in fictional, polemical and didactic works whether as amarginal or central theme, whether directly or allegorically. The author of the article considerably extends the circle of sources that drew retrospective analogies between Russian history and Sacred Land history. Indirect parallels in the “Word about the Law and the Grace” become explicit and specific in the hagiographic legend about Kiev Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich and later recur, with different accents, in a number of literary texts in the 15 th –17 th centuries, reflecting the course of Russian history. In these texts, we encounter a division between Rome as a symbol of imperial mundane power associated with state politics, and Jerusalem as a symbol of the Kingdom of God associated with church and religion.
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