Abstract

This article concludes the author’s series of studies on the chronological dimensions of martial culture in pre-Mongol Rus’ from the late tenth through the first third of the thirteenth century. It asks whether the Rus’ princes shared a notion — attested in certain sources for Byzantium and Latin Europe of the same period — that active warfare was undesirable on the most significant days of the Menaion and Triodion liturgical cycles. Drawing on the earliest annalistic compilations and on the writings of Vladimir Monomakh, the author assembles all dated notices that allow one to assert — or, where chronological indications are insufficiently precise, at least to suggest — that bloody engagements involving the Rus’ occurred on Easter, on major feasts, on commemorations of saints especially venerated by the Rurikids, and during the pre- and post-Paschal weeks. The study refines the chronology of a number of events and considers, case by case, the extent to which Rus’ commanders, constrained by particular tactical circumstances, were free to choose the day of battle. Contrary to an entrenched view in the historiography that Rus’ dynasts were indifferent to the ecclesiastical calendar in wartime, the article argues that the sources point to a princely eff ort to avoid pitched battles and urban assaults on the principal Christian feasts of the annual cycle, especially those devoted to Christ and the Theotokos. It further suggests that the disastrous Stugna battle against the Polovtsians in 1093 — undertaken by the princes on the very day of the great feast of the Ascension — may have contributed to the formation of such an outlook. The reverent attitude toward the chief celebrations of the church year identified here corresponds closely to the similar respect for Sundays that the author has demonstrated in earlier work. There is thus little doubt that the heightened attention of Rus’ rulers to the liturgical calendar during campaigns reflects the growing influence of Christianity on the martial culture of early Rus’.