Download PDF | The Routledge Handbook of East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages 500-1300, Routledge 2022.

Download PDF | The Routledge Handbook of East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages 500-1300.

607 Pages 

The Routledge Handbook of East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500–1300 is the first of its kind to provide a point of reference for the history of the whole of Eastern Europe during the Middle Ages. While historians have recognized the importance of integrating the eastern part of the European continent into surveys of the Middle Ages, few have actually paid attention to the region, its specific features, problems of chronology and historiography. This vast region represents more than two-thirds of the European continent, but its history in general—and its medieval history in particular—is poorly known. 

This book covers the history of the whole region, from the Balkans to the Carpathian Basin, and the Bohemian Forest to the Finnish Bay. It provides an overview of the current state of research and a route map for navigating an abundant historiography available in more than ten different languages. Chapters cover topics as diverse as religion, architecture, art, state formation, migration, law, trade and the experiences of women and children. This book is an essential reference for scholars and students of medieval history, as well as those interested in the history of Central and Eastern Europe. Florin Curta is Professor of Medieval History and Archaeology at the University of Florida, USA. 

His books include Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500–1250 (2006); The Making of the Slavs: History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube, ca. 500–700 (2011), which received the Herbert Baxter Adams Award of the American Historical Association; The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, c. 500 to 1050: The Early Middle Ages (2011); Slavs in the Making: History, Linguistics and Archaeology in Eastern Europe (c. 500 to c. 700) (2021); and The Long Sixth Century in Eastern Europe (2021).

Contributors 

Dariusz Adamczyk is Assistant Professor of Eastern European History at the Leibniz University in Hannover and researcher at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw, currently working on a project about the history of monetization and the political economy of state building in the Middle Ages. He is the author of Silber und Macht. Fernhandel, Tribute und die piastische Herrschaftsbildung in nordosteuropäischer Perspektive (800–1100) (Harrassowitz, 2014) and Monetarisierungsmomente, Kommerzialisierungszonen oder fiskalische Währungslandschaften? Edelmetalle, Silberverteilungsnetzwerke und Gesellschaften in Ostmitteleuropa 800–1200 (Harrassowitz, 2020). 

Adamczyk is the co-editor of two collections of studies entitled Fernhändler, Dynasten, Kleriker. Die piastische Herrschaft in sozialen und kontinentalen Beziehungsgeflechten vom 10. bis zum frühen 13. Jahrhundert (Harrassowitz, 2015) and Monetisation and Commercialisation in the Baltic Sea, 1050–1450 (Routledge, 2021). 

Maddalena Betti earned her Ph.D. in History from the University of Padova (2008). Her dissertation was published as The Making of Christian Moravia (858–882). Papal Power and Political Reality (Brill, 2014). Her research focuses on the eastern borderlands of the Carolingian Empire and on the Christianization of Central Europe in the 9th century. She also works on the history of the papacy and the history of Rome from the 8th to the 10th century. She is currently a research fellow at the University Ca’ Foscari in Venice. 

Ivan Alexandrov Biliarsky is Professor in the Institute of Historical Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia, as well as Professor of Law History in the School of Law at the Free University in Varna. He graduated from the Law School of the University “Saint Clement of Ochrid” in Sofia (1984), obtained his Ph.D. from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (1989), and his habilitation from the University of Sofia (2009). His main domains of interest are medieval institutions and law, sources, manuscript studies and political theology. He worked in the main libraries and manuscript collections as Mount Athos, Vatican, Jerusalem, Paris, Athens and Romania. Among his main publications are Hierarchia. L’Ordre sacré. Etude sur l’esprit romaïque (Freiburg, 1997); Word and Power in Mediaeval Bulgaria (Brill, 2011); The Tale of the Prophet Isaiah. The Destiny and Meanings of an Apocryphal Text (Brill, 2013; Vestigia semper adora. Power, Faith and Institutions in Byzantine and Post-Byzantine World (Bucharest/Brăila, 2020)

Florin Curta is Professor of Medieval History and Archaeology at the University of Florida. His books include Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500–1300 (Brill, 2019). He is also the editor of two collections of studies entitled East Central Europe and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages (University of Michigan Press, 2005) and The Other Europe in the Middle Ages: Avars, Bulgars, Khazars and Cumans (Brill, 2008). Curta is the editor of the Brill online Bibliography of the History and Archaeology of Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages and co-editor of the Brill series “East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450.” His most recent book is an economic and social history of Eastern Europe during the “long sixth century,” published in 2021 by Brill. Francesco Dall’Aglio is research fellow in Medieval History at the Institute for Historical Studies of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He specializes in the medieval history of South-Eastern Europe, with a focus on Bulgaria and its relations with the Byzantine Empire, the Western powers and the steppes world. He is the author of Innocenzo III e i Balcani: fede e politica nei Regesta pontifici (Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale,” 2003), and of Tentative Empires: Bulgaria and the Latins of Constantinople, 1185–1261, to be published this year by Brepols. Dall’Aglio is the supervisor and main editor of the corpus of Hungarian sources for the history of medieval Bulgaria, a project to be completed and published in 2024. Danijel Džino is Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and Archaeology at Macquarie University, Sydney. His books include Becoming Slav, Becoming Croat: Idemtity Transformation in Post-Roman and Early Medieval Dalmatia (Brill, 2010) and From Justinian to Branimir: The Making of the Middle Ages in Dalmatia (Routledge, 2021). Džino is also co-editor of Byzantium, its Neighbors and its Cultures (Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, 2014) and Migration, Integration and Connectivity on the Southeastern Frontier of the Carolingian Empire (Brill, 2018). Paweł Figurski is Assistant Professor in the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. His publications include papers on manuscript culture, political thought and the ecclesiastical history of early and high medieval Europe. He was the principal investigator of the project “Zaniedbane źródła. Społeczno-polityczna historia Polski na podstawie rękopisów liturgicznych (do początku XIV wieku),” financed by the Polish Science Center (NCN). Between 2014 and 2017, he was a Garstka Visiting Fellow at the University of Notre Dame. He is the co-editor of Political Liturgies in the High Middle Ages. Beyond the Legacy of Ernst H. Kantorowicz, a book that will be published this year by Brepols. Timofei V. Guimon is a researcher at the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is the author of Istoriopisanie rannesrednevekovoi Anglii i Drevnei Rusi. Sravnitel’noe issledovanie (Moscow, 2012) and Historical Writing of Early Rus (c. 1000–c. 1400) in a Comparative Perspective, published this year by Brill. He also wrote many articles, most of them dedicated to Rus’ and Anglo-Saxon historical writing, as well as to early literacy and written culture of Rus’ in a comparative perspective. Guimon is the editor and co-editor of several volumes of Drevneishie gosudarstva Vostochnoi Evropy. Roman Hautala earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of Siena in 2011. He is a Docent in the Department of History at the University of Oulu (Finland) and a Senior Contributors xii Research Fellow in the “Sh. Marjani” Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences in Tatarstan (Kazan, Russian Federation). His books include Ot “Davida, tsaria Indii” do “nenavistnogo plebsa satany.” Antologiia rannikh latinskikh svedenii o tataro-mongolakh (Kazan, 2015), Crusaders, Missionaries and Eurasian Nomads in the 13th–14th Centuries: A Century of Interactions (Bucharest/Brăila, 2017) and V zemliakh “Severnoi Tatarii.” Svedeniia latinskikh istochnikov o Zoloti Orde v pravlenie khana Uzbeka (1313–1341) (Kazan, 2019). Hautala is the editor of both the Golden Horde Review and the Golden Horde Legacy. His most recent book is a collection of Latin sources (with parallel translation into Russian) on the history of the Golden Horde from its founding to the mid-14th century. Hajnalka Herold is Senior Lecturer in Historical Archaeology at the University of Exeter. She is author of Die frühmittelalterliche Siedlung von Örménykút 54. I (Budapest, 2004), Frühmittelalterliche Keramik von Fundstellen in Nordost- und Südwest-Ungarn (Budapest, 2006), and Zilingtal (Burgenland)—die awarenzeitliche Siedlung und die Keramikfunde des Gräberfeldes (Mainz, 2010). Herold is the co-editor of “Castellum, civitas, urbs.” Zentren und Eliten im frühmittelalterlichen Ostmitteleuropa (Rahden, 2015) and Fortified Settlements in Early Medieval Europe: Defended Communities of the 8th to 10th Centuries (Oxbow Books, 2016). As Principal Investigator of the project “Glass Networks: Tracing Early Medieval Long-Distance Trade, c. 800–1000 CE,” funded by the Leverhulme Trust, her recent research focused on the long-distance trade between Europe and the Middle East in the early Middle Ages. Herold has also led a fieldwork-based study of the post-Roman to medieval landscape transformations in eastern Austria. The study was funded by the Society of Antiquaries of London, the Society for Medieval Archaeology and the County of Lower Austria. Marek Hladík is a researcher at the Center for Slavic and Medieval Archeology of the Institute of Archeology in Brno. For more than ten years, he has been a member of the research team at Mikulčice-Valy. In addition to theoretical archeology, he specializes in economic archaeology, particularly the study of social and economic relations of early medieval centers with their economic hinterlands. Hladík is the author of Mikulčice and its Hinterland. An Archaeological Model for Medieval Settlement Patterns on the Middle Course of the Morava River (7th to Mid-13th Centuries) (Brill, 2020) and the co-author of Úpravy hrobových jam a dřevěné konstrukce v hrobech na pohřebištích Velké Moravy (sociální, duchovní a chronologický fenomén) (Brno, 2017) and Zázemí hradiště Mikulčice-Valy v 9. století (Brno, 2020). David Kalhous is Associate Professor of History and Auxiliary Historical Sciences at the Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. His monographs on the medieval history of East Central Europe include Anatomy of a Duchy: The Political and Ecclessiastical Structures of Early Přemyslid Bohemia (Brill, 2012) and Bohemi: Prozesse der Identitätsbildung in frühpřemyslidischen Ländern (bis 1200) (Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2018). He currently works on an analysis of the chronicle of Cosmas of Prague based on a close reading of later chroniclers using Cosmas and on the codicological and paleographical examination of the manuscripts. He is also looking at governmental practices of King Přemysl Ottokar II (1253–1278) using digital humanities for a book to be published by Böhlau. Evgenia Komatarova-Balinova is Assistant Professor in the Medieval Department at the National Institute of Archaeology and Museum in Sofia. She is a specialist in the archaeology of early medieval Bulgaria, with a particular research interest in “migrations” and cultural Contributors xiii changes. Komatarova-Balinova is the co-editor of Eurika. In honorem Ludmilae DonchevaePetkovae (Sofia, 2009) and a member of the editorial board of Prinosi kăm bălgarskata arkheologiia and In sclavenia terra. Gregory Leighton earned his Ph.D. in History from Cardiff University in 2019. His first book, Sacred Landscape and Crusading Ideology in the Medieval Baltic Region, is currently under contract with ARC-Humanities Press for the series “War and Conflict in Premodern Societies.” Leighton is currently co-editing a collection of studies to be published with Brill under the title Religious Rites of War: Eastern and Northern Europe, 900–1500. He also serves on the editorial board for Ordines Militares. Colloquia Torunensia Historica. Leighton has contributed to the most recent project of the Malbork Castle Museum, Bilde von Prage. Czeska rzeźba stylu pięknego około 1400 w państwie krzyżackim w Prusach. Beginning with September of 2021, he is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of History and Archival Sciences at the Nicholas Copernicus University, in Toruń, Poland. Kirił Marinow is Associate Professor of Byzantine Studies at the University of Łódź. A specialist in the medieval history of the Balkans, he is the author of Carstwo bułgarskie. Polityka, kultura, gospodarka, społeczeństwo, 866–971 (Warsaw, 2015) and co-author of Piotr I Święty car bułgarski (ok. 912–969). Maria Lekapena caryca bułgarska (ok. 912–?963) (Cracow, 2018). He is also the co-editor of several collections of studies: Varia Mediaevalia. Studia nad średniowieczem w 1050. rocznicę Chrztu Polski (Łódź 2016), The Bulgarian State in 927–969. The Epoch of Tsar Peter I (Łódź, 2018), and Widno Mahometa, cień Samuela. Cesarstwo bizantyńskie w relacji z przedstawiecielami innych religii i kultur (VII-XV w.)(Łódź, 2020). Marinow’s next book is about Tărnovo, the capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire, during the late Middle Ages. Mirjana Matijević Sokol is Professor of Auxiliary Sciences of History at the University of Zagreb. She is the author of Studia diplomatica. Rasprave i prinosi iz hrvatske diplomatike (Zagreb, 2014), Evangeliarium Spalatense (Split, 2016) and Studia mediaevalia selecta. Rasprave i prinosi iz hrvatske srednjovjekovne povijesti (Zagreb, 2020) and the co-editor of History of the Bishops of Salona and Split by Archdeacon Thomas of Split (Central European University Press, 2006). Matijević Sokol is the editor-in-chief of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts series “Codex diplomaticus regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae. Supplementa.” Adrien Quéret-Podesta is Adjunct Professor in the Department of History of the Institute of Slavic Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. He is the author of Annales Magdeburgenses Brevissimi. The Short Annals of Magdeburg and their Significance in the Discussion on the Genesis of Czech and Polish Annalistic Productions (Palacký University Olomouc, Faculty of Arts, 2016). His research focuses primarily on the 11th century in East Central Europe. He is currently a member of the research team working on the project “Testimonies of the oldest history of Slavs. Latin Serial, v. 3: Middle Ages, 1, Hungarian Sources” funded by the Institute of Slavic Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences. In that capacity, he works on charters and other non-narrative sources. Grzegorz Pac is Associated Professor of History at the University of Warsaw. He works on the role of women and the cults of saints in the early and High Middle Ages. He is the author of Kobiety w dynastii Piastów. Rola społeczna piastowskich żon i córek do połowy XII wieku—stadium porównawcze (Toruń, 2013) and co-editor of Oryginalność czy wtórność? Studia Contributors xiv poświęcone polskiej kulturze politycznej i religijnej (X-XIII wiek) (Warsaw, 2020). He is currently the principal investigator in the Polish-Norwegian research project entitled “Symbolic Resources and Political Structures on the Periphery: Legitimization of the Elites in Poland and Norway, c. 1000–1300.” Aleksander Paroń is Associate Professor in the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Wrocław. He is the author of Pieczyngowie. Koczownicy w krajobrazie politycznym i kulturowym sredniowiecznej Europy (Wrocław, 2015), the English translation of which was published by Brill this year as Pechenegs: Nomads in the Political and Cultural Landscape of Medieval Europe. Paroń is also the co-editor of two collections of studies entitled Potestas et communitas. Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zu Wesen und Darstellung von Herrschaftsverhältnissen im Mittelalter östlich der Elbe (Warsaw/Wrocław, 2010) and Serica—Da Qin. Studies in Archaeology, Philology and History on Sino-Western Relations (Wrocław, 2012). ́ Cosmin Popa-Gorjanu is Associate Professor of Medieval History at the “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia. He is the author of Medieval Nobility in Central Europe: the Himfi Family (Cluj-Napoca, 2019), as well as several studies on the history of Romanian knezes and nobles in medieval Hungary and Transylvania and on the regional identity of Transylvanian nobility in the 13th to 15th centuries. He is also editor of Transylvania in the Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries: Aspects of Regional Identity (Cluj-Napoca, 2012) and Corruption and Anticorruption in Historical Perspective (from the Middle Ages to Modern Age) (ClujNapoca, 2016). Laurențiu Rădvan is Professor of Medieval and Pre-Modern History at the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iași. His books include At Europe’s Borders: Medieval Towns in the Romanian Principalities (Brill, 2010), Orașele din țările române în evul mediu (Iași, 2011), Social and Political Elites in Eastern and Central Europe (15th-18th Centuries), with Cristian Luca (School of Slavonic and East European Studies UCL, 2015), along with many other volumes of studies. He is also the editor of the journals “Historia Urbana” and “Analele Știinţifice ale Universităţii «Alexandru Ioan Cuza» din Iași,” the History series. His most recent book is on newly discovered plans of Iași, the former capital of the principality of Moldavia, published with Mihai Anatolii Ciobanu (Planurile orașului Iași în arhive străine, Bucharest/Heidelberg, 2020). Christian Raffensperger is Professor of History at the Wittenberg University. His books include Reimagining Europe: Kievan Rus’ and the Medieval World (Harvard University Press, 2012), The Kingdom of Rus’ (ARC Humanities Press, 2017) and Conflict, Bargaining, and Kinship Networks in Medieval Eastern Europe (Lexington Books, 2018). The overarching focus of his scholarship is to demonstrate the interconnectivity of medieval Europe, especially inclusive of connections between Eastern Europe (broadly construed) and the rest of the medieval European world; a key aspect of which is examining how the modern construct of medieval Europe was made in the first place. These connections can also be seen in his digital humanities projects such as Russian Genealogy Project, hosted by the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (gis.huri.harvard.edu/rusgen). His current project is a study of medieval political culture in medieval Europe. Stefan Rohdewald is Professor of East and South-East European History at the University of Leipzig, after teaching Southeast European History for several years at the University of Contributors xv Giessen. He is the author of Götter der Nationen. Religiöse Erinnerungsfiguren in Serbien, Bulgarien und Makedonien bis 1944 (Böhlau, 2014) and the co-editor of Religiöse Erinnerungsorte in Ostmitteleuropa. Konstitution und Konkurrenz im nationen- und epochenübergreifenden Zugriff (Akademie Verlag/De Gruyter, 2013). Rohdewald chairs the priority program Transottomanica: Eastern European-Ottoman-Persian Mobility Dynamics (SPP 1981), financed by the German Research Foundation (www.transottomanica.de). His next book is an expanded, English version of his 2014 monograph and will be published by Brill under the title Sacralizing the Nation Through Remembrance of Medieval Religious Figures in Serbia, Bulgaria and Macedonia. Maria Alessia Rossi, who earned her Ph.D. in Art History in 2017 from the Courtauld Institute of Art, is an Art History Specialist for the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University. Her main research interests include medieval monumental art in the Byzantine and Slavic cultural spheres, cross-cultural contacts between the Eastern and Western Christian world, and the role of miracles in text and image. She co-edited Late Byzantium Reconsidered: The Arts of the Palaiologan Era in the Mediterranean (Routledge, 2019) and Byzantium in Eastern European Visual Culture in the Late Middle Ages (Brill, 2020). Rossi is the cofounder of the initiative North of Byzantium (NoB), the digital platform Mapping Eastern Europe (https:// mappingeasterneurope.princeton.edu), and the co-editor of the Trivent book series “Eastern European Visual Culture and Byzantium (13th -17th c.).” Currently, she works on a monograph exploring the role of Christ’s miracles in the monumental art of late Byzantium. Sébastien Rossignol is Associate Professor of medieval European history at Memorial University, Newfoundland and Labrador. His research covers various subjects including early urbanization in Central Europe and the communication processes involved in the use of charters in 13th-century Silesia and Pomerania. He is the co-editor of Władza a struktury społeczne w średniowieczu na wschód od Łaby. Materiały konferencyjne (Wrocław/ Göttingen, 2008), Mittelalterliche Eliten und Kulturtransfer östlich der Elbe. Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zu Archäologie und Geschichte im mittelalterlichen Ostmitteleuropa (Göttingen, 2009), Potestas et communitas. Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zu Wesen und Darstellung von Herrschaftsverhältnissen im Mittelalter östlich der Elbe (Warsaw/Wrocław, 2010), Ad libros! Mélanges d'études médiévales offerts à Denise Angers et Joseph-Claude Poulin (Montréal, 2010), and Landscapes and Societies in Medieval Europe East of the Elbe. Interactions Between Environmental Settings and Cultural Transformations (Toronto, 2013). In addition, Rossignol has written several articles examining the contributions of women to the dissemination of literacy and written culture in medieval Central Europe. Aleksei S. Shchavelev is a researcher at the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. He is the author of Slavianskie legendy o pervykh kniaz’iakh: Sravnitel’no-istoricheskoe issledovanie modelei vlasti u slovian (Moscow, 2007) and Khronotop derzhavy Rurikovichei (911–987) (Moscow, 2020), as well as several articles on historical writing (especially origo gentis legends) and political thought in medieval Rus’, Bulgaria, Bohemia, Poland, Byzantium and Iceland. His research also focuses on problems of state formation in Rus’, its interrelations with Byzantium and other surrounding peoples, the chronology and geography of the events taking place in Eastern Europe during the 9th to 11th centuries. Dariusz Andrzej Sikorski is Professor of Medieval History at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. He is the author of a trilogy: Kościół w Polsce za Mieszka I i Bolesława Chrobrego. Rozważania nad granicami poznania historycznego (Poznań, 2011), Początki Kościoła w Contributors xvi Polsce. Wybrane problemy (Poznań, 2012), Wczesnopiastowska architektura sakralna (jako źródło historyczne do dziejów Kościoła w Polsce) (Poznań, 2012). His most recent book is Religie dawynch Słowian. Przewodnik dla zdezorientowanych (Poznań, 2018). He has also co-edited a collection of studies entitled Cognitioni gestorum. Studia z dziejów średniowiecza dedykowane Profesorowi Jerzemu Strzelczykowi (Warsaw, 2006). Ivo Štefan is Assistant Professor in the Department of Archeology of the Charles University in Prague. He is the author of several dozen studies devoted mainly to the Christianization and the rise of early medieval states in Central Europe. He is the co-editor of Kostel Panny Marie na Pražském hradě. Dialog nad počátky křesťanství v Čechách (Prague, 2018) and the author of Zrození hřbitova. Počátky farní organizace v českých zemích, to be published this year by the Karolinum publishing house in Prague. Štefan is the chief editor of Studia mediaevalia Pragensia. Boris Stojkovski earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of Novi Sad (2014) and is now Assistant Professor of Medieval History in the Faculty of Philosophy of that same university. His research focuses on Arab and Ottoman history and its ties to Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages. He is the editor of Voyages and Travel Accounts in Historiography and Literature (Budapest/Novi Sad, 2020), a book to which he contributed his own a study on Southern Hungary and Serbia in al-Idrisi’s Geography. He has also written several articles on al-Idrisi and Abu-Hamid al-Garnati. Currently, he is a part of an interdisciplinary research project on synagogues and Jewish heritage in Vojvodina, for which he prepares a study on the earliest possible mentions of Jews in Southern Hungary during the Middle Ages. Alice Isabella Sullivan, who earned her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan (2017), is Assistant Professor of Medieval Art and Architecture at Tufts University, specializing in the artistic and architectural production of Eastern Europe and the Byzantine-Slavic cultural spheres. She has written on topics related to monumental architecture with a focus on cross-cultural interactions, and the coordination between architecture, decoration, ritual and other ephemeral facets of medieval sacred spaces. She is the author of award-winning articles in The Art Bulletin (2017) and Speculum (2019), and the co-author of a study published in Gesta (2021). She is co-editor of Byzantium in Eastern European Visual Culture in the Late Middle Ages (Brill, 2020) and co-founder of North of Byzantium and Mapping Eastern Europe— two initiatives that explore the rich history, art and culture of the northern frontiers of the Byzantine Empire in Eastern Europe during the medieval and early modern periods. Cameron Sutt is Professor of History at Austin Peay State University. His book, Slavery in Árpád-era Hungary in a Comparative Context (Brill, 2015), examined slavery in the Hungarian kingdom. He has published on various aspects of medieval Hungarian society including inheritance practices, land-use strategies and estate management, and the property and agency of women. Aleksandar Uzelac is senior research associate at the Institute of History in Belgrade. He is the author of Pod senkom psa. Tatari i južnoslovenske zemlje u drogoj polovini XIII veka (Belgrade, 2015) and Krstaši i Srbi (XI–XII vek) (Belgrade, 2018). He dealt with the impact of the early crusades on Southeastern Europe and the history of the Latin Empire of Constantinople in several articles published in Istorijski časopis, the Golden Horde Review, Oğuz-Türkmen Arastır ̧ - maları Dergisi and Revista de istorie militară. Contributors xvii Jan Mikołaj Wolski is Assistant Professor of History at the Waldemar Ceran Research Center at the University of Łódź. He specializes in the spiritual and literary culture of the medieval Slavs. He is the author of Kultura monastyczna w późnośredniowiecznej Bułgarii (Łódź, 2017) and co-editor of Średniowieczne herezje dualistyczne na Bałkanach. Źródła słowiańskie (Łódź, 2017). Another collection of study co-edited by Wolski will be published in Greece this year. Dušan Zupka is Assistant Professor of History in the Faculty of Arts of the Comenius University in Bratislava. He is the author of Ritual and Symbolic Communication in Medieval Hungary under the Árpád Dynasty, 1000–1301 (Brill, 2016) and Meč a kríž. Vojna a náboženstvo v stredovekej strednej Európe 10.-12. storočie (Bratislava, 2020). Zupka is co-editor of Rulership in Medieval East Central Europe (Bohemia, Hungary and Poland), to be published this year by Brill. His research focuses on power, rulership and communication in medieval East Central Europe. Since 2017, he is co-editor of the Brill series “East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450.”

INTRODUCTION

 Florin Curta 

Almost two decades ago, in a conference paper entitled “Location in space and time,” the German historian Matthias Springer asked rhetorically how many people in his day were able to distinguish between Slovenia, Slovakia and Slavonia.1 His was a tongue-in-cheek remark about the then American President George W. Bush, who, in 1999, had told a Slovak reporter that he had learned about his country from its foreign minister visiting Texas. It turned out that that minister, however, was from Slovenia, not Slovakia. At the beginning of the second millennium, this was a politician’s gaffe de jour. Aware of that, Springer’s audience may have nodded and smiled approvingly. No record exists of the reaction that either the German historian or his audience had to the publication of a map just a few years later in a much used and praised handbook of Byzantine Studies. 

The map purports to show the Empire’s northern neighbors, and has Slovaks placed next to Avars, Pechenegs and Khazars.2 Meanwhile, prominent scholars write nonchalantly about the “Slavlands” being one of the vast and dynamic areas of Europe “whose transformations owed and brought so much to early medieval civilization.”3 The same scholars explain that by the time Charlemagne was born, the “eastern reaches of the Frankish territory” were separated from Byzantium by the “dreaded Avars” and, beyond them, by the “Protobulgarian Empire, then expanding over a great swath [sic] of central Europe, from roughly the modern-day Republic of Moldova down into Greece.”4 Others dread the migration of the (early) Slavs, who “broke the unity of the continuity of the continent” or, alternately, the Mongols, who “were almost entirely a negative force, with their tendency to mass killing and brutal exploitation.”5 At least the Slavs receive occasional kudos: “they may have lacked circuses, togas, Latin poetry and central heating, but the Slavs were as successful in imposing a new social order across central and Eastern Europe as the Roman had been to the west and south.”6 By contrast, the “pony- riding Avars” had only “aggressive impulses.”7 Like them, several other “central Asian peoples entered Europe before the age of the barbarian invasions was over,” with the Bulgars and the Magyars at the head of the list.8 Both groups came from “the grasslands where Europe meets Asia.”9 The Magyars at least played “a significant role in western Europe’s eastern frontier,” while the Bulgar(ian)s could consider themselves lucky to have such a charismatic leader as “Boris the Bogomil.”10 Under the pressure of the Bulgars and the Moravians from the south and from the east (!), the Poles had to embrace Catholicism.11 However, it took Emperor Otto II [sic] to establish the archdiocese of Gniezno “on the frontiers of the known world.

Being left out of history was not the only problem of Eastern Europe. In the 860s, the first wave of Viking invaders crossed the Baltic Sea “to what are now the Baltic states.”13 When they got to Russia, they found there the Varangians, who are “another Slavic people.”14 Like the Bulgarians, the Rus’ got lucky, though. First, they were able to overcome, albeit only gradually, “many of the Slavic, Lithuanian, Finnish and Magyar peoples who were then living on the steppe.”15 Second, having tapped onto the resources of Russia, the Rus’ began to trade with their neighbors. That much results from “the presence of Iranian coins in eastern Europe.”16 Moreover, since the Byzantines paid in cash, “Kiev had much more of a money economy than did western Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries.”17 Third, Cyril and Methodius knew Slavic, and the alphabet called Glagolitic “later developed into Church Slavonic.”18 Even the Euchologion of Sinai was “composed in Glagolitic.”19 Unfortunately, “successive Germanic and Scandinavian attacks threatened the survival of the principalities of Vladimir and Novgorod” after 1240.20 While several historians have recognized the importance of integrating the eastern part of the European continent into surveys of the Middle Ages, few have actually paid attention to the region, its specific features, problems of chronology and historiography. Some claim that studying the history of East Central (or Eastern) Europe is simply “provincializing a field of study.”21 The definition of medieval Europe has presumably been expanded, and the eastern part of the Continent has now been incorporated into textbooks of global medieval history. There is no need for a special study of the region, so the argument goes, and to claim otherwise amounts to an ill-conceived refusal to participate in the study of global history. However, at a theoretical level, at least, an “add-Eastern-Europe-and-stir” approach to the history of the Continent or, even more so, of the world is reductionist: a way to distill the specific history of the region to a simple solution, one that can easily match (and confirm) models created on the basis of West European history. 

In practice, the end result of such an approach is often a caricature of East European history, as shown above on the basis of the evidence selected from the most prominent, if not also egregious examples.22 To judge by that evidence, one needs more, not less knowledge of the history of Eastern Europe. In fact, a careful examination of the current situation will indicate that, although ignored by many, a chasm has been created, and continues to grow between the production of outstanding works by talented historians of Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, and the reception of that scholarly output, its impact on historiography in general, and its supposed incorporation into “global history.” At this point, in order to bridge that chasm and to correct, if only partially, one’s own misperceptions and stereotypes, it is important to have essential guidance through the complex past of the region. This handbook, the first of its kind on the subject, aspires to be that guidance and to make a significant contribution to scholarship by providing a point of reference for the history of whole of Eastern Europe. Geographic monikers for Eastern Europe include East Central Europe, Southeastern Europe, the Balkans and the Carpathian Basin. Eastern Europe, defined here, extends from the Ore Mountains and the Bohemian Forest to the Ural Mountains, as well as, north to south, from the Finnish Bay to the southernmost tip of Peloponnesus. This vast region represents more than two-thirds of the European continent. This book covers the history of the whole region in the Middle Ages, ca. 500 to 1300. The goal is to offer an overview of the current state of research and the basic route map for navigating an abundant historiography available in more than ten different languages. The literature published in English on the medieval history of Eastern Europe—books, chapters and articles— represents a little more than 11 percent of that historiography. The handbook is therefore meant to provide an orientation into the existing literature that may not be available because of linguistic barriers, and, in addition, a minimal bibliography in English.

To accomplish this formidable task, 33 historians and archaeologists from 15 countries have taken on a series of major topics. None of them is concerned with political history per se, with the exception of the last two chapters—Francesco Dall’Aglio on the rise of Serbia and the Second Bulgarian Empire and Roman Hautala on the Mongols in Eastern Europe. Christian Raffensperger introduces the problems of the terminology used for the region, the geographical boundaries of the book’s coverage and some of the important moments in the history of history writing about the Middle Ages in the region. Daniel Džino addresses the vexed question of the role of migration in the ethnic make-up and the political configuration of East Central and Eastern Europe. Special emphasis is placed in the contrast between well-documented migrations (such as that of the Magyars) and the problems of the historiography postulating migrations that are not attested either in the written or in the archaeological sources (e.g., the Slavs and the Croats). Evgenia Komatarova-Balinova deals with the earliest polities in the medieval history of East Central and Eastern Europe. Since those polities have been established by people otherwise regarded as “nomads,” her chapter entails a discussion of state formation among nomads but engages in debates surrounding the interpretation of the archaeological evidence pertaining to the “steppe empires” in the lands north of the Black and Caspian Seas (the Khazars) and the polities established in the northern Balkans (Bulgaria) and the Carpathian Basin (the Avars). The emphasis on nomads continues with Aleksander Paroń’s chapter. His goal is to take a fresh, critical look at the work done on medieval nomads, especially in Eastern Europe, over the last three decades or so. The chapter focuses on the relation between pastoralism and nomadism and highlights the specific features of the history of Eastern Europe in relation to the early medieval nomads. The next two chapters are dedicated to the question of religious conversion. Maddalena Betti deals with the 9th-century conversion to Christianity in Moravia and Bulgaria, the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism and of the Volga Bulgars to Islam. The chapter also discusses the thorny issue of mission (from Byzantium and/or the Frankish Empire), as well as the strategies employed in conversion and the political implications of that transformation. By contrast, Ivo Štefan brings forward four cases of conversion “from the top” in the 10th century. Two of them are linked to matrimonial alliances, and the political significance of those alliances is discussed in detail. The establishment of the ecclesiastical structures and the Christianization of the rural communities in Bohemia, Poland, Hungary and Rus’ are also in the focus of this chapter. The use of violence in the conversion (Hungary, Rus’) is also a question of significance in Štefan’s contribution to this volume. Continuing those themes, David Kalhous deals with the rise of early medieval states in the second half of the 10th century. His chapter discusses the nature of those polities, the mechanisms responsible for the rise of such political configurations and the impact of later sources on the assessment of the social and political forces responsible for state formation. Kalhous compares five political entities in the region—Croatia, Bohemia, Poland, Rus’ and Hungary. A perhaps unusual chapter is that on strongholds and medieval states. The topic of hillforts has gained enormous popularity in the last few years, particularly in relation to supposed slave trade routes. However, of much greater significance, especially in the case of Poland, is the role of strongholds in the building of the earliest medieval states. In her chapter, Hajnalka Herold discusses questions of administration and military organization pertaining to that special role of fortifications, using different areas of East Central Europe for useful comparison. Cosmin Popa-Gorjanu adopts a similarly comparative approach in Chapter 9, which is dedicated to the rise of the early medieval aristocracy. The question of the medieval elites in East Central and Eastern Europe has received much attention in the last three decades since the fall of Communism. Historians are currently debating the origin of the medieval nobility and the significance of land ownership in defining the specific features of the social structure of medieval Eastern Europe. Popa-Gorjanu examines the issue through the lens of that already abundant historiography. Equally large is now the body of scholarly literature on kingship in the region. Rulers and rulership have been the object of intense research, especially in Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. Dušan Zupka discusses the medieval ideals of rulership in East Central and Eastern Europe, while at the same time focusing on key sources (such as “mirrors of kings”) produced in the area, which could illuminate the origin and significance of the rudiments of political theory upon which the ideals of kingship were based. By contrast, while still working in a comparative mode (largely on the basis of the three polities in East Central Europe—Bohemia, Hungary and Poland), Adrien Quéret-Podesta takes a more pragmatic look at politics with an emphasis on royal government, from taxation and tolls (especially in Hungary) to the organization of chanceries. The emphasis is placed on the role of the written document in the organization of elaborate forms of government control. While most chapters in this book are based on the analysis of written sources, Marek Hladík capitalizes on the explosion of archaeological research in the region over the last 50 years or so, which has brought an enormous amount of information pertaining to rural settlements and the agrarian economy. Hladík discusses that on the basis of a case study, namely that of 9th-century Moravia and the surrounding regions. By contrast, Laurenţiu Rădvan’s chapter is a survey of towns and urban settlements within the entire region and throughout the entire period covered in this book. By AD 1000, Kiev was one of the largest urban settlements of Europe, a key trade and industrial center of the continent. Three hundred years later, there were several large cities in existence in East Central Europe, which played an equally significant role in European economy. Rădvan discusses the circumstances in which the earliest urban centers developed, the role of the transformations of the 13th century and the granting of privileges to old and new settlements. The rise of the medieval states in East Central and Eastern Europe coincides with the striking of the first coins as instruments of exchange on the local markets. Dariusz Adamczyk discusses the development of continental trade across the region, from the trade routes established by Viking merchants in the 10th century from the Baltic to the Caspian Sea, to the east-west axis of trade that became the characteristic feature of the later centuries. Cameron Sutt deals with the hotly debated issue of social organization in medieval East Central and Eastern Europe, particularly with the thorny question of slavery. Much like Hladík, he chose a case study (Hungary) to address in detail the problems created in the historiography of the region by Marxist scholars that insisted upon the difference between serfs and slaves. Women and, to a lesser extent, children in the Middle Ages have recently received much attention from historians working on medieval East Central and Eastern Europe. Sébastien Rossignol addresses questions pertaining to research on gender and age categories in medieval society. Of particular significance in this respect is the role of both women and children in the process of Christianization. Although much has been written on Jews in medieval Eastern Europe, there has been no attempt to synthesize a multitude of studies and their conclusions pertaining to different religious minorities in the region. Boris Stojkovski deals comparatively with three such groups (Jews, Armenians and Muslims) in an attempt to define their role in medieval society, and the relations between the Christian majority and the non-Christian groups. In Chapter 18, Dariusz Andrzej Sikorski deals with the organization of the church structures in the newly converted territories. 

He places special emphasis not only on the organization and size of dioceses (eparchies) in both Catholic and Orthodox countries in the region, but also on the key aspect of when and how parishes were first established. Following the publication of a number of influential works on the history of the saint cults in the region, the topic has received a great deal of attention. Paweł Figurski and Grzegorz Pac deal with the cult of pan-Christian saints, as well as with the first native saints—kings, princes and monks. Equally significant is the question of relics and the transformation of some of the sites on which they were kept in centers of pilgrimage. The so-called double faith in the history of Christianization of certain areas of Eastern Europe (especially Rus’) has been the target of much criticism in the last years. The whole notion of “popular religion,” on the other hand, was targeted by revisionist studies. Kirił Marinow and Jan Wolski explore those issues, with special attention to recent work on the Bogomils of Bulgaria and Bosnia. 

The first five crusades crossed (or at least tangentially affected) East Central and Southeastern Europe. Some of them had a great significance for the political developments in the region, particularly after the conquest of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade. In Chapter 22, Aleksandar Uzelac discusses the impact of those crusades upon the political configuration and the social cleavages in the region. Unlike other crusading territories (Outremer, the Iberian Peninsula), Eastern Europe offers a unique example of expeditions sanctioned by the papacy that were neither for the recuperation of previously lost, Christian territory, nor organized against Muslims. The Baltic crusades are therefore a special chapter in the history of the crusades, and they involve directly the history of Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages. Gregory Leighton presents the most recent results of the historical research dedicated to that topic. 

Christianization in East Central and Eastern Europe meant the adoption of several types of scripts (some created for that occasion only, such as Glagolitic). It is only after that that the written word began to play a significant role in the political and religious life of the region. In her chapter, Mirjana Matijević-Sokol deals with the history of “useful” writing, particularly for record-keeping, transactions and official documents. Despite the heavy influence of canon and Byzantine law, the legal history of medieval Eastern Europe includes a number of original sources, such as the Russkaia Pravda, which have received a great deal of scholarly attention. In both Hungary and Rus’, the history of medieval law has usually been written as part of the history of the medieval state. In Chapter 25, Ivan Biliarsky addresses those historiographic problems, as well as the results of more recent studies that insist upon the contextualization of those sources. History writing has a long tradition in East Central and Eastern Europe, which in the case of Bulgaria includes the so-called Bulgar inscriptions meant to commemorate the ruler’s deeds or faithful servants. However, a true historiography did not come into being in Eastern Europe before Christianization. 

The chapter by Timofei Guimon and Aleksei Shchavelev examines the most important works of the medieval historiography of the region, from the Russian Primary Chronicle to the work of Thomas, the archdeacon of Spalato. By contrast (but also with some overlap), Stefan Rohdewald deals with the lives of saints written especially during the later period. He pays special attention to the first texts written in Old Church Slavonic, the lives of Constantine/Cyril and Methodius, as well as to the (Latin) lives of the first royal saints, especially Stephen I, King of Hungary. Furthermore, he discusses the question of the relation between the surviving texts and the “canonization” of saints. Alice Isabella Sullivan’s chapter on monumental architecture is a survey of the most important lines of research on the medieval architecture of the region, which is otherwise known as one of very interesting blending of different artistic traditions. 

The chapter insists upon the role of the so-called pre-Romanesque monuments of Croatia, Moravia and Poland, as well as on the transfer of architectural patterns from other areas of the Byzantine Empire into the Balkans. Art historians have recently paid a great deal of attention to monumental programs of fresco painting in both Byzantine (Nerezi) and Romanesque (Kostoľany pod Tribečom) churches. Maria Alessia Rossi discusses those recent studies, as well as the older conclusions of the research dedicated to the earliest frescoes and mosaics of Rus’. Finally, her chapter focuses on the production of icons in the region and their role in liturgical practice. The last two chapters are dedicated to major political changes taking place in Eastern Europe during the last century considered in this book. Francesco Dall’Aglio discusses the rise and growth of two new polities in Southeastern Europe—Nemanjid Serbia and Assenid Bulgaria. The consequences of the Fourth Crusade upon both states are also discussed in his chapter. Roman Hautala deals with the 1238–1241 campaigns of the Mongols in Eastern (Volga Bulgharia, Rus’) and East Central (Poland, Hungary) Europe. 

While dealing in detail with the destruction and devastation brought by the military campaign, his chapter also insists upon the economic and political transformations brought to the region by the imposition of pax Mongolica and the establishment of the Golden Horde in the steppe lands north of the Black Sea. As apparent already through this brief survey of the contents, this handbook provides considerable room for a discussion of nomads—from Avars to Mongols—who have influenced developments in Eastern Europe from ca. 600 to ca. 1300. The “steppe empires” have rarely been integrated into surveys of the medieval history of Europe, which, more often than not treat Magyars, Pechenegs and Mongols as agents of destruction and doom. Both Khazaria and Volga Bulgharia played a key role in the establishment of trade routes from the Baltic to the Caspian and, later, Black Sea, which brought the Vikings to Eastern Europe and are ultimately responsible for the rise of the polity(-ies) conventionally known as Kievan Rus’. Moreover, this handbook highlights the role of the archaeological evidence particularly for the earlier segment of the chronological interval covered by the constituent chapters. 

The extraordinary development of medieval archaeology over the last half of a century has dramatically changed the picture of Eastern Europe between ca. 500 and ca. 1000. Even after AD 1000, archaeology remains the main, if not the only source of evidence for several parts of Eastern Europe—the Baltic region, northern Russia and the territory of present-day Romania. Without archaeology, very little would be known about some of the most fascinating aspects of the medieval history of Eastern Europe. The rise of towns in Russia, the wealth and power of the Avar qaganate, the building in Pliska of one of the largest palatial compounds in early medieval Europe, the earliest mosque and caravanserai built in the 10th century in Bolgar, or the role of brick and stone castles in the Baltic crusades—those and many other facets of the medieval history of Eastern Europe have been brought to the fore by means of archaeological research. 

This handbook is also an invitation to comparison between various parts of the region at the same chronological level. For example, the Khazar conversion to Judaism, the Volga Bulghar conversion to Islam and the conversion to Christianity of two other polities are compared in Chapter 5. Similarly, the chapters on state formation and royal saints compare different polities—Bohemia, Hungary and Poland—while that on law contrasts developments in Bulgaria and Serbia to those in Rus’. An even greater emphasis on comparison appears in the chapters on agriculture, strongholds, social hierarchies, law, art and historiography. 

Will this handbook provide a remedy to the problems mentioned at the beginning of this introduction? Neither the authors nor the editor wants to buoy themselves up with any false hopes. Books rarely, if ever bring about immediate removal of stereotypes and misrepresentations, but they certainly can contribute to change. It will take time, perhaps several generations of scholars, to clear the fog and to recognize medieval Eastern Europe for what it really was. With scholarly lucidity and humility, we feel we have accomplished much, if our handbook will serve as navigational buoy through the troubled waters of the 21st-century research on the Middle Ages.

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