Download PDF | Myroslav Voloshchuk, Vasyl Stefanyk - Ruthenians (the Rus’) in the Kingdom of Hungary, 11th to Mid-14th Centuries_ Settlement, Property,and Socio-Political Role, Brill 2021.
360 Pages
Introduction
The Middle Ages was an exceedingly complicated period in the history of European civilization. It swarmed with migratory movements; some ethnic groups were absorbed and assimilated by others; moral and ethical values were gradually worked out within the framework of Christianity; empires, kingdoms, principalities, and duchies were born and passed away; borders and frontiers shifted; and only the hegemony of ‘men of the sword’ over the rest of society endured. Eastern Europe was certainly no exception to this complexity.
In Ukraine, broad swathes of the country’s medieval history, including its wealth of regional and local variation, have suffered from neglect due to the poor and fragmentary state of the source base and marked politicization of many subjects. The restoration of Ukraine’s independence has not yet brought with it any significant advances in the study of her past. It has, however, spurred an interest in Ukraine’s history among her neighbors, with their centuries-old historical and cultural connections to our land. One such neighbor is Hungary. During the 9th to 14th centuries, the Hungarian kingdom reached a high level of development under the rule of the houses of Árpád and Anjou. Among its European peers, it stood as an example of relative social and religious tolerance. Its ethnic diversity took shape under a variety of circumstances, rarely led to open conflict, and, as a rule, did not provoke centrifugal tendencies.
This book will focus on just one of the numerous ethnic groups inhabiting medieval Hungary – the Rus’. Sustained, in-depth treatments of this subject have been lacking, either in Ukraine or in Hungary and wider Europe. In particular, there is little research on the Rus’ nobility that under various circumstances found home abroad. The need for such research, however, is there – not only for the Kingdom of Hungary during the reign of the Árpáds and Angevins, but also for the domains of the Piasts, Přemyslids, Asens, and other medieval dynasties of the region. For manifold reasons, students of the history of Rus’ long limited their source base almost exclusively to the native chronicler tradition, rarely turning to foreign texts.
A deeper engagement with Latin-language chronicles, annals, hagiographies, histories, and charters brings to light a phenomenon not reflected in the Rus’ chronicles: a socially diverse emigration out of the lands of Rus’. We can only surmise that it bore at least some resemblance to the immigration of Germans, Jews, Armenians and Karaites into Galicia and Volhynia. The subject also merits attention in view of the long residence in present-day Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia, Moldova, Poland, and other countries of communities that self-identify as Rusyns. Their perceptions of their own history are quite different from the academic view, resting as they do on legends, tales, and literary tradition, rather than on documentary evidence critically considered. The book covers the period from the 11th to the second half of the 14th century. We begin with the first marriage alliances between the Árpáds and Riurikids, when Rus’ nobles of various rank and status first started settling permanently in Hungary.
The upper chronological boundary of the study is defined by the partial inclusion of the Kingdom of Rus’ into the realm of Louis I after 1370, which changed the nature of population movement in the region. Analysis of charters and historical writing of the period shows that during the 11th to 14th centuries the Hungarians clearly distinguished between Rus’ (Ruthenia, Russia, Ruscia, Ruzia) and the land of Halych (Galitia), but this did not in the least affect the identification of newcomers from the domains of the Riurikids. Sources refer to most such immigrants as Rutenus, Ruthenus, Oros, Orosz, Oroz, Vrus, Vruz, Wrus, Wrvs, Wruz, or Wrwz, and possibly Orros (?) and Orrus (?).1 It is important to give an account of the involvement of bearers of this identity in Hungary’s domestic and foreign affairs from the 11th to the second half of the 14th centuries.
Drawing on the existing theories about the role of so-called ‘ecological zones’ in medieval migrations, we believe that before their relocation to the Hungarian counties of Liptov, Turiec, Spiš, Šariš, Zemplín, Máramaros, Cluj in Transylvania, and others, a proportion of them resided in the eastern foothills of the Carpathians and belonged to the elites of the lands of Halych and, possibly, Chernihiv, Volhynia, and Kyiv. The biographies of only a handful of boyars (Volodislav Kormilichich, Zhyroslav, Yuriy Vitanovich, Gleb Potkovich, Volodislav Vitovich, Sudislav, and some others) can be fleshed out by comparing sources of different origin. The book follows the general European trends in the study of migrations and the formation and mobility of social groups in the Middle Ages and opens the way for reconsidering a number of aspects of Ukrainian, Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian, Serbian, and Croatian history.
These include the condition, role, and place of the nobility in several Rus’ principalities and the Kingdom of Hungary, as well as the evolution of the multi-ethnic profile of the Hungarian elite, which included Rus’ settlers among its many constituents. Aside from their scholarly implications, the conclusions put forward in this book may help formulate political strategies within the European Union, especially those concerning ethnic minorities, the resolution of local trans-border misunderstandings, support of diasporas, and other issues.
We are convinced that studies of this kind will help better define the place of Ukrainian history in the European academic terrain. I would like to thank Ostap Kardash of the Centrum Studiorum Mediaevalium (Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine) for his assistance in the English translation and adaptation of quotations from Latin documents. An English-language version of the book, even in this shortened form as compared to the Ukrainian and Hungarian editions, would not have been possible without the full support of Brill Publishers (especially Marcella Mulder and Alessandra Giliberto), as well as the Consulate General of Hungary in Uzhhorod.
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