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Религиозный аспект церемонии вокняжения в домонгольской Руси
The development of the ceremony of prince’s enthronement in pre-Mongol Rus represents a gradual strengthening
of the ecclesiastical element, which had to be built into its established outline, which was initially exclusively secular,
probably due to the unwillingness to make the legitimacy of enthronement dependent on the Greek metropolitan and,
accordingly, on the will of the Byzantine Empire. The first key stage was the appearance of the metropolitan and clerics
among the townspeople meeting the new prince during the enthronement of Vladimir Monomakh in 1113, which
quickly became a custom. The second stage was connected with the enthronement of Izyaslav Mstislavich in 1146, where
such a meeting by the clergy turned into a litany and was supplemented by a visit to the cathedral with the worship
of icons and, possibly, the transfer of the princely throne there. These innovations were persistently repeated during
subsequent enthronements of Izyaslav and his protégé Vyacheslav, but Izyaslav’s opponents, on the contrary, carried
out their enthronement according to the old model. Having refused Izyaslav’s innovations, his rival Yuri Vladimirovich,
apparently introduced a new ceremony – blessing of the prince by the metropolitan. The strengthening of the religious
element in the enthronement ceremony in the mid-12th century can also be linked with its completion on Sunday,
which became more frequent since 1155 (11 cases out of 16). The third stage is connected with the fact that since
the mid-1170s, the innovations of Izyaslav Mstislavich began to be fully or partially repeated in other princely centers.
The ‘trigger’ therefor could be the partial ‘rehabilitation’ of his innovations in Kiev after the end of the Russian church
troubles in 1169. In this perspective, the pre-Mongol enthronements in Kiev appear not as a clearly formed ceremony,
especially an ecclesiastical one, but as a constantly evolving – and not linearly – act in which the representative intentions
of the new prince were to be perceived by the townspeople and clergy. In other centers, since the last quarter of the 12th
century, this ceremony began to be held in the form shaped in Kiev since the middle of this century.