Порабощение Руси монголами и отношения ханов монгольских к Русской Церкви или к вере русских и к их духовенству

Mongols or Tatars, a nomadic people of the so-called Altai or Ural-Altai family, who lived from ancient times in the same great Asian steppe in which their descendants live to this day and which is called Mongolia after their name. Until the second half of the 12th century, they did not constitute one political whole in the form of one state, but broke up into separate tribes and hordes, which were under the authority of their own special, large and small, rulers or khans 5 . In the middle of the 12th century, a great (and at the same time immensely terrible) man appeared among the Mongols, who not only united them into one whole, but also made huge conquests outside Mongolia in order to found the most powerful Mongol state. And who, dreaming of conquering the whole world, actually managed to fill the whole world with horror of his name and his wild relatives. This was Temujin, known in history by his subsequent title of Genghis Khan. Temujin was the son of Yazukai, the appanage owner of one Mongol horde, which consisted of 30-40 thousand families (wagons) and roamed in northeastern Mongolia, in the upper reaches of the Onon River (forming the Shilka River at its connection with the Ingoda, which in turn forms the Amur at its connection with the Argun); he was born around 1155. Having remained a 13-year-old boy after the death of his father, Temujin did not allow anything special to be expected from himself until he was forty years old, and all the time he remained the same little ruler. At the age now indicated, he suddenly entered, as the Easterners say, on the path of conquest and walked along it unusually quickly. Over the course of ten years, from 1195 to 1205, he subjugated all the individual Mongol tribes and hordes to his power and formed one state out of them. After this, having accepted at the general solemn congress of the conquered princes the title of Genghis Khan, which means great (powerful) khan, i.e. sovereign, and which corresponds to the European title of emperor, and, having established his residence in the city of Kharahorin or Karakorum on the upper Orkhon (flowing from the right side into the Selenga), to the south, to the southwest, from our present Kyakhta, Temujin began and quickly led external conquests: he conquered northern China along the Goang-go river or the Yellow, Tangut or the land of Tanogut of ours chronicles (the eastern greater or lesser half of present-day Tibet, or perhaps all of present-day Tibet with some part of western China adjacent to it), Karakhatai (present-day eastern Turkestan), Khovarezm or Kharezm (present-day Khiva, to which Bukhara and Kokand then belonged), Khorasan to the south of Khovarezm (with the cities of Merv in Turkestan, Balkh and Herat in Afghanistan and Nishabur in northeastern Persia), the eastern half of the so-called Kipchak or the Turkmen-Kyrgyz steppe 6. Genghis Khan died in 1227. Before his death, he divided his conquests between his three sons and between the grandchildren of his fourth son, who died before him, into four uluses or into four separate khanates, but so that the khan of one ulus, appointed to reside in his own capital Kharahorin or Karakorum, was the great khan and had supreme power over the khans of the rest. Our Rus' was then conquered by the khans of the Kipchak ulus, which, embracing not the entire eastern Kipchak, but its northern half or the Kyrgyz-Kaisak steppe, was given by Genghis Khan to the now mentioned grandchildren, namely, the children of his eldest son Chuchi or Jochi. The Russians first became aware of the Mongols during the life of Genghis Khan in 1223. The Khovarezm sovereign, having been defeated by the Mongol emperor, sought to save his life by fleeing to Persia. To pursue him, Genghis Khan dispatched two of his generals, who chased him almost to the northern border of Persia, until he took refuge from persecution on one of the islands of the Caspian Sea. Having gone too far into Persia to return back the old way, and at the same time wanting to have a new field for robbery, the commanders asked Genghis Khan and received permission from him to make the return journey through the Caucasian isthmus to the Kyrgyz steppe. While crossing the Caucasus, they beat the local peoples - Yasov, Obezov and Kasogov (Ossetians, Abkhazians and Cherkesovs), and having descended to its northern side, into the Polovtsian steppe, they began a terrible beating of the Polovtsians, whom they chased in the direction from the southeast to the northwest across the entire steppe to the very border of Rus' - to the Polovtsian rampart, which was below Pereyaslavl. The Polovtsians resorted to the Russian princes and begged them for help. Prince Mstislav Mstislavich of Toropets, who was then sitting in Galich, was the son-in-law of Prince Kotyan of the Polovtsians. Heeding the pleas of his father-in-law, he managed to win over his cousin Mstislav Romanovich, who was sitting in Kyiv, to the side of the Polovtsians; two Mstislavs formed a congress in Kyiv of all southern princes, and at the congress it was decided to go to the Tatars with the entire southern Russian land. The hordes of enemies retreating from the Russian borders were overtaken by our great army in the current Ekaterinoslav province, in its southeastern corner, on the Kalka River (present-day Kalets or Kalchik, flowing into Kalmius, which, separating the Ekaterinoslav province from the land of the Don army, flows into the Sea of ​​Azov near Mariupol). In the initial skirmish of the advanced detachments or vanguards, the Russians beat the Tatars; but then, in a general battle, both entire hordes suffered a complete and terrible defeat from them, which, according to the chronicler, had never happened (the main reasons for which were the cowardice of the Polovtsians and the mutual great envy between the two Mstislavs who organized the campaign). Nine or ten princes themselves fell, including Mstislav of Kiev, and as for the simple huge army, “many many..., many without number” perished (the Kievites alone, as they said, were about ten thousand people). After the defeat of the Russians, the Tatars returned to Rus' and reached Novgorod, which was located on the Dnieper, only 70 miles away from Kyiv; but, having terribly devastated the outskirts of the country and beaten everyone who was in their way and who did not flee from them, they did not go to Kyiv itself and fled back. The Kalkin massacre took place on May 31 (June 16?) 1223. 14 years after the Battle of Kalkina in 1237, the Tatars again came to Rus' to enslave it completely and for a long time. The Novgorod chronicler, having told about the invasion of the Tatars in 1223, concludes the story: “The Tatars (reaching Novgorod of the holy host) returned back from the Dnieper River, and we do not know where they came from and where they are again.” Based on these words of the chronicler, one could think of the final invasion of 1237 as completely unexpected for the Russians, which would serve as a considerable apology for the Grand Duke of Vladimir, who showed them such poor resistance. But if this may be true in relation to Novgorod, then it cannot at all be recognized as true in relation to Vladimir. At the same time that Genghis Khan sent two of his generals from Khiva to the south to pursue the Khan of Khiva, his son Jochi moved from there to the north, occupied the northern half of the eastern Kipchak and remained dominant in it. But the northern half of the eastern Kipchak had as its western border the Ural River, the ancient and old Yaik, which for the eastern, at least Russian, Vladimir and also Ryazan, was part of the geographic and political region to which their information extended. That the Tatars did not intend to consider the Ural River an impassable border for themselves, this should have become clear to the Vladimir and Ryazan Russians at least from 1229. Under this last year in our Russian chronicle, and specifically the Vladimir one, it is written: “that same summer Saksini (people of the Turkic tribe) and Polovtsi ran up from below to the Bolgars in front of the Tatars, and the Bulgarian guards came running from the Tatars near the river, whose name is Yaik.” In 1232, the aggressive aspirations of the Tatars, which threatened Rus' as well, should have been revealed to the Russians with even greater clarity. In our same Vladimir chronicle under this year we read “the same summer came to Tatarov and wintered before reaching the Great City of Bulgaria” (which was the capital of Kama Bulgaria and was located in the Spassky district of the current Kazan province, 25 versts southwest of the district city, near the left bank of the Volga, currently a village Uspenskoe-Bulgars). It seems that this year the Tatars only plundered Bulgaria, and did not conquer it, because the conquest is mentioned in our chronicle (the same Vladimir) under the year 1236. But terrible people who came once had to be expected again, and they came to our immediate neighbors. We didn’t have to wait long for the Tatars to come to us. After the death of Genghis Khan, the throne of the Great Khan in Karakorum remained unoccupied for two years; finally, in 1229, in accordance with his will, his third and especially beloved son Ogotai (Ogedei) was proclaimed Great Khan. After the pacification of the uprising that broke out in Khovarezm and after the conquest of China along the Yang-tse-Kiang River, in 1235 Ogotai decided to equip great armies to fulfill the thought and testament of Genghis Khan to conquer the whole world. Two armies were equipped and one of them was equipped to go west to conquer Europe. At its head was Batu, son of the Dzhuchis, ruler of the Kipchak, bordering Europe, to which the local conquered countries were to be annexed; Batu was accompanied by two sons of Ogotai himself and the sons of his two brothers. The conquest of Europe began by the Tatars from Kama Bulgaria, which was plundered by them in 1232. In the autumn of the following year, 1236, the Tatars appeared near the capital of Bulgaria, the Great City, took it and completely plundered it, beating up the inhabitants from old to young to pissing babies, and then devastated and conquered the entire country. In view of these horrors among the neighbors and the terrible thunderstorm already hanging too clearly over Russia itself, the Grand Duke of Vladimir Yuri Vsevolodovich was busy celebrating the weddings of his two sons! Having spent a year in Bulgaria, from autumn to autumn, the next winter, i.e. at the end of 1237, the Tatars came to Russia. In all likelihood, guided by the idea of ​​starting with the weakest, they headed not to the principality of Vladimir, but to Ryazan. Taking a route from Bulgaria to the southwest, and arriving in the southern part of the principality, they camped on a river called in the chronicles Onuza, which is currently unknown and by which, perhaps, should be understood the Uza River, flowing in the northern part of the Saratov province and flowing into the Sura on the border with the Penza province. From here they sent ambassadors to the princes of Ryazan, demanding from them tithes in people, horses and everything. The princes of Ryazan, not allowing the ambassadors to reach their capital, so as not to allow them to spy out its terrain and fortifications, and going out to them on the Voronezh River, answered: when we are all gone, then everything will be yours. The Tatars moved from the Onuza River to the Voronezh River, and the Ryazan princes, deciding to fight, sent to ask for help from the Grand Duke of Vladimir Yuri Vsevolodovich. But the Grand Duke pitifully let himself be deceived by the Tatars. According to a special code of rules on military honor, formed, as one must think, at a time when Mongolia, fragmented into small possessions, was immersed in civil strife, the Tatars considered cunning and the most unscrupulous deception to be the same military virtues as courage, and constantly tried to use the former before turning to the latter: The same Tatar ambassadors who came to the Ryazan princes passed from princes from the Voronezh River to Vladimir and assured the Grand Duke that he would not be touched if he remained neutral in the upcoming struggle. The prince, having given in to deceiving the ambassadors, sent them away gifted 8. On December 16, 1237, the Tatars approached Ryazan, and on December 21 they took it. From Ryazan they moved to Kolomna. Since the latter (belonging then to the Ryazan inheritance) stood on the very border of the Vladimir principality, the Grand Duke understood the deception and hastened to send his army to her, to the aid of the surviving Ryazan residents, led by one of his sons. But the united Ryazan-Vladimir army was defeated by the Tatars, and the city was taken. After the capture of Kolomna, they entered the region of the great reign and headed towards Moscow: they took the city, and captured the local appanage prince, another son of Yuriev, alive. Expecting the arrival of the Tatars on Vladimir, the Grand Duke left his two sons in the capital, and he himself with three nephews, the princes of Rostov, in a small squad, retired across the Volga and became a camp on the City River (in the current Molozhsky district of the Yaroslavl province), awaiting his brothers Yaroslav of Kyiv and Svyatoslav of Yuryev with his troops. The intention of the Grand Duke, whose behavior cannot be considered completely understandable, in all likelihood was to, after gathering his troops, attack the Tatars near Vladimir from the rear. But if this is so, then nothing of the kind happened. The Tatars, who were an exclusively equestrian army and at the same time exemplary in their attitude to the tirelessness of riding horses and people, acted with the greatest speed, hoping to instill special horror in their enemies and take them by surprise: hardly the Grand Duke had time to make any decision on the City, when Vladimir was already taken. The Tatars appeared under its walls on February 2. Having encamped near him, they made a trip to Suzdal, 34 miles away from it, to take this second capital of the great reign, and then, after a one-day preparation for the siege and after an equally short siege, they took it on February 8. Having captured Vladimir, in which the entire family of the Grand Duke perished, 9 the Tatars scattered for devastation and robbery throughout the entire Suzdal-Rostov region: in separate detachments they rushed to Rostov, Yaroslavl, Pereyaslavl, Tver, to the Volga to Gorodets, from which they extended their devastation in the Trans-Volga region to Galich Mersky (now Kostroma). The chronicler says that there was no place or village and such villages were rare, no matter where the Tatars fought on Suzdal land, and that they took 14 cities, except for settlements and churchyards. All this captivity and devastation of the Suzdal-Rostov region was carried out by the Tatars during one month of February 10. Truly and inexpressibly terrible must have been the position of Grand Duke Yuri Vsevolodovich, who stood on the City, when in a terrible fire his dying fatherland was waiting for his last attempt at salvation and when he personally was already a man without a fatherland, deprived of everything in this world. The Grand Duke did not make any attempt: the Tatars suddenly surged upon his army, which stood motionless in complete embarrassment of despair, which had forgotten even to post guards, on March 4th. A battle took place in which the Russians were defeated and fled, and in which the Grand Duke found his death 11. From the Suzdal region the Tatars headed to the Novgorod region. After a two-week siege, they took Torzhok on March 23, and went along the Seliger route to Novgorod itself. But, not reaching a hundred miles to Novgorod, they stopped at a place called Ignach Cross, 12 and turned south, probably frightened by the Novgorod swamps and swamps, which the Mongols, being residents of elevated dry places, are generally terribly afraid of at the present time. From the history of this movement of the Tatars to the south and then to the southeast, to the Polovtsian steppe, which, no doubt, was accompanied by the same looting and devastation as in the Suzdal region, the episode of the siege of Kozelsk by the Tatars is known. The insignificant town of Kozelsk, which belonged to the Chernigov region (now Kaluga province), covered itself with valiant glory for the entire Russian land, showing at the same time, to the shame of our princes, that with more courage and patriotic inspiration on their part, the Tatars would not have owned the Russian land. Kozelsk at that time had its own appanage prince, named Vasily, whose son and descendant is unknown 13; but the prince was very young. Despite this, the residents of the city decided to fight the Tatars and lay down their bellies for him. Having for their protection, no doubt, comparatively insignificant fortifications, they withstood the siege so courageously that the latter lasted for seven whole weeks. When, finally, the Tatars smashed the city wall and climbed the rampart, the Kozelites fought with them with knives and, attacking their very camp, slaughtered four thousand people until they themselves were killed every single one. The siege of Kozelsk left such a terrible memory among the Tatars that, according to the chronicler, they later did not dare to call it Kozelsk, but called it an evil city. The devastation of Rus', traversed by the Mongol hordes, must be presented as the most terrible. At that time, all European nations waged wars in a completely barbaric manner; but it is natural that real barbarians, relatives of the Huns and Pechenegs, such as the Mongols, should have been significantly superior to the Europeans in this regard. Terrible devastation and complete destruction of cities and villages, merciless and completely brutal beating of the inhabitants who did not have time to escape from them - sometimes with the exception of those who were taken into slavery, sometimes completely without exception, this is what the Mongols believed in their military glory and their chivalry and in which they found their wild pleasure and fun. This is how Genghis Khan himself conducted wars; This is how his children and grandchildren led them. The Mongols conquered the world in order to own it, and at the same time they devastated it so mercilessly that it was as if they wanted to own the deserts 14. The passage of the Mongols through northern Russia, without any exaggeration, should be likened to a terrible tropical hurricane, which crushes and destroys everything in its path: cities and villages were burned out and were piles of ash; on the ashes and around the ashes lay countless human corpses. Fortunately, the Mongols had that similarity to a hurricane in that they swept through as quickly as it, so that at least those who remained alive would soon be freed from their horrors: they passed the considerable arc that the Mongols described across Russia in no more than five or six months. From devastated Russia, Batu went out to the Polovtsian steppe, in which he decided to establish his permanent residence instead of the Kyrgyz steppe. During the year 1238, starting in the summer, and throughout the next year 1239 until the winter, his horde beat and drove away the Polovtsians in order to clear space for themselves, looked around and settled in a new place of residence and rested from the completed campaign. In the winter of 1239, Batu resumed his conquests and, at the same time, devastation. Two detachments he sent to the north-west took Pereyaslavl and Chernigov and turned them to ashes; a detachment sent to the north took the Mordovian land, the cities of Murom and Gorokhovets and devastated the region along the lower Klyazma. The resumption of hostilities by the Tatars brought such panic to the Russians that, according to the chronicler, in 1239 “there was an outbreak of evil throughout the whole earth, (so that) they themselves did not know where anyone was running.” After Pereyaslavl and Chernigov, it was the turn of the eldest capital of Rus' - Trans-Dnieper Kyiv. The leader of the detachment sent to capture Chernigov descended from Chernigov to Kyiv and approached it from this side of the Dnieper. Hoping to take Kyiv flatteringly, he sent ambassadors to the Chernigov prince Mikhail Vsevolodovich, who was then sitting in Kyiv, probably with the proposal that the city would be spared if it surrendered voluntarily; but Michael responded by ordering the ambassadors to be killed. The report to Batu from his leader, who saw the “beauty and majesty” of the older Russian capital, as well as its relatively strong fortifications, which from this side of the Dnieper should have seemed even stronger, since from the river the city was on a high mountain, probably stated that to capture Kiev, the entire Mongol army was required, and not a separate detachment. In the winter of the following 1240, Batu, who generally decided to resume the conquest of Europe, went to Kyiv with all his hordes. Meanwhile, three princes managed to change in Kyiv: Mikhail Vsevolodovich was expelled by Rostislav Mstislavich of Smolensk, and Rostislav by Daniil Romanovich of Galich. This latter, without moving to Kyiv himself, but only annexing it to his reign, planted his boyar Dimitri in it for defense against the Tatars. The army brought by Batu to Kyiv was so numerous that, according to the chronicler, from the creaking of the convoy carts, from the roar of camels and from the neighing of horse herds, it was impossible to hear a human voice. After a long siege, during which the besiegers’ battering machines or battering machines, which made up the then artillery, beat the city walls day and night, Kyiv was taken on December 6, Nikolin’s day 16. From Kyiv, which was plundered and burned, and whose inhabitants were subjected to a terrible beating 17, Batu headed to the Volyn-Galich region; took most of its cities, including the capital Vladimir and Galich, and devastated the region as mercilessly and horribly as the Suzdal-Rostov region 18. From Galich in Galicia, Batu moved to Western Europe. He divided his army into two halves: with one he went to Hungary through the Carpathians, and the other he sent to Poland. The First Army was engaged in the defeat of Hungary, and its advanced detachments reached the walls of Vienna in Austria, and the corps separated from it, sent to pursue the Hungarian king who was seeking salvation in flight, reached in the south as far as the Adriatic Sea in Dalmatia. The second army passed through Poland, Silesia, Moravia and from the latter turned to Hungary to join Batu himself. Having moved back from Hungary, the Tatars made their way back partly through Transylvania and Moldova (Batu himself), partly through Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Moldova (the corps sent to pursue the Hungarian king). Batu had to abandon the idea of ​​​​subjugating Western Europe. But his passage through it was the same terrible hurricane as in our Russia. Returning from Western Europe to the Polovtsian steppe in 1242 19 and establishing his stay on the eastern edge on the banks of the Volga, near the border with the Asian steppe, Batu began his dominance over Russia. In the same year, 1242, the Russian princes went to him to express their submission to him and to receive confirmation from him on their thrones. From the banks of the Volga, the princes had to undertake terribly distant and terribly difficult journeys to Kharahorin or Karakorum to worship the Great Khan. This last did not last long, however. The fourth great khan (after Genghis Khan himself), Kublai or Kublai 20, elected in 1260, having conquered all of China (in 1279), became the Emperor of China and moved from Kharahorin to Beijing: through this, the existence of the great khanate and tetrarchy established by Genghis Khan 21 ceased. In Russia itself, to manage it as a vassal country, and mainly to collect taxes and duties from its population, khan's governors, called Baskaks, appeared. Having enslaved the Russian land to their yoke and becoming its supreme masters in relation to the state, the Tatars at the same time became its supreme masters in relation to the church. They could force the Russians to accept their faith, and precisely - force either the entire people, or at least the princes with the upper class of boyars. Without forcing anyone to change their faith, they could limit the civil rights of our clergy, or completely take them away from them. In general, being a people of other faiths, they could become greater or lesser enemies of our Russian (Orthodox Christian) faith in relation to itself and its representatives. What kind of relationship did the Tatars have with the Russian faith and their clergy? But before answering this question, we must go back for a moment to talk about the behavior and fate of our clergy during the enslaving invasion of the Tatars and also about what disasters the church itself suffered from them during this invasion. If we believe that the duty of the highest clergy - bishops with councils of abbots, should, under the given circumstances, be to inspire princes and all citizens to courageously resist enemies in order to defend their land: then the chronicles do not give us the right to say that our bishops would rise to the height of their calling. - They do not tell us that, with general panic and confusion, this inspiring saintly message was heard throughout the country voice. As for the behavior of those bishops whose cathedral cities were taken by the Tatars, then, without giving us information about all of them and limiting ourselves to only some of them, the chronicles tell us that some of these certain bishops remained in their cities at the moment they were taken by the Tatars in order to suffer death from the latter along with the others, or to receive from them the mercy of life. And that others escaped from them by moving away from their cities to safe places. The bishop of Ryazan, unknown by name, from whose cathedral city the Tatars began, did the second thing we indicated: “and the bishop, the chronicles say, God forbid, left the rest (away, out of the city) in that year (at that time), when the army trampled the city.” Bishop Mitrofan of Vladimir remained in Vladimir and died in his cathedral church from fire or sword, along with all the others who shut themselves up and were with him in it 22. Bishop Kirill of Rostov acted like the Bishop of Ryazan, “having exiled” the Tatars on Beloozero. Bishops of Pereyaslavl Simeon and Chernigov Porfiry remained in their cities, and the first of them was killed, and the second survived and was left free. Other episcopal cities taken by the Tatars were: Metropolitan Kyiv, Belgorod, Yuriev, Vladimir Volynsky, Galich and, probably, Przemysl. Metropolitan Joseph, who arrived from Greece to Rus' in 1237, i.e. in the very year of the Tatar invasion of the Vladimir part of it, we do not find us after the capture of Kyiv by the Tatars and from two assumptions that either he was killed during the capture of the city, or before its capture he retired home to Greece, the second should be recognized as the most probable. What happened to the bishops of Belgorod, Yuryev and Vladimir-Volyn remains unknown; and we find the bishops of Galich and Przemysl alive after the Tatars captured their cities. The behavior of those bishops who remained in their cities to perish or only await death along with their flocks, of course, should be recognized as more valiant than the behavior of those bishops who retired to safe places. But, on the other hand, it must be borne in mind that the beating of many bishops by the Tatars would be very disastrous for society in church terms. If, for example, the bishop of Rostov had been killed along with the bishop of Vladimir, then where would the whole vast region get its priests? Representatives of the lower parish clergy - priests and deacons of cities and villages taken and plundered by the Tatars, and monks and nuns of the monasteries located in them - suffered the same fate as the laity, that is, they were either beaten or taken captive. The chronicle says about Ryazan: “I took the city of Rezan and burned the whole and killed their prince Yury and his princess, and some I ate husbands and wives and children and monks and monks and heres - some I cut with swords, and others I shot with arrows, I swept these (those, others) into the fire, others with elm (and I cut out the breasts, and pulled out the bile, and tore off the skins of some, and to biyakhu the needles and chips for the nails of others) 23 and disgrace to the monks and priests and good wives and maidens before their mothers and sisters (chinyahu).” About Suzdal the chronicle says: “old monks and monks and priests (old) and (people) blind and lame and weak and hard-working, and all the (old) people were cut to pieces, and that the monks of the old and monks and priests and priests (old) and the deacons and their wives and their daughters and sons (and all other old people)” - that’s all leading to his own camps 24. The chronicle says about Vladimir: “(killed and captured were) abbesses and monks and monks and priests and deacons, from an old man to an old man and a pissing babe, and that was all cut up (and captive), they killed, but they led barefoot and unveiled into their camps, breathing out filth.” The chronicle says about Torzhok: “and so they took the city and cut off everything from men to women, the priestly rank, all of them, and everything was stripped and desecrated”... As for the disasters of the church, in addition to the beating and captivity of priests and monks, the Tatars destroyed a great many churches and monasteries. As one might think, they did not intentionally destroy one or the other, exposing only one and the other, and especially the second, to their plunder; but when they burned cities and villages, both of them perished along with human habitations. Moreover, with regard to churches, the sensitivity of the disaster consisted not so much in their own destruction, but in the destruction of their prayer accessories, their liturgical utensils and their liturgical books: the churches themselves (implying wooden ones) could be built again without much difficulty, but the acquisition of accessories and utensils, especially the acquisition of liturgical books, was at that time an extremely difficult matter. Let us return to our question: what kind of relationship did the Tatars have with the Russian faith and with their clergy after the enslavement of their country? At the end of the enslavement itself, during which, as a time of war, the church was no exception and was subjected to absolutely the same terrible disasters as the state, the Tatars began to approach the faith and the Russian clergy in a relationship of the most complete tolerance and the most complete favor. Neither the whole people, nor anyone individually, they forced them to change their faith; They fully recognized the existing civil rights of our clergy. Thus, this scourge of God, which fell on our fatherland, was not, at least, a scourge for the church, that is, it was not a scourge for the latter, at least in terms of its external freedom and external position. The Tatars adopted a relationship of complete and complete tolerance towards the Russian faith, not because they wanted to make an exception specifically for them, but because they adopted such a relationship towards the faiths of all the peoples they conquered - because complete religious tolerance was their general rule applied to everyone. There were several reasons for this complete tolerance of the Tatars. The first reason was that they were pagans. We have already said before 26 that pagans do not look at their faiths, which they hold, as the only true religions, but that all faiths, no matter how many they see among people, they consider religions to be equally true, originating from the same God, and only different according to the differences of people. On this basis, the religious tolerance of the pagans is something that follows from the essence of their views on faith. Whatever views all pagans hold, the Tatars should have held the same; and hence, like all other pagans, they had to be tolerant in principle. That the Tatars did not deviate in their views on faith from all other pagans - which deviation would be an inexplicable matter - for this we have positive evidence belonging to them. When the monk Rubruquis, who went to the great Khan of Karakoram Mantu from the French king Louis the Saint 27, convinced the khan to accept Christianity, the latter answered: “we, the Mongols, believe that there is one (for all peoples) God, by whom we live and by whom we die, and to Him we have a right heart; but just as God gave the hand many fingers, so he gave people many paths (salvation: sed sicut Deus dedit manui diversos digitos, ita dedit hominibus diversas vias); God gave you the scriptures and you, Christians, do not keep them, but he gave us the Magi (divinatores) and we do everything that they command us, and we live in peace” 28. The second reason for the complete tolerance of the Mongols was political motives. Temujin declared and together recognized himself as a man destined by God to conquer the whole world in order to form from it one world state. But there are many faiths in the world, and to do violence to people in this regard would mean to arouse their enmity against oneself. Not at all wanting to make this violence religious based on his principles, Temujin, for political reasons, declared complete and complete religious tolerance, with equal patronage from the supreme power of all faiths, as the fundamental law of his state. Having united all the Mongol tribes into one and taking the title of Genghis Khan or emperor, he, before turning to further conquest of the world, promulgated a book of state laws called Yasa (Yasak), which means prohibitions 29. In this Yasa, the instructions of which were to be unconditionally binding on his successors on pain of deprivation of the throne and life imprisonment (which actually happened) and which the Mongols really looked at as a kind of gospel or Koran 30, a deliberate legalization was made that all faiths, without distinction between themselves and the peoples who contain them, should be tolerant and that ministers of all faiths, as well as doctors and beggars, scientists and ascetics, prayer callers and pallbearers should be exempt from all taxes and taxes 31. Genghis Khan's successors, prompted by politics, not only showed complete tolerance to all faiths, but tried to behave in such a way that the followers of each faith considered them more inclined to their particular confession. The same Rubrukvis, whom we have now cited above, writes about the same great Khan Mangu: “It is his custom that on those days on which his wise men designate to be holidays, or on which, as holidays, the Nestorian priests point out to him (about these priests below), Christian priests first come to him in their vestments and pray for him and bless his cup (of wine), so that after their removal the priests come Saracen (mullahs) did the same thing, and so that after these pagan priests (priests) would come and do (again) the same thing. And the monk (Nestorian, who was at the court of the Great Khan) told me,” continues Rubrukvis, “that he believes (the khan) only Christians, although he wants everyone to pray for him. But he (the monk), adds Rubrukvis, was deceived, because (the khan) does not trust anyone (does not adhere to anyone’s faith)... everyone follows his court like flies after honey, and (he) gives (shows favor) to everyone, and everyone thinks that he is their special patron, and everyone predicts his well-being.” The third reason for the complete religious tolerance of the Mongols and their zealous patronage of all faiths was that they were an extremely superstitious people to the last degree. They looked at their pagan sorcerers or magicians (shamans) as people who had the miraculous gift of turning away misfortunes from people and together sending them to them. Just as they looked at their Magi, who were the ministers of their faith, so they looked at the ministers of all other faiths. The Mongols, on the one hand, were very afraid of their magicians, fearing misfortunes from them; and on the other hand, they were highly revered, hoping through their wonderful gift to be successful in their affairs. For the same reason they feared and revered ministers of all other faiths in equal measure. The consequence of this was that they, equally tolerating all faiths, zealously revered, that is, actually tried to appease, the ministers of all faiths and behaved as if they belonged to all faiths 32 . Christianity, which constitutes the only true religion and openly presents itself as such, apparently should not have pleased the Mongol khans with its claims of exclusivity. But the khans showed, so to speak, generous condescension to the claims of Christianity, considering them unfounded from their point of view. Meanwhile, there were particular historical circumstances, as a result of which, starting from the time of Genghis Khan himself, it should have, on the one hand, become especially high in the eyes of the Mongols, so that they would be willing to give it deliberate and preferential protection, and on the other hand, to acquire intercessors for themselves before the khans with a very strong and effective voice. By the time of Genghis Khan, Christianity existed in Mongolia, as a faith professed by some of the individual peoples who inhabited it. This is precisely the Christianity of the Nestorian sect. At the end of the 5th century, the Nestorians, expelled from the Greek empire, found refuge in Persia, whose rulers, out of political rivalry with the emperors of Constantinople, offered them their zealous patronage. Having settled in Persia, the Nestorians began to conduct active propaganda in the east, sent their missionaries in all directions, and managed to spread the Christianity of their sect in India, Turkestan, Mongolia and China. In Mongolia, they introduced their Christianity among two peoples: among the people of the Turkic tribe of the Uyghurs, who lived north of the above-mentioned Tangut, on the eastern slopes of the Tien Shan mountain range, limiting the so-called eastern Turkestan from the north (cities: Hamil, Turfan, Urumqi) 33, and among the people of their own Mongolian family, the Keraits, who lived in the northern Mongolia, in the upper reaches of the Selenga and Orkhon rivers, with its capital in Kharahorin or Karakorum, which Genghis Khan later made his capital after the conquest of the Keraits in 1202–03 34. The Keraites adopted Nestorian Christianity at the beginning of the 11th century 35 . When it spread among the Uyghurs remains unknown; but one must think that significantly long before the Keraits, approximately in the 9th-8th century, if not in the 7th century 36. The Nestorians introduced their Syriac alphabet among the Uighurs (similar to how Constantine the philosopher introduced the Greek alphabet among the Slavs, adapting it to the Slavic language), and through this they not only made them a literate people, but also gave them the opportunity to become, to some extent, an educated people, which in fact was the case. These Uighurs, having voluntarily surrendered to Genghis Khan in 1209–10, occupied a prominent position in the crowd of peoples he gathered under his rule. Before Genghis Khan, the Mongols had no literacy at all; when he created his vast state, there was a need, for the purposes of administration, for literacy and literate people. This need was satisfied by the Uyghurs, from whom he borrowed a letter and whom he called to occupy positions in the administration that required writing 37 . At the same time, the service or noble class of the Uyghurs, who were relatively educated people, occupied a high position at the court of Genghis Khan, which always remained with his successors. Not all Uyghurs who played a prominent role under the Mongol khans belonged to Christianity—there were Buddhists and Mohammedans among them; but, as modern evidence positively says, a considerable number of them, including the most noble among them, were also Nestorian Christians 38 . Naturally, the respect enjoyed by the khans for their officials and dignitaries from among the followers of Nestorianism should have been reflected in the views of the khans and their Christian faith. At the same time, and directly about the ministers or spiritual leaders of Nestorian Christianity, the khans had to form an opinion for themselves as people who should be respected by them no less than the ministers of all other faiths. Throughout the Mohammedan east, the Nestorians were famous for their knowledge of the art of medicine, so they were predominantly the healers of the Mohammedan sovereigns and princes 39 . We have no direct information that this was the case in pagan Mongolia; but, in the first place, it is probable to suppose it in itself; secondly, this is made known by indirect information 40 . Meanwhile, the Mongols combined in their ideas healers with ministers of faiths, for the ministers of their own pagan faith were also healers. This view of the Nestorian spiritualists as the best healers, at the same time superstitious people could not help but imagine them as the most terrible sorcerers, should have had the consequence that the khans would show them not only the same favor as the spiritual ones of all other faiths, but also to some extent special - so that they would distinguish them from others. The words of Rubrukvis cited above about the festive customs of the great khan Mangu (if we give them full faith) show that this was in fact the case: on holiday days, the first to come to the great khan to pray for him and bless his cup were Christian priests, by which we mean precisely Nestorian priests. Another Western monk, Plano-Carpini, who traveled to the great Khan Guyuk from Pope Innocent IV 41, makes it known to some extent about the difference that was shown to the Nestorian Christians, both by the great khans and by all the Mongols, when he reports that Guyuk kept Christian priests with him, to whom he gave a salary. - That he also had a prayer house in front of his large tent, where the clergy were publicly they sang and celebrated services at the same hours as the Greek Christians, with countless Tatars and other peoples present. The second Christian people of Mongolia, the Keraits, it seems, could not make a favorable impression on the Mongol khans regarding Christianity by their comparative prosperity of enlightenment. At least there are no indications regarding this. But they had to help the khans become deliberate friends of Christianity in a different way. The sovereign himself received him from the Keraits 42 . When Genghis Khan conquered them and made their sovereign his vassal, he took one of the latter’s nieces as his wife, and two as wives for his two sons, and thus, on the one hand, among his own wives there was a Christian woman, and on the other hand, the consequence of this was that the last two great khans, Mangu and Kublai, were the children of a Christian woman 43 . The Nestorian Christians, of course, tried to convince the khans that the real Christian truth was only in their sect. But if for the khans the truth was the same in all religions, then it is obvious that they could not be convinced to believe that there was a difference between the private confessions of one religion. Showing absolutely complete tolerance to all faiths, the great Mongol khans, sincerely or feignedly and according to calculations, showed their favor to Christians to such an extent that legends were made about the last three among them, Guyuk, Mangu and Kublai, that one after another they actually accepted Christianity 44. With what complete tolerance the great khans of Karakorum treated all faiths during the short existence of the Great Khanate, with the same complete tolerance towards our Russian faith or our Orthodox Christianity the khans of the Golden Horde treated throughout their very long reign over Russia. It is quite possible, however, that the history of the Golden Horde khans’ tolerance towards our Russian faith should be divided into two periods: a period of voluntary tolerance and a period of involuntary tolerance. In the first half of their rule over Russia, the khans treated our faith with complete tolerance of their own free will, because they wanted to be completely tolerant. But regarding the second half, it can also be assumed that they remained as tolerant as before, no longer out of their own free will, but out of necessity, simply because they did not see the possibility of being intolerant. If the khans of the Golden Horde had constantly remained pagans, in order to at the same time maintain a view of all faiths as equally true, then they would have constantly retained a sincere disposition to show tolerance to the Russian faith. But already the third successor of Batu, who succeeded him and just two or three years after his death, in 1257 or 1258, Khan Berke or Berkai (Berkaliy) accepted Mohammedanism. The successors of Berke, who died in 1266, until Khan Uzbek, who ascended the throne in 1313, were again pagans; but from this Uzbek, who again accepted Mohammedanism, all the khans were already Mohammedans, so Mohammedanism became their ancestral religion instead of paganism. Mohammedanism, like Christianity, claims to be the one true religion, and therefore it is just as natural for Mohammedans to be intolerant of other faiths as, on the contrary, for pagans to be tolerant, especially since Mohammedanism, while claiming to be the one true religion, directly obliges its followers to spread it through violence. About the khans Berke and Uzbek, who, one after another, for the first time accepted Mohammedanism, we positively know that they wanted to be completely tolerant of the Russian faith of their own free will. This should be partly explained by the fact that they had not yet mastered Mohammedanism to such an extent as to fulfill the desire to become its disseminators, and still remained so pagan Mongols in their views as to continue to see equally true religions in all religions. (With this, probably, only the difference between Mohammedanism is to put it in first place among other true religions). Partly because Genghis Khan's Yasa, with its prescription of tolerance, still retained all its binding force for them and that they did not yet dare to act contrary to it. It is also positively known about the two successors of the Uzbeks, his son Janibek or Chanibek and grandson Berdibek, that they were tolerant of their own free will, which tolerance must be explained either by both of the reasons now indicated, or by the second of them 45 . But after the death of Berdibek in 1359, we continued to remain under the rule of the Tatars for more than a hundred years. It is very possible that Berdibek’s successors, until the very end of the Horde’s existence, constantly remained bad Mohammedans, stubbornly continuing to retain their former indifferent pagans and not at all thinking about any spread of their “orthodoxy.” But it is not impossible that they became sincere and zealous Mohammedans, at the same time, having placed the instructions of the Koran above the instructions of Genghis Khan's Yasa, they should have been animated by the desire for propaganda. If it was the latter, then Berdibek’s successors had to show complete, as before, tolerance for the Russian faith against their will, of necessity, due to the fact that the extreme confusion in the Horde that began immediately after Berdibek’s death, which led to the weakening of the power of the khans over Russia, had already deprived the latter of the opportunity to encroach on the inviolability of the Russian faith. That the khans of the Golden Horde, throughout their reign over Russia, for one reason or another, showed absolutely complete tolerance to the Russian faith, without making the slightest encroachment on it or the slightest constraint on it - that they fully recognized the rights of our church, without in any way limiting or belittling the existing civil advantages of our clergy, but on the contrary, accepting them under their decisive protection, this, firstly, is negatively evidenced by the complete silence of our chronicles and other modern monuments about any actions of encroachment on the inviolability of faith on the part of the khans; secondly, this is positively evidenced by the khan's labels or khan's letters of grant 46 to our metropolitans, through which the khans protect the inviolability of the faith and the integrity of the rights of the clergy from any encroachments. Several particular cases of the behavior of the khans are known, which seem to constitute objections to what has just been said; but the cases do not really present such objections at all, but only require explanation, which we will do below. The history of the actual-formal relations of the Golden Horde khans to the Russian church and the Russian clergy, as the patronizing side to the protected side, that is, the history of the forms and order in which the Golden Horde khans actually declared to the Russian church and its clergy their recognition of their inviolability and rights, remains insufficiently known. In the Nikon Chronicle, under the year 1313, we read about the journey of St. Metropolitan Peter to the Horde to Khan Uzbek, who this year took the place of Khan Tokta: “that same summer, the great Prince Mikhailo Yaroslavich of Tver went to the Horde, and Peter Metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia, together with him, went to the Horde, for this sake, before the Tsar Tyakhtya died in the Horde, and the new Tsar Azbyak sat down in the kingdom, and everything was renewed and everyone came to the Horde for this reason, since then in the Horde there were labels for each imah in his own name, both princes and bishops” 47 . The same chronicle, dated 1343, speaks of the journey of Metropolitan Theognost to the Horde to Khan Chanibek, the son of Uzbek, immediately after he took the throne: “That same year, Feognast, Metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia, came from the Horde from Tsar Chanibek; went about the church clergy, imash (imahu) for the metropolitan (s) and bishop (s) erlyk on their church clergy from the kings of the Horde” 48. Finally, about St. Metropolitan Alexy knows that he, by chance being in the Horde in 1357, when the Khan’s throne was taken by the Chanibeks’ son Berdibek, received a label from the new khan. Two pieces of evidence from the chronicle and a third fact say that upon the accession of new khans to the throne, the metropolitans had to go to the Horde in order to receive labels from each new khan for themselves and their bishops, in which each khan would confirm their rights and advantages. Thus, on the factual-formal side of the relationship, one should think that Batu, at the beginning of his rule over Russia, gave the clergy a label in which he recognized the inviolability of the faith and the inviolability of the rights of his clergy, and that all subsequent khans, upon their accession to the throne, issued labels to the clergy in which they confirmed the original label of Batu. But it is necessary to think that either the evidence of the Nikon Chronicle relates only to the particular time about which it speaks, or that, due to erroneous conclusions, an unfair generalization was made in it. From the eight khans preceding Uzbek, starting with Batu, the label of only one khan, Mengu-Temir (1266–1281), has reached us, and Uzbek’s label lets us know that regarding the labels of other khans, we should think not that they did not reach us, but that they did not exist 49 . From what has just been said, it follows that Batu declared his recognition of the inviolability of our faith and the rights of our clergy not through a label or a written document, but otherwise. This “otherwise” can only be understood as a factual recognition, i.e. that, having subjugated Rus' to his power and placed the princes and people in a certain relationship of tributary to himself, Batu left aside the Russian church and the Russian clergy, which made it clear that they recognized the inviolability of the former and the inviolability of the rights of the latter. Why Batu did not approve and did not consider it necessary to affirm the inviolability of our faith and the rights of our clergy with a deliberate deed of gift is completely understandable. We, the Russians, were not the first people to be subjugated by the Mongols; on the contrary, we were the last to be annexed to their multi-faith state. In this state, since the time of Genghis Khan himself, there has been an organic law so that all faiths remain inviolable and the rights of the clergy of all faiths are inviolable. The organic law itself applied to the faith of each conquered people, and therefore the khans had no need or incentive to give each people deliberate letters. There is no doubt that our clergy also knew about the existence of the aforementioned organic law among the Mongols; but if he could have any doubts, they should have been dispelled during the first census of the people, in order to impose tribute on them, carried out by order of Batu in 1246 or 1247 50: the clergy, who were free from tribute, were not subject to the census. After the actual recognition by the khans of our inviolability, the faith and rights of our clergy, or, what is the same, with the necessarily implied extension to our country of the organic law that was in force throughout the entire territory of the Mongol conquests, the khans had no need to give, and our clergy had no need to ask them for written affirmative letters. Khan's labels to our metropolitans, by their origin, are not affirmative letters, but the essence of protective letters: The first label given by Khan Mengu-Temir to Metropolitan Kirill, was given, as is clearly evident from himself, not for the purpose of establishing the inviolability of faith and the rights of the clergy, which was not necessary, but for the purpose of protecting one and others from the encroachment of Mongol officials who permanently lived in Russia and temporarily visiting it. Assuming the recognition of the inviolability of faith and the rights of the clergy as an existing fact, the khan addresses in the label all his officials (who are listed in it by position) and strictly prohibits them from encroaching on the inviolability of the faith and rights of the clergy, threatening them otherwise with punishments specified in the law. It is necessary to think that this first label was given by Khan Mengu-Temir at the deliberate request of Metropolitan Kirill, caused by the fact that Mongol officials, who permanently lived in Russia and temporarily came to it, in their relations with the clergy were little constrained by the existing laws regarding the rights of the latter 51. After Mengu-Temir, three labels were given to the metropolitans by three successive khans: Uzbek, Chanibek 52 and Berdibek. Regarding the label of Uzbekov, the Nikon Chronicle says that the metropolitans took labels from the new khans, and it is necessary to think that it was Uzbek who made the order that the metropolitans take labels from each new khan, and that this order remained in force under his two successors. The labels of the Uzbeks, Chanibeks and Berdibeks in their form and content are exactly the same as the label of Mengu-Temirov, i.e., letters of protection to the church and the clergy from attacks on the inviolability of faith and the rights of the clergy by the khan’s officials. But it is obvious that Uzbek, who ordered that the metropolitans receive labels from each new khan, wanted to give them another meaning, namely, the meaning of khan investitures to the metropolitans, or visible signs through which dependence on the khans, both the metropolitans and the entire church with them, would be expressed 53 . After Berdibek, who was killed in 1359, until the end of the Tatars’ rule over Russia or until 1480, only one khan’s label was known to the metropolitans, namely Atyulyakov (Tulunbekov), given to the betrothed metropolitan Mikhail or, as he was called, Mityai, in 1379. One must think that this only label known after Berdibek was in fact the only one and that it represents nothing more than a simple accident. After Berdibek, the Horde began for quite a long time, almost to the very end of the Tatars’ domination over us, such confusion and such a rapid change of khans that, on the one hand, the metropolitans could not keep up with receiving labels from the khans, and on the other hand, they had to take advantage of favorable circumstances in order to rid themselves of the duty imposed on them, which was very unpleasant for them 54 . As for Atyulyakov’s label to Mikhail or Mitya, it was given by the khan to the betrothed metropolitan when he was traveling through the Horde, traveling to Constantinople for installation, and was given, as one should think, not at all at the request of Mikhail, but due to the khan’s own courtesy, who wanted to express his special favor to him 55 . Thus, the factual-formal side of the relationship of the Golden Horde khans to the Russian church and the Russian clergy is that after the conquest of Rus' by the Mongols, the effect of Genghis Khan’s law on religious tolerance was actually extended to it - that the khans expressed their readiness, at the request of the metropolitans, to protect the strict inviolability of the law from encroachments on it by Mongol officials through their deliberate letters of safe conduct or labels - that Khan Uzbek gave the labels the meaning of investiture, which the metropolitans could receive from each new khan, but that, due to the circumstances of the Horde, this did not last very long 56. Having their own meaning of letters that protect the inviolability of faith and the rights of the clergy, and not directly affirming them, the khan’s labels to the metropolitans at the same time show to what extent the khans recognized the inviolability of our faith and to what extent or to what extent they recognized the rights of our clergy, for the labels indicate what and how much they protect from the encroachment of their officials. In the first label, which was given by Khan Mengu-Temir to Metropolitan Kirill in 1267 or, more likely, in 1279, we find: firstly, that the Russian faith is protected from all blasphemy and insults and that the belongings of external worship are protected from attacks on them in the sense of theft or damage; secondly, that the clergy is exempt from tribute, from all duties and all duties; thirdly, that all church immovable estates are recognized as inviolable and that church servants, that is, slaves or serfs belonging to bishops or anyone from the church authorities and places, are declared free from any public work. Regarding the faith and accessories of external worship, the label reads: “and whoever (of our various officials) blasphemes or curses their (Russian) faith will not apologize in any way and will die an evil death...; or what is in their law - icons and books or anything else for which they pray to God, let them not eat it, tear it up, or spoil it.” Regarding the freedom of the clergy from tributes, duties and duties, we read: “just as the first kings (meaning Genghis Khan and his successors in Karakorum) granted priests and monks and all god-giving people, (so) we, without altering their charters (i.e., legal provisions), do the same: they do not need (from them) tribute and tamga and pasture, no pits, no carts, no war, no feed; in all duties they do not need any royal duty, nor the Tsaritsyn, nor the princes, nor the ranks, nor the gifts 57, nor the ambassador, nor any duty officers, nor any income: and whoever takes (from the priests and monks tribute or anything else) - our Baskatsi and princely scribes and servants and customs officers, and he (he) according to the great Yaza (legislative code of Genghis Khan) will not apologize and let him die by death.” At the same time, two special decisions are made: firstly, regarding the acceptance by the metropolitan and bishops of candidates from the laity for the clergy; secondly, about the priest’s children and brothers living with their fathers and brothers and separated from them; the first decree: “if (the metropolitan) desires to receive other people who want to pray to God (ordained to a spiritual title), otherwise it will be at his will” 58; the second decree: “but the priest, one eats bread and lives in one place, and whoever has a brother or a son, and you (those) go according to the same grant; If you have distanced yourself from them, you have left the house, and to those you give duty and tribute.” Regarding immovable church estates and church servants, we read: “let not (any of our officials) seize (do not touch) them for church lands, waters, vegetable gardens, grapevines, mills, winter huts, and let them be given back without permission; and that church people: craftsmen, falconers, pardusnitsa (animal catchers), or who are servants and workers, and whoever their people are, let them not be used for anything, neither for work, nor for guarding.” After Mengu-Temir, who gave the label to Metropolitan Kirill, as we said, the khans gave four more labels to the metropolitans: St. Uzbek. Peter, Chanibek Theognostu, Berdibek St. Alexy and Atyulyak or Tulunbek to the named Metropolitan Mikhail (Mityay). Of the four labels, three have survived to this day, namely, the label given by Chanibek to Feognost 59 has not reached us. All three surviving labels, confirming the first label given by the khans to the metropolitans, or, as the Uzbek label says, “their first charter,” contain, despite the difference in the external, clerical, edition 60, regarding the inviolability of faith and the rights of the clergy, the same thing as this one, but with one new addition against it. The addition is that the metropolitans, and with them, as should be implied, the entire clergy, are granted trial over the people who belong to them or their slaves, slaves, in all decidedly criminal cases, not excluding robbery, red-handed robbery and theft: “but the metropolitan knows the truth,” it is decided in the first of the three labels by Uzbekov, “and the right judges and governs his own people in truth, in something.” (in whatever it may be): both in robbery and in the act of stealing and in all sorts of matters, the metropolitan alone is in charge or to whomever he orders” (In the yarlyki Berdibekov and Atyulyakov, the permission given to Metropolitan Kirill by the yarlik Mengu-Temirov is not read to receive other people who want to pray to God; but it is necessary to think that this omission is not intentional, but accidental, which occurred in the first of the labels, from which it was transferred to the second, due to the fault of the Khan's office, for Berdibek and Atyulyak directly say in their labels that they are given according to the previous labels, without distorting these latter 61. From the review we have now made of the khan’s labels, it apparently follows that the khans did not fully recognize the civil rights and advantages of our clergy: the labels do not confirm the right of bishops to collect tribute from the lay population of the dioceses, or the so-called tithe; they do not confirm the right of bishops to judge the laity in certain cases and civil crimes. But when it is said that the khans recognize the rights and advantages of our clergy, it goes without saying that we are not talking about all rights in general, but only about those; which, representing an exemption from duties specifically in relation to them - the khans, could be recognized by them or not. Having conquered Rus', the khans imposed on the Russian people certain duties, from which the clergy had been freed by our own government before them: to free, as it was before, or not to free the clergy from these duties was in the will of the khans; but as for these or those, greater or lesser, civil rights of the clergy that did not concern the khans, i.e. which did not represent the liberation of the clergy from the duties that had become obligations towards them, then they, the khans, had nothing to do with these last rights: recognition or non-recognition of these rights remained as before exclusively in the will of the princes, being, so to speak, a household matter between them and the clergy. The above-mentioned rights of the clergy, which are not confirmed in the khan’s labels, constitute the last category, and therefore there are no speeches or mentions about them in the labels. On the other hand, it is not impossible to assume that the khans not only recognized the existence of the rights of our clergy, but also somewhat expanded them, partly to the detriment of themselves and our home government or princes, partly to the detriment of these latter. We actually have no positive information about the rights of our clergy during the Kyiv period. Of those rights that are recognized by the khans in their yarlykas, the one that should most likely be assumed as a pre-existing right is the personal freedom of the clergy themselves from taxes and duties; but whether the people who belonged to the clergy were free from all duties, whether it had unlimited judicial power over them, and whether the metropolitan and bishops were given the right to accept the laity from all without exception or limitation into the clergy, regarding these questions we cannot say that the only probable answer to them should be an affirmative answer. At least regarding the unlimited judicial power of the clergy over its people, since this is not mentioned in the first label and is only already mentioned in the second, it does not seem incredible to think that this was a new right, first granted to the clergy only by the khans, that is, precisely by Uzbek Khan. If we assume that all three rights were new rights, then in the first case, by freeing people who belonged to the clergy from all their duties, the khans caused damage to themselves or sacrificed their own interests; in the second case, by giving the clergy unlimited judgment over his people, they caused damage to the princes; and in the third case, by allowing the metropolitan and bishops to accept into the clergy all laymen without exception, they caused damage to both the princes and themselves (for they allowed such laymen to go to the clergy who would pay taxes to both the princes and themselves). But if we assume that all three rights were new rights, then it is very likely to think that two of them, which encroached on the interests of the princes, were not unconditionally recognized by the latter, but were only ceded by them to the clergy in the form of a grant, as much as they themselves wanted. We will return to speeches about this after 62. It was the responsibility of the metropolitans to ensure that the khan's officials, who permanently lived in Russia and came to it for a while, did not encroach on the rights of the clergy and did not offend them at all, in relation to the entire clergy. But we know the example of bishops of at least one see, who themselves went to the Horde to seek there the protection of the ecclesiastical clergy of their own diocese; This is precisely the example of the Rostov bishops. It is likely, however, that this example should be looked at as an exception, explained by the special circumstances of the Rostov bishops. After the conquest of Rus' by the Mongols, the Suzdal-Rostov region remained without a metropolitan until 1250, when Metropolitan Kirill, appointed by the Galician-Volyn prince Daniil Romanovich, came to it to take it into his administration along with southern Russia. During all this time, the representative of the clergy of the region was the bishop of Rostov, since another bishop, the one of Vladimir, was killed by the Tatars during the capture of Vladimir. During the 12 years that passed from the conquest of the region to the arrival of the metropolitan in it (1238–1250), more than once the bishop of Rostov might have had the need to travel to the Horde for explanations and petitions on church matters. But, having begun the journey to the Horde before the arrival of the metropolitan, the bishops, who paved the way for themselves, so to speak, to the Horde, could continue them after their arrival and in general in the subsequent time. Be that as it may, only we know that Bishop Kirill of Rostov, about whom in the life of St. Peter, the prince of the Horde, it is said that he went “behind the house of the Holy Mother of God” (his pulpit) to Khan Berke, who ascended the khan’s throne in 1257 or 1258; about Cyril's successor Ignatius under 1282 it is said in the chronicle 63 that this year he went to the Horde for the second time for church duties; about Ignatius' successor Tarasiya under 1293 it is said in the chronicle 64 that he went to the Horde along with all the princes. If we give faith to the now mentioned life of Tsarevich Peter, then the bishops of Rostov were even in a very special relationship with the khans. Having told about Bishop Kirill’s miraculous healing of Berkin’s son, the life assures that the khan, in gratitude for this, “commanded to give annual dues to the mistress in the house of the Holy Mother of God” and that subsequent bishops of Rostov went to the Horde, “taking the royal dues” 65. It may seem strange and incredible that the khans of the Golden Horde would give taxes to Christian Orthodox bishops; but we cited above the testimony of Plano-Carpini that the great Khan Guyuk gave a salary to the Nestorian priests whom he kept at his court, and of the first khans of the Golden Horde this last is known about Batu’s son Sartak 66 . The Nikon Chronicle, as we saw above, talking about the receipt of labels by Metropolitans Theognostus and Alexy, assures that not only metropolitans, but also bishops “Imahu (then) received labels for their church clergy from the kings of the Horde.” To understand the matter in such a way that Uzbek, having obliged the metropolitans to appear for labels to each new khan, also obliged all Russian bishops, is completely prevented by the absence of any factual indications of this, which would be very difficult not to exist; but it is not impossible to admit that Uzbek, without obliging the bishops to appear together with the metropolitans, obliged the latter to take from the khans not only a general label for the entire metropolis, but also private labels for each of the bishops of the metropolis. This could have been done for two reasons: firstly, to give each bishop a visible sign of his dependence on the khans; secondly, to increase duties from metropolitans for the benefit of their treasury and their officials, since each label could be subject to a special duty. So, the Mongol khans, throughout their long reign over Russia, left the Russian faith completely inviolable and the rights of the Russian clergy completely inviolable. And, thus, as we said above, the heavy scourge of God, which fell upon us in the form of the Mongols, was not, at least, a scourge for the church, namely, it was not a scourge for it, at least in terms of its external freedom and external position. However, in the presentation we have now presented, we have already made it clear that the non-involvement of the clergy in the hardships of the Mongol yoke should not be presented as completely unconditional. We said that the khan's labels as metropolitans, by their origin, are letters of protection to the clergy from oppression and insults from Mongol officials. If the metropolitans were forced to ask the khans for letters of safe conduct, then it obviously follows that oppression and insults on the part of officials not only took place, but were more or less significant. But to think that the khan’s labels could put an end to oppression and insults, of course, would be in vain: the highest power orders strictly and threateningly, and officials do not pay any attention to orders - this is the general law of the entire bureaucratic world, in relation to which Mongol officials can least of all be considered an exception. Our clergy was exempted by the khans not only from tribute, but also from all duties and obligations without exception: “so they granted him (the metropolitan) that neither his people nor all the church pilgrims - the priest and the monk and the Beltsy and their people, from small to large, did not need any tribute, nor any duty, nor food, nor drink, nor request, nor gifts, no honors are given in any way, no service, no work, no guards, no income, no wake, no worship, no exit, no flight, no camp, no entry, no passing ambassador, no baskak, no one of my duty officers”... (label Atyulyakov). But the khan’s officials could always force the clergy to pay duties and serve duties, citing exceptional circumstances, special orders from the khan, or in relation to such duties as billeting, feeding and worship, simply referring to the fact that they were the khan’s officials and did not want to know any privileges. Thus, completely free in relation to the Mongols from any state burdens according to the law, the clergy should be represented as more or less suffering from arbitrariness and abuse on the part of Mongol officials 67 . There were also other reasons due to which the Mongol yoke was a disaster for the church from the outside. But here the fault was not with the Mongols, but with the Russians themselves, namely, with our princes. Quarreling with each other and taking away power from each other, the princes turned to the khans with requests for military assistance against each other. The khans' satisfaction of these requests was the greatest disaster not only for the state, but also for the church. The Mongols, by their nature, were wild predators, and the auxiliary troops that came to the princes from the khans, taking advantage of the opportunity, usually indulged in terrible robbery, not dismantling the possessions of either friend or enemy, and only trying to expand the area of ​​their devastation as much as possible. In these private presences of the Tatars, which in their horrors were only slightly inferior to the initial general invasion and which, in terms of the vastness of the devastated territories, sometimes reached him himself, there was no mercy either for churches and monasteries with their utensils and shrines, or for priests and monks 68 . At the court of the great Mongol khans in Karakorum there were ministers of the faiths of all the peoples they conquered, 69 so that the ministers of the faith of each of these peoples would pray for them - the khans. We don’t know if this was the case at the court of the Golden Horde khans. But our Russian faith, if not from the very beginning of the Mongol rule over Russia, then from 1261 had its own special representative under the khans, and precisely from this last year in the person of the bishop, whose see was established in the capital of the khan's Sarai. We do not know the history of the establishment of the department, for the chronicle under our year only says: “that same summer, Metropolitan appointed Bishop Mitrofan to Sarai”; But in all likelihood, the matter should be explained to oneself not in such a way that the Metropolitan asked the Khan for permission to appoint a bishop in his capital for those Russians who lived among the Tatars, but in such a way that the Khan himself demanded from the Metropolitan that a representative of the Russian faith be appointed to him in the person of a bishop or, as the Tatars put it about our bishops, a great priest. We will return to speeches about this a little below. If not during the entire period of domination over Russia, then at least as long as they remained pagans, the khans allowed the bishops of Sarai to convert their Tatars to Christianity. Mitrofanov's successor at the department, Theognost, addressed the Patriarchal Council of Constantinople in 1276 with various questions, which we will discuss below, among other things, asking: “those who come from the Tatars who want to be baptized, and there will not be a large vessel (that is, when the matter happens during the migration in the steppe), what to immerse them in” 70 . The khans of the Golden Horde were not against marrying off their Tatar maidens to our princes (and our boyars), with permission for the first to accept Christianity. Examples of marriages in the Horde of our princes, as far as we know, are not numerous; but they took place up to and including Uzbek Khan (1313–1341). It remains for us to talk about particular cases of the behavior of the khans, which seem to represent objections to their perfect tolerance of our faith and to their strict respect for the rights of our clergy. [The Golden Horde khans did not forbid their Tatar princes, boyars and officials from leaving to serve our princes (in the Genealogical Book published by Novikov, showing a very long series of boyar families leaving the Horde - part II, p. 421). But a necessary condition for the princes to accept these Tatar immigrants into the service and, in general, for their naturalization, was their acceptance of our Christian Orthodox faith.] As soon as some general thing is known in a positive and undoubted way, then regarding particular cases against it, it goes without saying that these cases either represent exceptions that depended on some special reasons, or are not understood quite correctly and do not have the meaning that is given to them, or, finally, that they are not reliable cases. That the Mongol khans showed complete and complete tolerance for our faith and the same respect for the inviolability of the rights of our clergy, this is generally known to us in a positive and undoubted way. And from this it naturally follows that about individual cases that seem to speak against this tolerance and respect of the khans, one should think of something from the above. Particular well-known cases are: firstly, the khans condemned two of our princes to martyrdom for their faith; secondly: one attempt they made to impose tribute on our clergy; thirdly: their intention, according to some of our chronicles, was to introduce their Tatar faith in one of the Russian regions. The princes who suffered martyrdom from the khans for their faith were: Mikhail Vsevolodovich of Chernigov, condemned by Batu in 1246, and Roman Olgovich of Ryazan, condemned by Mengu-Temir in 1270. We have four stories about the reason for Batu’s condemnation of Mikhail Vsevolodovich to martyrdom: a deliberate story about the suffering of the prince 71, the Laurentian and Ipatan chronicles, and the Western writer Plano-Carpini. The deliberate story says that the Russian princes with their boyars, who came to Batu in the Horde, had, on his orders, to walk through the fire, worship the sun, the bush 72 and Tatar idols, and that Mikhail with his boyar Theodore did not want to fulfill this demand of Batu, as contrary to Christianity. The Laurentian Chronicle says under the year 1246: “that same summer Mikhailo, Prince of Chernigov, with his grandson Boris (Vasilkovich, Prince of Rostov) went to the Tatars, and the ambassador Batu, who was in their camp, to Prince Mikhail, ordering him to bow to the fire and fool them, but Mikhailo the Prince did not I obey their command, but reproach and deaf his idols, and so without mercy from the wicked he was quickly slain.” In the Ipat Chronicle under the year 1245, it reads: Prince Mikhail “ekhov (from Chernigov) Batyevi, asking for his volost from him; Batyev said: “Bow your father to the law,” but Michael replied, “If God has betrayed us and our power, sin for our sake, is in your hands, we bow to you and bring honor to you, but we do not bow to your father’s law and your ungodly commandment”; Baty, like a ferocious beast, got up in arms (and) ordered to slaughter Prince Mikhail.” Plano-Carpini writes: “The Tatars adore the south, as if it were some kind of deity, and they force all the nobles who come to them to do the same; They first forced a certain Russian prince named Mikhail, who came to Batu to express his devotion, to walk between two fires, and then ordered him to pray to the south in front of Genghis Khan; but he answered that he would bow before Batu and his servants, but that he would never do this before the image of a dead person, since this is forbidden to Christians.” In the now indicated demands addressed to the prince, one must distinguish between passing through two fires and worshiping the image of Genghis Khan, as Plano-Carpini says, or in general idols, as our legends say. Passing through two fires did not constitute a pagan religious rite in the proper and strict sense of the word. Fire was considered a cleansing agent among the Tatars, and since they, being extremely superstitious, were terribly afraid of witchcraft and damage, so that everyone approaching the khan could be deprived of the ability to bewitch him, if anyone had such an intention, they passed through two fires, as having the ability to destroy the power of enchantment. Plano-Carpini writes about this: “having arrived at Batu, we stopped one mile from his tents and courtyard; when they took us to him, they announced that we had to pass between two fires; We did not agree to this under any circumstances. But they told us not to make any difficulty about it, because the fire, if we had any evil intention against their sovereign, or if we had any poison, could have devoured it all; “In order not to arouse suspicion on ourselves,” adds Plano-Carpini, “we agreed to this.” From his, Plano-Karpiniev’s, story it seems to follow that the prince also fulfilled the requirement to pass through the lights. Of the two discordant testimonies to which the prince should have prayerfully bowed - whether to Tatar idols in general, as our legends say, or to one image of Genghis Khan, as Plano-Carpini says, preference should be given to the testimony of the latter. The martyrdom of Mikhail Vsevolodovich took place on September 20, 1246, and Plano-Carpini, who traveled from the pope to the great Khan Guyuk in Karakorum, was with Batu, on his way back from the khan, on the Feast of the Ascension of the following 1247, so he had to hear the story about the event on the spot itself and from people who reliably knew the matter. Meanwhile, our narrators, speaking about the requirement to worship Tatar idols in general, could very easily make a generalization based on their simple conclusions. Be that as it may, the worship of the image of Genghis Khan, which was demanded of the prince, should be presented not as a simple civil tribute to the founder of the khan dynasty, but as prayerful worship of a deified person, for Plano-Carpini clearly speaks specifically about prayerful worship, i.e. makes it known that the Tatars idolized Genghis Khan 73. According to the testimony of the deliberate legend and Plano-Carpini, what was demanded of Mikhail Vsevolodovich was also demanded of other Russian princes who came to the Horde. The Ipat Chronicle also states the same thing, speaking about the journey to Batu of the Galich prince Daniil Romanovich 74. And thus, we get that Batu demanded from the Russian princes who came to him to express their submission and, in general, according to the duties of their tributary service, that they perform prayerful worship before the image of Genghis Khan, deified by the Mongols. But if this is so, then we get not the fact that the khans of the Golden Horde forced our princes to accept their Tatar faith, but the fact that they, without at all thinking of doing this latter, only forced our princes to express their respect for their Tatar faith. According to strict Christian concepts, this is something that a Christian should not agree to, and Mikhail’s behavior, of course, must be recognized as incomparably more valiant than the behavior of all our other princes who did not refuse to carry out the will of the khans. But as for the khans themselves, from their own point of view they could not find in this an attack on the conscience of the princes: equally respecting the faiths of all conquered peoples and expressing their respect for all faiths through visible signs (in relation to Christianity, censing and kissing the Gospel, see above), the khans could find it completely natural that from the princes of all conquered peoples they could demand a similar expression of respect for their faith 75 . (It is very possible to suspect that in relation to Mikhail Vsevolodovich, the demand for prayerful worship of the image of Genghis Khan was posed significantly differently than as it was in relation to other princes, namely, that such special demands were deliberately and deliberately presented to him, which his Christian conscience could not agree to. We said above that Mikhail Vsevolodovich, who was sitting in Kyiv in 1239, ordered to kill the Tatar ambassadors sent to him. But Plano-Carpini writes: “The Tatars have a habit of never making peace or truce with those who kill their envoys or do anything bad to them; they do not remain in peace until they take revenge for this, it is very possible to think that Mikhail Vsevolodovich was deliberately brought against others.” the princes' demands, in the hope that he would not fulfill them, and that, thus, would give Batu an excuse to condemn him to death. Plano-Carpini, after the story we have given about the death of Mikhail, says in another place: “sometimes the Tatars are so angry that they look for an opportunity to kill princes, as they did with the Russian prince Mikhail and others,” and this, in any case, makes it quite clear that Batu had a predetermined decision to kill Mikhail and that he only needed some pretexts. One might think that the prince was lured into the Horde by the Tatars by cunning, through one or another false promise, for, knowing his guilt, he could hardly have had the desire to go to them himself). Thus, the history of Prince Mikhail Vsevolodovich of Chernigov proves not that Batu forced our princes to change their faith, or even to accept his paganism, but only that he understood the principle of religious tolerance in a pagan way and that, in accordance with his understanding, he demanded from our princes in relation to their Tatar-pagan faith. Together with the prince, as we said, one of his boyars, named Theodore, suffered martyrdom. The boyar not only followed the example of the prince, but also strengthened him himself in his determination to refuse to carry out Batu’s will, in view of urgent admonitions from other Russians who were in the Horde to submit to the khan’s demand 76 . After a long torment (about which Plano-Carpini speaks according to our deliberate legend 77), the prince and the boyar were put to death by cutting off their heads. The bodies of the martyrs were thrown to be devoured by dogs 78, but then the pious Russian people were given burial - probably in the general cemetery of the Russians who lived under the khan 79. The Nikon Chronicle in 1270 tells about the martyrdom of the Ryazan Grand Duke Roman Olgovich 80: while he was in the Horde, the prince was slandered by the khan, who blasphemed him - the khan - and cursed his faith. The Khan unleashed the Tatars on the prince, who began to force him to his faith. When the prince replied that it was not worthy for Orthodox Christians, having abandoned their Orthodox faith, to accept the filthy faith of Besermen, the Tatars began to beat him; when even after this the prince praised the Christian faith and reviled the Tatar faith, the khan’s officials put him to a terrible death: first they cut out his tongue and covered his mouth with a towel; then they began to cut off his joints and throw them away - they cut off all the fingers from his hands and feet, they cut off his mouth and ears, and cut off the other joints, so that only one corpse remained. Finally, they tore off the skin from the head and stuck it on a spear. The chronicle says that the prince was slandered by the khan; but her further story shows that he really had the audacity to vilify the faith of the khan 81 (probably not Besermen’s, but pagan, for Khan Mengu-Temir, under whom the prince was tortured, after his predecessor Berke, who converted to Mohammedanism, it seems, was again a pagan). Thus, if the prince acquired the crown of martyrdom with true Christian boldness, then, on the other hand, the behavior of the khan does not at all show his intolerance towards our Christian faith. The khans treated all faiths with complete tolerance; but it is natural that they demanded the same from others in relation to all faiths. Khan Mengu-Temir, who gave the first security label to our metropolitans, threatens his officials in it: “and whoever blasphemes their faith or curses will not apologize in any way and will die an evil death.” If an evil death was determined by the Tatars, who would dare to blaspheme the Russian faith, then it is natural that the khan should have condemned to an evil death the Russian who dared to blaspheme the Tatar faith. The incredibly evil death to which the prince was betrayed makes it clear that he blasphemed the Tatar faith with complete and great boldness. An attempt on the part of the khans to impose an annual tribute on the Russian clergy took place during the reign of Khan Chanibek, in 1342. With his attempt, Chanibek wanted to violate the basic state law of the Mongols, established by Genghis Khan, so that the clergy of all faiths would be free from tribute and from all duties. But the blame for the violation of the law, if it really happened, would fall not so much on the khan as on the Russians themselves, for it was not he himself who made the move, but the latter who were moved to his attempt. In 1342, Metropolitan Theognost came to the Horde in order, in accordance with the legitimation of Uzbek, to receive a label from Chanibek as the new khan. At this time, according to the Nikon Chronicle, “netsii rusti people slandered Metropolitan Theognostus to Tsar Chanibek, as he has a lot of countless income - both gold and silver and all kinds of wealth, and it is worthy for him to give you flying tributes to the Horde for every year.” As a result, the khan began to ask the metropolitan for annual tributes. The matter ended with the Metropolitan, who refused with decisive firmness and, no doubt, relying in his refusal on Genghis Khan’s law, was forced to give the Khan and Khansha and their main boyars (princes) 600 rubles. The assurances of some of our chronicles about the intention adopted by the Tatars to introduce their Tatar faith in one of the Russian regions are that in 1327, his cousin Shevkal, son of Dudenev, came to Tver as an ambassador from Khan Uzbek. - It was as if this Shevkal intended, having beaten the princes of Tver, to sit in the Tver reign, and to plant his Tatars in the cities princes. And that it was as if he wanted to bring the reigning Christians to his Tatar faith 82. It is not impossible that Shevkal really had the intention of beating the Tver princes, but that he himself intended to sit on the reign of Tver is completely incredible, and even more incredible is that he intended to bring the Christians of the Tver region to the Tatar faith. The Tatars could still dream of converting all of Rus' to their faith, but what would be the meaning of converting one Russian region to the Tatar faith? Shevkal was sent by Uzbek, and about the latter we know that he was distinguished by completely complete religious tolerance. It is necessary to think that the rumor about Shevkal’s intention to introduce the Tatar faith, if only it really circulated among the Tver residents, was started by the Tver princes themselves with the aim of arming the people as much as possible against the Khan’s ambassador, as was actually the case 83 . We will talk about the significance of the Tatar yoke over Russia for the Christian morality of the Russians below, in a special section about this latter. Until they were united into one political whole, the Mongols or Tatars did not have one common name. Since the time of unification, they have adopted and were adopted by their unifier, as such a common name, a private name of the tribe to which the latter belonged: this is the first of two names, i.e. Mongols. As for the second name - Tatars, then, not being used by them themselves, but having been given to them by neighboring peoples and serving as their preferred name among strangers, including Europeans, it appeared in such a way that the private name of another tribe was extended to the entire people. In our Russian chronicles and among us Russians in general, the Mongols were known exclusively under their second or improper name. Kipchak, Kipchak steppe (Deshti-Kipchak) was called by the eastern, on behalf of the Turkic people Kipchak, the Turkmen-Kyrgyz steppe and our Novorossiysk steppe, which serves as its continuation in Europe. The Pechenegs and Cumans either belonged to the Kipchaks, or, based on the area in which they lived, they are called Kipchaks by the eastern people. The Mstislavs were the grandchildren of Rostislav Mstislavich of Smolensk. That this was the case is made clear by the Laurentian Chronicle in its speeches about Grand Duke Yuri Vsevolodovich, which are read in it under the year 1239. And what is asserted by the Novgorod Chronicle, that Yuri refused to help the Ryazans because he especially wanted to fight the Tatars, obviously makes little sense (although, perhaps, he really gave this strange answer to the Ryazans in order to somehow motivate his refusal). Son Vladimir, captured in Moscow, was killed under the walls of Vladimir; two sons Vsevolod and Mstislav, left in the capital for its protection, a wife, daughter, daughters-in-law and grandchildren who remained in it, all died in Vladimir itself. The Grand Duchess with the female and young part of the family, the boyars (old and non-military, who did not take part in the defense), the boyars' wives with their families, as well as many different citizens, shut themselves up together with Bishop Mitrofan in the cathedral episcopal church. But the Tatars, having taken the city, set fire to the church and, allowing some of those who had secluded themselves to perish in smoke and fire, cut out the rest. It may seem puzzling that the Tatars launched their campaign of conquest against Russia in winter. But this is with deliberate intent. Mongolia, which is an elevated and treeless plane, has an extremely harsh climate: its winter is very long, characterized by terrible cold, terrible snowstorms and blizzards. Being therefore a people hardened against winter with all its horrors, the Mongols, since the time of Genghis Khan himself, deliberately undertook their large military campaigns in winter in order to have it as their assistant in gaining the upper hand over their enemies, see Geography of Asia by K. Ritter in the Russian translation of Semenov, vol. V, issue 1, St. Petersburg, 1879, p. 444 (Testimony of a Greek historian Pachymer that the Tatars are in the habit of fighting in winter, in Memorr. III, 170. According to Boplan, the Crimean Tatars of the 17th century always made their invasions of enemy lands in winter, - Description d’Ukraine, ed. The Novgorod Chronicle makes a mysterious remark regarding the death of Yuri Vsevolodovich, perhaps pointing only to the gossip circulating in Novgorod: “God knows how he died, they say a lot about him.” This place is currently unknown; they consider it probable to see in it the current city of Kresttsy (located 79 versts southeast of Novgorod). Perhaps the son of that Mstislav, who, being called Kozelsky and Chernigov in the Ipata Chronicle, died with his son in the Battle of Kalkino. In explanation of the terrible murders that the Mongols carried out in the cities they conquered and the lands they enslaved, they cite the fact that they considered themselves sent by God to conquer the world and that they wanted to punish those who opposed them as those who opposed the will of God. But quite often they mercilessly beat the inhabitants of those cities who, relying on their promise of mercy in case of submission, surrendered to them voluntarily. To form a proper understanding of the horror of the Mongol invasions, you need to read not only our chroniclers, who were unable to paint any vivid pictures of horrors, but also those from Eastern and Western Europe. (Our chroniclers, in their few and not at all picturesque speeches about the furies of the Mongols, mainly draw attention to the fact that the latter, when beating or taking into slavery the inhabitants, did not make exceptions for monks and monks, for priests and priests. However, we also have one writer who is not one of the chroniclers, who paints to some extent the mentioned living pictures; this is Serapion of Vladimir, who gives them to us in his teachings). According to the legend about St. Mercury Smolensk Tatars passed by Smolensk in the second half of November; but it is necessary to think that it was much earlier - about half of April. How long the siege of Kyiv lasted, our chronicles do not say; but Plano-Carpini says that it was long - the news section in his essay on the Tatars, article V. Laurentian Chronicle: “and they killed all the people, young and old, with the sword.” Plano-Carpini also testifies to the terrible beating. ibidd. When the Galich-Volyn princes Daniil and Vasilko Romanovich, who were in Hungary and Poland during the devastation of their region by Batu, returned home from the latter and came to Berestia, present-day Brest-Litovsk, then, according to the chronicler, “not being able to go (further) into the field of stench for the sake of the multitude of those who were beaten, no wonder,” says the chronicler, “ there was no living left on Volodymer, the church of the Holy Mother of God was filled with corpses, other churches were filled with corpses and the bodies of the dead” (Ipatskaya, 2nd edition p. 524). According to the Ipat Chronicle, Batu returned from Western Europe in 1243; but the Novgorod Chronicle, which is more reliable in terms of chronology, which is followed by other northern chronicles, says that, having returned from Western Europe, Batu called Grand Duke Yaroslav Vsevolodovich to him in 1242. Between Ogotai and Kublai there were two intermediate great khans: Guyuk or Kuyuk and Mangu or Mengu (Monka). In the Russian language there is a word to swagger, which means to show off immoderately, to break too much. We suspect that the word comes from the name of the capital of the great khans, Kharahorin, and that it was introduced into the Russian language by our princes who traveled to Kharahorin, for the reason that the great khans were too proud of them or that they had to humiliate themselves too much before the khans. The great khans bore the title “kaans,” which is interpreted as a khan above khans (and that there is probably a special pronunciation of the title khakan or kagan, while khan is an abbreviation of the latter). In our chronicles, the great khans are called kans, and about the princes’ trips to them, in addition to the expressions: to go to kanovich, to come from kan’s land, also expressions are used: to go to kanovich, to come from kanovich, which should be understood in the sense of: to go to the heirs of Genghis Khan as great khans, for Genghis Khan himself is called a kan in our chronicles. At the end of his reign, probably in 1253, Batu built for his stay the city of Serai or Sarai (which means a palace), which should be located on the lower Akhtuba, on the site of the current village of Selitryany Gorodok, located 110 versts from Astrakhan (and after that a new Sarai was built, which should be located on the upper Akhtuba, on the site of the current city of Tsarev and which is called Sarai in the chronicles great, – Collection of Chronicles VI, 194). The Batyev horde, which ruled Russia, was called the Dzhuchiev ulus from Batyev’s father, the Kipchak ulus and the Kipchak horde from the area, the Sarai horde from the city of Sarai and the Golden Horde from the Khan’s tent. Horde actually means a camp consisting of one or another number of tents (and hence the whole nomadic people living in tents), but this name was also used, as Plano-Carpini repeatedly makes clear, about the tents of khans and nobles (because, probably, near their tents there were entire camps, hordes, tents of their servants). The tent of the khans was called the golden horde, as the same Plano-Carpini makes clear, because it was placed on poles covered with gold sheets (and perhaps also because the Mongols used the epithet “golden” about the khans in accordance with the European epithet of the august). - Finally, about the nationality of the Kipchak or Batu horde it should be said that it was not actually Mongolian or Tatar, but Turkic, so that our Tatars remaining from it to this day are not Mongols or Tatars, but Türks (the national group of which, in Asia as its main representatives are the Turkmen, and in Europe represented by the Ottoman Turks, belongs to the same Ural-Altai family as the Mongols, and is closest in it to the latter). It happened in such a way that Batu brought with him to Europe for its conquest hordes not of the native Mongols, but of the Türks conquered in the eastern Kipchak (the aforementioned Turkmens and Kirghiz) and that the present Mongols were only at the head of the hordes, as commanders. The Ipatan chronicle claims about Mitrofan that he inspired princes and citizens to resist the Tatars. But given the silence of the Laurentian Chronicle about this, it seems much more probable that the Novgorod Chronicle shows that at the first glance at the Tatar hordes surrounding Vladimir, the bishop and the princes recognized, “as if the city had already been taken.” The words in brackets are from the summary story about Batu’s devastation of Ryazan, published by I. I. Sreznevsky in Information and notes on little-known and unknown monuments, No. XXXIX, p. 79. We somewhat supplement and correct the Laurentian chronicle, based on the place read above in it, which she literally uses in the present case, namely the place under the year 1203. Of the famous and at the same time rich churches, the Tatars, according to the chronicles, plundered the following cathedrals: Suzdal, Vladimir, Pereyaslavl (South Pereyaslavl) and Kiev Sophia. About the plunder of the Vladimir Cathedral, the chronicle says: “I plundered the holy Mother of God, the wonderful icon [of the Vladimir Mother of God] was robbed, decorated with gold and silver and precious stones, and (other) icons were robbed, and others were cut down, and others were taken, and honest crosses and sacred loans and books were robbed, and ports the blessed first princes, who hung the hedgehogs in the churches of the saints as a souvenir for themselves, put the same everything in full for themselves.” As for the monasteries, the chronicles say that the Tatars plundered them all - in Moscow (?), Suzdal, Vladimir and Kiev. I volume 1 half, pp. 75 and 79. (electronic version - paragraph after footnote No. 138 - paragraph before footnote No. 139, corr.). Wilhelm Rubrukwis (Runsbroeck, Rubruk), a French monk of the Franciscan order (minor), was sent by Saint Louis from Syria, where the king was for the crusade war with the Saracens, to Batu's son Sartak, with the aim of preaching Christianity among the Tatars, due to the fact that he, the king, was falsely informed that Sartak had converted to Christianity. Sent by Sartak to Batu, and Batu to Mang, Rubrukvis arrived at the court of the Great Khan on December 27, 1263, and after a five-month stay with him, he was released on his return journey in June 1264. The last and best edition of his work “Voyage en Orient” (Voyage en Orient) in Recueil de voygee et de memoires of the Parisian Geographical Society, vol. IV. Not having this edition, we used the work partly from Bergeron’s old edition, partly through different hands (detailed extract, by the way, from D’Hosson in Histoire des Mongoles, II, 283 sqq). On the complete religious tolerance of pagan shamanists, such as the Tatars were before the adoption of Mohammedanism, at present see “China in a civil and moral state” by the monk Iakinthos, IV, 55 fin.. Of the pagans contemporary with the Mongols and in a place close to our Russia, the Lithuanians represent a convincing example of religious tolerance. See about Jas at Hammer in Geschichte d. gold. Horde, S. 148, also in Grigoriev’s dissertation “On the reliability of the labels given by the khans of the Golden Horde to the Russian clergy,” p. 35 sqq. The Arab historian of the late 14th - first half of the 15th century Makrizi says: “for the descendants of Genghis Khan, Yasa was an inviolable law, from whose regulations they never deviated in any way...; they carried out the commands of Yasa as strictly as the first Muslims followed what was prescribed by the Koran”... See History of the Mongols from ancient times to Tamerlane, translation from Persian (from Khondemir) Grigorieva, St. Petersburg, 1834, note 93. We have cited the testimony of Rubrukvis that the great Khan Mangu behaved towards all faiths in such a way that he seemed to belong to each of them. Here is the same testimony of the famous Marco-Polo about the successor of Mangu, the Great Khan (then the Emperor of China), Kublai or Kublai: “on the day of Easter, knowing that this is one of the main Christian holidays, the Great Khan ordered all Christians to come to him and bring with them the sacred scripture in which the Four Gospels are contained; having solemnly fumed this book with incense, he reverently kissed it. The same should have been done, according to to his order and all the former nobles here: this is his constant custom at every major holiday among Christians, about Christmas and Easter. He observed the same on the holidays of the Saracens, Jews and pagans. When they asked him why he did this, he answered: “There are four prophets, revered and adored by four different tribes of the world: Christians honor Jesus Christ, Saracens - Mohammed, Jews -. Moses, and among the pagans the highest god is Sogonombar-kan. And I honor all four and pray for help to the one who, in fact, is higher than all of them”... Travels book 2, chapter 2, Russian translation by Shemyakin from the German (very good) edition of Aug. Burke in Readings of the Society of History and Antiquities 1861 book 3. K. Ritter Die Erdkunde von Asien, V. I, S. 342 sqq. Ios. Assemani Bibliotheca Orientalis, Vol. III, p. 474 and 483 (Ritter ibid. S. 288). Later legends derived the Christianity of the Uyghurs from the three wise men who went to worship the born Jesus Christ, who allegedly were Uyghur wise men - in Assemani ibid. p. 470 and 503. Ritter Erdkunde von Asien, Band V, Drittes Buch, S. 438 and 589. Armenian historians: Commestabularius Armeniae and Guyton in Assemani p. 470 and 503; Rubrukvis, ch. XVII and XXVI. Ritter Erkunde von Asien, V. I, S. 285. Rubrukvis in one example makes it clear that the great Khan Mangu trusted the medical art of the Nestorians more than the pagan magicians - ch. XXXVIII. John of Plano-Carpini, an Italian monk of the same Franciscan order as Rubruquis, was sent by Pope Innocent to the Great Khan Guyuk with the aim of turning him away from the idea of ​​​​conquering Europe and trying to convert him to Christianity. Driving through our Russia, he arrived at Guyuk on July 22, 1246, and after staying with him for four months without ten days, and having seen his solemn proclamation as the Great Khan, he set off back on November 13 of the same year. (The best edition of his work: Relation des Mongols ou Tatares - in the same place as Rubrukvis. There are two Russian translations: belonging to the unknown A.M., printed in 1795, and Yazykov, 1825, read in 1 volume of the last edition undertaken: “Collected travels to the Tatars and other eastern peoples in the XIII. XIV and XV centuries"). Bearing the title of Van Khan, from where the Nestorian missionaries came from the presbyter Iohannes rex, famous in the Middle Ages in the West (for Van, otherwise Ovan, was taken for the proper name John, and khan, kagan, was taken for the same thing with the Syrian kagana, which means priest). According to the Mongolian historian of the late 13th - early 14th centuries, Rashid Eddin, Genghis Khan took Rzhakhanbo from the four daughters of Van Khanov's brother - one for himself, the other for his eldest son Jochi, and the third, the subsequent mother of Mangu and Kublai, for his youngest son Tuli. (It is believed, or at least believed, that Ogotay had a Christian wife and that Guyuk was his son precisely from the latter, see Assemani ibid. p. 103 and 408. But from Rashid-Eddin it is clear that this is not true: he does not say that Ogotay had a wife from the house of Van-khanov, and about Guyukova’s mother Turakina clearly says that she was from the Merkit tribe, which is supposed to have Christianity has no basis). In Assemani ibid. p. 105 sqq. and 480. The later Mongol-Muhammedan historian of the house of Genghis Khan, Abultazi (Khan of Khovarezm or Khiva, †1664) assures that Berke, having accepted Mohammedanism, ordered by decree that all his subjects accept his new faith - Genealogy of the history of the Tatars, part seven, chapter two. But this is not true. That Berke was distinguished by complete tolerance towards the Russian faith and wanted to show it his deliberate favor is evident from the fact that during his reign in 1261, with his permission, and much more likely - as a result of his demand, a Russian episcopal see was established in his capital Sarai. If we give faith to the life of St. Peter, Tsarevich of the Horde, which tells that Berke, in order to heal his son from his illness, called upon the Bishop of Rostov Kirill (see the life in the Orthodox Interlocutor of 1859, part 1, p. 360), then we will see in him a pagan Mongol who does not yet at all consider the Mohammedanism he accepted to be the only true faith. (We do not refer to the fact that in 1257 the Rostov prince Gleb Vasilkovich married in the Horde either the daughter or some close relative of Berka, and the princess, as it must be implied, was allowed to be baptized, since the marriage could have taken place even before Berka accepted Mohammedanism. If our chronicle speaks of Berke’s death: “the king of Orda Berka died and “If Rus' was weakened by Tatar violence” - Nikonovskaya III, 45, then by violence we should mean not violence in faith on the part of Berke himself, but violence in collecting taxes on the part of Tatar tax farmers). Evidence of the voluntary tolerance of the Uzbek Khan is his label of St. Metropolitan Peter, and that his tolerance was not only a consequence of Genghis Khan’s obedience to Yas, but also the absence of Mohammedan intolerance in him, this is evident from the fact that he married his sister Conchasa to the Moscow prince Yuri Danilovich, allowing her to be baptized, and that he patronized Western Christians in the Black Sea part of his possessions, see Karamzin IV, 166 fin. and Grigorieva On the reliability of labels, p. 60 (Uzbek himself had among his wives a Greek princess - the daughter of Andronicus the Younger - Hammer Geschichte d. gold. Horde, S. 299). The voluntary tolerance of Chanibek and Berdibek is evidenced by their labels, the first - to Metropolitan Theognostus (not preserved and mentioned in the label of Theognostus Taidula), the second - to St. Metropolitan Alexy. That Chanibek, in his views, was not yet a real Mohammedan who would recognize only Mohammedanism as true, but remained more or less a pagan who recognized all faiths as equally true, is evident from the fact that to heal his wife Taidula from the illness, he called on St. Alexia. Our chronicle speaks directly about him: “This king Chanibek Azbyakovich is very kind to Christianity,” Nikonovskaya III, 209. The Turkic label”, which actually means: command, order, in the legal language of the Mongols meant all kinds of paper emanating from the government and corresponded to the old Russian “letter.” - Grigoriev “On the reliability of labels”, p. 18. After referring to the charters of the first and former kings, which should be understood (as in the Mengu-Temirov label) the charters of the great khans, namely Genghis Khan Yasu and its confirmation by Ogotai and Mangu (Gammer Geschichte d. gold. Horde, S. 151), Uzbek refers to “our first charter” (in Grigoriev, p. 117). But since his own first charter was precisely this label of 1313, it is necessary to understand his words about the first or only charter of the Golden Horde khans before him. According to our chronicles, a census of the people was carried out for the first time after the death of Batu in 1257; but Plano-Carpini says that the first census, by order of the Great Khan Guyuk and Batu, was carried out while he was in Russia, therefore, in 1246, in which Plano-Carpini was in Russia, going to the Great Khan, or in 1247, in which he was in it on his way back, - news article VII; cfr Solovyov History vol. III, edition 4, p. 189. The Mongolian date displayed under the label of Mengu-Temir, from the method of Mongolian chronology, is not entirely certain and corresponds to our two years - 1267 and 1279, - Grigorieva On the reliability of the labels, p. 93. It is considered most likely to take the first year as the year of Mengu-Temir’s accession to the throne; but in fact it is more likely to take the last year, since the Nikon Chronicle makes it known that in 1279 Metropolitan Kirill was in the Horde near Mengu-Temir; under this year the chronicle reads: “the same summer, Bishop Theognast of Sarai the third came from the Greek land, from Constantinople: the Most Reverend Kirill, Metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus' and the Tsar of Orda Mengu-Temir sent him to the Patriarch and to Tsar Michael Palaeologus of Greece, - from the Most Reverend Kirill metropolitan letters and letters from Tsar Mengu-Temir and commemoration (from) both.” Uzbek's immediate successor was Tinibek. But he was killed by Chanibek after a very short time on the throne. Uzbek, who sat on the khan's throne more than all other khans (1313–1341), was, at the same time, the most powerful among them after Batu and the most magnificent (the great Uzbek). It is not surprising, therefore, that he wanted the Russian metropolitans’ dependence on the khans to be expressed through visible signs, through a kind of investiture. In Atyulyakov’s yarlyk, however, it is stated that even after Berdibek, metropolitans received yarlyats from all khans. But if the Slavic translation of this place is correct, then there is no doubt that this is nothing more than a simple “red” word and a simple fanfare on the part of the khan or his office (and after Berdibek it invariably continued as Uzbek established). See Nikon Chronicle III, 74. In the chronicle, the character is Mamai, because he was then in full charge of the khans, whom he constantly changed. And the label says that it is given by the khan “Mamaev’s uncle’s thought.” On the basis that Metropolitan Maxim, immediately after his arrival at the see in 1283, went to the Horde to see Khan Toda-Mangu (Nikon Chronicle III, 76), some argue that this Khan Toda-Mangu decreed that every metropolitan, when occupying the see, appear in the Horde to receive an affirmative label. But, firstly, Metropolitan Maxim could go to the Horde not for his own church affairs, but on behalf of the Government of Constantinople (who had just taken the throne of Emperor Andronicus the Elder) with a political mission (for the Greeks were then in political ties with the Tatars, see Stritter Memorr. pp. III, 1002 and 1071 fin. sqq); secondly, if he also went about church business, then the conclusion deduced from here remains a simple assumption, which cannot be accepted due to the fact that after Mengu-Temirov’s label to Metropolitan Kirill, the first label should be the Uzbek label of St. Metropolitan Peter in 1313, and that absolutely nothing is known about the labels supposedly received by metropolitans when they occupied the see (after Maxim they should have been received by: Peter in 1308 from Khan Tokta, Feognost in 1328 from Uzbek, Alexy in 1354 from Chanibek). Daroga is a police official. In printed editions of the label this resolution is unclear; We present it according to Synodal Manuscript No. 792. He is mentioned, as we said above, in the label of Chanibek Taidula’s wife to the same Metropolitan Feognost. Label of Uzbeks St. Petru, in relation to the external edition, is very verbose and eloquent, and as a result is relatively extensive. This feature of the label should probably be understood as a sign of the khan’s deliberate favor towards the metropolitan (as our chronicles speak of), and also, perhaps, explained by the fact that he gave the label a new meaning of investiture. The reminder made by the khans in the labels to our clergy that they must pray to God for them and that “if anyone has a wrong heart to pray (for them) to God, otherwise that sin will be on him” (label Mengu-Temirov), according to the above, means that the khans equally recognized the prayers of ministers of all faiths as valid and that they were equally afraid of ministers of all faiths. Of the five labels given by the khans to the metropolitans, as we said, four have survived to this day: Mengu-Temirov to Kirill, Uzbekov to St. Peter, Berdibekov St. Alexy and Atyulyakov Mikhail (Mitya). Along with these four khan's labels, three more labels of one khansha have been preserved, namely the famous wife of Khan Chanibek Taidula, given by her to Metropolitans Theognostus and St. Alexy and Bishop John of Sarai, so that a total of seven labels have been preserved. In the collection of labels made (very ignorantly) at the metropolitan department in the 15th-16th centuries, the label Mengu-Temirov to Kirill is not in first place, but in fifth, because the collector appropriated it to Mengu-Temir-Oksana, i.e. Tamerlane. As for the labels of Taidula, the labels for Metropolitan Theognostus and Bishop John (according to the inscription - Jonah, Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Rus', i.e. as if St. Jonah, who lived a century after Taidula), have the goal of protecting the clergy, in the first case of the entire metropolis, and in the second, the bishopric, from the oppression and insults of private Khansha officials (the label to John is not a letter to him, but a letter about him to one of the Khansha’s senior officials; the label to Metropolitan Alexy is a document passing him through the Horde in the event that “if he happens to go to Tsarjugrad"). When the aforementioned collector of labels in his afterword to them assures that in addition to our seven labels, “there are many other great labels,” he either means the labels of the khans not to metropolitans, but to princes (he himself and there and then says that he found only our seven labels in the metropolis), or he asserts a tendentious lie (meaning to reproach our sovereigns XV-XVI centuries, who decided to encroach on the rights of the church). That during the time of Metropolitan Macarius only seven labels were kept at the metropolitan see (and he, the metropolitan knew), he clearly testifies to this in his well-known answer to Ivan the Terrible “about the immovable things given by God”: “and to this day in the Russian metropolis,” he says, “seven labels written remain.” The translation of the labels, unfortunately, is very unsatisfactory, and the surviving lists of them, one must think, are very faulty. The labels were printed several times; their latest edition, according to which they should be read, is in the appendix to the dissertation of V.V. Grigoriev: “On the reliability of the labels given by the khans of the Golden Horde to the Russian clergy,” Moscow, 1842. The so-called Academic. See the life in the Orthodox Interlocutor of 1859, part I, pp. 361 and 363. Rubrukvis, ch. XX.– In 1257, the Rostov prince Gleb Vasilkovich married some princess there in the Horde: perhaps the beginning of the Rostov bishops’ journeys to the Horde has some connection with this marriage. When, at the beginning of the 14th century, an accusatory sermon arose among us against the collection of fees by bishops for appointments to church degrees and when the bishops, in their justification, referred, among other things, to “filthy violence”: then the accusers did not answer the bishops that they were citing unfairly and, removing the justification in a different way, admitted that the filthy ones really rob, see Monuments of Ancient Russian Law, edition. A. S. Pavlova, part I, col. 154. For example, the Tatar troops, which Prince Andrei Alexandrovich, son of Nevsky, brought against his older brother Dimitri, in 1281 and 1293, both times terribly devastated the Suzdal and Rostov regions almost completely. See also V. O. Klyuchevsky in the Lives of the Saints, page 41 fin.. Known in several editions and readable - in a separate form in collections (from one collection of the XIV-XV centuries, printed by the Right Reverend Macarius in the appendix to Volume V of History; about the author, see Klyuchevsky in the Lives of the Saints, p. 146) and incorporated in chronicles, namely: 1 Sophia (Complete Collection of Chronicles V, 182), Resurrection (ibid. VII, 152), Nikonovskaya, – III, 19, and in the Degree Book, – I, 340. We cannot say what this “kustu” is. Hammer claims that “kustu”, in Persian “kesti”, is the sacred belt of magicians and Indians - Geschichte d. gold. Horde, S. 137 note: but we doubt that this is so. The Ipatian Chronicle refers to “bush” as a bush in the Russian meaning of the word, for it is expressed: “water near the bush” (2nd edition p. 535 fin.): but this also seems doubtful to us. Since in the legend the sun and “kustu” stand together only once, and other times either the sun or “kustu”: doesn’t “kustu” mean the sun? About the religious worship of the Mongols to the souls of their ancestors, see Notes on Mongolia by the monk Iakinthos, volume I, part II, p. 188, and his “China”, IV, 58 fin.. The Ipatian chronicle says that the Mongols worship “the sun and the moon and the earth, the devil and their father and grandfather and mother who died in hell,” - 2nd edition p. 535.– Worship to the south was precisely prayerful worship, – Plano-Carpini, ch. VIII, Rubrukvis y Bergeron, b. 31. Under 1250, 2nd edition p. 535 fin. sqq. From all the stories, and mainly from the story in the chronicle, it is clear that worship was required once, namely before the princes were to present themselves to the khans. Cfr of the Most Reverend Macarius History vol. IV, p. 117. According to our deliberate legend, Mikhail Vsevolodovich was strongly urged to carry out Batu’s will by his grandson Boris Vasilkovich of Rostov. According to Plano-Carpini, who also speaks of what we have just said about a boyar he does not call by name, Batu sent to Mikhail with an admonition to the son of Yaroslav, who was in the Horde, that is, the son of the Grand Duke Yaroslav Vsevolodovich. In our deliberate legend: “The murderers (of the prince) arrived, jumped off the horse and Yasha Mikhail and stretched out his arms, beating his heart with their hands; they threw him face down on the ground and beat him with their heels; for this reason, someone who was before Christians and later rejected the faith Christian and a filthy lawbreaker named Doman, he cut off the head of the holy martyr Michael and cast it away... (then) he began to torment Theodore, just as he had cut off his honorable head; Which, perhaps, should be understood not in such a way that they wanted to betray them to the greatest possible shame, but in such a way that they just did not want to honor them with an appropriate burial. According to Przhevalsky, the Mongols currently bury only the corpses of princes and important lamas in the ground, and throw out all other corpses to be devoured by dogs and wild animals and birds. The year of the martyrdom of Mikhail Vsevolodovich is shown in two ways: according to the deliberate legend and according to the Hypatan Chronicle, it is 1245, according to the Laurentian and so-called Academic Chronicles - 1246. Accepting the second year, we are based on the assumption that the Laurentian Chronicle is not mistaken when it attributes the death of the prince to the same year as the death of the Grand Duke Yaroslav Vsevolodovich, and regarding this latter we know from Plano-Carpini that he died in 1246, and not earlier. The month and date, as we said, is September 20. It is unknown when the relics from the Horde were transferred to Chernigov and placed here in the cathedral. From Chernigov in 1575, Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich transferred them to Moscow and placed them in the cathedral dedicated to the name of our (Chernigov) miracle workers, located above the Kremlin Tainitsky Gate; in 1770, when it was proposed to destroy the cathedral, they were moved to the Sretensky Palace Cathedral, and from here in 1774 they were moved to the Archangel Cathedral, where they remain hidden to this day, see. Snegireva Monuments of Moscow Antiquity, p. 67 col. 1 fin. (a curious message from the king to the miracle workers, begging them to come to Moscow, ibid., explanatory notes p. 4, l). Prince Mikhail Vsevolodovich and his boyar Theodore were canonized at an unknown date before the council of 1547. Also Degree Book – I, 383 However, since in ancient and old times the word “slander” was used in two senses: in the sense of slander, as now, and in the sense of denunciation, accusation: it may be that the chronicle uses it in the second sense. Nikon Chronicle, III, 137. 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