Abstract
The article presents an analysis of early information received in Russia in the 16th-17th centuries about one of the oldest and most honorable knight orders in Europe – the English Order of the Garter. Besides the reports from Muscovite ambassadors to London, one more detailed Russian account of this order has survived. Written by the English antiquarian W. Camden, this text was included in the fourth volume of the most famous geographical atlas of the world – Willem Blaeu’s Atlas Novus. This volume was translated very accurately into Church Slavonic by Isaiah, the Ukrainian-born scribe of the Moscow Chudov Monastery, in the 1650s-1661 at the behest of Patriarch Nikon. In addition to a detailed description of the appearance of the Knights of the Garter and a description of the brotherhood’s symbol itself, the translation recites legends about the founding of the order. The key point is that the translator interprets the term order to mean a social group rather than an award. This information appears to be very important in the general context of the Russian order system development, since knowledge of the English Order of the Garter and its statutes became one of the starting points for Peter I when planning the introduction of the first Russian order, the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called.
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