“Assassins of the Great Prince Andrey”: An Inscription about the Murder of Andrey Bogolyubsky from Pereslavl-Zalessky

Abstract

The present paper deals with a long inscription which was uncovered in the autumn of 2015 on the external wall of the southern apse of the 12th century Transfiguration Cathedral in Pereslavl-Zalessky. It contains an almost fully legible list of assassins of the Vladimir-Suzdal prince Andrey Yuryevich, who was murdered in Bogolyubovo on June 29th, 1174. The writer places a curse on the murderers and wishes eternal memory to the prince. The graffito probably dates from 1175–1176 when Andrey’s younger brother Vsevolod Yuryevich ruled in Pereyaslavl. It is the oldest inscription from the North-Eastern Rus’ to have a fairly precise dating. The discovery corroborates the general accuracy of the chronicles in respect to the murder and serves as a source for the study of Old Russian princely titles and other terms of social hierarchy. Andrey Yuryevich is called the grand prince and his murderers are collectively given the pejorative name of parobki (servants) despite the high social status of at least some of them. As the first example of anathematising state criminals in Rus’, the inscription has relevance for church history as well. Valuable new information is provided by the list of assassins. It includes the names of 11–13 individuals. The list indicates that the main conspirator, the boyar Kuchcko's son-in-law named Peter was the son of someone named Frol. That Frol may have been the founder of the Church of Saints Florus and Laurus in the Moscow Kremlin. The patronymic of the third of the murderers Yakim Kuckovičь is spelled with a c., which may be an indication of Kuchko's Novgorodian origin. The fourth on the list is Ofrem Moizich. The authors accept the Arabic origins of Ofrem’s patronymic suggested by V. S. Kuleshov. The latter traces it back to the name Muʕizz which could have belonged to a Muslim from Volga Bulgaria. The fifth conspirator Dobryna Mikitich is tentatively identified as the Rostov boyar Dobryna the Tall. He played a prominent role in the feud triggered by the assassination of Andrey Yuryevich and perished in the Battle of Yuryev Field on June 27th, 1176. The last person on the list bears the rare Slavic name Styrjata which elsewhere is attested only in the 12th century graffiti inscriptions from the Annunciation Church at Gorodische near Novgorod. From the standpoint of linguistics the inscription demonstrates an advanced stage of the yer-shift. In this respect it is similar to the Novgorod birchbark letter No. 724 which dates from the same period. The inscription was read with the help of a three-dimensional model created by the RSSDA Lab. (https://rssda.su/ep-rus).