History Writing and the Quest for Fame in Late Muscovy: Andrei Lyzlov's History of the Scythians

Abstract

M ore than a decade ago Edward Keenan suggested that until the seventeenth century Muscovy offered the prospect of a national Christian historiography that developed essentially in isolation from foreign influences and that did not possess a generalized conception of history. Muscovy was, in Keenan's view, a culture that had never seen a book.1 The History of the Scythians by Andrei Ivanovich Lyzlov offers fertile ground for studying the impact of European history books upon the relatively static and insular Muscovite historiographical tradition. Lyzlov made extensive use of European, almost exclusively Polish, histories in compiling the History of the Scythians, which he completed in 1692. This research note attempts to assess the impact of European models of writing upon the History of the Scythians and place Lyzlov's work within the context of late Muscovite court culture.