Orbis Russiarum: genèse et development de la representation du monde 'russe' en Occident à la Renaissance by Stéphane s> Mund (review)

Abstract

338 SEER, 83, 2, 2005 Mund, Stephane. Orbis Russiarum: genese etdevelopment delarepresentation dumonde 'russe' en Occident a'la Renaissance. Travaux d'Humanism et Renaissance, 382. LibrairieDroz S. A., Geneva, 2003. 598 pp. Illustrations.Appendices . Maps. Tables. Bibliography.Indexes. Notes. ?E72.00. ORBIS RUSSIARUM is a study of a number of accounts of Muscovy composed by Western travellerswho visited the country between I487 and i6oo. The book consists of two parts, the first containing three, and the second two chapters which, in turn, are divided into subchapters. The book is well structured,compiled and edited, and its appendices and indices are particularly to be recommended as they are thorough, comprehensive and perspicuous. The first part of the book introduces the reader to its subject and places Muscovy in the context of her relations with the West. The first chapter is dedicated to accounts which were written in the form of a travel diary and examines the understanding and depiction of the Muscovite towns and villages, nature, religion, etc., by the authors.The second chapter deals with chronographic treatises where some attempts are made to establish the intellectual and political position of the writers of the accounts. The main strengthhere lies, perhaps, in the volume of evidence brought to the support of the author's thesis rather than in the theses themselves. Notwithstanding, this part of the book will prove of considerable interest both to specialistsin the field as a referencevolume, and to the erudite casual reader interestedin travelwritings. The second partof Orbis containsthe bulkof the originalresearch.Here the author examines what he terms 'the diffusionand borrowing of knowledge', the latter, according to his thesis, being in direct correlationwith the former. Through meticulous examination of substantialdata he convincingly demonstratesthatpeople who travelledto Muscovycould and didpreparethemselves for thejourney by extensive reading of the accounts already extant, and that in a number of cases, theirown perceptionsof Muscovycould have been more heavily influenced by what they read than by what they actually saw. This part of the book also broadens our understanding of the importance of translationin the early modern period in the particularcontext of Muscovy. The 'diffusion of knowledge' is illustrated by carefully constructed charts which will be of particularuse to futurestudentsof Muscovy'stravelaccounts of the period. One of the more unusualfeaturesof Orbis is the inclusion of descriptionsof Ruthenia, the south-westpartsof Muscovylessvividlydepictedby theWestern travellersas more exotic Tartaror Sarmatianlandsand, therefore,not usually examined by scholars.The book does not appearto lay claim to discoveriesof new documentaryevidence or new interpretationof the materialpresentedin the travelaccounts under scrutiny.Rather it examines the familiartexts from a particularperspective concentrating, to a large extent, on the correlations between the accounts themselves. Russianistswill regardthisbook as a usefultool and as a timely supplement to the extant scholarship of early-modern accounts of Muscovy. Mund enlarges on earlier works and takes a step furtherour understandingof the REVIEWS 339 fabric of travel writing and its importance for Muscovite history. However, the book isunlikelyto move the historyof Muscovy fromitspresentperipheral position to mainstream historical research, because it does not provide sufficientground for an intense intellectualdebate either about Muscovy and its historyor about the Renaissance discoveriesof the World. Despite this, Orbisis an intensely scholarly work which recommends its author as a person of greateruditionand considerableapplication. HerfordCollege, Oxford MARIA UNKOVSKAYA Kazmierczyk,Adam. Zydziwdobrachpywatnych ws'wietle sidowniczej i administracyjnejpraktykidobr magnackich w wiekachXVI-XVIII. Studia Judaica Cracoviensia. Series Dissertationum, I. Ksiegarnia Akademicka, Krakow, 2002. 276 PP.Map. Bibliography.Notes. Summaryin English. Priceunknown. STUDIES such asMoshe Rosman's TheLord's Jews(Cambridge,MA, I990) and Gershon Hundert's 7The J7ews in a PolishPrivateTown(Baltimore, MD, I992) have illuminatedthe vital economic relationshipbetween magnates andJews in the eighteenth-century Polish-LithuanianCommonwealth. Nobles gained jurisdiction over Jews living in their lands and towns from the king in 1539. By the mid-eighteenth century, between a half and three-quarters of the Commonwealth's Jews lived under private jurisdiction. On the one hand, 'private'Jews' legal status became more dependent on their lords, a process parallelto the gradualwitheringof autonomousJewish institutionswithin the Commonwealth. They were left largely defenceless against chicanery and arbitraryviolence from nobles and estate managers. On the other hand, the economic ties between Jews and nobles (especially the magnates) deepened within this 'protection racket', aggravating...