Was There a Riurikid Dynasty in Early Rus’?

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the gap between the scholarly literature, which touts a Riurikid dynasty in Rus’ before the sixteenth century, and the primary sources of the time, which seem to be unaware of such a dynasty. The appeals to legitimacy in the primary sources for particular kniazi to rule in a town never resort to claiming descent from Riurik. Instead, such claims are based on whether one’s father ruled in that town. All others are izgoi, that is, outside the line of succession to any particular throne. The chronologies of the Povest’ vremennykh let and the Novgorod I Chronicle that declare Igor’ to be Riurik’s son are faulty and most likely derive from a single source. In the sixteenth century, Rus’ churchmen in an effort to shore up the legitimacy of the Daniilovichi, who should have been considered izgoi according to the Rus’ succession system, to rule in Moscow claimed descent of the Rus’ grand prince from Riurik and beyond him to Prus, a supposed kinsman of Augustus Caesar. Historians have accepted the dynastic claim of the sixteenth-century Rus’ churchmen to Rus’ kniazi being descended from Riurik (although not from Prus) and thus perpetuate the view that such a dynasty, and thereby a state, existed in early Rus’.