The Chronicle of the Monk of Sazava and the Kievan Chronicle: A Comparison of the Historigraphical Method

Abstract

The article defines the main characteristic features of the Chronicle of the Monk of Sazava,one of a number of Bohemian Latin historiographic works that belong to the group of so-called continuations of Cosmas’s chronicles (Continuationes Cosmae); the article compares the method of the Monk of Sazava with the method used in Old Russian historiography of the same period, namely in the Kievan Chronicle. It focuses on the role of the chronological line in the narrative structure of both texts, and reveals their tendency to break the chronological narrative frame. This tendency, however, is not consistent, and the chronological line is not replaced by another structural principle (as happens, for example, in the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle).  Such an approach is defined as hybridization of annalistic structure. The tendency to break the year-by-year structure is related to the insertion of independent literary works into the chronologically organized historical narration, which is particularly evident in the way in which the Monk of Sazava incorporated the text entitled De exordio Zazavensis monasterii into the chronological narration of Cosmas. The typological similarity of the Chronicle of the Monk of Sazava and the Kievan Chronicle is also evident in their ability to incorporate the texts of a non-literary (legal) character. In both chronicles under consideration, the role of the author is more important than in annals, however, the importance of the author is still lower (particularly in the case of the Kievan Chronicle) than in such Latin medieval works by an individual author, as in the Chronicle of Bohemians by Cosmas of Prague. In this respect, the texts analysed here are defined as texts that exceeded the frame of the genre of annals, but did not become chronicles, since their authors could not overcome the diverse character of the sources they used; they were not able to provide the text with a unified narrative perspective and thus to act as an authority defining the method of narration and guaranteeing the credibility of judgment.