“All Sovereign Novgorod-the-Great” in Fifteenth Century Documents in Germanic Languages
Abstract
The article considers one of the designations of the Novgorod political community emerged in the second half of the 15th century—“All Lord Sovereign Novgorod-the-Great”. It played a very important part in the political life of Novgorod at that time, as it stressed Novgorod’s complete independence and therefore was directed against the claims of the grand princes of Moscow. In total, no more than ten mentions of this name are known so far. However, taking into account little-studied documents in Middle Low German and Old Swedish allows us to increase this number. Moreover, the treaty between Novgorod and Sweden on 10 April 1468 may contain the very first mention of “All Sovereign Novgorod-the-Great” in written sources. It also turns out that translators used the Middle Low German word herschopp or the Old Swedish word herskap to convey both the designation “Lord Novgorod-the-Great” known since the late 14th century, and the designation “Sovereign Novgorod-the-Great”. This may indicate that for them the semantic difference between “Lord” and “Sovereign” in reference to Novgorod was not obvious, as well as that they lacked lexical means capable of conveying this difference. Meanwhile, this difference was very significant in the context of the Moscow-Novgorod confrontation in the 1470s. At the same time, the concept of herschopp/herskap should be recognized as probably the best possible translation of both designations into Middle Low German and Old Swedish respectively.
DOI: 10.31168/2305-6754.2023.2.04
Keywords
Full Text:
PDF (Русский)References
Bachinskiy A. A., Erusalimskiy K. Yu., Kochekovskaya N. A., Moiseyev M. V., Diplomatic Correspondence of Ivan the Terrible: Problems of Authorship, Storage and Existence, Rossiiskaia Istoria, 2, 2018, 111–129.
Gippius A. A., K istorii slozheniia teksta Novgorodskoi pervoi letopisi, Novgorodskii istoricheskii sbornik, 6 (16), 1997, 3–72.
Ilieva I., Moskovskite letopisi ot 70-te g. na XV vek i formirane ideologiiata na samodurzhavieto, Godishnik na Sofiiskiia universitet “Kliment Okhridski”. Istoricheski fakultet, 78, 1985, 137–187.
Kashtanov S. M., Instituty gosudarstvennoi vlasti Velikogo Novgoroda i Pskova v svete nemetskoi srednevekovoi terminologii (predvaritel′nye zametki), Drevneishie gosudarstva Vostochnoi Evropy: 2001 god: Istoricheskaia pamiat′ i formy ee voploshcheniia, Moscow, 2003, 297–319.
Khoroshkevich A. L., Russkie gramoty 60-70-kh godov XV v. iz byvshego Rizhskogo gorodskogo arkhiva, Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik za 1965 god, Moscow, 1966, 325–341.
Lukin P. V., Strata of the Novgorod Population in the Opasnaia Gramota of 1472, Slověne, 4, 1, 2015, 253–265.
Lukin P. V., Novgorod i Venetsiia: sravnitel′no-istoricheskie ocherki stanovleniia respublikanskogo stroia, St. Petersburg, 2022.
Lukin P. V., “Sovereign Novgorod the Great” and the Moscow Chronicle Compilation in the 1470s, Cahiers du monde russe, 64, 3–4, 517–534.
Skvairs E. R., Ferdinand S. N., Ganza i Novgorod: Iazykovye aspekty istoricheskikh kontaktov, Moscow, 2002.
Uspenskij B. A., “The Lord Great Novgorod”: The Origin oft he Name, Old Rus. The Questions of Middle Ages, 3 (85), 2021, 24–44.
Yanin V. L., Novgorodskie akty XII–XV vv. Khronologicheskii kommentarii, Moscow, 1991.
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2023 Pavel V. Lukin
![Creative Commons License](http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nd/4.0/88x31.png)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.