Pilgrimage and Polemics: Early Reception of Latin Christendom in Kievan Rus’ between Byzantine Normativity and Practical Decisions

This article analyses the main traits of reception of Latin (Roman Catholic) Christendom in Kievan Rus’, drawing from the notion of its confessional ≫otherness≪ in relation to the Eastern Orthodox norm. The mentioned reception is studied according to the East Slavic narrative sources written at the end of the eleventh and beginning of the twelfth centuries, i.e., directly after the ≫Great Schism≪ (1054) between Constantinople and Rome. The author of this article accentuates the complexity of the Rus’ attitude towards Latin Christians on various levels: 1) upholding the official Orthodoxy, following the Byzantine doctrinal themes as adopted in Church Slavic polemical literature, while, simultaneously, 2) respecting practical considerations of dynastic ties between the East Slavic political elite and ruling families of the neighbouring Latin world, 3) and venerating particular Latin saints. In this respect, special consideration is given to the travel diary on the Holy Land titled Life and Pilgrimage of Daniel, the Hegumen of the Land of Rus’, serving as a prime example of encountering confessional differences. Daniel’s Pilgrimage is placed within the political and cultural context after the First Crusade during the Frankish rule over Palestine; it brings some valuable testimonies about the ≫Latin-Greek≪ relations in the Kingdom of Jerusalem as perceived by an educated ecclesiastical traveller, himself originating from an Eastern Orthodox environment. Daniel’s thematization of his confessional ≫other≪ in the Holy Land reveals a similar ambiguity in the case of Rus’ itself: on a declarative level, the polemical writings of the Kievan metropolitans testify about a negative position on the ≫Latin heresies≪; on the other hand, common veneration of particular saints, such as Olaf of Norway or Magnus of Orkney, and decisions of the East Slavic princes confirm the permanence of intercultural contacts and pragmatic willingness to cooperate with the neighbouring Catholic polities (Sweden, Poland, Hungary) in forming dynastic marriages and military alliances.