This 2006 book documents developments in the countries of eastern Europe, including the rise of authoritarian tendencies in Russia and Belarus, as well as the victory of the democratic 'Orange Revolution' in Ukraine, and poses important questions about the origins of the East Slavic nations and the essential similarities or differences between their cultures. It traces the origins of the modern Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian nations by focusing on pre-modern forms of group identity among the Eastern Slavs. It also challenges attempts to 'nationalize' the Rus' past on behalf of existing national projects, laying the groundwork for understanding of the pre-modern history of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The book covers the period from the Christianization of Kyivan Rus' in the tenth century to the reign of Peter I and his eighteenth-century successors, by which time the idea of nationalism had begun to influence the thinking of East Slavic elites.

Winner of the 2020 Verbruggen prize This book provides a comprehensive synthesis of scholarship on Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages. The goal is to offer an overview of the current state of research and a basic route map for navigating an abundant historiography available in more than 10 different languages. The literature published in English on the medieval history of Eastern Europe—books, chapters, and articles—represents a little more than 11 percent of the historiography. The companion is therefore meant to provide an orientation into the existing literature that may not be available because of linguistic barriers and, in addition, an introductory bibliography in English. Winner of the 2020 Verbruggen prize, awarded annually by the De Re Militari society for the best book on medieval military history. The awarding committee commented that the book ‘has an enormous range, and yet is exceptionally scholarly with a fine grasp of detail. Its title points to a general history of eastern Europe, but it is dominated by military episodes which make it of the highest value to anybody writing about war and warmaking in this very neglected area of Europe.’ See inside the book.

This book studies the nature of Venetian rule over the Slavs of Dalmatia during the eighteenth century, focusing on the cultural elaboration of an ideology of empire that was based on a civilizing mission toward the Slavs. The book argues that the Enlightenment within the “Adriatic Empire” of Venice was deeply concerned with exploring the economic and social dimensions of backwardness in Dalmatia, in accordance with the evolving distinction between “Western Europe” and “Eastern Europe” across the continent. It further argues that the primitivism attributed to Dalmatians by the Venetian Enlightenment was fundamental to the European intellectual discovery of the Slavs. The book begins by discussing Venetian literary perspectives on Dalmatia, notably the drama of Carlo Goldoni and the memoirs of Carlo Gozzi. It then studies the work that brought the subject of Dalmatia to the attention of the European Enlightenment: the travel account of the Paduan philosopher Alberto Fortis, which was translated from Italian into English, French, and German. The next two chapters focus on the Dalmatian inland mountain people called the Morlacchi, famous as “savages” throughout Europe in the eighteenth century. The Morlacchi are considered first as a concern of Venetian administration and then in relation to the problem of the “noble savage,” anthropologically studied and poetically celebrated. The book then describes the meeting of these administrative and philosophical discourses concerning Dalmatia during the final decades of the Venetian Republic. It concludes by assessing the legacy of the Venetian Enlightenment for later perspectives on Dalmatia and the South Slavs from Napoleonic Illyria to twentieth-century Yugoslavia.

A discussion of the origins and early migrations of the Slavic peoples, in terms of social structure, religions, and culture.

In Sources of Slavic Pre-Christian Religion Juan Antonio Álvarez-Pedrosa presents all known medieval texts that provide us with information about the religion practiced by the Slavs before their Christianization.

The Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja is a mysterious narrative source covering the Slavic presence on the Adriatic coast and its hinterland. This study offers a new interpretation of the text, based on the recognition of the figures of model rulers.

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome is the first book-length study of the medieval legend that Church Father and biblical translator St. Jerome was a Slav who invented the Slavic (Glagolitic) alphabet and Roman Slavonic rite. Julia Verkholantsev locates the roots of this belief among the Latin clergy in Dalmatia in the 13th century and describes in fascinating detail how Slavic leaders subsequently appropriated it to further their own political agendas. The Slavic language, written in Jerome's alphabet and endorsed by his authority, gained the unique privilege in the Western Church of being the only language other than Latin, Greek, and Hebrew acceptable for use in the liturgy. Such privilege, confirmed repeatedly by the popes, resulted in the creation of narratives about the distinguished historical mission of the Slavs and became a possible means for bridging the divide between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches in the Slavic-speaking lands. In the fourteenth century the legend spread from Dalmatia to Bohemia and Poland, where Glagolitic monasteries were established to honor the Apostle of the Slavs Jerome and the rite and letters he created. The myth of Jerome's apostolate among the Slavs gained many supporters among the learned and spread far and wide, reaching Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and England. Grounded in extensive archival research, Verkholantsev examines the sources and trajectory of the legend of Jerome's Slavic fellowship within a wider context of European historical and theological thought. This unique volume will appeal to medievalists, Slavicists, scholars of religion, those interested in saints' cults, and specialists of philology.

In this pioneering book, Eve Levin explores sexual behavior among the peoples of Serbia, Bulgaria, and Russia from their conversion to Christianity in the ninth and tenth centuries until the end of the seventeenth century. By ranging across all these societies, Levin is able to fulfill three basic aims: to delineate the general character of sexuality among the Orthodox Slavs, to enrich that account by drawing our attention to regional variations in the sexual mores of these peoples, and to draw suggestive comparisons between the world of the medieval Orthodox Slavs and their contemporaries in the Latin West. Levin begins with a study of the ecclesiastical image of sexuality as expressed in didactic and literary texts, showing that the Orthodox Church was deeply suspicious of sexuality. Her second chapter, on canon law and marfiage, examines the conditions for marriage, divorce, and remarriage, the obligation of the conjugal relationship, and the impact of these rules on social order. Levin looks at church regulations concerning sexual relations among relatives by blood, marriage, spiritual kinship, and adoption in Chapter Three, and she devotes Chapter Four to prohibited sexual practices, both inside and outside of marriage. In the fifth chapter she studies Russian and South Slavic responses to rape, and demonstrates that these societies simultaneously censured violence against women and sanctioned the attitudes and social structures that justified it. Chapter Six deals with the rules on sexual conduct for the clergy, whose job it was to enforce sexual precepts. Throughout her work, Levin argues that, despite its conviction that sexual expression was diabolical, the medieval Orthodox Church approached sexual matters in a surprisingly practical way; its official sexual ethic corresponded to a great degree with popular views. Historians of the Slavic world, both medieval and modern, will welcome this accessible study. It should also attract comparativists who work in such fields as church history, the history of women and the family, and the history of sexuality.