Khans and Sarai Diocese
In the relations between the Golden Horde and the Russian principalities in the XII – XIV centuries, the religious factor played an important role. This is a rather obscure topic for the general public and is waiting for more conscientious researchers. Judging by the available chronicle sources, the testimony of Catholic monks and Arab travelers of the time, the Chingisids who came to Russia were notable for their tolerance.Thus, the Franciscan monk Guillaume de Rubruk, a member of the French embassy to the great Khan Munke (1253) wrote to King Louis the Holy: "Let your majesty know about the city of Karakorum ... There are 12 temples of various nations, 2 mosques in which proclaim the law of Muhammad, and the Christian church on the edge of the city. "
The Orthodox Church of Batu and the subsequent rulers of the Juchi Ulus (Golden Horde) treated very favorably. In 1261, the Metropolitan Kirill of Kiev, at the request of the Grand Duke of Vladimir Alexander Nevsky and with the permission of Khan Berke, in Sarai-Batu, the Sarai diocese was established in the capital of the Golden Horde. The first bishop of Sarai was St. Mitrofan, who also managed the Pereyaslav Diocese.
One of the most profound researchers of the Sarai diocese is the historian and Orthodox publicist Vladimir Makhnach, whose works shed light on this page. stories Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church. His vision of those events is as follows.
ORTHODOX The diocese in the capital of the Horde, Sarai, three centuries later transferred to Krutitsy (now the Tagansky district of Moscow. - Ed.), was established in 1261 year. Many authors point out the most numerous reasons for founding a new department. Firstly, the number of Russians in the Horde in the 1250s increased. It was already about the frequent visits to the Khan's residence by the Russian princes with their entourage, merchants, and various embassies. The princes kept their yards with servants in Saray. Many of these Russians, willy-nilly or not, spent years in the Horde.
Secondly, by this time the Horde power had already fully established relations with the clergy, who were in a privileged position compared to the rest of the Russian population, and probably did not oppose the desire of the Russian clergy to strengthen their influence in the vast new territory.
Thirdly, in the Horde lands, especially along the Don, there lived rodents - Christianized descendants of the Khazars and the ancestors of the Don Cossacks.
Fourthly, the khan's power attached special importance to the bishop of Sarai in the relations of the Horde with Byzantium. It was hardly a coincidence that the foundation of the pulpit in the very year of 1261, when Mikhail Paleologue threw the crusaders out of Constantinople, restoring the Orthodox capital. A chronicle certificate is known about the return of Theognostos, the second bishop of Sarai, in 1279, “from Greek, sent by a beater of the metropolitan to the patriarch and Tsar Mengutemer to the king of the Greek Palaeologus”.
The Russian princes and the higher clergy, apparently, received information from the Sarai bishop about the situation in the headquarters, about the Khan’s attitude to this or that of the Russian princes. To some extent, the bishop could influence this relationship.
With all the knowledge of the question, a strange situation is striking when historians are primarily interested in what the Saray department of the Horde was useful for, not the Russians, not the Byzantine Empire, not the Universal Orthodox Church. In the end, it was not the Horde who established a diocese!
WAS MORE ONE the most serious reason for the desire of the Russian clergy to increase influence in the Horde: the struggle against Roman Catholicism, which from the thirteenth century constantly increased the pressure on the East. With the establishment of the Horde government in Russia in Rome, it was considered that it was now possible to spread papism among the Russians with the help of the Horde, and among the Horde themselves, perhaps with the help of ours. The goal was also pursued to attract the steppe inhabitants to the struggle against the Seljuk Turks, the Nicene (Byzantine) Empire, and the German Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen.
This pressure was carried out with the help of missionaries, most often Franciscans and Dominicans, whom the pope, having supplied with messages, were sent to Russia and to the Horde in the XIII and XIV centuries. Such of them, as John Plano Karpini, Guillaume Rubruck, Julian, we owe the most interesting testimonies about the countries where they visited, but they were not sent at all with educational purposes.
Their reports were sometimes even false in describing their own missionary successes. Thus, the Hungarian Dominican monk Julian in 1235 reported the words that the prince of great Laudameria (Vladimir-Suzdal principality said - Ed.) Said: "... After all, the time is close when we all must accept the faith of the Roman church and submit to its authority" .
It is interesting to note that even in the 1233 bulle of the year, Pope Gregory IX gave indulgence to all Dominicans who went to Russia, forgiving them such sins as the arson and murder of a cleric; they were also given the right to let go of these sins themselves. In a number of messages starting from the 13th century, the popes called on the Russian princes to renounce "their own delusions," that is, Orthodoxy.
GEOPOLITICAL The situation in the XIII century was the hardest in the whole of Russian history. Russia could not protect itself from the invasion of the Mongol horde. A number of the most important cities were devastated, the fear of the steppe walks made the movement of merchant caravans impossible. In the 12th century, the Great Dnieper transit route “from the Varangians to the Greeks” dried up. In addition, the western border was hostile, and the surviving cities of the North-West - Novgorod, Pskov, Polotsk, Smolensk - sought to reorient their trade to the Baltic Sea, having lost the Russian market.
The decline of trade encouraged the decline of craft and vice versa, which forms a vicious circle. The fall of the order under the influence of the socio-psychological shock was monstrous: the richest Novgorod that was not ruined by anybody for about 60 did not lead stone construction for years.
Cut off by the Great Schism (church split in 1054, which led to the division of Christianity into the Roman Catholic Church in the West and the Orthodox - in the East with the center in Constantinople. - Ed.), The West became completely alien after the devastation of Constantinople in 1204 year. The Byzantine Empire, having survived the six-century onslaught of Islam, fell under the treacherous blows of the crusaders. Between Russia and the Black Sea instead of "their nasty" - Torks, Berendeys, Polovtsy - there was a Horde. Cultural isolation and economic decline entailed the loss of influence of cities and city monasteries.
Only the Church remained the stronghold of the Russian people. A church that was not touched by the Mongols, which "even the gates of hell cannot overcome."
RELIGIOUS CULTURAL Tolerance Mongol amazed contemporaries. Khan's labels exempted the clergy from all kinds of tribute, all obligations in favor of the khan. “This letter is seen and heard from the priests and Chernets neither tributes, nor anything else they want, nor take Baskats, princes scribes, popluzhniki, customs, and take the Yen to apologize and die” (from the label Mengu-Timur 1267) .
Labels protect lands, waters, gardens, gardens, mills belonging to the clergy. Church houses are exempted from standing. For the insult of churches, the blasphemy of faith, the destruction of church property (books, etc.) relied on the death penalty. The Taydul 1347 label of the year directly appeals to the Russian princes to support all these privileges of the church.
It seems appropriate to note that the Russian land, having recovered from the first shock, could resist. In 110, thousands of warriors estimate historians the strength of the united principalities in the thirteenth century. This is obviously more than the forces of Batuyev Ulus. But Russia fought in the West. Poles, Hungarians, Swedes and an incomparably more dangerous Teutonic Order - these are terrible uncompromising enemies.
Brilliant analysis L.N. Gumilyov leaves no doubt that Russia could win at the cost of an alliance with the papacy, at the cost of exaggeration and feudalization. At the price that Prince Daniel Galitsky refused to pay in the end, which the blessed Prince Alexander Nevsky and Metropolitan Kirill decisively rejected.
Moreover, the position in the Horde and in the headquarters of the Great Khan was distinguished by exceptional instability and even yielded to Russian influence. During the campaign, Batu fell out with his cousins, Guyuk, the son of the great Khan Ogedei, and Buri, the son of the great guardian of Yasy, Chagatai.
“Fathers took the side of Batu and punished their impudent sons with disgrace,” wrote L.N. Gumilev, but when Udegei died in 1241, and power fell into the hands of Guyuk's mother, Khansha Turakina, Guyuk and Buri's squads were recalled - and poor Baty turned out to be the ruler of a huge country, having only four thousand faithful warriors with over-tensioned relations with the central government. There was no question of forcible retention of the conquered territories. Return to Mongolia meant a more or less cruel death. And here Batu, a stupid and far-sighted man, began a policy of flirting with his subjects, in particular with the Russian princes Yaroslav Vsevolodich and his son Alexander. Their lands were not subject to tribute. ”
But Guyuk was not good. Mongolian veterans, companions of his grandfather, and Nestorians associated with Tolui’s children came out against him. Although in 1246, Guyuk was proclaimed the Great Khan, but he had no real support. Guyuk tried to find her in the same place where his enemy, Baty, was among the Orthodox population of the conquered countries. He invited “priests from Sham (Syria), Rum (Byzantium), Wasps and Russia” to him and proclaimed a program acceptable to these peoples, a campaign in the Latin West.
MISSION Plano Carpini was officially to convey to the Great Khan an offer to adopt Roman Catholicism. With regard to the Mongolian power, these plans at that stage were hopeless: Khan Guyuk’s letter to Pope Innocent IV remained, where the Khan, threatening with invasion, demanded complete submission. “From here, know for the right thing,” Guillah Rubruk informed the French king in 1253, “that they are very far from the faith, as a result of this opinion, which was strengthened among them, thanks to the Russians, whose number is very large among them.”
At the beginning of 1248, Guyuk died suddenly or was poisoned. Baty, who gained the superiority of forces, entrusted the son of Tolui, Munke, the leader of the Nestorian party, to the throne, and supporters of Guyuk were executed in 1251 year.
OUR REFERENCE. Nestorianism is a teaching traditionally attributed to Nestorius, Archbishop of Constantinople (428 — 431) and condemned as a heresy at the Ephesian (Third Ecumenical) Council in 431. The only Christian church practicing this doctrine is the Assyrian Church of the East. In fact, Nestorianism arose long before Nestorius, being a teaching of the Antioch theological school.
After the conquest of Russia, Batu and Batu's quarrels with the heir to the throne, Guyuk (1241), Russian affairs in the Golden Horde were headed by Sartak, the son of Batu. Christian sympathies of Sartak were widely known, and there is even evidence that he was baptized, of course, according to the Nestorian rite. However, Sartak did not favor Roman Catholics and Orthodox, making an exception only for his friend and brother - Alexander Yaroslavich.
This situation continued until the death of Sartak in 1256, after which Khan Berke (the younger brother of Khan Batu. - Ed.) Converted to Islam, but he tried to establish a diocese of the Orthodox Church in Sarai in 1261 and favored the Orthodox, relying on them in the war with the Persians Ilkhans, patrons of Nestorianism (the rulers of the state of Hulaguid wore the title of Ilkhan, the founder of this dynasty was Hulagu, the younger brother of Mongke. - Ed.)
From this very moment, the Nestorian problem becomes irrelevant for the Russians, and the Orthodox counter mission is directed primarily against the Latins.
AMAZINGHowever, as all historians refuse to notice another reason for the establishment of a department in Sarai, in our opinion, the most important one is the organization of a broad mission among Horde people.
N.M. Karamzin attributed the idea of establishing a department in Saray to Alexander Nevsky, Metropolitan Macarius (Bulgakov) and E.E. Golubinsky - Metropolitan Kirill. Both of them, no doubt, knew that the Polovtsian threat ended with the baptism of many and many Polovtsy. The facts are known: Polovtsian Khan Amurat was baptized in Ryazan in 1132, Aydar - in Kiev in 1168, Bastia - in 1223, entering into an alliance with the Russians against the Mongols; from the Orthodox Polovtsy consisted of a whole wing of the troops of King David the Builder in the Didgor Battle (occurred in 1121 between the troops of the Georgian kingdom and the Seljuks army. - Ed.); Polovtsians who migrated to Hungary were Orthodox. It should be remembered that the Mongol invasion itself Russia brought on, standing up for the Polovtsian friends.
Infinitely much was written about Alexander Nevsky, but, perhaps, undeservedly little - about Metropolitan Kirill, shielded from us by the bright images of the great Saints of Moscow. Meanwhile, this lord occupied the primacy department from 1243 to 1280 years, that is, longer than anyone ever. He opened three new dioceses: Kholmskaya - in 1250 year, Sarai - in 1261 year and Tverskaya - about 1271 year.
It was Metropolitan Kirill who reached agreement between the princes Alexander Nevsky and Daniel Galitsky, between Alexander Nevsky and his brother Andrey. He convened the Vladimir Local Council 1274 of the year. He spent the last journey of Saint Prince Alexander, saying over his coffin the words that had become immortal: "The sun of Suzdal has already gone down."
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