Women's Rights in Early Medieval Rus

The Ruirikid Dynasty ruled Rus lands during the eleventh century. This marks the early part of a Golden Age for the ruling cities Kyiv/ Kiev and Novgorod. These princes replaced many diverse local customs and created a Rus State that stretched from the Black Sea north of  Moscow and St Petersburg, which, if they existed at all then, were tiny hamlets. The ruling Ruirikid princes over the period of two centuries established a series of law codes known collectively as The Russkaia Pravda. These laws united various clans under the cultural and religious umbrella of the Byzantine influenced Russian Orthodox Church and established a common written language, Old Church Slavonic.

The Golden Gates of Kiev

The Princes controlled the judicial system to their own financial advantage. For instance, although vengeance was recognized as a legal response to crimes such as rape and murder, if the victim was a member of a prince's household the prescribed punishment was a fine, levied on the offender and paid to the prince. A portion of the fine went to the Church as well. Of course, for a woman's life the fine was half of that for the murder of a man.

Later Medieval Rus Princess

Women's property rights differed also. Women, like Anglo-Saxon women, could own property which they had received as gifts or as a dowry. If a woman's husband died and her sons inherited the estate, her sons had to arrange their sisters' marriages and provide their dowries. Noble daughters could inherit their fathers' estates and property if there were no surviving sons.

Later Medieval Rus Woman

 All women found protection in the law. At the end of the tenth century, relations and questions relating to family, and importantly women, came under church jurisdiction. Church literature divided women into 'good' women and 'bad' women. There were more of the latter, needless to say. Descriptions of the immorality of women were used as an excuse for setting forth an entire set of instructions on how men should avoid 'lustful' women. Women were admonished to be silent, to submit to God and to their husbands.

Map showing Kievan Rus Lands

Yet, feudal law gave women from the underprivileged social strata a modest role in society. If they were slaves and married a free man, they were set free; not so for the male slave who married a free woman. The honour of female slaves was protected. If they were raped, they were compensated, and if a slave was raped by a foreigner, she was freed. If a woman accused a man of rape, she would be protected by the law.

'If anyone kills a woman, he will be tried and if guilty pay a half-wergild, twenty grivney.' 
 But only half- is that fair?

The rights of women from all classes of society were severely limited. Women were less likely to serve as witnesses in legal disputes or in the drawing up of documents. Only ten per cent of land documents testify to women's rights. Even so, all women could defend their honour and property they owned independent of their husbands. Moreover, Medieval Rus possessed the institute of female guardianship at this time.

Nizhniy Novgorod- Did this Kremlin have a Terem?

Terem culture, that of the seclusion of noble women in their own part of a palace, is often dated from the sixteenth century. In fact, it most likely had its roots in much earlier traditions. Terem culture is being reassessed by historians. Separate living quarters for noble men and women were not unusual during the Rus medieval period, that dated from the tenth century. Elite women in Frankish culture also lived in separate quarters from their men. It is certainly now considered that the practice predated the Mongol invasions. The Mongols never segregated women. It is possible the concept and word Terem (not to be confused at all with harem) came from Byzantium to Rus lands long before the Mongol invasions. It is likely however that later Muscovite royal families strengthened this control condiderably over female members, maybe for marriage purposes which explains the highly developed Terem culture of the seventeenth century and the Muscovite era in Russian history. 

I have integrated some aspects of this research into the narrative of The Betrothed Sister. However, if you read it, do remember that my novel is fiction albeit researched as far it is possible with limited sources. Women's lives were hidden and largely went unrecorded during the Medieval period. All I could do was make a few, hopefully informed, guesses as to what Gita Godwinsdatter, the Anglo-Saxon princess encountered in the lands of the Kievan Rus. If anyone who reads this knows more about Terem culture in medieval Russia I would love you to comment here.

I am the co-ordinator for HNS Conference 2016  2nd-4th September in Oxford. Do look at:

 https://hnsoxford2016.org

Medieval Russia, Fairytales and History

Most of The Betrothed Sister is set in medieval Russia where King Harold II's daughter Gita (Thea in the novel) is married off by her father's cousin, King Sweyn of Denmark, to a prince of the Rus ruling family, The Riurikid Dynasty, founded in the tenth century. What sort of land did Thea discover, circa 1070?

Medieval Russian Countryside

I always think of medieval Russia as a land of fairy tales, snow, castles, and sleighs. In fact over the years I have been so entranced by Russian fairy tales, that I constructed Thea, the heroine of The Betrothed Sister, as a teller of stories. Appropriately at the maiden's party just before her wedding to Vladimir Monomarkh, I introduce a competition for the telling of fairy tales since, with this story, I aimed for a 'fairy-tale' atmosphere. These events happened so long ago that finding out what happened to Thea was difficult. However, with imagination and a thorough investigation of the times, I constructed a possible history for her.

Rus Fairy Tales

Medieval Rus was very different to Anglo-Saxon England, another extremely cultured society. This said, many exiles from the Anglo-Saxon world wound up in Kiev and Novgorod after the Norman Conquest. If Moscow existed at all, it was a simple village, totally insignificant. Kiev, the centre of the Rus Kingdom, was cosmopolitan and wealthy from trade along the River Dnieper from Byzantium. Novgorod, too, was equally wealthy and the discovery of birch wood tablets with shopping lists and love letters in Novgorod dating from this period, suggests a high level of literacy that is often found in established rich societies.

Church of the Holy Wisdom, Kiev.

Thea sailed to a land where the Church had already become a second institution. As the ruling  Riurikid Dynasty gave shape to the emerging Rus State, rulers looked towards Byzantium for a range of cultural influences associated with Christianity. A perfect example is, therefore, the development of the Russian Orthodox creed and a literature very influenced by Byzantine styles.

A simple note from 11thC Novgorod

Writing and literacy existed within Rus lands during the tenth century. East Slavonic was used for practical, administrative and personal written application-type correspondence. With a Greek Orthodox influence, Church Slavonic drew on Slavic words and grammar and used them in Byzantine style, becoming the liturgical and formal literary language of the Kievan Rus. From the middle of eleventh century literacy and texts became more widespread. Clerics used Greek forms as models for their own compositions. Chronicles, recording the first written history of the Rus, were written in Church Slavonic. This gave the tribes that made up the Rus state a common cultural background. It also gave the Riurikid Dynasty an ideological foundation for exclusive rule over the Kievan Rus. Much of this literature is admired today. The Lay of Igor's Campaign is an epic poem, written in old Slavonic, describing Prince Igor's campaign against the Kumans in the twelfth century. It is unanimously acclaimed as the highest achievement in Russian literature of this Kievan era. Consequently, not to be kept in ignorance in her new land, Thea learned to read and write the literary language of her adopted country.

Imagined Medieval Novgorod

 According to the Russian Primary Chronicle, in part written down in Kiev during the years encompassed by my story, years of fratricide dominated the eleventh century, often linked with Rus battles fought against the Kumans, the collective name for Steppe tribes dwelling on Rus borders. Warring princely Rus brothers would seek support from these organised, sophisticated and militaristic border tribes. Thea's first decade in Rus lands was haunted by such rivalry between members of her husband's family. It was all about succession to the important throne in Kiev. The family member who was crowned Grand Prince of Kiev ruled the kingdom of the Rus.

The principal of succession to the Kiev throne was that the senior member of the Riurikid princes of their generation would inherit the throne. Thus, it could pass to an uncle rather than to the eldest son of the eldest son. Brothers and nephews soon disputed this order of seniority established by Prince Vladimir's great grandfather, another Vladimir. For instance, was seniority defined as chronological age or by the status of a wife? The Rus princes were monogamous, but despite warfare, it seemed that many of the Rus princes became widowers early in life and remarried, sometimes to Kuman princesses, never mind dynastic marriages into great European families.  Thea married into such a situation. In 1068 the senior prince, Iziaslav, her betrothed Vladimir's uncle was challenged by his cousin, Vseslav. This had a warlike outcome that lasted for a number of years. 

Women wrote love letters and even shopping lists

For the early part of Thea's marriage to Prince Vladimir, the son of a younger brother, there was a period of intense dispute over succession to the Kievan throne. Eventually, in 1078, Vladimir's father gained the throne but became embroiled in battles with his nephews who felt they should inherit the throne from their father, Vladimir's second uncle.

Prince Vladimir Monomarkh

Thea sadly died before her husband inherited the Kiev throne from his father in 1113. Thea's husband had become a pivotal figure in dynastic politics, greatly admired as a leader because he led a series of successful campaigns against the Steppe tribes, securing Rus southern borders. Thea's sons followed their father as Grand Prince, one by one, and became in their turn rulers of the Rus. Thea is, in fact, the great grandmother many times removed of the Romanovs, the Russian royal family that ruled Russia in the first years of the twentieth century. It could be said too that, although, the Godwin dynasty did not hold on to England in 1066, King Harold's elder daughter, Gytha/Gita/ Thea, gave them a long regal legacy.

 The Betrothed Sister is published by Accent Press for all e devices, and as a paperback. It is available from all good bookshops.