dr Barbara Bielaszka-Podgórny

Section 6.: Territoriality of power versus the mobility of people and ideas

The aim of the presentation is to depict the image of Christian Rus' in the "Annals," particularly the place assigned to the Orthodox Rus' people by the chronicler within the Christian universe. Undertaking inquiries into the chronicler's view of Rus' and the Rus' people is linked to the attempt to reconstruct his perceptions, evaluations, and judgments about this nation, and thus to studies on the mentality and awareness of the Slavic community in the High Middle Ages. The issue of the perception of Eastern Rite Christianity by Długosz is inseparably connected with the question of the place of the Orthodox Church in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth contemporary to the chronicler and how it was treated by the inhabitants of the Crown, especially by the political and church elites. It is also crucial to pose the question of the integration of Rus' saints into the Polish liturgical tradition. The process of identifying the concept of Ecclesia with the Latin Church formed the basis for a certain ambivalence in the chronicler's approach to granting, or denying, the Orthodox Rus' people membership in the Christian world.