Alexander the Great in early Medieval Russia

[delos13]

A few years ago I was surprised to read in one of the system1988 posts that Alexander was considered a saint in Byzantine era. Surprisingly, just a few weeks later, I found out that he was considered a saint in Russia as well. I was truly amazed because when I lived in Russia, I never came across this info. I find this information really interesting and decided to share it with you. It took me a few years to finally translate the info but I hope you like my New Year present. I am sure Alexander would also love to learn about his widespread popularity centuries after his death.

The first image is from the south façade of Cathedral of Dimitry of Solunsk from Vladimir (an old Russian city some 200 km east of Moscow). The Cathedral was finished in 1197 AD. By the way, Solunsk is a Russian version of Thessaloniki and this Russian Cathedral has its counterpart in Thessaloniki – Church of Agios Dimitrios (Ιερός ναός Αγίου Δημητρίου).



The composition is called “Ascension of Alexander the Great to Heaven”. The choice of Alexander for the Russian cathedral of XII century might seem strange but the king’s name and his deeds were very popular in Russia [more correctly Rus, of course] at that period due to the Byzantine “Alexandria” translated into many languages, Russian included. “In a church sculpture of the second half of XII century [in Russia] the ascension of Alexander can be viewed on equal terms with most important Christian images,” writes Prof. B.A.Rybakov.

This particular image shows two griffins carrying the king on their wings. Alexander sits in a wicker basket and holds lion cubs in his hands – a bait for the griffins. The legendary birds try to reach for the cubs and as a result lift up Alexander into the sky.

Below you can see a general view of the Cathedral and also a more close up image of Alexander.



A close up image of Alexander seems to me a bit different than in a main panel above, I went through several google images for both, and they all say the same. Maybe a smaller image is a separate vignette from other part.

Another image of Alexander, this time as part of jewelry, the so called "Sahnovskaja diadem”


This gold diadem was part of the buried treasure found in 1900 in the village Sahnovka (near Kiev in Ukraine). It is decorated with cloisonné (decorative work in which enamel, glass, or gemstones are separated by strips of flattened wire placed edgeways on a metal backing) and considered to be work of Kiev jewelers of the XII century. It consists of seven plates with the total length of 35 cm. On both sides there are smaller plates with hooks (you can’t see them in this photo) for special decorative chains hung vertically.

Alexander’s ascension is the subject of central plate of this diadem. It seems that it was a popular design because a similar diadem (with Alexander’s ascension) was found in Preslav (a capital of the Bulgarian king Simeon I the Great ruled 893 to 927). Here is a link to a brief description, in English, of the Preslav treasure and an image of the central plate with ascension of Alexander. http://www.goldensands.bg/cultural/treasure-preslav.asp The article mentions the diadem, above, found in Kiev.

The golden diadem like that would be worn by the tsar’s wife only on the special occasions. The diadems of the time had a special sacred meaning because the head of the tsar’s wife should have been protected by the main heavenly powers. There are also speculations that the subject of ascension of Alexander was supposed to mask still existing pagan beliefs prevalent in Rus in previous centuries. Alexander was identified with Dajdbog, one of the main pagan Slav deities. Funny enough, though Dajdbog actually translates as god of rain, he is actually considered Russian counterpart of Apollo (Hyperboreans, anybody?).

Here is a short paragraph [again, translation is mine] from the Russian version of Alexandria. It is written in a very old Russian so English translation also a bit of awkward, somewhat mimicking the style of those bygone centuries:
“…Alexander, son of Apollo. …And Romans pray to their god Apollo in his temple so that he would announce the birth of his son Alexander. And Apollo comes to them in their sleep and says “Warriors of the Great Rome! Don’t fear Alexander, he is my son.” “

Not sure how Alexander himself would react to such a parentage but…..

I hope you find this information interesting.

Happy New Year everybody!

[system1988]

A really extraordinary post. Thank you for the valuable information.

[Taphoi]

We know where the story of Alexander's flight comes from in its literary tradition. Leo the Archpriest visited Constantinople in the middle of the tenth century and came across a Greek recension of the Alexander Romance, which he subsequently translated into Latin. I think it is only derivatives from Leo that have the gryphon-drawn air-carriage in them.
Among the earliest of the images of the flight is that which decorates the northern exterior of the Basilica di San Marco. In this 11th century version Alexander is very clearly represented as a Byzantine emperor of about the early tenth century. Byzantine influence was then strong in Russia as it was in Venice. An inference could be that the prototype for all these images was an image on a church or palace in Constantinople, which would fit in closely with the roots of the literary tradition.
Is it therefore coincidence that there was a Byzantine emperor called Alexander who lived from the late ninth century to the early tenth century? Might he have had himself depicted in a gryphon-drawn chariot on some major public building in Constantinople? Could this have inspired a little addition to local versions of the Alexander Romance? If it was on a church, this would help to explain why this image tends to appear in Christian contexts later on. Attempts to explain the interpolation of the flight of Alexander into the Romance and its parallel association with Christianity have not otherwise proven very fruitful.
Best wishes,
Andrew

The Flight of Alexander (11th century, Venice)

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The Byzantine Emperor Alexander

[Alexias]

Fascinating post, Delos. Oral tales of Alexander may well have travelled back to Russia with the Swedish Vikings (the Rus) who ruled part of modern Russia from the 9th to 11th cent. and who travelled down the Dnieper to the Black Sea and Miklagard (Byzantium), where they formed the Varangian Guard. Could this be why Alexander appears to he holding hammers (Thor's?) or possibly axes on the diadem?

[Taphoi]

We know where the story of Alexander's flight comes from in its literary tradition. Leo the Archpriest visited Constantinople in the middle of the tenth century and came across a Greek recension of the Alexander Romance, which he subsequently translated into Latin. I think it is only derivatives from Leo that have the gryphon-drawn air-carriage in them.
Among the earliest of the images of the flight is that which decorates the northern exterior of the Basilica di San Marco. In this 11th century version Alexander is very clearly represented as a Byzantine emperor of about the early tenth century. Byzantine influence was then strong in Russia as it was in Venice. An inference could be that the prototype for all these images was an image on a church or palace in Constantinople, which would fit in closely with the roots of the literary tradition.
Is it therefore coincidence that there was a Byzantine emperor called Alexander who lived from the late ninth century to the early tenth century? Might he have had himself depicted in a gryphon-drawn chariot on some major public building in Constantinople? Could this have inspired a little addition to local versions of the Alexander Romance? If it was on a church, this would help to explain why this image tends to appear in Christian contexts later on. Attempts to explain the interpolation of the flight of Alexander into the Romance and its parallel association with Christianity have not otherwise proven very fruitful.
Best wishes,
Andrew

As a small build on this, it seems that the 11th century Basilica di San Marco in Venice was based on the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, which was second in importance only to Hagia Sophia. It was the place where the emperors were buried. Perhaps therefore the image of the emperor flying in a carriage drawn by gryphons was part of the tomb of the Emperor Alexander in the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. Only a possibility and difficult to investigate, since the Church of the Holy Apostles was destroyed a long time ago (AD1461).
Best wishes,
Andrew

[amyntoros]

Here's an 82 page pdf from Julianna Lees, Montagrier, June 2012. It includes photographs and articles by others, all on the single subject of Alexander ascending in the heavens. Nice!

http://www.green-man-of-cercles.org/art ... xander.pdf

Best Regards,

[Taphoi]

Thanks for the archive of articles on Alexander’s celestial journey. Clearly Loomis makes great play of the supposedly 9th century abecedarian Latin poem as a manuscript source for Alexander’s flight that he suggests was written a century before the next extant version by Leo the Archpriest. I have seen Loomis’s source on the poem, which is an article in a German journal of 1877 by Zarncke. He actually states (see attached scan) that the poem was among a set of manuscripts in a 10th century codex from Verona in Italy. He does not seem to have seen this manuscript himself but had studied a handwritten transcript made by a Professor Wattenbach. He records that Wattenbach had told him that the abecedarian poem looked to be in an older script than the other manuscripts in the codex and had therefore speculated that it could “perhaps” have been written in the ninth century. However, more recent scholarship (Norberg, Stockholm, 1954) is held to have demonstrated that the abecedarian poem was composed in northern France. This would appear to provide an alternative explanation of why the poem’s script looked anachronistic: it was carried to Italy from a scholarly backwater, where the writing style was a bit old-fashioned, but was nevertheless contemporaneous with the codex of 10th century Italian manuscripts in which it was found. Hence there is no need to infer that the abecedarian poem is older than Leo’s version of the Alexander Romance.

However, there is reason to suppose that the abecedarian poem is an early derivative from Leo’s Alexander Romance. The first line of the poem refers to Alexander puer Magnus. The other place that Alexander is referred to in precisely this unusual way is the beginning of Leo’s original Latin manuscript of the Alexander Romance, one copy of which still survives. Since Leo states in his prologue within that manuscript that he is simply translating a Greek text that he found in Constantinople, he cannot have taken Alexander puer Magnus from the poem, so the poem must instead be derived from Leo. This means that there is no manuscript evidence for Alexander’s celestial journey before Leo and that the story appears to have originated in Constantinople, where also the images of the flight of Alexander apparently originated in about the first half of the 10th century.

Actually, there is a tale of a celestial journey in modern folklore, where a Christian saint, transformed into a demigod and outfitted in bright scarlet with a white fur trim, ascends annually into the heavens on a journey across the earth in a carriage drawn by a team of light-footed reindeer. But it would be rather implausible for me to suggest that this legend of Sant Niklaus was directly inspired by the celestial journey in the Alexander Romance! This is why I am dubious whether there was any direct adoption into the Alexander Romance of the Persian story of Kai Kaus or of any of the other ancient celestial journeys catalogued by Loomis, although there might have been some kind of indirect cross-fertilization.

Best wishes,

Andrew

zarncke1877_1.jpg (131.23 KiB) Viewed 4969 times