Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/543

 APPENDIX 521 works, chaps. 13-89, is arranged in the form of annals. It falls into three parts, indicated by the compiler in cap. 13. (a) Caps. 14-36, from the }-ear852to death of S^iatoslav, 972 ; (b) caps. 37-58, to the death of Jaroslav, 1054 ; (c) caps. 59-89, to the death of Siatopolk, 1114. i^ Sources of the chronicle : ^'^ (1) George the monk, in an old Bulgarian translation of 10th centurj- (op. chap. 11 ; see also chaps. 24, 65). (2) A work ascribed to Methodius of Patara (3rd cent.): "On the things which happened from the creation and the things which will hapjien in the future " — also doubtless through a Slavonic translation. ^^ (3) Lives of the apostles of the Slavs, CjTil and Metho- dius. (4) The Bible. (5) The Palaia (collection of Bible-stories), in Slavonic form. (6) The Symbolum Fidei of Michael Sj-nceUus in Slavonic version (c. 42). (7) Oral information indicated by the chronicler ; communications of («) the monk Jere- miali, who was old enough to remember the conversion of the Russians, c. 68 ; (6) Gurata Rogovich of Novgorod, c. 80 ; (c) John, an old man of ninety, from whose mouth the chi'onicler received many notices. (8) A relation of the murder of Boris and Gleb bj- their brother Sviatopolk ; an account which does not agree with the biography of these saints by the monk Nestor, but does agree with the relation of the monk Jacob.^^ (9) A Paschal calendar in which there were a few notices entered opposite to some of the years. (10) "Written and dated notices preserved at Kiev, beginning with a.d. 882, the year in which the centre of the Russian realm was transferred from Novgorod to Kiev. Srkiilj conjectures that these notices were drawn up in the Norse language by a Norman who had learned to write in England or Gaul, and perhaps in Runic characters. (11) Local ^rtironicles, cp. a chronicle of Novgorod, of the existence of which we are otherwise certified. (12) Possibly a relation of the story of Vasilko, c. 82. The traditional view that the monk Nestor, who wrote the biography of Boris and Gleb, and a life of Theodosius of Peshtcherski (see above, p. 166), was the author of the chronicle is generally rejected. Nestor lived in the latter part of the 11th century, and, as we do not know the date of his death, so far as chronology is concerned, he might have compiled the chronicle in 1115. But not onlj- does the account of Boris and Gleb (as noticed above) not agree with Nestor's biographj' of those sainted princes, but there are striking discrepancies between the chronicler's and Nestor's accounts of Theodosius. And, while the chronicler expressly says that he was an eye-witness, Nestor expressh- says that he derived his information from others. It is very hard to get over this. There are two other candidates for the authorship : (1) S3-lvester, abbot of St. Michael, who states, at the end of the Chronicle in the Laurentian Ms., that he " wrote these books of annals " in A.D. 1116 ; as long as Nestor was regarded as the author, the word for v:rote was interpreted as copied (though a different compound is usually employed in that sense), but Golubinski and Kostomarov have proi)osed to regard the abbot as the author and not a mere coj^jist ; (2) the monk Basil who is mentioned in the stor}- of Yasilko (c. 82), and speaks there in the first person : "I went to find Vasilko". But this mav be explained by supposing that the compiler of the chronicle has mechanicall}- copied, without making the necessary change of per- son, a relation of the episode of Vasilko written by this Basil. The authorshij) of the chronicle is not solved ; we can onh- sa}' that the compiler was a monk of the Peshtcherski monastery of Kiev. [For a minute study of Nestor the editions of the Laurentian (1846 and 1872) and the Hypatian (1846 and 1871) Mss. published by the Archseographical Commis- 15 There is a question as to the end of the chronicle. M. Leger thinks it reached down to 1113 ; but in the Laurentian Ms. it stops in mo. ifi See a good Summary in Stjepan Srkulj, Die Entstehung der altesten russischen sogenannten Nestorchronik (1896), p. 7 sqq.; Le^er, Introduction to his translation, p. xiv.-xvii. ; Pogodin, Nestor, eine hist.-crit. Untersuchung, tr. Loewe (1844); Besiuzhev- Riumin, op. cit. 17 Suhomlinov ascribes the work to the Patriarch Methodius of the gth century. See Srkulj, op. cit. p. 10. 18 Sreznevski, Skazanie o sv. Borisie i Gliebie, i860. Some think that Jacob used the account in the Chronicle, c. 47.