When did the birch bark charter appear? Birch bark letters

Birch bark letters are usually called texts inscribed (scratched) with a pointed bone rod on birch bark - birch bark.

Birch bark as a writing material is found among many peoples of Eurasia and North America. Some Russian Old Believer books are written on specially treated birch bark. However, all the texts on birch bark known until recently were written in ink (sometimes with charcoal) and, apart from the writing material, do not differ in anything from manuscripts written in ink on parchment or paper. And all of them are of relatively late origin (no older than the 15th century).

The discovery of Novgorod birch bark documents introduced scientific world with the unexpected and amazing phenomenon ancient Russian culture. Although the traditions of birch bark writing in Ancient Rus' (until the 14th-15th centuries) had been known for a long time, the first Old Russian birch bark letter was found only on July 26, 1951 during excavations in Novgorod under the leadership of the prominent Soviet archaeologist A. V. Artsikhovsky. It is no coincidence that birch bark letters were discovered precisely in Novgorod, one of the most important cultural centers of our Middle Ages: the composition of the local soil favors the long-term preservation of woody materials in it.

With the expansion of archaeological excavations, systematic finds of letters on birch bark followed: in the early 80s. their number exceeded 600. Birch bark letters were also discovered in Smolensk (10 letters), in Staraya Russa near Novgorod (13 letters), Pskov (3 letters), in Vitebsk (one well-preserved letter). It is easy to notice that all the sites of finds are geographically close to Novgorod and had, if not identical, then similar conditions for the preservation of these monuments of ancient writing. Their preservation, of course, was facilitated by the fact that they were scratched, and not written with ink, which should have dissolved over hundreds of years of being in damp earth.

Novgorod birch bark documents date from the 11th century. The overwhelming majority of them are texts of one-time use: these are private letters sent with the opportunity to close people - family members, friends, neighbors or partners in trade matters (for example, with a request to quickly send something, come or somehow help in business ); there are drafts business papers(which were then apparently copied on paper or parchment), memorable notes “for myself” (about debts, about the need to do something); There are texts that belong to students and represent something like rough writing exercises. For example, a whole series of exercises in the alphabet and drawings of the boy Onfim and his friend, who lived in Novgorod in the 13th century, were found. Naturally, after some time, such notes or read letters were thrown away.

Most birch bark letters have been damaged by time, so often only fragments are readable ancient text, but there are also those where the text has been preserved completely. These certificates are the most valuable material for historians: they characterize private, economic and cultural life ancient Novgorod as if from the inside, significantly enriching our information about ancient Novgorod.

Their historical and cultural significance is also very great: birch bark letters confirm the long-standing assumption about the widespread spread of literacy in Rus', especially in medieval Novgorod, where the ability to read and write was the property of the most diverse segments of the urban population (including women, who are the authors or recipients of some birch bark letters), and not just the clergy and professional scribes. Medieval Western Europe I have never known such widespread literacy.

For linguists, as well as for historians, birch bark letters are a fundamentally new source. Created by people who were not involved in copying ancient books or compiling official documents, they only partly reflect the norms of church-book spelling and are more closely related to the peculiarities of local pronunciation. At first, however, it seemed that the birch bark letters could only confirm the correctness of previous assumptions about the features of the Old Novgorod dialect, made on the basis of an analysis of “misprints” in books and official documents, and would not provide fundamentally new information that would be unexpected for historians of the Russian language . For example, birch bark letters widely reflect such a striking feature of the ancient Novgorod dialect as “tsokanye” - the presence in the speech of Novgorodians of only one affricate c (which in other ancient Russian dialects corresponded to two affricates - ts and ch) (see Tsokanye): wheat, martens and hotsu, kissing, Gorislavitsa (gen. p.), etc. But this feature of the ancient Novgorod dialect is also reflected in previously known books written in Novgorod (for example, in the Menaions of the 11th century, in the Novgorod Chronicle of the end of the 13th-14th V., etc.), although, of course, not as consistently as in the birch bark documents. This is understandable: they learned to read and write from church books, memorizing prayers and psalms in which the letters q and ch were used “correctly,” so the ancient scribes, regardless of the characteristics of their native dialect, tried to write q and ch “according to the rules.” And among the birch bark letters there are those where the rules for using these letters are not violated (the same boy Onfim in his exercises writes letters and syllables with these letters in the sequence in which they are located in the Slavic alphabet: ts-ch, tsa-cha, tse - what). But most of the authors of birch bark letters, making notes “for themselves” or rushing to send a note to a loved one, unwittingly violated these rules by using only the letter c or mixing c and ch. This confirms the assumption that there are no two affricates in the local dialect (which also corresponds to its modern state).

With further, deeper study of the language of birch bark letters, it began to be discovered that they reflect such features of ancient Novgorod speech that disappeared over time and are not reflected in traditional sources or are represented in them by involuntary clerical errors that did not allow more or less definite conclusions to be drawn.

An example is the writing representing the fate of the consonants k, g, x, which in Slavic (including Old Russian) languages at that time were impossible before the vowels i and e (ђ). They spoke and wrote pomosi (not help), po bђltsi (not po bђlkђ), grђsi (not sin).

In Novgorod texts, rare examples with spellings that contradict traditional ones have been known for a long time. Thus, a Novgorodian who rewrote the text of the official Menaion in 1096 wrote in the margins his local (non-Christian, absent in church books) name Domka in a form that does not correspond to what is known from other texts of the 11th-12th centuries: Lord, help the servant to its Дъмкб, while according to the laws of the pronunciation of that time (as language historians have always imagined it) and according to the rules of spelling, it should have been: Domtsi. Single spelling Дъмкђ on the background general rule was interpreted as special case earlier generalization of the basis (under the influence of Dom'k-a, Dom'k-u, etc.).

However, upon careful study of the oldest birch bark letters (before the 14th century), it turned out that in them such a transfer of purely local words (personal names, names of settlements, terms) not found in church books is common: to Kulotki, on Mestyatka, on Tusk ( type of tax), by belki (local unit of calculation), etc.

Such spellings mean that the ancient Novgorod dialect did not know the changes to, g, x in the usual for Slavic languages ts, z, s (one would expect Kulotshch, in Pudoz, etc.). This is reflected in other positions, including the beginning of the roots, which is found only in birch bark letters: kђli (= tђly, i.e. whole) hђro (= сђро, i.e. gray), as well as вђхо, вђхому (= whole, everything). All these cases show that the combinations кђ, xђ and others in the speech of the Novgorodians did not change combinations with the consonants с, с. It turns out, therefore, that the usual words in parchment and in later Novgorod texts are whole, gray, all - to everything, etc. - this is the result of the loss of the original Novgorod dialect features and mastering all-Russian pronunciation norms in the process of formation single language ancient Russian people.

Such facts themselves suggest that further study of birch bark letters, the collection of which continues to grow, promises historians of the Russian language many new interesting discoveries.

At the same time, the birch bark letters contained materials that made it possible to judge from what texts and how the ancient Novgorodians were taught reading and writing (see the drawings of the boy Onfim doing his “homework” on birch bark).

In 1951, the archaeological expedition of Artemy Vladimirovich Artsikhovsky, conducting excavations in Novgorod, discovered the first birch bark letter. And since then they have been found in abundance, and not only in Veliky Novgorod. Birch bark letters of steel historical sensation because they gave me the opportunity to find out everyday life people of the Russian Middle Ages. How have our ideas about the life of our ancestors changed? The doctor tells philological sciences Alexey Gippius, professionally specializing in the study of birch bark letters.

Color the outlines

Alexey Alekseevich, how did the discovery of birch bark documents change historians’ ideas about the culture of Ancient Rus'? -

It expanded them significantly. Thanks to the study of birch bark letters, it opened up for us everyday life Ancient Rus'. Before that, our knowledge about this era was based on chronicles, on such legal texts as “Russian Truth”. The chronicles deal with events and figures of “big” history, its heroes are princes, nobility, and high clergy. How did you live? ordinary people- townspeople, peasants, merchants, artisans? We could judge this indirectly only from legal texts, but they don’t appear there specific people, but just some social functions. The discovery of birch bark letters made it possible to directly see real characters this “small” story. Those general contours that we had before are colored and take on specific outlines.

- And what aspects of the life of people of that time can we judge from birch bark letters?

Birch bark letters are writing of a practical nature. Ancient Russian people, when they took up the “writing” (this is a pointed metal rod that was used to scratch letters on birch bark; the Greeks called it stylos), proceeded from some kind of everyday necessity. For example, while on a trip, send a letter to your family. Or write a statement to the court. Or make some kind of reminder for yourself. Therefore, birch bark letters introduce us primarily to practical life that era. From them we learn fundamentally new things about the structure of the ancient Russian financial system, about ancient Russian trade, about the judicial system - that is, about what we know very little from the chronicles; the chronicles do not touch on such “trifles”.

- Are there any contradictions between what we know from the chronicles and what is said in the birch bark letters?

In theory, there should be no contradictions. But in order to correctly correlate the contents of birch bark letters with other sources (primarily chronicles), one must understand them correctly. And here there is a problem. In birch bark letters, people, as a rule, are designated only by names, and you need to figure out who they are - merchants, warriors, priests, boyars. That is, for example, when some Milyata addresses his brother, you need to understand that Milyata is a merchant. And when Miroslav writes to Olisey Grechin, it is determined that the first is a mayor, and the second is a member of the court. That is, it is necessary to correlate the authors and characters of birch bark letters with their social status and function. And this is not always easy. In general, we can answer this way: obvious contradictions no, but our ideas about these aspects of life, gleaned from chronicles, are extremely approximate and inaccurate - thanks to birch bark letters they become not only more accurate, but filled with life. This is approximately like a pencil outline of a human figure - and the same figure painted with paints, in all its details.

Is it true that birch bark letters are found precisely in the Novgorod region, and therefore they give new information only on the everyday life of Novgorodians?

No, that's not true. Now birch bark letters have been found in 12 cities, including Pskov, Tver, and Torzhok. By the way, and Moscow - seven birch bark letters were discovered in Moscow. And the southernmost point is Zvenigorod-Galitsky in Ukraine. But the truth is that archaeologists found most of the birch bark letters in Veliky Novgorod. 1089 of them were found there this moment, and in all other cities combined - 100. The reason is not that the Novgorodians were more literate than others and wrote more - it’s just that there is such soil in which birch bark is better preserved. Birch bark writing was widespread throughout the territory of Rus'. By the way, similar (in content) letters were used not only in Rus' - the Scandinavians also had them. For example, in Norway there is the so-called “Bergen Archive” - these are documents of approximately the same type: private records, letters, notes for memory. But not on birch bark, but on wooden planks and chips.

- By the way, why not on birch bark? IN Scandinavian countries Birch trees are also growing.

I think it’s just a matter of established tradition. In Rus', writing arose along with the adoption Christian faith and culture. Therefore, the main type of Slavic written text is a book, sewn sheets of parchment. And in a sense, a birch bark leaf is similar to a parchment leaf. Especially if you cut it off at the edges, as was often done. Among the Scandinavians, their writing - runes - arose much earlier than these peoples accepted Baptism. And just as they had long been accustomed to carving runes on wood chips and planks, they continued to carve them.

Prince Yaroslav School

Novgorod, 1180–1200 Contents: From Torchin to Gyurgiy (about squirrel skins)

As far as I remember, the earliest birch bark letters date from the beginning of the 11th century. A logical question: where did so many literate people come from in ancient Rus', if writing arose after the Baptism of Rus'?

A small clarification: the earliest birch bark letters date back to the 30s of the 11th century. That is, between the baptism of Rus' in 988 and the appearance of everyday writing on birch bark - about half a century. Apparently, these half a century took the formation of a generation for which writing is not something special, but a completely ordinary, everyday thing.

-Where did this generation come from? Did it grow on its own or was it specially grown?

It was specially grown, and we even know exactly how. The appearance of the first birch bark letters remarkably coincides with the evidence Novgorod Chronicle, which tells how Prince Yaroslav came to Novgorod in 1030 and set up a school. “He collected 300 children from the priests and elders and sent them to book studies.” Sometimes this chronicle record is questioned, but I consider it quite reliable. By the way, there is also confirmation from “independent sources”. In the Scandinavian saga about Olaf Trygvasson it is written that he attended school in Novgorod under Yaroslav. Unfortunately, we cannot judge how long this school operated, but it was, of course, a very important cultural enterprise. So, these three hundred children learned to read and write and became, as they say now, intellectual elite Novgorod society, they formed the social basis for the spread of literacy.

That is, they corresponded with each other, and, very likely, taught their friends and, as they grew up, their children to read and write. Thus, the circle of literate people quickly expanded. In addition, the benefits of literacy were quickly appreciated by merchants. Now there is debate whether some kind of “commercial” writing existed in Rus' even before official baptism. But this is unlikely. Novgorod archaeological data indicate that until the 30s of the 11th century there was nothing like this. That is, a lot of birch bark was found, but with drawings, and not with this or that writing. By the way, there is the famous Novgorod wax Psalter, which dates back to about 1000. That is, the era when book writing had already appeared, but its everyday use had not yet occurred. The codex of three linden tablets lay in the ground completely intact. How he got there we don’t know; perhaps the book was hidden under some tragic circumstances. But no one hid the birch bark letters. They were simply thrown away like regular garbage.

- So how? - Yes, they were thrown away as unnecessary. The person read the letter or note, received the information, and then threw it away. Paradox: that is precisely why these birch bark letters have survived to this day. What was carefully preserved died in fires (remember that all ancient Russian houses burned down sooner or later). And what was thrown out ended up in the soil, in the so-called cultural layer, and in Novgorod soil all organic matter is perfectly preserved.

It is interesting that those birch bark letters that were found on the site of houses that once stood there were preserved only because they fell through the cracks between the floorboards and ended up at the level of the lower crowns (those can be preserved during fires). By the way, during excavations of urban estates, birch bark documents are found unevenly: in some places their concentration per unit area is greater, in others less. So, where there are more - there, as we assume, there were garbage dumps, cesspools.

- What time period do the birch bark documents cover? Which are the latest?

The latest ones are the middle of the 15th century, that is, birch bark letters were common for about 400 years, from the middle of the 11th century to the middle of the 15th.

- Why did they stop later?

This is a combination of two circumstances. Firstly, the spread of paper as a cheap material that has become an alternative to cheap birch bark. Secondly, by that time the Novgorod cultural layer has already changed, the soil becomes less moist, so birch bark is no longer preserved in it. Maybe the Novgorodians didn’t stop writing on birch bark, it’s just that these letters have no longer reached us.

- Are there known cases of transfer birch bark letters on long distances?

Yes, they are known. For example, five letters from the merchant Luke to his father were found. In one, he writes that he is coming from somewhere in the north, and complains that there, in Zavolochye, the squirrel is expensive - they didn’t buy it. He writes another letter from somewhere on the Dnieper, where he is sitting and waiting for the Greek man. And the Greek is a merchant caravan coming from Byzantium. Or here’s another example, a son invites his mother: “Come here, to Smolensk or Kyiv, bread is cheap here.”

By warehouse

Novgorod, 1100–1120 Contents: Love letter

You said that birch bark letters were distributed throughout all the cities of Ancient Rus'. Was their content the same everywhere, or were there regional differences?

In principle, there are no special differences; everywhere it is everyday writing. The specificity of Novgorod could lie in the special intensity of correspondence connecting the city with its rural district, including very remote ones. That's how it was arranged Novgorod land. There is a capital, Novgorod, and around it are the estates of the Novgorod boyars. The boyars themselves live in the city, and the managers, elders, correspond with the capital, buy and sell all sorts of goods, supplies, pay taxes - and all this is reflected in birch bark letters.

School history textbooks give an example of birch bark letters - where the boy Onfim depicted himself as a horseman piercing a snake with a spear. Sometimes it is suggested that this letter is a leaf from his school notebook, that is, that even in those days schoolchildren had notebooks.

Let's start with the fact that many of Onfim's letters were found, and not just the drawing that ended up in school books. But these are individual leaves of birch bark, which never physically constituted a single whole. These are his various student notes, but not a notebook. In general, there were birch bark notebooks. They have reached us. More precisely, separate sheets have arrived, but it is clear that they were originally sewn into a notebook. For example, there is an entry evening prayers, this is such a small book that has all the attributes this book. There is a screensaver, there is a line. Or here is a text of a magical nature, to which there are parallels in Greek, Coptic, and in general this text was distributed throughout the Mediterranean, the so-called “Legend of Sisinia” * (FOOTNOTE: The Legend of Sisinia is a collection of magical texts that existed in the traditions of many peoples. It is called so named after one of the characters, Sisinia. The main content is magical spells that protect the woman in labor and the newborn from evil forces. - Approx. ed.). It was also written down on birch bark sheets sewn into a book.

Novgorod, 1280–1300 Birch bark book: two prayers

- And among the birch bark letters, besides Onfim, were there other examples of student notes?

There were, of course. By the way, it is necessary to explain how elementary school education was organized then. First we studied the alphabet and learned letters. Then the student began to write so-called warehouses, that is, combinations of vowels and consonants. “Ba”, “va”, “ga”, “da”, “be”, “ve”, “ge”, “de”. In other words, syllables. And only then did it come to reading the texts. The Old Russian primer was the Psalter and the Book of Hours* (The Psalter is a collection of psalms composed by King David, one of the books Old Testament. The Book of Hours is a book containing the texts of the unchangeable prayers of the daily liturgical cycle. - Approx. ed.), the texts were read from there. So, many birch bark leaves with written “warehouses” were found. By the way, the same Onfim has cases when he begins to write a coherent text, for example, some kind of prayer: “as if…” - and then gets lost in writing syllables starting with the letter “e”: “as if be-ve-ge -de".

To what extent has the study of birch bark documents changed historians’ ideas about Old Russian education? -

We generally know quite little about him. Judging by the birch bark letters, this formation was the most elementary character, the alphabet was learned along with the basics Orthodox faith. But we, in general, know nothing about further stages. There is, however, evidence from Metropolitan Kliment Smolyatich (12th century); one of his works mentions the existence of so-called “schedography” in Rus' - this is already a very advanced stage of Byzantine learning. But the Metropolitan mentions this as a kind of delicacy, a great rarity.

Find out about the fate of the monastery cow

Novgorod, 1420–1430 Contents: From Koshchei and sharecroppers (please give horses)

- Have our ideas about the church life of Ancient Rus' expanded thanks to birch bark letters?

Yes, they expanded, although not immediately. At first, when excavations were carried out only at the Nerevsky excavation site in Novgorod, it seemed that birch bark letters were a purely secular phenomenon; no texts on church topics were found there at all. But at the Troitsky excavation site, where work has been going on since the 1970s, the situation turned out to be completely different. More than five percent of the texts found there are church texts. For example, record church holidays, falling in the fall. Or, for example, a summary of Easter Matins. That is, they were, speaking modern language, the working records of priests, necessary for them in their ministry

. Another example, not from Novgorod, is a letter from Torzhok, which is a lengthy quotation from a teaching that most likely belonged to the pen of St. Cyril of Turov. The charter was written either at the end of the 12th century or in beginning of XII I century. In terms of content, this is simply a long list of sins. Most likely, a preparation for a sermon that the priest was going to read. I note that such letters are not spiritual treatises, not attempts at some kind of religious self-expression, but purely practical, applied church writing. There is, by the way, wonderful example, when the fragment is written in the same handwriting church calendar, And business letter from Ludslav to Khoten. It is logical to assume that in the first case the priest made the recording for himself, and in the second he acted as a scribe.

- So they came to the priest and asked him to help write a letter?

Exactly. And this, by the way, is a feature of Novgorod church life - the clergy and monasticism did not live in isolation, but side by side with the laity, influenced their neighbors, and also influenced them in the sense of epistolary culture. For example, Old Russian birch bark letters often begin with the word “worship” and end with “I kiss you.” The references to the apostolic epistles are obvious (“greet one another with a holy kiss” - words from the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Romans, 16:16), and this tradition clearly comes from a spiritual environment. I have already mentioned the Trinity excavation site. I will add that it is divided in the middle by Chernitsyna Street, and it is called that because since the 12th century there was the Varvarin Monastery, one of the most famous convents. It was located in the midst of urban development and was in no way separated from the neighboring merchant and boyar estates. Among the letters found at the Trinity excavation site, there are some that were clearly written by nuns of this monastery (let me remind you that in the old days nuns were colloquially called chernitsy). Moreover, these are just everyday recordings. For example: “As for the fact that I sent you three cuts for the warrior, then come quickly,” “find out if Matvey is in the monastery?” (Matvey, judging by the context, is a priest). Or, say, the nuns are concerned about the fate of the monastery cow: “Is St. Barbara’s heifer healthy?” It must be said that the letters found in this part of the city are characterized by frequent mentions of God in stable expressions: “Dividing God” (that is, for the sake of God), “Fighting God” (that is, fear God).

It is quite possible that the reason for this is the influence of the monastery on its neighbors. I note that at that time the clergy did not yet recognize themselves as some kind of special class; there were no class barriers yet. For example, I have already mentioned Olisey Grechin. This is an amazing figure! On the one hand, he is a priest, on the other, an artist and icon painter, and on the third, a major city administrator, one might say, an official. And he came from the Novgorod boyar environment, but he followed the spiritual path. But another one is very interesting example. This is a birch bark letter from the early 15th century, a letter to Archbishop Simeon - a rare case when everything in the address formula in clear text written. “Vladyka Simeon is beaten with his brow from young to old by all the residents of the Rzhevsky district and the Oshevsky churchyard.” The letter is a request to appoint Deacon Alexander as a local priest, arguing as follows: “before his father and grandfather sang at the Holy Mother of God in Oshev.” That is, it means that they had a priestly dynasty, first the grandfather of this deacon Alexander served in the local church, then his father, and now, after the death of his father, the church “stands without singing,” that is, without divine services, and for their resumption it is necessary to make Alexander a priest.

I read somewhere that the Novgorod clergy did not really approve of people writing letters on birch bark - this was seen as some kind of profanity high art writing that has a sacred meaning...

This is greatly exaggerated. In fact, we are talking about only one person who lived in the 12th century, the famous Kirik of Novgorod, who recorded his conversations with Bishop Niphon. And he really asked him a question: “Isn’t it a sin, Vladyka, to walk on letters with your feet if they are thrown away, but the letters can be made out?” There is some concern in this matter. Moreover, considering that the texts themselves, which were scattered in abundance on the Novgorod pavements, were 98% everyday, profane, this is not the same thing as the fear of desecration of a shrine. No, Kirik was worried about the very fact that the letters were being trampled underfoot. Letters are like some kind of sacred essence. But, importantly, the bishop did not give any answer to this. As it is said, “he remained silent.” Apparently, as an enlightened hierarch with a good Greek background, Niphon did not see anything sinful in the everyday use of writing.

About deeply personal

Novgorod, 1180–1200 Contents: On the intention to go on pilgrimage

Were any ethical issues reflected in the birch bark letters? human relations, themes of justice, injustice? And if so, was there any influence of Christianity?

There was influence. The expressions “For God’s sake”, “fear God” - in those days these were not just figures of speech. Or, for example, in one letter it sounds hidden threat: “If you don’t manage this (if you don’t do what I asked you to do), I will tell you to the Holy Mother of God, to whom you came to the company.” That is, “I will betray you to the Holy Mother of God, to whom you took an oath.” That is, a direct, very harsh and very rhetorically formulated threat, appealing, on the one hand, to church authority, and on the other, to the deeply pagan practice of the oath (“rota”), which is deeply pagan in origin. To a practice that has already fit into the new Christian life. This is one example of grassroots Christian culture.

Another example is a remarkable 11th century letter written by a young woman to her lover. Reproaching him, she writes in particular: “maybe I hurt you by sending you to you?” A very subtle emotional tone, it sounds completely modern. And the letter ends with the words: “If you start to mock, then God and my badness will judge you.” This “my thinness” is a literary expression that has a well-known Greek source. It can be found, say, in the Kiev-Pechersk Patericon of the 13th century, where one of its authors, Bishop Simon, writes about himself. This means “my unworthiness.” And a Novgorod woman of the 11th century uses this same expression in relation to herself!

The addressee of this letter tore it and, tying strips of birch bark in a knot, threw it onto the pavement. There are other examples of “relational” letters - say, a letter where a father instructs his daughter: it would be better for you to live with your brother, but you somehow communicate with him through force. And all this clearly bears the imprint of Christian ethics. But there are also texts, so to speak, with opposite sign- that is, magical content. These are conspiracies, about a dozen of them have been found. Here, for example, is a conspiracy against fever: “Far away angels, distant archangels, deliver God’s servant Micah from the shaking with the prayers of the Holy Mother of God.” There are slightly less than a dozen such texts, about the same number as canonical prayers and their fragments. But we must, of course, take into account that Christian texts themselves, in principle, had less chance of being preserved on birch bark.

No one would throw them away, they were taken care of - and everything that was carefully stored eventually died in fires. Conspiracies were perceived as something functional, not particularly valuable. They were used and thrown away. This is the paradox: what was stored died, but what was thrown away remained. There was birch bark writing, which was designed for long-term use, which was carefully preserved - and which, precisely for this reason, has almost never reached us. Here is the rarest exception - a large document, 60 cm in length. This is a woman’s teaching, it retains the address formula “from Martha”, the form “wrote” is preserved (that is, it is emphasized that this is an extract from some source). And then there are practical instructions like “go to bed late, get up early,” instructions for salting fish, and at the end about parents: if they are already incapacitated, then find a hired worker for them. That is, this is a birch bark predecessor of “Domostroy”, and the author is a woman. In general, only thanks to birch bark letters did we learn that in Ancient Rus' women were not at all dark and illiterate. There are many of them among the authors of birch bark letters.

- Is it always easy to understand what is being said in a birch bark letter?

This is generally a problem: what does it mean to understand a text correctly? It happens, and quite often, that we are confident in letters, in dividing them into words (let me remind you that in ancient Russian texts words were not always separated by spaces), but we still don’t really understand what it’s about. Let's take this example: take 11 hryvnia from Timoshka for a horse, as well as a sleigh, a collar, and a blanket. What does this request mean? The deed was found about forty years ago, but only recently did we understand what the matter was: the horse was gone, Timoshka had ruined the horse, and we needed to get money from him for it monetary compensation and remaining property. That is, it is not enough to understand the text, you also need to reconstruct the context, and this is a separate, very interesting area of research.

- Are there any stereotypes about birch bark letters?

Yes, they do exist. And this is, first of all, the opinion that in Novgorod (and in Ancient Rus' in general) everyone was literate. Of course this is not true. Writing, especially in the early days, still had an elitist character. If it was used not only by the upper classes, but also simple people, it does not follow from this that all merchants or artisans were literate. I'm not even talking about the fact that we find birch bark letters in cities. Among rural population Literacy rates were much lower.

- Where does the conclusion follow that, at least among the urban population, literacy was not universal?

When we study birch bark letters, we naturally try to compare their characters with historical figures mentioned in the chronicles. So, there are quite a few cases when we can prove that the person about whom it is written in the birch bark letter is exactly the person about whom it is written in the chronicle. Now imagine that everyone is literate, everyone writes birch bark letters. In this case, the likelihood of such an identification would be negligible. So, such a high percentage of coincidences between the “birch bark” characters and those in the chronicles can only be explained by the fact that the circle of literate people was limited. Another thing is that this circle was not closed, that it included people from different classes, and that it gradually expanded. There is one more important point: literate people did not always write letters personally; they could use the work of scribes (who were often clergy). For example, we have such a wonderful character in birch bark letters, his name is Peter, and we identify him with Peter Mikhalkovich, known from the chronicles, who married his daughter to Prince Mstislav Yuryevich - the son of Yuri Dolgoruky. So, from this Peter came to total 17 texts... written in different handwritings. Maybe he wrote some with his own hand, but in general a man of such a tall social status has competent servants with him and dictates to them. Being himself, quite likely, literate.

- How many birch bark letters do you think still remain unexcavated?

I think that the oil will run out much earlier than the birch bark letters. If things continue at the same pace as now, then we will have enough work for 500 years. True, by that time we ourselves will already be figures of the distant past. On the headband: Certificate of the boy Onfim: fragments of liturgical texts, XIII century. (fragment)

Kaplan Vitaly

True, it should be noted that he collected the first collection of birch bark letters back in late XIX century Novgorod collector Basil Stepanovich Peredolsky(1833-1907). It was he who, having carried out independent excavations, found out that there is a perfectly preserved cultural layer in Novgorod. Peredolsky exhibited the birch bark letters found or bought from the peasants in the first private museum in the city, built with his own money. The birch bark letters, in his words, were “letters of our ancestors.” However, it was impossible to make out anything on the old scraps of birch bark, so historians spoke of a hoax or considered the “writings of ancestors” to be the scribbles of illiterate peasants. In a word, the search for the “Russian Schliemann” was classified as an eccentricity.
In the 1920s, the Peredolsky Museum was nationalized and then closed. Director of the State Novgorod Museum Nikolay Grigorievich Porfiridov issued a conclusion that “most of the things were not of particular museum value.” As a result, the first collection of birch bark letters was irretrievably lost. Purely Russian history.

The sensation came half a century late. As they say, there was no happiness, but misfortune helped... During the restoration of the city in the 1950s, large-scale archaeological excavations, who discovered medieval streets and squares, the towers of the nobility and the houses of ordinary townspeople in the thickness of a multi-meter cultural layer. The first birch bark document (late 14th century) in Novgorod was discovered on July 26, 1951 at the Nerevsky excavation site: it contained a list of feudal duties in favor of a certain Thomas.

Academician Valentin Yanin in his book “Birch Bark Mail of Centuries” described the circumstances of the find as follows: “It happened on July 26, 1951, when a young worker Nina Fedorovna Akulova I found during excavations on the ancient Kholopya Street of Novgorod, right on the flooring of its pavement of the 14th century, a dense and dirty scroll of birch bark, on the surface of which clear letters were visible through the dirt. If it were not for these letters, one would think that a fragment of another fishing float had been discovered, of which there were already several dozen in the Novgorod collection by that time. Akulova handed over her find to the head of the excavation site, Gaide. Andreevna Avdusina, and she called out Artemia Vladimirovich Artsikhovsky, which provided the main dramatic effect. The call found him standing on an ancient pavement being cleared, which led from the pavement of Kholopya Street into the courtyard of the estate. And standing on this platform, as if on a pedestal, with a raised finger, for a minute, in full view of the entire excavation, he could not, choking, utter a single word, uttering only inarticulate sounds, then, in a voice hoarse with excitement, he shouted: “I was waiting for this find.” twenty years!”
In honor of this find, July 26 is celebrated in Novgorod. annual holiday- “Birch bark literacy day.”

The same archaeological season brought 9 more documents on birch bark. And today there are already more than 1000 of them. The oldest birch bark letter dates back to the 10th century (Troitsky excavation), the “youngest” - to the middle of the 15th century.

The wax was leveled with a spatula and letters were written on it. The oldest Russian book, the Psalter of the 11th century (c. 1010, more than half a century older than the Ostromir Gospel), found in July 2000, was just that. A book of three 20x16 cm tablets filled with wax carried the texts of the three Psalms of David.

Birch bark letters are unique in that, unlike chronicles and official documents, they gave us the opportunity to “hear” the voices of ordinary Novgorodians. The bulk of the letters are business correspondence. But among the letters there are also love letters and a threat to summon God's judgment- water test...

The educational notes and drawings of the seven-year-old boy Onfim, discovered in 1956, became widely known. Having scratched the letters of the alphabet, he finally depicted himself as an armed warrior riding a horse, crushing enemies. Since then, the boys' dreams have not changed much.

Birch bark document No. 9 became a real sensation. This is the first letter from a woman in Rus': “What my father gave me and my relatives gave me in addition, then after him (meaning - for ex-husband). And now, having married a new wife, he gives me nothing. Having struck hands as a sign of a new engagement, he drove me away and took the other as his wife.” This is, indeed, a Russian share, a woman’s share...

And here is a love letter written at the beginning of the 12th century. (No. 752): “I sent to you three times. What kind of evil do you have against me that you didn’t come to me this week? And I treated you like a brother! Did I really offend you by sending you? But I see you don’t like it. If you cared, you would have escaped from under human eyes and rushed... do you want me to leave you? Even if I offended you due to my lack of understanding, if you start to mock me, then let God and I judge you.”
It is interesting that this letter was cut with a knife, the pieces were tied into a knot and thrown into a pile of manure. The recipient, apparently, has already acquired another sweetheart...

Among the birch bark letters there is also the first marriage proposal in Rus' (late 13th century): “From Mikita to Anna. Follow me. I want you, and you want me. And for this Ignat listened (witness) ...” ( No. 377).

Another surprise came in 2005, when several messages from the 12th-13th centuries were found. obscene language- f... (No. 35, XII century)., b... (No. 531, beginning of XIII century), p...(No. 955, XII century), etc.. Thus, the established myth that we supposedly owe the originality of our “oral Russian” to the Mongol-Tatars was finally buried.

Birch bark letters opened to us amazing fact about the almost universal literacy of the urban population of ancient Rus'. Moreover, Russian people in those days wrote practically without errors - according to Zaliznyak’s estimates, 90% of letters were written correctly (sorry for the tautology).

From personal experience: when my wife and I were working as students during the 1986 season at the Trinity excavation site, a letter was found that began with a tattered “...Yanin”. There was a lot of laughter at this message to the academician after a millennium.

Wandering around the Novgorod Museum, I came across a letter that can serve as a good alternative to the title famous book Yanina "I sent you birch bark." “I sent you a bucket of sturgeon”, by God, it’s better))...

According to archaeologists, the Novgorod land still stores at least 20-30 thousand birch bark documents. But since they are discovered on average 18 per year, it will take about one and a half thousand years to bring this entire invaluable library into the light of day.

A complete set of birch bark documents was published in 2006 on the website "Old Russian Birch Bark Letters" http://gramoty.ru/index.php?id=about_site

In 1951, the archaeological expedition of Artemy Vladimirovich Artsikhovsky, conducting excavations in Novgorod, discovered the first birch bark letter. And since then they have been found in abundance, and not only in Veliky Novgorod. Birch bark letters became a historical sensation, as they made it possible to learn about the everyday life of people in the Russian Middle Ages. How have our ideas about the life of our ancestors changed? Doctor of Philological Sciences Alexey Gippius, who professionally specializes in the study of birch bark letters, tells the story.

Color the outlines

— Alexey Alekseevich, how did the discovery of birch bark documents change historians’ ideas about the culture of Ancient Rus'?

“It expanded them significantly.” Thanks to the study of birch bark letters, the everyday life of Ancient Rus' was revealed to us. Before that, our knowledge about this era was based on chronicles, on such legal texts as “Russian Truth”. The chronicles deal with events and figures of “big” history, its heroes are princes, nobility, and high clergy. How did ordinary people live - townspeople, peasants, merchants, artisans? We could indirectly judge this only from legal texts, but it is not specific people who appear there, but simply certain social functions. The discovery of birch bark letters made it possible to directly see the real characters in this “small” story. Those general contours that we had before are colored and take on specific outlines.

- And what aspects of the life of people of that time can we judge from birch bark letters?

— Birch bark letters are writing of a practical nature. Ancient Russian people, when they took up the “writing” (this is a pointed metal rod that was used to scratch letters on birch bark; the Greeks called it stylos), proceeded from some kind of everyday necessity. For example, while on a trip, send a letter to your family. Or write a statement to the court. Or make some kind of reminder for yourself. Therefore, birch bark letters introduce us primarily to the practical life of that era. From them we learn fundamentally new things about the structure of the ancient Russian financial system, about ancient Russian trade, about the judicial system - that is, about what we know very little from the chronicles; the chronicles do not touch on such “trifles”.

— Are there any contradictions between what we know from the chronicles and what is said in the birch bark letters?

— In theory, there should be no contradictions. But in order to correctly correlate the contents of birch bark letters with other sources (primarily chronicles), one must understand them correctly. And here there is a problem. In birch bark letters, people, as a rule, are designated only by names, and you need to figure out who they are - merchants, warriors, priests, boyars. That is, for example, when some Milyata addresses his brother, you need to understand that Milyata is a merchant. And when Miroslav writes to Olisey Grechin, it is determined that the first is the mayor, and the second is a member of the court. That is, it is necessary to correlate the authors and characters of birch bark letters with their social status and function. And this is not always easy. In general, we can answer this way: there are no obvious contradictions, but our ideas about these aspects of life, gleaned from chronicles, are extremely approximate and inaccurate - thanks to birch bark letters, they become not only more accurate, but filled with life. This is approximately like a pencil outline of a human figure - and the same figure painted with paints, in all its details.

— Is it true that birch bark letters are found specifically in the Novgorod region, and therefore they provide new information only on the everyday life of Novgorodians?

- No, that's not true. Now birch bark letters have been found in 12 cities, including Pskov, Tver, and Torzhok. By the way, and Moscow - seven birch bark letters were discovered in Moscow. And the southernmost point is Zvenigorod-Galitsky in Ukraine. But the truth is that archaeologists found most of the birch bark letters in Veliky Novgorod. There are 1089 of them found at the moment, and in all other cities combined - 100. The reason is not that the Novgorodians were more literate than others and wrote more - it’s just that there is such soil in which birch bark is better preserved. Birch bark writing was widespread throughout the territory of Rus'.

By the way, similar (in content) letters were used not only in Rus' - the Scandinavians also had them. For example, in Norway there is the so-called “Bergen Archive” - these are documents of approximately the same type: private records, letters, notes for memory. But not on birch bark, but on wooden planks and chips.

- By the way, why not on birch bark? Birch trees also grow in Scandinavian countries.

“I think it’s just a matter of established tradition.” In Rus', writing arose along with the adoption of the Christian faith and culture. Therefore, the main type of Slavic written text is a book, sewn sheets of parchment. And in a sense, a birch bark leaf is similar to a parchment leaf. Especially if you cut it off at the edges, as was often done. Among the Scandinavians, their writing - runes - arose much earlier than these peoples accepted Baptism. And just as they had long been accustomed to carving runes on wood chips and planks, they continued to carve them.

Prince Yaroslav School

Novgorod, 1180-1200
Contents: From Torchin to Gyurgiy (about squirrel skins)

— As far as I remember, the earliest birch bark letters date back to the beginning of the 11th century. A logical question: where did so many literate people come from in ancient Rus', if writing arose after the Baptism of Rus'?

— A small clarification: the earliest birch bark letters date back to the 30s of the 11th century. That is, between the baptism of Rus' in 988 and the appearance of everyday writing on birch bark - about half a century. Apparently, these half a century were precisely what it took to create a generation for which writing is not something special, but a completely ordinary, everyday thing.

-Where did this generation come from? Did it grow on its own or was it specially grown?

“It was specially grown, and we even know exactly how.” The appearance of the first birch bark letters remarkably coincides with the testimony of the Novgorod chronicle, which tells how Prince Yaroslav came to Novgorod in 1030 and set up a school. “He collected 300 children from the priests and elders and sent them to book studies.” Sometimes this chronicle record is questioned, but I consider it quite reliable. By the way, there is also confirmation from “independent sources”. In the Scandinavian saga about Olaf Trygvasson it is written that he attended school in Novgorod under Yaroslav. Unfortunately, we cannot judge how long this school operated, but it was, of course, a very important cultural enterprise.

So, these three hundred children learned to read and write and became, as they say now, the intellectual elite of Novgorod society; they formed the social basis for the spread of literacy. That is, they corresponded with each other, and, very likely, taught their friends and, as they grew up, their children to read and write. Thus, the circle of literate people quickly expanded.

In addition, the benefits of literacy were quickly appreciated by merchants. Now there is debate whether some kind of “commercial” writing existed in Rus' even before official baptism. But this is unlikely. Novgorod archaeological data indicate that until the 30s of the 11th century there was nothing like this. That is, a lot of birch bark was found, but with drawings, and not with this or that writing.

By the way, there is the famous Novgorod wax Psalter, which dates back to about 1000. That is, the era when book writing had already appeared, but its everyday use had not yet occurred.

The codex of three linden tablets lay in the ground completely intact. How he got there we don’t know; perhaps the book was hidden under some tragic circumstances. But no one hid the birch bark letters. They were simply thrown away like regular garbage.

- So how?

- Yes, they were thrown away as unnecessary. The person read the letter or note, received the information, and then threw it away. Paradox: that is precisely why these birch bark letters have survived to this day. What was carefully preserved died in fires (remember that all ancient Russian houses burned down sooner or later). And what was thrown out ended up in the soil, in the so-called cultural layer, and in Novgorod soil all organic matter is perfectly preserved.

— What time period do the birch bark documents cover? Which are the latest?

— The latest ones are the middle of the 15th century, that is, birch bark letters were widespread for about 400 years, from the middle of the 11th century to the middle of the 15th century.

- Why did they stop later?

“It’s a combination of two circumstances.” Firstly, the spread of paper as a cheap material that has become an alternative to cheap birch bark. Secondly, by that time the Novgorod cultural layer has already changed, the soil becomes less moist, so birch bark is no longer preserved in it. Maybe the Novgorodians didn’t stop writing on birch bark, it’s just that these letters have no longer reached us.

— Are there any known cases of sending birch bark letters over long distances?

- Yes, they are known. For example, five letters from the merchant Luke to his father were found. In one he writes that he is coming from somewhere in the north, and complains that there, in Zavolochye, the squirrel is expensive - they didn’t buy it. He writes another letter from somewhere on the Dnieper, where he is sitting and waiting for the Greek man. And the Greek is a merchant caravan coming from Byzantium. Or here’s another example, a son invites his mother: “Come here, to Smolensk or Kyiv, bread is cheap here.”

By warehouse

Novgorod, 1100-1120
Contents: Love letter

— You said that birch bark letters were distributed throughout all the cities of Ancient Rus'. Was their content the same everywhere, or were there regional differences?

— In principle, there are no special differences; everywhere it is everyday writing. The specificity of Novgorod could lie in the special intensity of correspondence connecting the city with its rural district, including very remote ones. This is how the Novgorod land was structured. There is a capital, Novgorod, and around it are the estates of the Novgorod boyars. The boyars themselves live in the city, and the managers, elders, correspond with the capital, buy and sell all sorts of goods, supplies, pay taxes - and all this is reflected in birch bark letters.

— School history textbooks give an example of birch bark letters - where the boy Onfim depicted himself as a horseman piercing a snake with a spear. Sometimes it is suggested that this letter is a leaf from his school notebook, that is, that even in those days schoolchildren had notebooks.

- Let's start with the fact that many of Onfim's letters were found, and not just the drawing that ended up in school textbooks. But these are individual leaves of birch bark, which never physically constituted a single whole. These are his various student notes, but not a notebook.

In general, there were birch bark notebooks. They have reached us. More precisely, separate sheets have arrived, but it is clear that they were originally sewn into a notebook. For example, there is a recording of evening prayers, it is such a small book that has all the signs of a real book. There is a screensaver, there is a line. Or here is a text of a magical nature, to which there are parallels in Greek, Coptic, and in general this text was distributed throughout the Mediterranean, the so-called “Legend of Sisini”* (FOOTNOTE: The Legend of Sisini is a collection of magical texts that existed in the traditions of many peoples. It is called so named after one of the characters, Sisinia. The main content is magical spells that protect the mother and the newborn from evil forces - Ed.). It was also written down on birch bark sheets sewn into a book.

Novgorod, 1280-1300
Birch bark book:
two prayers

— And among the birch bark letters, besides Onfim, were there other examples of student notes?

- There were, of course. By the way, it is necessary to explain how elementary school education was organized then. First we studied the alphabet and learned letters. Then the student began to write so-called warehouses, that is, combinations of vowels and consonants. “Ba”, “va”, “ga”, “da”, “be”, “ve”, “ge”, “de”. In other words, syllables. And only then did it come to reading the texts. The Old Russian primer was the Psalter and the Book of Hours* (The Psalter is a collection of psalms composed by King David, one of the books of the Old Testament. The Book of Hours is a book containing the texts of the unchangeable prayers of the daily liturgical circle. - Ed.), the texts were read from there. So, many birch bark leaves with written “warehouses” were found. By the way, the same Onfim has cases when he begins to write a coherent text, for example, some kind of prayer: “as if…” - and then gets lost in writing syllables starting with the letter “e”: “as if be-ve-ge -de".

— To what extent has the study of birch bark documents changed historians’ ideas about ancient Russian education?

— We actually know quite little about him. Judging by the birch bark letters, this education was of the most elementary nature, the alphabet was learned along with the fundamentals of the Orthodox faith. But we, in general, know nothing about further stages. There is, however, evidence from Metropolitan Clement Smolyatich (12th century); one of his works mentions the existence of so-called “schedography” in Rus' - this is already a very advanced stage of Byzantine learning. But the Metropolitan mentions this as a kind of delicacy, a great rarity.

Find out about the fate of the monastery cow

Novgorod, 1420-1430
Contents: From Koshchei and sharecroppers (please give horses)

—Have our ideas about the church life of Ancient Rus' expanded thanks to the birch bark letters?

— Yes, they expanded, although not immediately. At first, when excavations were carried out only at the Nerevsky excavation site in Novgorod, it seemed that birch bark letters were a purely secular phenomenon; no texts on church topics were found there at all. But at the Troitsky excavation site, where work has been going on since the 1970s, the situation turned out to be completely different. More than five percent of the texts found there are church texts. For example, recording church holidays that fall in the fall. Or, for example, a summary of Easter Matins. That is, these were, in modern terms, the working notes of the priests, which they needed in their ministry.

Another example, not from Novgorod, is a letter from Torzhok, which is a lengthy quotation from a teaching that most likely belonged to the pen of St. Cyril of Turov. The charter was written either at the end of the 12th or the beginning of the 13th century. In terms of content, this is simply a long list of sins. Most likely, a preparation for a sermon that the priest was going to read.

I note that such letters are not spiritual treatises, not attempts at some kind of religious self-expression, but purely practical, applied church writing.

By the way, there is a wonderful example when both a fragment of a church calendar and a business letter from Lyudslav to Khoten are written in the same handwriting. It is logical to assume that in the first case the priest made the recording for himself, and in the second he acted as a scribe.

— So they came to the priest and asked him to help write a letter?

- Exactly. And this, by the way, is a feature of Novgorod church life - the clergy and monasticism did not live in isolation, but side by side with the laity, influenced their neighbors, and also influenced them in the sense of epistolary culture. For example, Old Russian birch bark letters often begin with the word “worship” and end with “I kiss you.” The references to the apostolic epistles are obvious (“greet one another with a holy kiss” - words from the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Romans, 16:16), and this tradition clearly comes from a spiritual environment.

I have already mentioned the Trinity excavation site. I will add that it is divided in the middle by Chernitsyna Street, and it is called that because from the 12th century there was the Varvarin Monastery, one of the most famous convents. It was located in the midst of urban development and was in no way separated from the neighboring merchant and boyar estates. Among the letters found at the Trinity excavation site, there are some that were clearly written by nuns of this monastery (let me remind you that in the old days nuns were colloquially called chernitsy). Moreover, these are just everyday recordings. For example: “As for the fact that I sent you three cuts for the warrior, then come quickly,” “find out if Matvey is in the monastery?” (Matvey, judging by the context, is a priest). Or, say, the nuns are concerned about the fate of the monastery cow: “Is St. Barbara’s heifer healthy?”

It must be said that the letters found in this part of the city are characterized by frequent mentions of God in stable expressions: “Dividing God” (that is, for the sake of God), “God fighting” (that is, fear God). It is quite possible that the reason for this is the influence of the monastery on its neighbors.

I note that at that time the clergy did not yet recognize themselves as some kind of special class; there were no class barriers yet. For example, I have already mentioned Olisey Grechin. This is an amazing figure! On the one hand, he is a priest, on the other, an artist and icon painter, and on the third, a major city administrator, one might say, an official. And he came from the Novgorod boyar environment, but he followed the spiritual path.

Here's another very interesting example. This is a birch bark letter from the beginning of the 15th century, a letter to Archbishop Simeon - a rare case when everything is written in clear text in the address formula. “Vladyka Simeon is beaten with his brow from young to old by all the residents of the Rzhevsky district and the Oshevsky churchyard.” The letter is a request to appoint Deacon Alexander as a local priest, arguing as follows: “before his father and grandfather sang at the Holy Mother of God in Oshev.” That is, it means that they had a priestly dynasty, first the grandfather of this deacon Alexander served in the local church, then his father, and now, after the death of his father, the church “stands without singing,” that is, without divine services, and for their resumption it is necessary to make Alexander a priest.

- I read somewhere that the Novgorod clergy did not really approve of people writing letters on birch bark - this was seen as some kind of profanation of the high art of writing, which has a sacred meaning...

- This is greatly exaggerated. In fact, we are talking about only one person who lived in the 12th century, the famous Kirik of Novgorod, who recorded his conversations with Bishop Niphon. And he really asked him a question: “Isn’t it a sin, Vladyka, to walk on letters with your feet if they are thrown away, but the letters can be made out?” There is some concern in this matter. Moreover, considering that the texts themselves, which were scattered in abundance on the Novgorod pavements, were 98% everyday, profane, this is not the same thing as the fear of desecration of a shrine. No, Kirik was worried about the very fact that the letters were being trampled underfoot. Letters are like some kind of sacred essence. But, importantly, the bishop did not give any answer to this. As it is said, “he remained silent.” Apparently, as an enlightened hierarch with a good Greek background, Niphon did not see anything sinful in the everyday use of writing.

About deeply personal

Novgorod, 1180-1200
Contents: About the intention to go on pilgrimage

— Did the birch bark letters reflect any ethical moments, some human relationships, themes of justice and injustice? And if so, was there any influence of Christianity?

— There was influence. The phrases “For God’s sake”, “fear God” - in those days these were not just figures of speech. Or, for example, in one letter there is a hidden threat: “if you don’t manage this (if you don’t do what I asked you to do), I will tell you to the Holy Mother of God, to whom you came to the company.” That is, “I will betray you to the Holy Mother of God, to whom you took an oath.” That is, a direct, very harsh and very rhetorically formulated threat, appealing, on the one hand, to church authority, and on the other, to the deeply pagan practice of the oath (“rota”), which is deeply pagan in origin. To a practice that has already fit into the new Christian life. This is one example of grassroots Christian culture.

Another example is a remarkable 11th-century letter written by a young woman to her lover. Reproaching him, she writes in particular: “maybe I hurt you by sending you to you?” A very subtle emotional tone, it sounds completely modern. And the letter ends with the words: “If you start to mock, then God and my badness will judge you.” This “my thinness” is a literary expression that has a famous Greek source. It can be found, say, in the Kiev-Pechersk Patericon of the 13th century, where one of its authors, Bishop Simon, writes about himself. This means “my unworthiness.” And a Novgorod woman of the 11th century uses this same expression in relation to herself!

The addressee of this letter tore it and, tying strips of birch bark in a knot, threw it onto the pavement.

There are other examples of “relational” letters - say, a letter where a father instructs his daughter: it would be better for you to live with your brother, but you somehow communicate with him through force. And all this clearly bears the imprint of Christian ethics.

But there are also texts, so to speak, with the opposite sign - that is, magical content. These are conspiracies, about a dozen of them have been found. Here, for example, is a conspiracy against fever: “Far away angels, distant archangels, deliver God’s servant Micah from the shaking with the prayers of the Holy Mother of God.” There are slightly less than a dozen such texts, about the same number as canonical prayers and their fragments. But we must, of course, take into account that Christian texts themselves, in principle, had less chance of being preserved on birch bark. No one would throw them away, they were taken care of - and everything that was carefully stored eventually died in fires. Conspiracies were perceived as something functional, not particularly valuable. They were used and thrown away.

This is the paradox: what was stored died, but what was thrown away remained. There was birch bark writing, which was designed for long-term use, which was carefully stored - and which, precisely for this reason, has almost never reached us. Here is the rarest exception - a large document, 60 cm in length. This is a woman’s teaching, it retains the address formula “from Martha”, the form “wrote” is preserved (that is, it is emphasized that this is an extract from some source). And then there are practical instructions like “go to bed late, get up early,” instructions for salting fish, and at the end about parents: if they are already incapacitated, then find a hired worker for them. That is, this is a birch bark predecessor of “Domostroy”, and the author is a woman.

In general, only thanks to birch bark letters did we learn that in Ancient Rus' women were not at all dark and illiterate. There are many of them among the authors of birch bark letters.

— Is it always easy to understand what is being said in a birch bark letter?

— This is generally a problem: what does it mean to understand the text correctly? It happens, and quite often, that we are confident in letters, in dividing them into words (let me remind you that in ancient Russian texts words were not always separated by spaces), but we still don’t really understand what it’s about. Let's take this example: take 11 hryvnia from Timoshka for a horse, as well as a sleigh, a collar, and a blanket. What does this request mean? The deed was found about forty years ago, but only recently did we understand what the matter was: the horse was gone, Timoshka had ruined the horse, and we needed to receive monetary compensation and the remaining property from him for this. That is, it is not enough to understand the text, you also need to reconstruct the context, and this is a separate, very interesting area of research.

— Are there any stereotypes about birch bark letters?

- Yes, they exist. And this is, first of all, the opinion that in Novgorod (and in Ancient Rus' in general) everyone was literate. Of course this is not true. Writing, especially in the early days, still had an elitist character. If it was used not only by the upper classes, but also by ordinary people, it does not follow from this that all merchants or artisans were literate. I'm not even talking about the fact that we find birch bark letters in cities. Among the rural population, the literacy rate was much lower.

- Where does the conclusion follow that, at least among the urban population, literacy was not universal?

— When we study birch bark letters, we naturally try to compare their characters with historical figures mentioned in the chronicles. So, there are quite a few cases when we can prove that the person about whom it is written in the birch bark letter is exactly the person about whom it is written in the chronicle. Now imagine that everyone is literate, everyone writes birch bark letters. In this case, the likelihood of such an identification would be negligible. So, such a high percentage of coincidences between the “birch bark” characters and those in the chronicles can only be explained by the fact that the circle of literate people was limited. Another thing is that this circle was not closed, that it included people from different classes, and that it gradually expanded.

There is another important point: literate people did not always write letters personally; they could use the work of scribes (who were often clergy). For example, we have such a wonderful character in birch bark letters, his name is Peter, and we identify him with Peter Mikhalkovich, known from the chronicles, who married his daughter to Prince Mstislav Yuryevich, the son of Yuri Dolgoruky. So, from this Peter came a total of 17 texts... written in different handwritings. Maybe he wrote some of them with his own hand, but in general, a person of such high social status has competent servants with him and dictates to them. Being himself, quite likely, literate.

— How many birch bark letters do you think still remain unexcavated?

“I think that the oil will run out much earlier than the birch bark letters.” If things continue at the same pace as now, then we will have enough work for 500 years. True, by that time we ourselves will already be figures of the distant past.

On the headband: Certificate of the boy Onfim: fragments of liturgical texts, XIII century. (fragment)

Kaplan Vitaly

Archeology of the 20th century led to the discovery of a unique historical source- birch bark letters.

True, it should be noted that the first collection of birch bark letters was collected at the end of the 19th century by a Novgorod collector Vasily Stepanovich Peredolsky(1833–1907). It was he who, having carried out independent excavations, found out that there is a perfectly preserved cultural layer in Novgorod.

Peredolsky exhibited the birch bark letters found or bought from peasants in the first private museum in the city, built with his own money. Novgorod birch bark letters, in his words, were “letters of our ancestors.” However, it was impossible to make out anything on the old scraps of birch bark, so historians spoke of a hoax or considered the “writings of ancestors” to be the scribbles of illiterate peasants. In a word, the search for the “Russian Schliemann” was classified as an eccentricity.

In the 1920s, the Peredolsky Museum was nationalized and then closed. Director of the State Novgorod Museum Nikolai Grigorievich Porfiridov issued a conclusion that “most of the things were not of particular museum value.” As a result, the first collection of birch bark letters was irretrievably lost. Purely Russian history.

Found it again!

The sensation came half a century late. As they say, there was no happiness, but misfortune helped... During the restoration of the city in the 1950s, large-scale archaeological excavations were carried out, which discovered medieval streets and squares, the towers of the nobility and the houses of ordinary citizens in the thickness of the multi-meter cultural layer. The first birch bark document (late 14th century) in Novgorod was discovered on July 26, 1951 at the Nerevsky excavation site: it contained a list of feudal duties in favor of a certain Thomas.

Academician Valentin Yanin in the book “Birchbark Mail of Centuries” described the circumstances of the find as follows: “It happened on July 26, 1951, when a young worker Nina Fedorovna Akulova I found during excavations on the ancient Kholopya Street of Novgorod, right on the flooring of its pavement of the 14th century, a dense and dirty scroll of birch bark, on the surface of which clear letters were visible through the dirt. If it were not for these letters, one would think that a fragment of another fishing float had been discovered, of which there were already several dozen in the Novgorod collection by that time.

Akulova handed over her find to the head of the excavation site Gaide Andreevna Avdusina, and she called out Artemy Vladimirovich Artsikhovsky, which provided the main dramatic effect. The call found him standing on an ancient pavement being cleared, which led from the pavement of Kholopya Street into the courtyard of the estate. And standing on this platform, as if on a pedestal, with a raised finger, for a minute, in full view of the entire excavation, he could not, choking, utter a single word, uttering only inarticulate sounds, then, in a voice hoarse with excitement, he shouted: “I was waiting for this find.” twenty years!”
In honor of this find, on July 26, an annual holiday is celebrated in Novgorod - “Birch Bark Letter Day”.

As they wrote on birch bark

The letters on the letters were scratched with a pointed pen.

The writings were found regularly in archaeological excavations, but it was not clear why they were back side made in the form of a spatula. The answer was soon found: archaeologists began to find in excavations well-preserved boards with a depression filled with wax - tsera, which also served for teaching literacy.

Birch bark letters are unique in that, unlike chronicles and official documents, they gave us the opportunity to “hear” the voices of ordinary Novgorodians. The bulk of letters are business correspondence. But among the letters there are love messages, and a threat to bring God to trial - a test by water...

Examples of Novgorod birch bark letters

Birch bark document No. 9 became a real sensation. This is the first letter from a woman in Rus': “What my father gave me and my relatives gave me in addition, then goes to him (meaning, to my ex-husband). And now, having married a new wife, he gives me nothing. Having struck hands as a sign of a new engagement, he drove me away and took the other as his wife.” This is, indeed, a Russian share, a woman’s share...

Among the birch bark letters there is also the first marriage proposal in Rus' (late 13th century): “From Mikita to Anna. Follow me. I want you, and you want me. And that’s what (witness) Ignat listened to…” (No. 377). It’s so everyday, but without beating around the bush.

Another surprise came in 2005, when several messages from the 12th-13th centuries with obscene language were found - e... (No. 35, XII century), b... (No. 531, early 13th century), p... (No. 955, XII century), etc. Thus, the established myth that we supposedly owe the originality of our “oral Russian” to the Mongol-Tatars was finally buried.

Birch bark letters revealed to us the amazing fact of almost universal literacy of the urban population of ancient Rus'. Moreover, Russian people in those days wrote practically without errors - according to Zaliznyak’s estimates, 90% of letters were written correctly (sorry for the tautology).

Wandering around the Novgorod Museum, I came across a letter that can serve as a good alternative to the title of Yanin’s famous book “I sent you birch bark” - “I sent you a bucket of sturgeon”, by God, it sounds better, more tempting))…