In the latter half of the fourteenth and first half of the fifteenth century, under the descendants of Ivan the Money-Bag, Moscow emerged more and more actively as the centre unit­ing the principalities of North-Eastern Russia. Moscow’s strug­gle for supremacy against rival principalities was accompanied by constant clashes with external […]

In the late fourteenth and first half of the fifteenth century numerous chronicles were compiled. The compilers collected, revised and redacted local chronicles depending on the political interests that the compilation was intended to serve. Of great ideological importance was the tradition of including The Tale of Bygone Years or […]

The victory of the Russians over the Mongols at Kulikovo Field not only made a great impression on contemporaries of this epoch-making event in Russian history, but also interested Russians for a long time afterwards. This is explained by the fact that the battle against Mamai was the subject of […]

The chronicle story of the Battle of Kulikovo has survived in two versions: the short and the extended. The short chronicle story is found in chronicles that originate from the Cyprian compilation (The Trinity Chronicle). The extended story in its earliest form is in the Novgorod Fourth and Sophia First […]

The Tale of the Battle Against Mamai is the most lengthy work of the Kulikovo cycle. It contains the most detailed account of the events of the Battle of Kulikovo. The Tale describes the preparations for the campaign and the uryazhenie or deployment of the detachments, the order of battle […]

The Tale of Tokhtamysh’s Campaign Against Moscow. After Mamai’s defeat at Kulikovo Field Khan Tokhtamysh seized power in the Horde. Realising that the victory over Mamai could mean a radical change in the attitude of the Russian princes to the Horde, Tokhtamysh undertook a campaign against Moscow in 1382. Due […]

In 1395 Timur’s army invaded the Russian principalities. Timur (also known as Tamerlane or Timur i Leng), the famous Oriental conqueror, was Emir from 1370 to 1405 of a state that had its capital in Samarkand. His large, well-organised armies waged constant warfare and were famed for their cruelty. The […]

As in the preceding periods, together with chronicle-writing, hagiography remains one of the main literary genres which underwent a number of important changes during this period. In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century in the Slav countries (Bulgaria, Serbia and Russia) there was a flowering of the expressive-emotional style […]

Cyprian, a Bulgarian, was a very learned man. He received an ecclesiastical and scholarly education in his homeland, in Byzantium and at Mount Athos. He was closely associated with his fellow-countryman Euthymius of Tyrnovo (1330-1402), the Bulgarian Patriarch, who was the founder and theoretician of the panegyric style in Bulgarian […]

Epiphanius was born in Rostov in the first half of the fourteenth century. In 1379 he became a monk in a Rostov monastery. Later he moved to the Trinity Monastery of St Sergius. He visited Jerusalem and Mount Athos and most probably travelled in the Orient. He died in the […]