Contributions to the Study of the Beginnings of the Orthodox Church in Western Rus’

Abstract

In 1882 T. Ziemięcki conducted in Pìdgìrcì (Lviv district, Ukraine) a research excavation of two neighboring burial mounds which he called the Great Twin Barrows No. 1 and No. 2. In barrow No., he discovered on richly furnished double burial (probably of a married couple) where he found two identical silver crosses. The crosses belong to the so called Scandinavian type (variant B.1 type 1.4.3 acc. J. Staecker). In barrow No. 2, he found a skeleton of a male buried with furnishings, including two crosses. The bigger one (lost) was a bronze encolpion depicting the Crucifixion and the Virgin Orans, which can find analogies in the Danube countries. The smaller one is a silver St. Peter’s cross. In the mouths of the corpses found in both barrows there were tiny gold objects which could be interpreted as a local variation of the obolus of the dead custom. Both graves are a part of necropolis with druzhina burials. They date back to the end of the 10th century or the first half of the 11th century. The objects presented here are the earliest evidence to confirm the presence of a Christianized (Greek version of Christianity) elite in the region of the Upper Bug and Upper Dniester, which is not burdened with chronological or interpretative reservation. The deceased were not members of the clergy but, nevertheless, representatives of the new official religion in a pagan Slavic population whose conversion had barely begun. It seems, therefore, that their presence in Pìdgìrcì can be considered the beginning of the Orthodox Church in the western part of the former Kievan Rus’.