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Redating the Life of Alexander Nevskii Donald Ostrowski The time of composition of the Life of Alexander Nevskii has been generally accepted as the late 13th century, but the reasons for that acceptance need to be reexamined1 Establishing the date of composition of the First Redaction of the Life is dependent on determining the relationship of it to chronicle accounts ; in particular, whether or not the Older Redaction of the Novgorod I Chronicle (Novg. I-OR) served as a source for the Life. In addition, I explore the possibility that the Life is the reworking of a chronicle tale about Alexander Nevskii. My contention is that the Life is indeed based on a no-longerextant Tale of Alexander Nevskii, and that it borrows from the Novg. I-OR. In contrast, the Younger Redaction of the Novgorod I Chronicle (Novg. 1-YR) incorporates parts of the Life into its account (for the relationship of these texts, see figure 1, below). Begunov identified three main redactions of the Life of Alexander Nevskii that existed by the 15th century. The First Redaction of the Life is extant in full in eleven MS copies (one of which dates to the end of the 15th century, the other ten to the 16th and 17th centuries) and in part in two MS copies (one of which dates to 1377, the other to the end of the 15th century) 2 1 The composition that is usually referred to in the scholarly literature as the Life of Alexander Nevskii is titled in most MS copies the Tale about the Life of the Brave, Blessed, and Great Prince Alexander Nevskii. But the earliest MS copy of the First Redaction of the Life, which appears in the Laurentian Chronicle (..16), merely begins: "That same year Grand Prince Alexander, son of laroslav, passed away. We speak [about] his bravery and life...." Five other MS copies (A, B, M, Ap, and 0) of the first redaction amplify the first sentence by adding a date and specific year, November 23, 1263, but repeat the "skazhem muzhestvo i zhire ego" part. See "Zhitie Aleksandra Nevskogo (pervaia redaktsiia)," in lu. K. Begunov, Pmniatnik ,.usskoi literatury XIII veka "Slovo a pogibeli Russkoi zemli" (Moscow: Nauka, 1965), 159. For reasons that should become clear below , I continue the practice of calling the First Redaction the Life ofAlexander Nevskii. 2 The MSS that contain the full Life, according to Begunov's listing, are: Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Arkhangel'skoi oblasti (GAAO), sobranie ruskopisnykh knig, no. 18 (Ap); Gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii muzei (GIM), sobranie E. V. Barsova, no. 1413 (E); GIM, Muzeiskoe sobranie, no. 1706 (M); GlM, Sinodal'noe sobranie, no. 154, fols. 156162v (nc); GlM, sobranie A. S. Uvarova, no. 279 (Y); Institut russkoi literatury (Pushkinskii dom) (IRL-PD), R. IV, op. 24, no. 26 (A); Rossiiskaia gosudarstvennaia biblioteka (RGB), sobranie losifo-Volokolamskogo monastyria, f. 113, no. 523 (B); RGB, Rude & Barbarous Kingdom Revisited: Essays in Russian History and Culture in Honor of Robert 0. Crummey. Chester 5. L. Dunning, Russell E. Martin, and Danie l Rowland, eds. Bloomington, IN: siavica Publi shers, 2008, 23-39. 24 DONALD OSTROWSKI M. D. Priselkov proposed in 1939 that the original redaction of the Life appears in the Laurentian Chronicle (Jle) and was composed shortly after Alexander 's death in 12633 Priselkov did not analyze the relationship of the Life to the chronicle accounts. In 1947, D. S. Likhachev pointed out what he considered to be parallels in motifs, style, and words between the Galician Chronicle (GC) and the Life of Alexander Nevskii. He attributed the common source of these parallels to the Galician literary tradition, and he saw Metropolitan Kirill as the link between them, either as the author or more probably in commissioning both of them.4 As further evidence, Likhachev cited the words from the Pskovo-Pecherskii copy of the Life: "This was preached by the holy metropolitan Kirill and by his cellarer Sebastian.',5 If Metropolitan Kirill did have something to do with the composition of the Life, then that would place the date of its composition sometime between 1263, the year of death of Alexander Nevskii, and 1280, the year of death of Kiril!. It is difficult to see, however, in the version of the quotation that Likhachev cited, which is limited to two (n and.ll) copies of the First Redaction (as reported by Begunov), any evidence of Kirill's writing or commissioning the Life to be written. Even less so is there such evidence in this passage...

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