A CATHEDRAL AND ITS PATRON

The Cathedral of Saint Sophia is the greatest monument of Kyivan Rus. It was built by the Grand Prince Yaroslav I ‘the Wise’ (r. 1019-1054) in the centre of Kyiv in ca. 1037. The building is a fiveaisled cross-domed church with thirteen domes. It served as the seat of the Metropolitan of Kyiv and all of Rus until this centre moved to Vladimir in 1299.

By Özlem Eren

Yaroslav the Wise arguably built the Cathedral of Saint Sophia to celebrate the victory over the Pechenegs in 1036. The oldest East Slavic chronicle, the Tale of Bygone Years (more popularly known as the Primary Chronicle), is one of the main written sources about the foundation of Rus. The Primary Chronicle entry for 1036 reports that “[Pechenegs and Rus] met on the spot where the Metropolitan Church of Saint Sophia now stands.” The Cathedral of Saint Sophia The cathedral seems to have an older history. Among the 7000 graffiti discovered in situ inside Saint Sophia, eleven inscriptions have been dated to the period before 1037. The earliest inscriptions date to 1018-1021 and 1022. The eleventh-century German chronicler Thietmar of Merseburg (975-1018) also wrote in the entry for 1017-1018 that the Cathedral of…

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Medieval World (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 2 - 2022

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