Polystoria. Цари, святые, мифотворцы в средневековой Европе - [77]

Mikhail Boytsov

How Alexander the Great, Moving from Bohemia,

Offered His Support for the Muscovites

The study is centered on one curious text that spread in manuscripts and prints in the Slavic countries of Eastern Europe from the 16^th through the 17^th century. The document seems to have been composed in Bohemia in the 15^th, maybe even in the mid-14^th century This was a charter, ascribed to Alexander the Great, endowing the Slavs with his privilege to possess all lands “reaching from the utmost North down to the Italy’s southern boundaries.” The “Alexanders Slavic charter” is transmitted in several deviating versions, whereas the most peculiar of them was written in one of the (western?) Russian regions, probably as early as in 1556–1576. According to this specific Russian interpretation of the Alexanders generosity, the pagan Slavs – the direct ancestors of the Muscovites – received from the King not the “usual” lands but other vast territories – from the Baltic to the Caspian Sea. The article argues that the intention of the original “Russian version” had differed seriously from the political tendency of the official Chronograph, where this text was finally inserted (presumably between 1646 и 1661) and where it later became visible for scholars.