2025, Volume 22, Issue 2
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Maria Vladimirovna Korogodina Aleksey Vladimirovich Sirenov ON THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE NAMES OF THE EARLIEST NOVGOROD PRINCESSES: ANNA AND ALEXANDRA
For citation Received on 7 August 2024 Abstract: This article addresses the question of the authenticity of the names attributed to two early Novgorod princesses, the mother and the wife of the 11th-century Prince Vladimir Yaroslavich, founder of Novgorod’s oldest cathedral, St Sophia. Through an analysis of written sources, the authors establish that the name Anna, attributed to Vladimir’s mother, first appears in the early 16th century during the episcopacy of Archbishop Gennady, in manuscript Euchologia. The name Alexandra, ascribed to his wife, surfaces in the Synodikon of Orthodoxy compiled in 1559 for the St Sophia Cathedral. There is no evidence of either name in Novgorod prior to the 16th century. The article proposes that the attribution of the name Anna likely arose from the location of the princess’s burial near the Chapel of Joachim and Anna, with the dedication to Saint Anne being retrospectively interpreted as an indicator of her personal name. The name Alexandra, meanwhile, appears to result from a confusion of identities in the 1558 commemorative Synodikon. Rather than referring to Vladimir’s wife, it originally denoted Alexandra, the second wife of the 14th-century Muscovite prince Ivan Kalita. When compiling the Novgorod Synodikon of Orthodoxy, this later Muscovite princess was erroneously identified as the wife of the 11th-century Novgorod prince. The study concludes that both names, Anna and Alexandra, assigned to the earliest Novgorod princesses are products of mistaken medieval attribution and cannot be regarded as historically authentic. Keywords: princely onomasticon of Old Rus’; Novgorod princesses of the 11th century; history of Old Rus’; history of Russia of the 16th century; ancient Russian memorial practice; source study of the history of Russia; genealogy; necropolistics; Synodikon References Dmitriev, L. A. (1973). 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