Princess Olga and Constantinople: wandering plots and changeable inscriptions

Introduction. The author proposes a new reconstruction of two episodes concerning Princess Olga in the chronicles and Prolog, which allows to clarify the overall picture of the development of the pre-Mongol legend about the baptism of Olga and her trip to Constantinople. Analysis. In the early chronicles, two layers of narrative about Olga’s trip to Constantinople are clearly distinguishable. The original story contained only the relationship between Olga and Emperor Ioannes Tzimiskes: the author had a good knowledge of the realities of Byzantine politics in the 960s, probably from the Byzantine chronicles. However, the story itself is too ctionalized, and its author, who inscribes Olga’s trip in 946 and her baptism in a completely di erent chronological frame - the turn of the 960-970s, had to work in the 1060s - early 1070s imitating stories about a wise pagan princess from an older chronicle. Probably, in the “Initial Compilation” this ‘secular’ story was ‘Christianized, but not quite harmoniously. In this form, the story of Olga’s trip and baptism was included in the “Tale of Bygone Years”, but in its recension the “unhistorical” Ioannes Tzimiskes was replaced - probably on the basis of Byzantine chronicles - by the ‘historical’ Constantine VII. However, the chronicles of the late 11th - early 12th century do not know Olga’s cross, which, according to the Prolog, stood in the 1160s in the altar of St. So a of Kiev. It was either a “ xation” of the historical memory of the rst baptist of Rus’, or a contribution of a 12th century princess with the same name (e.g., of the daughter of Yuri Dolgorukiy and a Byzantine princess). The author of the Prolog combined excerpts from the “Tale of Bygone Years” with the story of Olga’s cross, also “historicizing” the patriarch, who became now Photios, and creating the basis for the entire further hagiographic tradition of the princess.