The Russians commonly say “You are so heavy to wear, cap of Monomachus,” and if some power- wielding head is not equal to the office held...
The crown thus called has been kept since ancient times at the Armory, a Moscow Kremlin museum, as the old crown of grand princes and tsars of Muscovy before Peter I. But whenever popular historical publications deal with the grand princes of Kyiv, many our illustrators did and still crown their heads only with the Cap of Monomachus, trying to say categorically that the latter was the main princely diadem from times immemorial.
This consideration, or rather legend and conjecture, is of reciprocal interest for us, Ukrainians, and, to a still higher degree, to Russians addicted to great power status.
What, however, is the story behind this historical piece of tempting regalia in the opinion of connoisseurs, especially those from Moscow? First of all, let us start with the legends that have had wide currency since long ago “throughout Holy Rus’,” especially those told by Moscow clergymen, not historians.
Legend one. They believe in its original royal origin, for the Cap of Monomachus was presented by a Byzantine emperor to Kyiv Grand Prince Volodymyr Monomachus. In his turn, the emperor had inherited it from Constantine Monomachus, Volodymyr’s grandfather on his mother’s side, “precisely from Byzantium,” ostensibly as a token of great affection.
Legend two. Grand Prince and St. Volodymyr, who supposedly baptized Rus’ in 988, was married to the sister of Byzantine Emperors Basil and Constantine. In honor of this, they gave the Cap of Monomachus to Volodymyr. Let us refer to professional historians about this.
Outstanding Russian Byzantinist, Academician Nikodim Kondakov (1844-1925) wrote as follows in the Archeological News and Notes (parts 5-6): “The crown (?) of Monomachus was made not in Constantinople but in Asia Minor, the Caucasus, or Chersonesus, i.e., where Byzantine art came into contact with elaborate Arabic ornamentation.” Moreover, he thinks the Cap of Monomachus is neither the imperial Byzantine stemma (crown — Auth.) nor the coronet of some nobleman. Kondakov called it a caesar’s war helmet or an emperor’s spiked helmet of honor.
Academician Kondakov further related how and why Byzantine emperors would hand out these spiked helmets of Oriental origin, after remaking them as gifts, regalia (but not crowns! — Auth.), to minor princes of neighboring and dependent states.
Another authority on the problems of “the Cap of Monomachus,” Academician Dmitry Anuchin (1843- 1923), a contemporary of Kondakov’s, disagreed with the latter quite wittily. Let us not list all his arguments, for they essentially boil down to the following: “If the Cap of Monomachus is to be considered a twelfth century Byzantine artifact, then how can we explain that it was only mentioned only in Muscovite period sources and not in the chronicles of Kyivan Rus’?”
Another professor of history, Sergei Filimonov, claimed in his study, On the Time and Origin of the Cap of Monomachus, “The Cap of Monomachus has no signs of Byzantine origin: it is of eleventh century Arabic origin.” If we look at the Arabic ornaments of the items of that time, we will see they are identical with the filigrees on so-called Cap of Monomachus. Moreover, Prof. Filimonov asserted, “The Cap of Monomachus was made in Cairo in the fourteenth century, then in 1317 Egyptian Sultan El-Qalawun sent it as a gift to his Uzbek kinsman, khan of the Golden Horde (ruled 1313 to 1342). The latter presented it, but not as a crown, to his vassal, Prince Ivan Danilovich of Muscovy, also known as Kalita (? — 1340).
We shall omit here Professor Filimonov’s further historical and artistic views on how the future Cap of Monomachus, this time called golden without the name of Monomachus, found itself in Muscovy under Ivan Kalita. It was only Ivan the Terrible (1530-1584) who, crowned in 1547 as the first Russian tsar, called Ivan Kalita’s golden headgear the Cap of Monomachus.
Proceeding from all this, we can state that the grand princes of Kyiv, Volodymyr the Great and Volodymyr Monomachus, had nothing to do with the Cap of Monomachus, so mysterious to historians for centuries. Incidentally, it is this golden cap that was seen and described by the German traveler and diplomat Sigismund von Herberstein (1486-1566) who twice (in 1517 and 1526) visited Moscow as Ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire emperors and published in Vienna valuable and beautifully-styled historical Notes on Muscovite Affairs in Latin. Herberstein’s description of the golden cap quite corresponds to the way it looks now at the Armory, this time as the crown of Ivan the Terrible and subsequent Russian tsars until Peter I: it was sable-bordered on the rim, which no other crowns of the world have ever had.
Then how can we explain an ornament so uncustomary for crowns? Whether we like it or not, we have to refer ourselves to memories over fifty years old.
In October 1948, at Special Prison Camp No. 5” near Inta, I was lucky (lucky indeed) to meet Akop Dzharakiants, an Armenian Ph.D. in history and art history, who was brought under guard from Moscow’s notorious Lubianka Secret Police headquarters. Before his arrest he had been a senior research consultant in Moscow to the Kremlin museums, History Museum in Red Square, and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. By a coincidence of camp circumstances, I happened to communicate with him, an old bearded man, who resembled our compatriots, historical and political figure Mykhailo Hrushevsky and Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky. King Tigranes, as we, recent students at Ukrainian universities, dubbed the bearded professor, was emaciated and haggard after his stay in the Lubianka for terrorism. He was sentenced to a 25+5-year term for “intent to murder Comrade Stalin and members of the VKP(b) TsK Politburo.” In a word, he was a giant.
For me and other students, the old man was a true storehouse of unheard- of knowledge of, above all, Soviet museums, the treasures “rescued” by the Red Army in Germany, and so on. The professor was quite frank with us, young Ukrainian students. The main evidence against him were the thirty volumes of his thirty year long diaries, from 1917 onwards, which “the scum of the Armenian people,” Anastas Mikoyan, as Dzharakiants said, read to “Lavrenty Beriya himself,” translating the humor from Armenian.
Once, telling us about the Armory’s treasures, he also touched upon the Cap of Monomachus. He explained that the rim is trimmed with sable because all the grand princes of Muscovy and Tsar Ivan the Terrible suffered from alopecia, that is, they were bald as a baby’s bottom. This might have been a hereditary ailment or one caused by a “shameful disease,” as the professor put it. Thus, in order to keep this annoying defect out of sight when they put on and wore the crown, they had it hemmed with the fur that you can see even now in photos.
Answering our question why the Russians have so long and doggedly stuck to the legend of the cap originating from Monomachus of Byzantium, King Tigranes said, “Remember, children, but for this legend about its allegedly Byzantine and Kyivan origin in the times of Volodymyr Monomachus, Moscow could never have assumed the role of the successor to the traditions of Kyivan Rus’ and call itself Third Rome. I, an old Armenian, tell you young Ukrainians this, because I know the historical sources very well. Not so soon will you come to know what tremendous historical treasures of the Ukrainian land and your art are being purposefully hidden in the caches of Moscow museums. And even if these are to be shown some day, they will be called the great creations of the Great Russian people. I say this out of respect for your nation.” We, students, especially the young ones from Kyiv, listened with open mouths. According to Dzharakiants, the name “Monomachus” derives from Old Greek and means “single combatant,” i.e., a bold and victorious warrior, which our Prince Volodymyr Monomachus really was.
It follows from the above that it is improper for us, Ukrainians, to trespass on the Muscovite Cap of Monomachus, in fact a historical fake with nothing to do with our history.
