The famous St. Sophia Cathedral occupies an exceptional place in Ukrainian history, spirituality, and culture. It is the highest symbol of Ancient Rus’s cultural and educational achievements, as well as of the state’s grandeur and wisdom. It is our imperishable message to eternity and the perennial roots from which the Ukrainian people have been drawing for centuries and, undoubtedly, will continue to draw courage, inspiration, and vigor of heart. This is why all that concerns St. Sophia’s history, including the real and proven date of construction, is not just an abstract academic problem that is only important for professional historians, but one that arouses considerable public interest.
For this reason, the roundtable debate “Finding the Date of Kyiv’s Sophia in the Light of New Factual Data,” held the other day on the famous cathedral’s territory, became a major public and cultural event. Researchers at the National Sanctuary “Sophia of Kyiv” suggest, on the basis of some newly-analyzed and discovered factual data, that St. Sophia’s foundation date be essentially revised. Incidentally, the director of this research institution, Nelia Kukovalska, also shares this opinion.
The idea is that the cathedral was built not in 1037, as it has been traditionally believed based on the Tale of Bygone Years (here is a quote: “Yaroslav founded the great city of Kyiv, and this city had a golden gate. He also founded a metropolitan church called Saint Sophia, which means Divine Wisdom.”), but in 1011. Because of this, the 35th UNESCO General Conference was formally requested to consider 2011 a jubilee year and mark the 1,000th anniversary of the legendary cathedral’s construction.
Naturally, to be officially approved by competent institutions, such a crucial decision should be based on serious scientific argumentation. This was furnished by National Museum research associates: Candidate of Sciences (History) Viacheslav Kornienko, who spent decades on researching the cathedral, including its famous graffiti, and Tamara Riasna, head of the sanctuary’s research sector, and other scholars. Here are some details so that readers can judge their arguments themselves.
First about St. Sophia’s graffiti. Mr. Kornienko announced his conclusions about the date of these graffiti (incidentally, he noted that as these monuments represent figurative art rather than a written language, they require an altogether different method of study known as epigraphy). For example, in his opinion, the inscriptions can be dated as follows: the year 6529 from the “creation of the world” (i.e., 1021 AD), then, accordingly, 1022 (or 6530), 1028, and 1033 (although very much damaged, these signs can be identified in general). This can be confirmed by a contextual analysis: one of the frescoes shows the so-called “eschatological calendar” (i.e., the calendar which enabled people to calculate the date of “the end of the world”), and, according to Kornienko’s calculations, the graffiti prove that the peak of eschatological expectations was a special Easter Day, known as Easter Kyrie, in 1022. This fact, as well as the general configuration of images, irrefutably prove that St. Sophia’s Cathedral was a full-fledged temple in the 1020s—1030s, i.e., somewhat earlier than it was believed in Soviet times.
The historian Tamara Riasna noted in her speech that in 1634, when Petro Mohyla was the Metropolitan, an inscription was made above the cathedral’s arches under the dome. It was an artfully executed text, a chronicle of the cathedral’s history, which says: “By the grace of God, this temple of Divine Wisdom began to function in the year 1011.” Petro Mohyla had archival materials at his disposal, which were, unfortunately, destroyed in a fire some time later. The surviving chronicles were edited several times and dated to the period three or four centuries later than the time of St. Sophia’s construction. In the historian’s view, the entry in the Tale of Bygone Years is in fact a figurative panegyric for St. Sophia’s because the inscription under the date 1037 says that St. Sophia’s is a functional cathedral.
One more argument: the famous Sermon on Law and Grace by Metropolitan Ilarion (which Kyivan Sophia researchers believe should be dated 1022), mentions “a great House of God and of His holy wisdom,” and provides evidence that Yaroslav the Wise finished the task begun by his father Volodymyr, just as the biblical King Solomon completed the deeds of his father David by erecting a majestic temple. Moreover, Ilarion’s sermon mentions St. Sophia as a functional temple. In addition, the Chronicle by Thietmar of Merseburg, an 11th-century traveler and religious figure, also confirms the existence of the metropolitan St. Sophia’s monastery in Kyiv – in which case the cathedral also existed at the time. Thietmar of Merseburg died in December 1018… The roundtable participants also cited some late-medieval documentary evidence, such as notes by Martin Groenewer (a German-born traveler and Lviv merchant) from 1584 and well-known memoirs of the traveler and diplomat Erich Lassota dated 1594, who bluntly say that “it (St. Sophia’s) was built by King Volodymyr.”
So it is up to experts to assess the veracity of the abovementioned arguments (incidentally, a certain part of researchers at Ukraine’s Institute of the History of Ukraine and Institute of Archeology believe that it is so far premature to revise the date of St. Sophia’s). Some of the roundtable participants expressed quite radical arguments, such as: “dating in chronicles is tendentious, for it reflects a desire to link a date to a ‘required prince or principality,’ rather than real facts.” But, still, let us read a fragment from the Tale of Bygone Years dated 1034: “And they (Yaroslav and the Pechenegs – Author) met at the place where St. Sophia’s Cathedral, the Rus metropoly, is now standing and where there was an open field at the time. And there was a fierce battle, and Yaroslav finally defeated them by the evening. And the Pechenegs ran away in all directions.”
So historians and archeologists have a tremendous amount of research to do. Let us not jump to conclusions because this is a very serious and important problem. It is not about a trivial or litte-known object, it is about our Sophia of Kyiv.
