"Крест золотой митрополита": к вопросу о прочтении одного источника

ENAmong valuable sources on the fourteenth-century Russian Church history are the records from the Vatican Greek miscellany described by V.N. Beneshevich. M.D. Priselkov, who published the records, entitled them “V.N. Beneshevich’s Fragments”. Record Nr. 10 mentions a golden metropolitan cross of a certain Pince Dmitry. Priselkov identifies this Prince Dmitry with Prince Gediminas’s son Liubartas, whose Christian name was Dmitry. According to the scholar, Liubartas kept the cross of Metropolitan Theophilus of Lithuania after his death, and that means the Metropolitanate of Lithuania was abolished not later than 1330. The author addresses some disputable questions concerning the origin of Liubartas-Dmitry, his kinship, and the early period of his life. The research aims at investigating the validity of the assumption that Liubartas-Dmitry could obtain the regalia of Metropolitan Theophilus of Lithuania to check whether the records confirm that the Metropolitanate of Lithuania was abolished by 1330. The author concludes that 1) the data regarding Liubartas-Dmitry’s kinship with the Romanovichi lineage are on the whole tentative, and the type of this relationship is not precisely established. However, the recognition he had as a legitimate ruler after the death of Boleslaw-Yuri II and his participation in the lengthy struggle over the succession in the Principality of Galicia – Volhynia testify to the existence of these ties; ; 2) Liubartas had no authority over the lands under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitanate of Lithuania, so there were no reasons why the cross of the metropolitan of Lithuania could be handed over to him. As an alternative hypothesis, the article points to the connections between Liubartas with the diocese of Lutsk, whose head Theodore was the only bishop to take part in the burial of Metropolitan Peter.The author assumes that the golden cross in question was given to Peter by Pince Yuri I of Galicia on the eve of Peter’s trip to Constantinople to be consecrated as metropolitan of Galicia. Later, Metropolitan Peter could hand the cross over to the Romanovichi successors through Bishop Theodore. Keywords: history of the Russian Church, Prince Liubartas-Dmitry Gediminovich, Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Russia Peter. [From the publication]