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The Masonry Churches of Medieval Chernihiv*VOLODYMYR I. MEZENTSEVIn the two centuries after Rus' accepted Christianity, a series of outstandingchurches was erected in Chernihiv. Several of them are comparatively wellpreserved or have been reconstructed in their original aspect. These buildingshave been the subject of a great deal of research by architectural andchurch historians, archaeologists, and art historians. Here I would like tosurvey briefly the results now available of these investigations intoChernihiv's pre-Mongol masonry churches.In the pre-Mongol period Chernihiv was one of the oldest and mostsignificant towns of Rus', long a rival to Kiev. 1 The land of Chernihiv,along with the regions of Kiev and Pereiaslav, constituted the political andcultural nucleus of the Kievan state. In these lands of the Middle Dnieper,which had developed earlier than the other parts of Rus', Christianityspread especially swiftly.When Volodimer the Great baptized Rus' in 988, Chernihiv did not haveits own princely throne. The local Severian princely dynasty had evidentlyceased to exist in the 960s under Sviatoslav. During Volodimer's reign inKiev (980-1015), Chernihiv, along with the entire Middle Dnieper region,was the private domain of the Kievan prince and was probably ruled by hislieutenant (posadnik).The chronicle records that in 988, Volodimer, having baptized the populationof Kiev and destroyed the town's pagan sanctuaries, "ordained thatchurches should be built and established where pagan idols had previously* The first version of this paper was presented at the conference "The Culture of KievanRus'," held at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, on 1-2 June 1987. I amdeeply grateful to Professor Omeljan Pritsak, who encouraged me in this work and discussedthe original version with me. I also thank Professor Thomas S. Noonan, Professor AndrzejPoppe, Professor Frank E. Sysyn, and Dr. Paul Hollingsworth for their valuable suggestions.1Boris A. Rybakov, "Drevnosti Chernigova," Materialy i issledovaniia po arkheologii SSSR(hereafter MIA) (Moscow and Leningrad), 1949, no. 11, pp. 7-10; Volodymyr I. Mezentsev,"Do pytannia pro henezys davn'oho Chemihova," Ukrains'kyi istorychnyi zhurnal (Kiev),1980, no. 1, pp. 107-112; idem, Drevnii Chernigov: Genezis i istoricheskaia topografiiagoroda. Abstract of Candidate (Ph.D.) Dissertation (Kiev, 1981), pp. 13-23.