The chroniclers of medieval Rus were monks, who celebrated the divine services of the Byzantine church throughout every day. This study is the first to analyze how these rituals shaped their writing of the Rus Primary Chronicle, the first written history of the East Slavs. During the eleventh century, chroniclers in Kiev learned about the conversion of the Roman Empire by celebrating a series of distinctively Byzantine liturgical feasts. When the services concluded, and the clerics sought to compose a native history for their own people, they instinctively drew on the sacred stories that they sang at church. The result was a myth of Christian origins for Rus - a myth promulgated even today by the Russian government - which reproduced the Christian origins myth of the Byzantine Empire. The book uncovers this ritual subtext and reconstructs the intricate web of liturgical narratives that underlie this foundational text of pre-modern Slavic civilization.

Winner, 2020 W. Bruce Lincoln Book Prize, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

Winner, 2020 Ecclesiastical History Society Book Prize

‘It is hard to over-emphasize just what a tour de force this is.’

Nadieszda Kizenko Source: The Russian Review

‘… Sean Griffin’s excellent new study, The Liturgical Past in Byzantium and Early Rus, reveals just how complex, vital, revolutionary, and central this particular event - the Christianization of the Eastern Slavic peoples - was to the self-understanding and self-representation of Kiev’s ruling elite.’

Patrick Lally Michelson Source: Slavic Review

‘The focus of Sean Griffin’s book is a medieval chronicle and its sources. However, the subject resonates beyond its time.’

Simon Franklin Source: Los Angeles Review of Books

‘… there is no doubt that this book brings fresh insights and a powerful approach to the understanding of history writing in Rus’. This is a sharply argued contribution to Byzantine and Rus cultural and intellectual history that will deservedly be cited for decades to come.’

Florin Curta Source: Medieval Encounters

‘Griffin’s contribution has definitively inserted liturgy into the list of core sources for future studies of the medieval Slavic world, and provides a solid methodological starting point for future reflection on the topic.’

Nina Glibetić Source: Speculum

‘… an excellent study of specific aspects of liturgy in early Rus, and, in particular, the role of worship in the development of a myth of East Slavic Christian origins. Sean Griffin demonstrates a solid command of the most recent scholarship in the field and does so with an engaging style.’

Peter Galadza Source: Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies