Smolensk Treaty

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The Smolensk Treaty was a peace and trade treaty between Prince Mstislav of Smolensk and Gotland and German merchants. It was probably closed in the summer of 1229. It is one of the oldest preserved contracts between a Rus prince and German merchants.

contract

Manuscripts

Two slightly different versions (reviews) of the contract have survived, of which three copies have been preserved. The oldest is in Old Slavonic from 1229 and probably a translation of the original text, which was probably written in Low German or, less likely, in Latin . The other manuscripts are later copies from the 13th and 14th centuries, four also in Old Slavonic and one in Low German.

content

In the treaty, the parties declare that they want to create peace and agree on mutual rights. Rules are made for merchants in each other's territory, with guarantees for free trade, but also for cases of theft, manslaughter, debt repayment and more. The German and Russian merchants are legally equated with each other.

The contract was probably made in Gotland. In addition to two envoys from the Prince, the Vogt of Riga and merchants from Lübeck , Gotland , Soest , Munster , Groningen , Dortmund , Bremen and Riga were present.

backgrounds

Trade routes through the Kiev Rus. Düna (middle blue path), Gotland (crossing of the orange paths in the Baltic Sea)

The Daugava was an important trade route between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea . It led from the estuary in Riga, founded in 1200/01, via Polotsk and Vitebsk to Smolensk, which was reached by a short land route, and further over the Dnieper to the Black Sea. There was also a trade route from Smolensk to the important Novgorod . There was already a Gotland and a German merchant court there in the 12th century . Around 1191/92 a contract was signed between the local prince and the merchants.

The settlement of German merchants on the Baltic coast on the Düna, the establishment of a diocese in Riga and the establishment of the Order of the Brothers of the Sword led to tensions with the local population and the Prince of Polotsk, to whose tribute area this territory belonged. In 1210 and 1212 there were agreements between Bishop Albrecht of Riga and Prince Vladimir , which also included free trade in Polotsk. A Ludolf von Smolensk acting as the prince's mediator was apparently a German who lived in Smolensk. After the prince of Smolensk had conquered the principality of Polotsk in 1222, he sent messengers to Riga to the bishop in the same year to arrange peace. In 1228 or 1229, Prince Mstislav sent the priest Jerofei and Pantelei first to Riga and then to the Gothic bank to make peace with the merchants there and to enable free trade in their areas. A copy of the treaty also mentions German farms in Smolensk and a church that already existed there at that time or were built soon after.

Text versions

Original old Russian text

  • TA Sumnikova, VV Lopatin: Smolenskie gramoty XIII – XIV vekov. Moskva 1963. pp. 20-25. online Latest scientific edition with commentaries and facsimile
  • SP Obnorskij, SG Barchudarov: Chrestomatija po istorii russkogo jasyka. T. 1. Moskva 1952. pp. 44-50.

German translations

  • Leopold Karl Goetz : The Smolensk Treaty of 1229. In: Ders .: German-Russian trade agreements of the Middle Ages. Hamburg 1916. pp. 231-304, here pp. 232-293. on-line
  • Konstantin Höhlmann (arrangement): Hansisches Urkundenbuch. Volume 1. Hall 1876. P. 72–79 No. 232.

Web links

literature

  • Detlef Kattinger: The Gotland Cooperative, the early Hanseatic Gotland trade in Northern and Western Europe. Böhlau, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 1999. pp. 195–211.
  • Karl Eduard Napiersky: Russian-Livonian documents. St. Petersburg 1868. pp. 405-447.
  • Stefan Rohdewald: “From Polock Venice”. Collective action of social groups in a city between Eastern and Central Europe. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2005. pp. 69-77
  • Jos Schaeken: For example in the old Russian trade agreement between Smolensk, Riga and Gotland (1229) . In: Journal of Slavic Philology. 60. 2001. pp. 1-8.
  • Jos Schaeken: On the language unit in the corpus of the Smolensk documents of the 13th-14th centuries Century . In: Sebastian Kempgen, Ulrich Schweier, Tilman Berger (eds.): Rusistika - Slavistika - Lingvistika. Festschrift for Werner Lehfeldt on the occasion of his 60th birthday (= Die Welt der Slaven, anthology 19). Sagner, Munich 2003. pp. 261-272.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stefan Rohdewald: "From Polock Venice". Collective action of social groups in a city between Eastern and Central Europe. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2005. p. 73
  2. ↑ Leonid Arbusow and Albert Bauer (eds.): Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 31: Heinrichs Livländische Chronik (Heinrici Chronicon Livoniae). Hanover 1955, p. 187 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version )
  3. ↑ Konstantin Höhlmann (Ed.): Hansisches Urkundenbuch. Volume 1. Halle 1876. p. 79