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Historical informatics
Reference:

Boyar land ownership according to the complex of scribal materials of the Obonezhskaya pyatina of the Novgorod land: visualization in GIS

Gavrilov Pavel Vladimirovich

ORCID: 0000-0002-8796-1618

Postgraduate student; Department of Special Historical Disciplines; Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences

141032, Russia, Moscow region, Mytishchi, Shady blvd., 17, sq. 407

pashagavrilov98@mail.ru

DOI:

10.7256/2585-7797.2024.3.71777

EDN:

MBRVGG

Received:

23-09-2024


Published:

04-10-2024


Abstract: The article is devoted to the localization of microregions of the Obonezhskaya pyatina of the Novgorod land and the fate of ancestral land holdings. The subject of the study is the historical and geographical information of scribal books. The purpose of the work is to map the land ownership of the reconstructed register of Novgorod owners of boyar origin by analyzing the history of the Novgorod secular patrimony at the last stage of its existence. The source of the reconstruction is the scribal books of the Novgorod land on the Obonezhskaya pyatina. The property of the source base under consideration is the preservation of information about the old owners – the Novgorod boyars, brought together by Ivan III. An attempt is made to summarize the results obtained in the study of two aspects of the Novgorod land – historical and genealogical and historical and geographical historiographic lines. Special attention is paid to the composition of the owners of Novgorod time in the rural periphery. The present study aims to fill in the lack of data on the owners of the municipalities surrounding Novgorod. The method of mapping the database using QGIS 3. 32. 2. consists in visualizing the attributes of points: the source of information about the boyar, his Christian affiliation, an intermediate ancestor and the surname to which the character belonged. GIS capabilities make it possible to reconstruct the distribution of boyar family possessions across the Novgorod land. The distribution of boyar volosts is uneven: landholdings on the northern and eastern coasts of Lake Onega are concentrated, and scattered on the southeastern shore. There is the least written evidence of Boyar land ownership in the churchyards located south of Lake Ladoga. The land ownership of the Prussian-carpenter boyars prevails, the plots of the titled owners of the Slavensky and Nerevsky ends are the least fractional. The Olonets churchyard was the place of concentration of the boyars' patrimony of both the three groups of Novgorod and the archbishop. The indication of the Knyazhishche parish within the boundaries of the churchyard, as well as the name of Lake Knyazheselskoye in the valley of the Belaya River, is an argument in favor of the fact that the prince once had a representative office in the microregion. The novelty of the study lies in the characterization of the composition of landowners of a significant territory, including areas of ancient settlement.


Keywords:

Geoinformation system, GIS, Geoinformation data, historical geography, prosopography, Middle Ages, Novgorod land, Novgorod, Novgorod boyars, patrimony

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Introduction

The research is devoted to the historical geography of boyar land ownership in the Obonezhskaya pyatina of the Novgorod land. The historiographical line in the study of the Novgorod boyars is represented by the works of V. L. Yanin, E. N. Nosov, L. A. Bassalygo and A. A. Molchanov [4, 10, 14, 24, 25, 26]. The researchers have established genealogical connections and the circumstances of the "withdrawal" of some characters of chronicles, acts and scribal books. V.L. Yanin turns to historical and geographical issues, if necessary, to reconstruct the results of the last hereditary sections that managed to happen between the Novgorod patrimony. Data on the latter are found in scribal materials on the Obonezhskaya pyatina: there are books by Yu. K. Saburov (end of 1495/1496), Ladoga viceroyalty (1555/1556), A. Likhachev (1563-1566) and numerous extracts from the circle of documents known in the XVI century [17, 18, 19] [see Appendix 2.]. At the same time, an attempt to combine the results of two historiographical lines – historical-geographical and historical-genealogical could, as a result, give an idea of the location of the patrimony of boyar relatives united by belonging both to one or another end of Veliky Novgorod and to separate branches of genealogical branches. An attempt to characterize the territorial division of the lands of the Novgorod state was made by K. A. Nevolin [11]. The researcher localized the territories of the pyatins based on the locations of churchyards. The researcher's work marked the beginning of the development of problems of the historical geography of the Novgorod land with the involvement of these scribal books. Studies of the settlement structure in a different methodological way, already for "ordinary" villages, were carried out by N. N. Nordman, A.M. Andriyashev, M. V. Vitov, A. A. Selin, A. L. Gryaznov, A. A. Golubinsky, A. A. Frolov and N. V. Piotukh [1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, 21, 22, 23]. The territorial and administrative units known from scribal books have been studied. The authors of the publication of the Parish Register of the Sofia fee of 1576/1577 localized the tithes of the Novgorod diocese [20]. The mentioned works involved data on the names of villages or churches in order to map the boundaries of medieval spatial structures, which was achieved as a result of comparing later cartographic sources and information from scribal books. The "unit" of the map for such studies is a localized medieval village or temple, equipped with one or another "attribute" borrowed from a scribe's book. The role of such an attribute is belonging to some kind of spatial area: a parish, a parish, a churchyard-district or a tithe.

The reconstruction offered to the reader is based on the news about the old owners, i.e. about the reduced Novgorodians of boyar origin, which are contained in the scribal books of the late XV-XVI centuries. This work develops a method of creating a cartogram, tested on materials on the Bezhetskaya pyatina.

Methods and technologies

The method of mapping using GIS (QGIS 3.32.2.) consists in the location of a certain number of points with the same coordinates in a place corresponding to the location of the central medieval village: a significant part of the cemetery sites were localized by researchers of the XIX - XXI century. The result of the proposed work is a schematic map on which one geometric figure, obtained from a plotted point, corresponds to a "group" (parish, volost or borschina, according to the terminology of scribal books) of villages described by the formulas of the source. The number of points in the place corresponding to the medieval parish center is equal to the number of secular owners whose lands formed the district of the village church. The QGIS program allows to achieve such simplification without significant loss of accuracy. The preliminary work includes creating a database with coordinates and fields whose cells contain visualized attributes. Each point is accompanied by the following properties to be visualized: the document is the source of information about the Novgorod boyar, his genealogical and Christian affiliation, as well as his surname. To clarify the latter aspects, the works of V. L. Yanin are involved. Next, using the layer settings and the "Offset of overlapping points" option, attributes are visualized, which, due to the selected settings, form "clusters" indicating clusters of fiefdoms of different owners. Geoinformation bases are a series of cartograms compiled by the authors of the publication of the parish book of the Novgorod House of St. Sophia in 1576/1577. Information about the location of rural temples is used to ensure the connection of V.L. Yanin's genealogical reconstruction with the space of historical reality. As mentioned above, at the point corresponding to the location of the central rural temple (the "graveyard" of scribal books), figures are placed indicating the totality of the villages of one or another boyar. For example: "The parish of Smerdomlya Yakovlevskaya Gubina Selezneva on the river on Smerdoml in the Bogoroditsky churchyard in Smerdomelsky...". The "Parish of Smerdoml..." is "put on the map." Yakov Gubin Seleznev is the owner of the Novgorod time – his Konchan and genealogical connections inform the figure of the corresponding "attributes": "The Nerevsky end" and "the descendant of Ivan Sokira" [17, p. 220]. Information about the location of the Bogoroditsky Smerdomelsky churchyard is attracted by the already completed reconstruction of the authors of the parish register of the Novgorod House of St. Sophia in 1576/1577 [20, p. 107].

The results of the study

General characteristics of the fiefdoms east of the lake line. Vygozero – Ladoga Lake - Volkhov River – Msta River. An attempt has been made to identify groups of patrimony of old owners in the microregions of the Obonezhskaya pyatina of the Novgorod land. In order to orient the reader in space, appendices 1.1. and 1.2. are attached to the article, containing the names of the main physical and geographical markers of the studied territory. The regions of domination of large patrimonial land ownership should include the valleys of the pp. Svir, Oyat, Syas, the entire coast of Lake Onega, the southern shores of Vygozer and Vodlozer. The coast of Lake Onega was occupied by the fiefdoms, fishing and warns of the Prussian carpenter boyars. The Boyar villages of the northern coast of Lake Onega and in the valley of the PP were more "densely" concentrated. Vodla and Shuya. The fiefdoms of the southeastern part of the shores of Lake Onega do not differ in concentration. The property of the patrimonial way of life in the designated territory is the almost complete absence of boyars in the easternmost part of the central districts of the Novgorod state. To the east of the Volkhov River, boyar land ownership was interspersed with sovereign and foreign [Appendices 3.1. and 3.2.]. The specifics of the mutual location of local plots are the subject of future special research.

At the same time, the lands of some church centers of the Obonezhskaya pyatina were formed by the possessions of everyday people. Thus, the lands of Nikolsky's churchyard (Gotslav Volok) belonged to Ivan Dmitriev, the son of Rozshchepi [19, p. 17]. As well as to the east of the river. The boyars of the Slavonian End are the "neighbors" of the Prussian-Carpenter boyar group: the possessions of Nikita Gruzov, Ivan Nemir Shenkursky, Timofey Matveevich, and Ivan Ofonosov are mentioned by sources among the lands of the churchyards surrounding Lake Onega in the same places where the lands of the Prussian-carpenter boyars were concentrated [19, pp. 63, 76, 90, 108, 115, 126, 173, 182, 187, 217]. The boyars of Yakov and Spyridon Slizin from the Nerevsky end are adjacent to the parish of Timofey Matveev, the son of Maly Gruzov, within the boundaries of the churchyard of the Nativity of the Blessed in Ostrenichi, on the coast of the Svir River. Another neighborhood of boyars of the same groups is found in the Spassky churchyard, on the shores of Lake. Kletno and Nutty [17 p. 223, 224] [19, p. 108]. The boyars of the Nerevsky end practically did not own lands in the territory covered by the work on compiling scribal books of the Obonezhskaya Pyatina. Another explanation for the situation may be the low degree of preservation of extant scribal materials on this territory. General characteristics of the land ownership of the Konchan groups east of the river. The MST is given in an article in the collection Historical Geography. In this article, the distribution map of sources with information about old owners has been corrected, a map of the distribution of possessions by individual surnames has been attached, and the scope of the method's application to spaces from the documentary complex on the Obonezhskaya Pyatina has been expanded. About the fiefdoms of the boyars of the Nerevsky and Slavensky ends within the boundaries of the Olonets churchyard below. The explanation of the neighborhood of the possessions of representatives of different boyar ends within the boundaries of one churchyard is the subject of future research.

Noticed errors in the reconstruction of the Bezhetskaya Pyatina. This article publishes corrected reconstructions made on scribal materials on Bezhetskaya Pyatina. Luka Klementyev, a Prussian–carpenter boyar, a descendant of Dmitry Ivanovich, is incorrectly attributed to landowners of unidentified origin. The place of the latter mistakenly belongs to the irrelevant Dmitry Andreevich. Luka Klementyev was counted twice in the Mlevo microregion (No.69-70). The marker of the archbishop's land ownership (No. 102) was mistakenly affixed. The Yuriev Monastery should be indicated as the owner. The figures meaning the plots of Nastasia Ivanova Grigorieva's wife, Grigory and Ivan Kazimerov's Sisters and Ivan Kuzmin were removed from the Yegoryevsky point in the Osechne of the churchyard: they were placed unreasonably [6].

Land ownership of the Prussian-carpenter boyar group. Descendants of Ondreyan Zakharyevich. The Basilistines [See here and further Appendix 4.1. and 4.2. Geography of land ownership of individual surnames, see Appendix 5.1. and 5.2.]. The relative unity of location is inherent in the volosts of Oksana Mikitina, Esipov's wife – four plots of the patrimony were located east of the shore of Lake Onega. Separate enclaves of the owner can be considered possessions in the valley of the Svir river, where Oksana shared land with Ivan Ovinov, and in the Olonets churchyard, where the land of the owner was interspersed with the lands of the descendants of Yesif Zakharyevich. East of the lake. Kezadra, in the valley of the Olkhovitsa river in the Mikhailovsky Kostovsky churchyard, there was a collection of villages of the Prussian-carpenter boyars of different branches, among which there was also a plot of patrimony [18, p. 140] [19, p. 89, 170, 174, 186-187, 188]. Sheep. The Ovins' land ownership is represented by the plots of Ivan Kuzmin, Ivan Zakharyevich, Vasily Kuzmin and Zachary Ovin. The villages of Ivan Kuzmin were located on the coast of Lake. Osechno, Moldino and Olshevo. Ivan Zakharyevich's villages were located in the valleys of Tikhvinka, Polonukha, Belaya, Oyat and Svir districts, as well as on the coast of Lake. Shegrino. The villages of Vasily were located on the coast of Lake. Olonets, in the valley of Tifina and Medveditsa. Zachary owned a fiefdom in the valley of the Trestny river [12, stb. 72-79, 127-130, 250, 252-254, 281-287] [19, pp. 38, 86]. The peas. The boyars of Ivan Esipov Goroshkov and Ofimya's wife Esipova Goroshkova were located in the tributaries of the Mologa River – on the coasts of such rivers as Polonukha and Saragozha [17, pp. 226-227, 237]. The Posokhnovs. Andrey Posokhnov's landholding was located from north to south from the valleys of the PP. Sorogozhi and Mologi to the Tifina River in the south. In the north, the possessions of the owner are formed by plots in the valleys of the PP. Svir and on the coast of Lake Onega [12, stb. 213-221; 399-421; 445, 447-456] [17, pp. 227, 237] [19, pp. 64, 132].

Descendants of Dmitry Ivanovich. In the valley of the pp. Grigory Tuchin's plots were concentrated in the mountains and Volkhov. His wife Marya and son Mikhail Grigoryevich owned villages in the Mlevo microregion in the upper reaches of the Msta River [12, stb. 43, 77, 82, 142-148, 306, 321 – 324, 342, 350, 357, 368, 386-387] [18, pp. 22, 25, 32]. Yakov and Luka Fedorov are the owners within the boundaries of a group of churchyards in the tributaries of the Mologa and Moshny rivers. Yakov also owned land in the valley of the pp. Tikhvinki, Levochki and Chagodoschi. He also owned villages on the shores of Lake. Dry and Great. Luka owned lands in the Nikolsky district of the Vyshnevolotsky churchyard, the valleys of the pp. Syas, Svir, Shuya and on the shore of Vygozer [12, stb. 38-39, 276-281, 343, 384 – 390] [18, p. 139] [19, p. 7, 76, 114, 131, 162]. In the valley of the pp. Volozhba, Chagoda and Moshna were the villages of Kuzma Fefilatov [17, pp. 222, 228] [19, pp. 22, 53].

Descendants of Yesif Zakharyevich. The Glukhovs. Numerous descendants of Yesif Zakharyevich had possessions in various areas east of the shores of the Russian Federation. Volkhov and Msta. The possessions of the Glukhovs – Fedor, Alexander and Mary – spread over the entire territory of the Novgorod state. Marya owned plots in the valley of the Tikhvinka River (a tributary of the Syas River) [18, p. 104]. Fedor is the owner of a network of estates on the northern coast of Lake Onega, in the valleys of the Russian Federation. Oyat, Volkhov, and the same Tikhvinka. Alexander is the owner of villages in the valleys of Belaya, Tifina, Chernaya and Svir [18, pp. 28, 105] [19, p. 1, 47, 126, 138, 162, 250]. Alexander is the owner of villages in the microregions of ancient settlement, in the Olonetsky pogost district and the valley of the Belaya River [12, stb. 99] [17, p. 217, 220, 230, 236] [19, S. 8, 64, 130, 138, 172]. Here, its co-owners are representatives of two other Conch groups and the archbishop. The Cavs. The patrimony of Nikita Dmitrievich and Bogdan Aleksandrovich Kavsky is located on the Novotorzhsky line [12, stb. 63, 65]. The Berdenevs. Mikhail owned shares of the inheritance of the Prussian carpenter group, located at a considerable distance from each other: the patrimony stretched along the points of an imaginary line from the lake. Vygozera is the northern coast of the Onega Lake. – the valley of the Oyat River – the valley of the Tresna river at the Tver turn [12, stb. 162] [19, pp. 6, 39, 132, 162]. Nosovs. Bogdan Esipov is the heir to the plots in the valleys of the Volchina, Tifina, Mologa, Sorogozha, Olkhovitsa, Popovka and Tikhvinka rivers (tributary of the Syas River). The owner's plots were located on the shores of the lake. Ostrovenskoye, Karkomlya and Beloe [12, stb. 214, 221-223, 229, 284, 368, 402, 435-437, 456] [17, pp. 226, 227-228, 229]. The Grigorievs. The land ownership of the influential patrimony of Nastasia Ivanova, Grigorieva's wife, was located on the shores of Lake. Olshevo, Osechno, Ladoga, Onega and Vodlozero. The owner's villages were concentrated in the valleys of the pp. Svir, Volkhov, Pasha, Oyat, Olonka, Vodla and Volchina. Nastasia is one of the heiresses of the villages in the Olonets pogost district [12, stb. 89, 223, 279] [17, pp. 291-299, 301] [18, pp. 113, 81, 100] [19, p. 58, 64, 77, 119, 168, 175, 177, 251]. The Isakovs. On the southern shores of Lake. Onezhsky, Vodlozero, Videmer, Korobozha, Lyubonskoye concentrated the patrimony of Marfa Isakova. Its villages are found in the mouths of the pp. Oshta, Megra and Vytegra. A patrimony on the coast of Oz. Velikoye and Sukhoe is the site of Ivan Dmitriev's son Isakov Marfin's grandson [12, stb. 23-24, 27, 29] [16, pp. 242-275] [17, p. 228] [19, p. 29, 133, 155, 177, 184, 207, 212].

Land ownership of the Olonetsky pogost district. As in the microregion of the Belaya River Valley, the land holdings of the boyars of each grouping and the archbishop were concentrated in the Olonets pogost district [19, pp. 57-75, 65-75]. At the same time, it is not difficult to detect traces of the princely presence: if for the valley of the Belaya River it is the Knyazheselskoye Lake, then for the Olonets pogost it is the Knyashchyna volost, divided in half between Timofey Maly Gruzov (Slavensky end) on the one hand and Yakov and Spyridon Slizin (Nerevsky end) on the other [19, p. 63]. Burials in the microregion are dated to the X-beginning of the XI century[]. In the valley of the Belaya River, Archbishop Efimiy is building the Procopius Church, which was noticed by the authors of the Lyubytinsky archaeological collection [15, p. 39]. In the Nikolsky churchyard in Sherekhovichi, the lord's patrimony was located [12, stb. 1-16]. Thus, the presented evidence suggests proto-state centers in the valley of the Belaya River and the Olonets district [8, 27].

Appendix 1.1. Physical and geographical markers of the studied area

Appendix 1.2. Physical and geographical markers of the studied territory

Appendix 2. Sources of reconstruction

Appendix 3.1. Boyar land ownership: Konchan aspect

Appendix 3.2. Boyar land ownership: Konchan aspect

Appendix 4.1. Boyar land ownership: intermediate section

Appendix 4.2. Boyar land ownership: intermediate section

Appendix 5.1. Land ownership of owners of the same surname

Appendix 5.2. Land ownership of owners of the same surname

References
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The subject of the study is the boyar land ownership of the Obonezhskaya pyatina of the Novgorod land at the end of the XV – XVI centuries. The source base of the research is based on scrupulous collection of data from scribal materials on the Obonezhskaya pyatina (in particular, books by Y. K. Saburov (late 1495/1496), Ladoga viceroyalty (1555/1556), A. Likhachev (1563-1566) are used, as well as numerous extracts from historical sources of the XVI century. The research methodology is based on the use of modern technology of the historical geographical information system (software – QGIS, version 3.32.2.). The research methodology consists in placing points on the map in places corresponding to the location of the central medieval village (in fact, most of the churchyards were localized by researchers of the XIX – XXI century). As a result, schematic maps are obtained (in the appendices they are given with a high degree of detail and detailed legends), where "groups" (volosts, volostka or borshchyna, according to the terminology of scribal books) of villages described by the formulas of the source are represented. The paper rightly notes that the QGIS software package allows you to solve this type of problem without significant loss of accuracy. The geoinformation sub-bases of the obtained schematic maps are cartograms compiled by the authors of the publication of the parish book of the Novgorod House of St. Sophia 1576/1577. Methodically, an important result is the described opportunity to visualize attributes that form groups (called clusters in the article) indicating clusters of fiefdoms of different owners using the layer settings and the "Offset of overlapping points" option. The results obtained can be described as new, accurate and verifiable. It is convincingly shown on the maps and proved in the text of the article that the valleys of the pp should be attributed to the regions of domination of large patrimonial land ownership. Svir, Oyat, Syas, the coast of Lake Onega, as well as the southern shores of Vygozer and Vodlozer. Also in this article, important adjustments to previous data are given: corrected reconstructions made on scribal materials on Bezhetskaya Pyatina are presented. The style of work is scientific, the structure of the work is logical, the content fully reveals the problem named in the title. The article could use at least a brief general conclusion, but the quality of the results is beyond doubt. The bibliography is complete. The author has carefully studied the available historiography devoted to the localization of villages, in particular the works of N. N. Nordman, A.M. Andriyashev, M. V. Vitov, A. A. Selin, A. L. Gryaznov, A. A. Golubinsky, A. A. Frolov and N. V. Piotukh. Applications reflecting the physical and geographical markers of the studied territory, the historical sources of the reconstruction presented (the spatial coverage of the complex of scribal materials used for five paintings), as well as the actual maps-schemes of Boyar land ownership, have independent significance, and will undoubtedly attract great reader interest.