As I have already said, the history of the study of the Russian epic as a whole is a too voluminous topic. And to sum up the results, to “close topics” in the manner of Putilov, in any science, especially in the humanities, is an extremely thankless task. It is worth remembering at least how some thirty or forty years ago Soviet historians declared that the Norman theory, which explained the origin of the Russian state by the activity of newcomer Normans, allegedly the Varangians of the Russian chronicle, was refuted.
At present, the purest Normanism of the sample of the report by Gottfried Müller at the St. Petersburg Academy of 1749 dominates in special and popular books about the beginning of Russian history as the last word of science.
At the end of the 19th century, George Fraser explained the common features of the traditions of the Old Testament with the legends and beliefs of almost all peoples of the Earth by similar ways of developing society and people's ideas about the world. At the end of the 20th century, Messrs. Petrukhin and Danilevsky explain any similarity between, say, "The Tale of Bygone Years" and the Bible with quotations from the latter - say, the same Varangians, brothers Rurik, Truvor and Sineus, who came to Russia and sat down in Ladoga, Izborsk and Bely The lake, it turns out, is the influence of the Old Testament legend about the three sons of the patriarch Noah, who divided the earth after the flood. As if Russian fairy tales are not full of legends about the three brothers-tsarevich, as if the legend does not speak of three brothers-tsars, who divided the land of the Scythian plowmen on the banks of the Dnieper - Kolo, Lipo and Arpo from the Scythian times!
Such examples are endless.
We confine ourselves to the history of researchers' views on the reflection of deep, pre-feudal, pre-Christian, pre-state antiquity in epics.
The first attempts to solve the problem of interconnection of epics and history began long before the appearance of historical and philological sciences. Back in the sixteenth century, the author of the Nikon Chronicle solved these problems in his own way, introducing into the text the epic heroes - Alexander (Alyosha) Popovich and Vasily Buslaev. It was he who first "turned" the epic Vladimir Krasno Solnyshko into Vladimir I Svyatoslavich, the baptist of Russia.
New generations have confidently followed in his footsteps. Thus, the writer of the "century of golden Catherine" Vasily Alekseevich Levshin wrote based on the epics "Russian fairy tales" - which, incidentally, inspired Pushkin to create "Ruslan and Lyudmila." In them, Levshin also identifies "Vladimir Svyatoslavich of Kiev and All Russia" with the epic prince. It is indicative that he calls the prince "Svyatoslavich" only in the author's preface, while in the "Tales" themselves he is "Glorious Prince Vladimir of Kiev Sun Vseslavievich."
Following Levshin, the first publisher of The Lay of Igor's Host, citing an epic quotation from Ancient Russian Poems by Kirsha Danilov, replaces the patronymic “Vseslavich” with the “correct” “Svyatoslavich” - the latter appears in epics almost in the 20th century. Finally, Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin legitimizes this identification with his authority - and after him it is considered a commonplace, almost an axiom.
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The curious remark of Vasily Nikitich Tatishchev, who, it seems, connected the old songs about Prince Vladimir from the "buffoons" not with the baptist of Russia, but with the ancient pagan prince of the same name, the ancestor of Rurik Gostomysl, who called Rurik Gostomysl, remained, as far as I know, unnoticed.
Even more interesting is the story of how the main hero of Russian epics acquired the nickname Muromets, by which he is now known, as well as a place in the host of saints revered by the Orthodox Church. The life of this “saint”, whose “relics” were recently pompously transported “to their homeland”, in Murom, the church dates back to the twelfth century. However, his life, which is significant and which even church authors admit, does not exist.
In the "Kiev-Pechersk Patericon", which describes in detail the life of the monastery in that very twelfth century, there is not even a hint of the stay of the Murom hero there - although the biographies of much less remarkable monks are meticulously retold on dozens of pages. However, it is not surprising - in the twelfth century, the Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Constantine was just baptizing the stubborn "Murom svyatogonov", using stone-throwing machines under the city walls as the most compelling theological argument.
The first news of the heroic relics in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra also does not call their owner Muromets. The ambassador of the Austrian emperor Rudolf II to the Cossacks, Jesuit Erich Lassotta, was the first to describe the remains of "the giant Ilya Morovlin" in 1594. Twenty years earlier, out of touch with the relics and the laurel, the Orsha headman Philon Kmita of Chernobyl in a letter to Trotsky castellan Ostafy Volovich mentions the epic hero Ilya Muravlenin.
Back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Russian scientists D. I. Ilovaisky and B. M. Sokolov convincingly proved that the reason for the transformation of Muravlenin into the peasant son of Muromets was the appearance at the beginning of the 17th century of an associate of the famous rebel Ivan Bolotnikov, an impostor Cossack Ileika Ivanov, the son of Muromets, who passed himself off as a non-existent "Tsarevich Peter".
Numerous local Murom legends linking the names of tracts, the emergence of springs and hillocks with the activities of Ilya Muromets, apparently were originally dedicated to the robber Cossack. Such "fighters for the people's happiness", from giants like Stepan Razin, Emelyan Pugachev, Vanka Kain to some Roshchins or Zelins, were the favorite heroes of folk legends in the Russian Empire. They were very often associated with - sometimes in the most incredible way - the names of forests, mountains, rivers. So, the river Kineshma got its name from the dreary cry of the Persian princess on the Razin plow “Throw me!”.
Needless to say, Stepan Timofeevich drowned the unfortunate captive hundreds of miles from Kineshma - by the way, and not in the Volga, as it is sung in a famous song, but in Yaik, which was not yet called the Urals. On the banks of the Kama, this or that hill appears in the eyes of local peasants as a heap of earth poured out of a boot by Pugachev. In the Zhiguli mountains, almost every stone is associated with the memory, if not of Razin and Pugachev themselves, then of their associates. And so on and so forth.
There are no such legends about other epic heroes - Alyosha, Dobrynya, Svyatogor and others - there are no such legends, and the Murom legends about the key that hammered from under the hooves of Ilya's horse, or about the hill that stood where he threw his hat, do not adjoin the epics, but to the robbery stories. And only later they were associated with the epic namesake of the impostor. The hero himself is much older: his name, as we will see, appears in Germanic legends and Swedish sagas in the XI-XIII centuries.
The cult of “Saint Ilya of Muromets” itself flourishes by the end of the same seventeenth century. During Nikon's Schism in the Russian Church, numerous pilgrims to the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra rushed to the relics of the holy hero. And here a very amusing misunderstanding arises - the Old Believers, returning, assured that the saint's hand was folded in an "ancient two-fingered sign."
The Nikonians, in their turn, saw the fingers of the saint, "in disgrace to the schismatic superstition," folded with three fingers. Finally, when the passions of the split subsided, the hand of "Ilya Muromets" was lying peacefully over the vestments with straightened fingers. Since everyone understands that any attempt to bend or unbend the withered fingers of the relics - in fact, mummies - would lead only to their destruction, there are only two explanations for this strange phenomenon.
The first suggests that in the Lavra, this center of Orthodox holiness, the unclean was having fun over the pilgrims (with the help of holy relics) - well, it was not the heavenly powers that scoffed so cruelly at the feelings of believers! The second, more commonplace - to him, reader, I am inclined myself - is that at the end of the 17th century the monks of the Caves had not yet firmly decided which of the relics belonged to Ilya Muromets.
While the Schism was going on, and the power of the Russian state and the Moscow patriarch over Kiev was still not firm, the Pechersk monks, some from personal convictions, and some from selfishness - led the Old Believers to the relics with a double-footed right hand, and supporters of Nikon's reforms - to those that folded their fingers "pinch".
Subsequently, in order not to kindle passions, relics with outstretched fingers were selected for the role of "Saint Ilya of Murom" - neither yours nor ours, so to speak. And with these relics of an unknown monk, some would-be “scientists” in the excitement of the “church revival” of the late eighties “restored” both the appearance of the epic hero, and almost his biography! And it was these nameless relics that recently moved to their homeland.
It remains truly only to pray to God that the owner of the "holy" remains during his lifetime had at least some touch to Murom. However, he, I think, is already indifferent, but the people of Murom received "visual proof" that the main hero of Russian epics was their fellow countryman, and the Murom authorities, secular and spiritual, are a good source of income, both from pilgrims and ordinary tourists. In the end, if Veliky Ustyug is declared “the homeland of Santa Claus”, and the village of Kukoboy in the Pervomaisky district of the Yaroslavl region, the “homeland of Baba Yaga”, why is “Ilya Muromets” worse?
The linking of "Saint Ilya of Murom" with the twelfth century is characterized by approximately the same degree of reliability and validity. Liasotta mentioned in passing that de "Eliya Morovlin" was a hero either four hundred or five hundred years ago. Orthodox writers quickly reckoned four hundred years from the time of Liasotta - and please, the twelfth century! That there were no exact dates in the legends heard by the foreign ambassador, and could not be, that, finally, the writings of the German Jesuit are not the best source for searching for information about the Orthodox saint - this, apparently, did not bother anyone.
The main thing is for the good of the church, for the glory of Christ. And truth is the tenth thing. Well, our contemporary Andrey Kuraev, who is ready to involve Harry Potter in the Orthodox preaching work, has worthy predecessors. And they were not the first - did not the pagan goddess of the Celts Brigitte (a relative of the Scandinavian Frigga, Odin's wife, and our Beregina) and the Alexandrian pagan Hypatia, who was killed by Christians, become Christian saints?
As we will see later, the main hero of the Russian epic was a “Christian” no better than these worthy women.
It is also worth noting that in connection with the cult of the relics attributed to Ilya Muromets, a very stable legend remained among the people that these relics have been found in caves on the Dnieper bank since the times preceding the foundation of the Kiev-Pechersk monastery by Anthony at the beginning of the 11th century …
This, in a way, created an atmosphere in which subsequent researchers of the epic traditions of the Russian people had to work.
