Authors

Christian Raffensperger¹;  ¹ Wittenberg University, United States

Discussion

This paper investigates the relationship between the church and the rulers in the kingdom of Rus in the eleventh and twelfth century. Though there has been a lot written about both the ecclesiastical structure within Rus’ and rulership within Rus’ in the last two decades, the two are rarely combined into one attempt to understand their relationship to one another. And while Central European, or East Central European, comparisons now seem to abound, Rus’ is rarely added into those comparatives. The goal is to see the similarities and differences between the ways that these rulers arranged relationships with their ecclesiastical establishments. Was there a major rift between the Latin and Constantinopolitan regions? Or, given that the ruling families of these regions intermarried a great deal, were the rulers following the same larger playbook of managing the establishment of their church hierarchies. The polities under discussion here, Rus, Hungary, and Poland, in particular, have been divided in the historiography based upon regional differences, linguistic differences, religious differences, and much more. However, it seems time to consider them together to better understand a larger portion of medieval Europe; ideally in the way that the people of the time perceived it, rather than how moderns have constructed it.