‘Выведеть свободна два мужа или мытника’: Typologies of Trading Taxation in Pre-Mongol Rus’
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irk-123456789-1918652023-07-10T21:14:33Z ‘Выведеть свободна два мужа или мытника’: Typologies of Trading Taxation in Pre-Mongol Rus’ Russell, A. 2022 Article ‘Выведеть свободна два мужа или мытника’: Typologies of Trading Taxation in Pre-Mongol Rus’ / A. Russell // Ruthenica. — 2022. — Т. 17. — С. 37-49. — Бібліогр.: 53 назв. — англ. 1995-0276 http://dspace.nbuv.gov.ua/handle/123456789/191865 en Ruthenica Інститут історії України НАН України |
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‘Выведеть свободна два мужа или мытника’: Typologies of Trading Taxation in Pre-Mongol Rus’ |
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‘Выведеть свободна два мужа или мытника’: Typologies of Trading Taxation in Pre-Mongol Rus’ / A. Russell // Ruthenica. — 2022. — Т. 17. — С. 37-49. — Бібліогр.: 53 назв. — англ. |
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© Ruthenica XVII (2022), 37–49
Angus Russell
‘Выведеть свободна два мужа или мытника’:
Typologies of Trading Taxation in Pre-Mongol Rus’1
The Rus’ raid on Constantinople in 907, ostensibly led by Oleg of Novgorod,
famously appears nowhere in the Byzantine written sources2. Yet to believe the
single record of the Primary Chronicle (Povest’ vremennykh let), the eventual
‘treaty’ agreed between the Rus’ and the imperial throne imposed logistical, but
not fiscal, restrictions on trading activities: the Rus’ were required to enter
Constantinople through a single gate, unarmed in groups of fifty men and
accompanied by a representative of the emperor, but were exempt from paying
what the chronicle calls myto3.
Interpreting this term poses several challenges, not least as those Greek sources
that give prominence to the Rus’ as figures of both trade and war gloss over their
precise fiscal obligations at Constantinople4. My immediate interest, however, is
less in the Byzantine dues exempted from the Rus’ at the imperial capital, but in
how the Povest’ presents this (lack of) obligations as a single, all-encompassing
term. Myt(o) cognates exist across the Slavonic languages, all with similar
connotations as a customs toll5. Lexical scholarship, however, varies on how far
its historical application can be specified beyond this generic conception: Izmail
Sreznevskii leaned towards a wider definition of ‘trading tax’, in contrast to the
more recent Slovar’ russkogo iazyka XI–XVII vv., which proposes that the due was
1 This article started life as a paper I delivered at a conference in memory of Andrzej Poppe, held at
Warsaw in January 2020; I am grateful to the organisers of the conference and to those who offered
feedback, in particular to Prof. Aleksei Gippius for drawing my attention to his article on the os’mik in
Novgorod (see n. 23 below). Where available, translations are taken from existing publications, and
given in the notes; otherwise, they are my own.
2 On this event, see: Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard, The Emergence of Rus, 750–1200 (London,
1996), 103–104.
3 Povest’ vremennykh let, ed. and trans. by D. S. Likhachev and others, 2 vols (Moscow, 1950), , 25; for
the corresponding English text: The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text, ed. and trans. by
Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor (Cambridge, MA, 1953), 64–65.
4 See, for instance, the De administrando imperio, which details how the Rus’ travelled to Constantinople,
but fails to attest fiscal practice: Constantine Porphyrogenitus: De administrando imperio, ed. by
G. Moravcsik and trans. by R. J. H. Jenkins (Dumbarton Oaks, 1967), 50–51, 57–63.
5 Max Vasmer, Russisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols (Heidelberg, 1950–1958), , 185.
38 Angus Russell
charged at specific toll barriers6. This latter view certainly reflects the evidence for
post-Mongol Moscow, when myt was collected by Muscovite princes at barriers
labelled myty, but is less definite for earlier sources7.
Put simply, this article asks whether typologies of myt(o) can be identified in
Rus’ prior to the Mongol invasions: was the term understood consistently across
Rus’, or did regional variations precipitate increasing specification around its
extraction? Here I seek to trace the interplay of bureaucratic terminology — how
terms overlap in delineating practice, and where they differentiate between forms
of income gathering — in a series of legislative texts that postulate pre-Mongol
taxation. I initially assess those texts frequently situated, rightly or wrongly, at the
‘heart’ of early medieval law in Rus’: Russkaia pravda (‘the Rus’ Law’), and the
‘church statutes’ attributed to the grand princes Vladimir (Volodimer) the Great
(980–1015) and Iaroslav the Wise (1019–54). I subsequently range geographically
further afield from this purportedly Kyivan centre. First, I study two princely
documents from Novgorod that implicitly follow practice outlined in Russkaia
pravda and the ‘church statutes’, one attributed to a ‘prince Vsevolod’ and the
other to Sviatoslav Ol’govich (1136–8). Second, I explore the evidence from
Smolensk: an episcopal charter supposedly dating to the establishment of the
town’s bishopric under Rostislav Mstislavich (1128–60), and a set of trade treaties
concluded between the town, Riga and Gotland in 1229.
Unsurprisingly, this corpus of texts is frequently marked by an (often
significant) gap between their claimed time of production and their earliest
surviving manuscript. To that end, much of the previous scholarship on these
sources has focused on their textual transmission8. In this article I aim to build on
earlier scholarship that moves beyond purely textual considerations, to instead
postulate possible fiscal practice9. Inherently this kind of analysis is therefore
6 I. I. Sreznevskii, Materialy dlia slovaria drevnerusskago iazyka po pismennym pamiatnikam, 3 vols
(St Petersburg, 1893–1903), , cols 219–220 (‘особый вид торговой пошлины’, ‘a particular type of
trading due’); Slovar’ russkogo iazyka XI–XVII vv., ed. by F. P. Filin and others, 30 vols (Moscow,
1975–), , 337 (‘пошлина за проезд и провоз товаров через установленные заставы’, ‘due for the
transport and carriage of goods through fixed barriers’).
7 There is little doubt from the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century sources that Muscovite myt — in these
cases almost always attested without the final -o — was collected along routes, in contrast to tamga,
which was extracted at points of exchange. See, for instance, a 1396 agreement between Vasilii I of
Moscow (1389–1425) and Mikhail Aleksandrovich of Tver’ (1368–1399) that absolves traders from
the usual fine (promyt) if they pass the myt (here the tollgate, not the due) when the mytnik is not present:
Dukhovnye i dogovornye gramoty velikikh i udel’nykh kniazei XIV–XVI vv., ed. by L. V. Cherepnin
(Moscow, 1950), no. 15, 40.
8 Most significant — especially for the ‘church statutes’ and the Novgorod material — is the work of
Iaroslav Shchapov, especially: Ia. N. Shchapov, Kniazheskie ustavy i tserkov’ v drevnei Rusi XI–XIV vv.
(Moscow, 1972). Shchapov also integrated this textual work into a wider study of relations between
princely power and the church in pre-Mongol Rus’: Ia. N. Shchapov, Gosudarstvo i tserkov’ Drevnei
Rusi X–XIII vv. (Moscow, 1989).
9 Much of this article is grounded in the scholarship of Daniel Kaiser and Ferdinand Feldbrugge: the former
uses legal sources to trace the shift from ‘horizontal’ to ‘vertical’ judicial relations in early Rus’, while
the latter synthesises a vast range of material on pre-modern law codes: Daniel H. Kaiser, The Growth of
39‘Выведеть свободна два мужа или мытника’:
Typologies of Trading Taxation in Pre-Mongol Rus’
speculative, and to some extent assumes that in their transmission such documents
point to how myt(o) was understood in pre-Mongol Rus’10. Against this background,
my primary interest is in asking how far a uniform conception of myt(o) can be
identified in pre-Mongol Rus’ — in essence, did similarity of language reflect or
disguise similarity of practice?
An obvious starting point in this regard is Russkaia pravda. While its Short
redaction fails to attest any fiscal agents, its Expanded redaction twice invokes
figures called mytniki as sources of judicial authority. In §37, they are invoked as
equivalent to two freemen in verifying whether stolen goods were nonetheless
fairly purchased at market:
О татбѣ. Паки ли будеть что татебно купилъ в торгу, или кѡнь, или портъ, iли
скотину, то выведеть свободна мужа два или мытника; аже начнеть не знати, оу
когѡ купилъ, то iти по немь тѣмъ видокомъ на роту, а истьцю своѥ лице взѧти…
пѡзнаѥть ли на долзѣ оу когѡ то купилъ, то своѣ куны возметь, i сему платити,
что оу негѡ будеть погибло, а кнѧзю продажю.
On theft. If someone purchases at market some stolen property, either a horse, or clothes
or livestock, then [the purchaser] is to produce two free men or the customs officer
[to confirm that he purchased the property at market]; if he maintains that he does not
know from whom he purchased [the stolen property] then the eyewitnesses are to take
the oath [on his behalf], and the complainant is to take his own property…if subsequently
he [the other party] recognizes [the person] from whom he purchased [that property],
then he is to take back his own money, and that [newly discovered person] is to pay
[the complainant] for the unrecovered property [as well] as a fine to the prince.11
The length of Kaiser’s translation is testament to the complexity of the legal
process in §37, but three facets of its provisions stand out. First is the mytnik’s
the Law in Medieval Russia (Princeton, 1980), esp. 3–17, 186–188 for the core argument; Ferdinand
Feldbrugge, A History of Russian Law: From Ancient Times to the Council Code (Ulozhenie) of Tsar
Alexei Mikhailovich of 1649 (Leiden, 2017), esp. 124–162 for summaries in English of the historiography
pertaining to the sources discussed in this article. Among English-language scholars, George Weickhardt
has explored how far many of these texts conceived of the contractual relationships underpinning
commercial activity, and how they conferred ecclesiastical jurisdiction, but does not explicitly investigate
trading taxation: George G. Weickhardt, “The Commercial Law of Old Russia,” Russian History 25
(1998), 361–385 (esp. 363–371); George G. Weickhardt, “The Canon Law of Rus’, 1100–1551,” Russian
History 28 (2001), 411–446 (esp. 413–421).
10 On this risk when studying early Rus’ law, see: Simon Franklin, “On Meanings, Functions and
Paradigms in Early Rus’,” Russian History 34 (2007), 63–81 (65–68).
11 Pravda Russkaia, ed. by B. D. Grekov, 3 vols (Moscow, 1940–1966), , 107; The Laws of Rus’ — Tenth
to Fifteenth Centuries, ed. and trans. by Daniel H. Kaiser (Salt Lake City, 1992), 24 (‘[the other party]’
on l. 5 of the translation is my addition). This extract and §39 below are given from the Trinity recension
(vid). §37 is attested consistently across nearly all redactions of the Expanded pravda: Pravda Russkaia,
, 152, 170–171, 189, 219, 249 (Trinity group); 284, 304 (Pushkin group); 332, 350, 375 (Karamzin
group). The Synodal redaction reiterates the importance of witnesses being present at the point of
exchange (‘…видокомъ на тьргоу на ротоу…’, ‘an eyewitness at the market is to take the oath’ [my
emphases]): Pravda Russkaia, , 125. The so-called ‘Abbreviated’ pravda includes the stipulation
around mytniki, but frames it in terms of purchase rather than theft (‘Ѡ купли’, ‘On purchase’): Pravda
Russkaia, , 269. For a summary of the relationship between the groups and recensions of the Expanded
pravda, see: Kaiser, Growth, 45.
40 Angus Russell
position at the point of exchange, as a valid witness to the goods’ sale: if the mytnik
is absent, the purchaser must present two freemen to vouch for the sale. The act of
exchange is hence made the concern of others, imbued with a degree of ‘public’
interest — in this case overlapping with the ‘private’ interest of the purchaser in
ensuring they are not labelled a thief. Second is the value difference between the
testamentary evidence given by the mytnik and the freemen. Evidently the mytnik’s
word carried greater weight, implying some form of social hierarchy in favour of
the fiscal agent. Third is destination of the fine (prodazh(a)) levied on those who
were subsequently identified as the original seller: it is granted uniquely to the
prince. At first glance, therefore, §37 posits a clear interplay — albeit a loose
one — between exchange and the prince, modulated by the mytnik. There is,
however, no indication that the mytnik was a princely appointee, merely that they
enjoyed a degree of authority beyond the accepted norm. In this sense, the mytniki
in §37 exemplify the shift away from the strictly ‘horizontal’, or dyadic, legal
relations that epitomised the Short redaction of Russkaia pravda: the Expanded
redaction reveals judicial process alongside the desired result12.
The mytnik is attested again in §39 of the Expanded redaction, on this occasion
in the context of confrontment (svod), the practical means of recovering stolen
goods; the claimant to the property would successively seek out and question its
previous owners, until the thief was identified13. §39, however, limits the
geographical extent of this process:
А и своѥгѡ города в чюжю землю свѡда нѣтуть, но тако же вывести
ѥму послухи любо мытника, передъ кимь же купивше…
Also on confrontment. And the confrontment is not to proceed from one’s own town
into another district, but [the accused] is to present witnesses or the customs officer
before whom he purchased [the property in question]…14
If the svod is unsuccessful, therefore, the mytnik is again invoked to verify the
original transaction, if an unidentified number of witnesses (poslukhi) could not
do so. §39 implies even more clearly than §37 that the mytnik was not merely
found at the market, but was intimately involved in the transaction: transactions
were to be conducted before them, feasibly so that some kind of due could be
applied. But who was this mytnik, and who had the right to appoint them? Did they
charge a defined due labelled myt(o), or did they enjoy wider fiscal authority?
12 S. V. Iushkov, Russkaia Pravda: proizkhozhdenie, istochniki, ee znachenie (Moscow, 1950), 329; Kaiser,
Growth, 83.
13 On this process for recovering stolen goods, see: Kaiser, Growth, 82–85; Feldbrugge, History, 442–446;
Weickhardt, “Commercial Law,” 366.
14 Pravda Russkaia, , 108; Laws of Rus’, 24. As for §37, the formulation is consistent across the recensions
of the Expanded redaction published by Grekov: Pravda Russkaia, , 126, 153, 171, 190, 220, 250
(Trinity group); 285, 305 (Pushkin group); 332, 350, 375 (Karamzin group). It is, however, absent from
the ‘Abbreviated’ pravda: Pravda Russkaia, , 270.
41‘Выведеть свободна два мужа или мытника’:
Typologies of Trading Taxation in Pre-Mongol Rus’
Regardless of how far ecclesiastical input is admitted in Russkaia pravda15, it
is in legal texts explicitly concerned with church rights and income that some of
these questions are most immediately addressed. In principle, a tithe (desiatina)
was first granted to the Rus’ church in the years following Vladimir’s conversion
to Christianity. It is first mentioned in the 996 entry of the Povest’ vremennykh let,
which records that Vladimir granted income to the church of the Mother of God
at Kyiv — a church so associated with the tithe that it was eventually named in its
honour16. After the church had been completed, he is said to have instructed: ‘даю
церкви сей святѣй Богородици от имѣньӕ моего и от градъ моихъ десятую
часть’17. In contrast to these comparatively general sources of tithe — from his
property and from towns — the two so-called ‘church statutes’, attributed to
Vladimir and his eventual successor Iaroslav, detail how the income was calculated
in practice. As for Russkaia pravda, however, both documents exist only in much
later manuscript traditions: the earliest copy of the Vladimir statute dates to the
fourteenth century, and to the fifteenth for the Iaroslav text18.
§3 of the Vladimir statute details the tithe granted to the church of the Mother
of God. The statute — purportedly granted in the prince’s own name — reiterates
the narrative of the Povest’ vremennykh let, but is far more specific about how the
church would gain its income:
…и дах десѧтиноу к неи въ всеи земли Роускои кнѧженьѧ ѡт всего соуда I-ты
грошъ, ис торгоу I-тоую недилю…
…and I gave it a tithe from all the Rus’ land, from my principality…from [the fees of]
all [cases that come before]…the court, and from trade [fees] the tenth week…19
While both a judicial tithe and a trading tithe are allocated to the church in the
Vladimir statute, there is an obvious discrepancy in their calculation: while court
15 Compare Kaiser’s view of ecclesiastical ‘association’ with Russkaia pravda to Aleksandr Zimin’s
negation of church influence: Kaiser, Growth, 44; A. A. Zimin, Pravda Russkaia (Moscow, 1999), 220.
16 Franklin and Shepard, 230.
17 Povest’ vremennykh let, , 85 (‘I bestow upon this church of the Holy Virgin a tithe of my property and
of my cities’, from The Russian Primary Chronicle, 121).
18 Kaiser, Growth, 53–57. For an outline in English of Shchapov’s argument that the ‘church statutes’ are
indeed derived from law codes issued by their eponymous princes, see: Charles J. Halperin, “A Soviet
View of Medieval Russian Canon Law,” Russian Review 34 (1975), 78–90 (83).
19 Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy (hereafter DKU), ed. by Ia. N. Shchapov (Moscow, 1976), 15; Laws of
Rus’, 42. This provision holds across most versions of the Vladimir statute published by Shchapov: DKU, 21,
30, 37, 43, 46, 54 (all Synodal redaction). Those versions that do not directly specify the trading tithe
from the market nonetheless affiliate its collection — as in the Povest’ vremennykh let — with centres of
settlement. A late fourteenth-century copy of the Varsonof’ev redaction stipulates that ‘…дахъ ц(е)ркви
тои десѧтину по всеи Русскои з(емли) во всѣх град(е)х’ (‘I gave that church [of the Mother of God]
the tithe across the entire Rus’ land in all towns’): DKU, 62 (replicated in other versions of the redaction:
DKU, 66). Subsequent redactions often include further provisions. The Volhynian redaction, the earliest
copy of which dates to the late fifteenth century, also includes a lengthy sequence of sources from which
the tithe could be taken — among others pogosty, villages, lakes, and rivers — while maintaining the
trading calculation every tenth week: DKU, 70; the so-called Trinity redaction (first dated to the mid-
sixteenth century), situates the relevant markets explicitly at towns: DKU, 76.
42 Angus Russell
fees are given by amount (every tenth grosh, or, in some redactions, every tenth
veksha), trading dues are calculated by time (every tenth week)20. Did this
difference in calculation also mirror a possible difference in extraction? Feasibly
the church delegated an agent to collect its share of trading dues every ten weeks,
whereas it relied on the prince to grant its share of (princely) court fees21. In any
event, the precise trading dues collected at the market remain unspecified in the
Vladimir statute: the tithe is merely ‘from the market’ (is torgu).
The statute attributed to Iaroslav, meanwhile, broadens the scope of the trading
tithe to include the metropolitan and bishops more broadly, rather than merely
recounting practice at the Mother of God Church in Kyiv. Equally, while the
trading tithe remains calculated by week rather than amount, in the Expanded
redaction of the Iaroslav statute the due is now defined explicitly as myt(o):
…дал есмь митрополиту и еп(и)с(ко)пѡм: роспусты по всѣм городѡм, I-ю н(е)д(е)
лю мыта къ ц(е)ркви и к митрополиту, а людем его не даѧти мыта нигдѣ;
ѡсминѣчье дал есми…
…I have given to the Metropolitan and the bishops [jurisdiction over the following]:
divorce [cases] in all towns, the customs duty each tenth week [is to go] to the church
and the Metropolitan; and his people are not to pay the customs duty anywhere…and
I have given [the church the revenue from] the “eighth”…22
The church hence accrues a double fiscal benefit in the Iaroslav statute. Not
only is it allocated its tenth of myt(o), but it is also exempted from paying the due
where it would otherwise be liable. The church is also granted — seemingly
wholesale — the proceeds of osminichee (‘eighth’), a due lacking precise
definition but otherwise attested in post-Mongol Moscow in relation to trade23.
20 Compare the implicit monetary calculation of the judicial tithe in the Short pravda: Russkaia pravda, ,
72–73, 81.
21 An example of how this may have worked in practice is evident in a set of documents relating to Turov
(Turau in modern-day Belarus), found in the seventeenth-century Kyiv-Pechersk paterikon, but which
Shchapov dates to the fourteenth century. This collection, which includes what Shchapov labels the
Pechersk redaction of the Vladimir statute (DKU, 72–74), also contains a document that allocates the
tithe from myto. This record (zapis’) stipulates that myto is to be collected from merchants on exchange
(torgovlia), at Turov and Pinsk, seemingly trading centres in the bishopric (‘а се десятая н(е)д(е)ля
св(я)теи Б(огоро)д(и)цы. / У гостеи в Туровѣ и в Пинску во всякои торговле мыто имати…’,
‘And this is the tenth week of the [church of] the Holy Mother of God. / Myto is to be collected from
merchants in Turov and Pinsk on all trading…’). It then specifies how the church share was to be
collected: a particular mytnik — perhaps a church agent — was to preside over the weighing scales at
Turov for the weeks before and after the feast of Peter the Athonite (12 June), and any such myto then
collected formed part of the tithe (‘а гость, котороï приидет на тоï н(е)д(е)ли, то все мыто ц(е)
рковное’, ‘and [any] merchant who arrives in that week, [their] myto is to be paid to the church’): DKU,
200; Ia. N. Shchapov, “Turovskie ustavy XIV veka o desiatine,” Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik za
1964 god, ed. by M. N. Tikhomirov (Moscow, 1965), 252–273; Shchapov, Gosudarstvo i tserkov’, 81.
22 DKU, 86; Laws of Rus’, 45.
23 Slovar’ russkogo iazyka, , 113. See, for instance, its attestation in the agreement between Moscow
and Tver’ discussed in n. 7 above (‘а тамгы и ѡсминичее взѧти, а ѡже имет торговати’, ‘and
tamga and osminichee is to be taken when [a person] is trading’): Dukhovnye i dogovornye gramoty,
no. 15, 42. Unclear are how far osminichee in this context overlaps with the os’mik attested in a charter
43‘Выведеть свободна два мужа или мытника’:
Typologies of Trading Taxation in Pre-Mongol Rus’
If this section of the Iaroslav statute is treated as a natural extension of the less
definite provisions in the Vladimir text, osminichee seems to form part of the
trading tithe. Yet regardless of how the due is precisely interpreted, the
differentiation between myt(o) and osminichee does suggest that myt(o) at some
point shifted from the catch-all epithet applied to Byzantium to a more fiscally
specific form of due, extracted only in certain circumstances.
Such specification varies in other versions of the Iaroslav statute. The Hypatian
recension, which also first dates to the fifteenth century, instead mirrors the
construction of the Vladimir statute, granting a ‘tenth week’ (desiataia nedelia) of
unspecified dues, while retaining the ecclesiastical exemption from myt and
osminichee24. By contrast, the Archeographic recension — similarly dating to the
fifteenth century — not only specifies myt(o) every tenth week, but also includes an
exemption from paying tamga; this latter due was only ever charged on exchange,
but the recension does not allocate any tamga as tithe, merely allowing the church
to avoid payment25. Meanwhile, the Short redaction, along with certain copies of the
Expanded redaction, ignore the trading tithe provisions altogether26. This mixture of
endings to §1 led Iaroslav Shchapov to conclude that the allocation of myt(o) was
absent from his proposed prototype of the Iaroslav statute, instead being fixed in the
fourteenth-century evolution of the text27. Yet this raises the question of what myt(o)
represents in the Iaroslav statute: a due on exchange at the market, or the toll on
transit to which it was applied in late fourteenth-century Moscow?
Demarcating practice at Novgorod suffers similar impediments as the
stipulations attributed — however loosely — to Kyiv: the limited sources are
matched by a significant gap between their possible date of creation and their
earliest extant version. Notably, the Novgorodian documents attest a tithe that
initially seems to replicate Kyivan practice, but which does not invoke myt(o). The
first is a statute attributed to a ‘prince Vsevolod’ of Novgorod, the earliest copy of
pertaining to road maintenance (o mostekh) at Novgorod: DKU, 149. Semenov argues that such agents
collected osminichee, which he perceives as a tax on the sale of goods (similar to later tamga); Gippius
instead reverses this analytical assumption, contending that the os’mik at Novgorod instead held
responsibility for a group of eight people, and only subsequently collected a due called osminichee:
A. I. Semenov, “Osmenniki ‘ustava o mostekh’,” Novgorodskii istoricheskii sbornik, 10 (1961), 253–
255 (255); A. A. Gippius, “K izucheniiu kniazheskikh ustavov Velikogo Novgoroda: ‘Ustav kniazia
Iaroslava o mostekh’,” Slavianovedenie, (2005), 9–24 (19–22).
24 DKU, 90.
25 DKU, 94; see also: Kaiser, Growth, 56.
26 DKU, 100–107, 110–115, 116–120, 121–125. This also holds for the Rumiantsev and Tarnov
redactions — whose earliest copies date to the second half of the fifteenth century — and the so-called
Svitok Iaroslavlia (‘Scroll of Iaroslavl’’) version of the early sixteenth century: DKU, 128–131, 133–136,
137–138. The truncated version of the Iaroslav statute found in the sixteenth-century Ustiug Chronicle
is testament to its later overlapping with more widespread ecclesiastical immunities (‘не емлютъ с них
ни съ из людеі ни мытъ, ни явку, ни тамгу, ни восмьничье’, ‘[will] not collect from them [church
people] myt, or iavka, or tamga, or (v)osminichee’): DKU, 139. Compare with the allocation of perevoz
and myt as tithe in §2 of a statute issued by Lev Danilovich, prince of Halych (1264–c. 1301), ostensibly
in March 1301, but the earliest copy of which dates to 1581: DKU, 169.
27 Shchapov, Kniazheskie ustavy, 280–281.
44 Angus Russell
which dates to the mid-fifteenth century28. While his identity has attracted
significant interest — with arguments in favour of two princes both named
Vsevolod Mstislavich (1117–1132 and 1219–21), as well as Vsevolod Iur’evich
(1221–1222, 1223–1224) — all possibilities pre-date the Mongol invasions29.
The document reiterates the tithe provisions of the Vladimir statute almost
verbatim, expanding its orbit in §2 to include the St Sophia church in Novgorod:
…и с(вя)тѣи Софии Новгородскои, и митрополитомъ киевъскыимъ, и архиеп(и)
ск(о)помъ новгородскыимъ ѡт всѧкого кн(я)жѧ соуда десѧтоую вѣкшоу, а ис
торгоу десѧтую нед(е)лю…
…[and] the Wisdom of God St. Sophia [Cathedral]…and the Kyivan Metropolitans, and
the Novgorodian archbishops…received [every] 10th veksha [taken] from the prince’s
court, and [every tenth] week of income taken from the market place…30
The roots of this text in the Vladimir statute are borne out in the difference in
calculation between the judicial and trading tithes31; yet unlike for Kyiv, there is
no corresponding Iaroslav statute to specify what dues may have contributed to
the ‘tenth week’ of income. Was myt(o) extracted at Novgorod from exchange in
the form seemingly envisaged by the Iaroslav statute32?
Such a discrepancy between Kyiv and Novgorod is further implied in a charter
supposedly issued by Sviatoslav Ol’govich in 1137 as prince of Novgorod, which
replaces an apparently pre-existing tithe with a newly calculated form. The
previous tithe had been granted from danii (general tributes), despite the church
already securing sufficient income from bloodwite fees (viry) and other fines
(prodazhi) (§2):
А здѣ, в Новѣгородѣ, что ѥсть десѧтина ѡт дании обрѣтохъ урѧжено преже мене
бывъшими кнѧзи. Толико ѡт виръ и продажъ десѧтины зьрѣлъ, ѡлико д(а?)нии
въ роуцѣ кнѧжии въ клѣть ѥго.
And here in Novgorod I found established by the princes who came before me a tithe
[given to the Church] from the tribute. I saw [that the church received] as much of a tithe
from the bloodwites and fines as [came from all the?] [tribute] into the prince’s hands,
into his storeroom33.
28 DKU, 153.
29 Feldbrugge, 155–157.
30 DKU, 154; Laws of Rus’, 59.
31 S. V. Iushkov, “Ustav kn. Vsevoloda,” S. V. Iushkov, Trudy vydaiushchikhsia iuristov, ed. by O. I. Chis-
tiakov (Moscow, 1989), 345–369 (358).
32 In this vein, the earliest surviving treaty between Novgorod and Tver’ — dated to 1264 — prefigures
the extraction of myt in fourteenth-century Moscow, namely where the due is collected ‘at the myt’ from
loads (‘у мыта…от воза’): Gramoty Velikogo Novgoroda i Pskova, ed. by S. N. Valk and others
(Moscow, 1949), no. 1, 10.
33 DKU, 148; Laws of Rus’, 57. The earliest copy of the charter dates to the second half of the fourteenth
century. The ‘[tribute]’ in l. 3 of the translation is my replacement for Kaiser’s ‘days’: see n. 34 below.
45‘Выведеть свободна два мужа или мытника’:
Typologies of Trading Taxation in Pre-Mongol Rus’
In the following section, Sviatoslav promptly limits the church’s tithe to
100 grivnas of new kunas from these specific fees and fines. §2 of the Sviatoslav
charter has otherwise attracted significant debate around the precise implication
of ‘д(а?)нии’, where the text is unclear; I follow Vladimir Ianin in understanding
it as danii, in other words as tributes accumulating to the prince34. Feasibly these
generalised danii included trading dues charged at Novgorod, if a share of income
was taken from the market as anticipated in the Vsevolod statute. Yet neither the
latter nor the Sviatoslav charter ever specify that this tithe was formed by
anything called myt(o), nor do they detail how such a due may have been
collected.
A similar issue emerges in the evidence from Smolensk, which points in an
even more different direction to Novgorod in understanding myt(o). This is first
evident in a charter attributed to Rostislav Mstislavich in his capacity as prince of
the town, feasibly dating to c. 115035. Establishing the town’s episcopacy,
Rostislav mimicked Kyivan practice in allocating a tithe to the bishop.
At Smolensk, however, a tenth of all fairly collected tributes (ot vsekh danei) are
granted (§4):
И се даю с(вѧ)тѣи Б(огороди)ци [и] єп(и)ск(о)пу: десѧтину ѡт всѣх данеи
смоленских что сѧ в них сходит истых [к]ун, кромѣ продажи, и кромѣ виры, и кромѣ
полюдь ӕ.
And I [hereby] give to the Holy Mother of God and the bishop: a tenth from all genuine
Smolensk tribute payments that are collected [for my treasury], except those monies that
derive from fines, bloodwite payments, and the prince’s circuit collection drives36.
This contrasts in two respects with practice postulated elsewhere. First, the
allocation of vse dani mirrors the terminology used in Sviatoslav’s charter for pre-
existing income at Novgorod, but at Smolensk it is bloodwite payments (viry) and
fines (prodazhi) that are purportedly excluded. Second, Rostislav does not follow
the distinction made in the Kyivan ‘church statutes’, nor in the Vsevolod statute
following them, between judicial and trading tithes: shares of the tithe are all
included under vse dani.
Most instructive in the Rostislav charter, however, is not the overarching grant of
tithe in §4, but the list of dues collected from different locations in the bishopric that
follows it. The first — and most profitable — territory is Verzhavliane Velikie, from
the nine districts (pogosty) of which are collected: 800 grivnas of dan’, 100 grivnas
34 V. L. Ianin, “Gramota kniazia Sviatoslava Ol’govicha 1137 g.,” Feodal’naia Rossiia vo vsemirnom
istoricheskom protsesse, ed. by V. T. Pashuto and others (Moscow, 1972), 243–251 (p. 244). See also:
Ia. N. Shchapov, “Tserkov v sisteme gosudarstvennoi vlasti drevnei Rusi,” A. P. Novo sel’tsev and others,
Drevnerusskoe gosudarstvo i ego mezhdunarodnoe znachenie (Moscow, 1965), 279–352 (285–287).
35 The charter survives, however, in a single set of documents dating to the second quarter of the sixteenth
century; on this and its dating to 1150, see: Shchapov, Kniazheskie ustavy, 141–147.
36 DKU, 141; Laws of Rus’, 51.
46 Angus Russell
of peredmer37, and 100 grivnas from istuzhnitsy38. From this total, 100 grivnas are
allocated to the church, in other words ten percent of the total sum, not ten percent
only of dan’; vse dani encompass all proceeds from Verzhavliane Velikie, not merely
dan’. Certainly, for most locations attested in the charter, the calculation is
straightforwardly expressed: the statute gives the amount of grivnas in dan’ collected
from a given location, and ten percent is given to the bishop. Yet when used in the
plural, dani seems to denote broad spectrum of income flowing into the prince’s
treasury, including more specific terms that appear to denote trading dues39.
This emerges elsewhere in the list. At Patsin’, the dan’ given v gostinei — the
precise amount of which is unknown to the document’s compiler, but which forms
part of the tithe — implies a levy on merchant activity, but is still considered dan’
rather than a discretely named due. A manuscript defect makes the situation at
Put’tino even more complicated:
На Путтинѣ присно платѧт(ь) четыри гривны, бѣ […] ници двѣ грив(ы), кор[ч]
мити полпѧты гривны, дѣдичи и дан(ь), и вира ЄI грив(ен), гость З грив(ен). А ис
тог(о) с(вѧ)тѣи Б(огороди)ци и єп(и)ск(о)пу три гривны без семи ногат.
In Put’tino they always pay 4 grivnas;…2 grivnas; the inn taxes [amount to] two-and-
a-half grivnas; payments from inheritance, tribute and bloodwites [total] 15 grivnas; the
merchant tax [amounts to] 7 grivnas. And the bishop and the Holy Mother of God
[are to take] from that 3 grivnas less 7 nogatas40.
Here gost’ is differentiated from dan’, but surely represents a very similar levy
to that charged v gostinei at Patsin’; in any event, it seems to be included among
the vse dani forming the tithe41.
At Kopys’, two further dues emerge relating to trade: perevoz (four grivnas)
and torgovoe (also four grivnas), which are collected alongside charges for
poliud’e (circuit collection dues) and korch’miti (due on inns). The syntax is
somewhat unclear, but the phrase ‘что сѧ соидет(ь)’ following the dues seems to
37 The meaning of peredmer is unclear; the term is seemingly only attested in this document: Sreznevskii,
, 904–905; Slovar’ russkogo iazyka, , 237. Mikhail Vladimirskii-Budanov considered it the sum of
various indirect taxes, a position followed by Marc Szeftel and Alexandre Eck: S. V. Iushkov,
Obshchestvenno-politicheskii stroi i pravo Kievskogo gosudarstva (Moscow, 1949), 390; Documents
de droit public, relatifs à la Russie médiévale, ed. and trans. by M. Szeftel and A. Eck (Brussels, 1963),
295. This nonetheless leaves the question of why peredmer is used only in respect of Verzhavliane
Velikie, rather than at other locations where indirect taxes were collected.
38 Also opaque, and again unique to Rostislav’s charter: Sreznevskii, , 1154; Slovar’ russkogo iazyka,
, 338.
39 Shchapov, Kniazheskie ustavy, 148.
40 DKU, 142–143; Laws of Rus’, 53.
41 The calculation here suffers from too many variables to be certain, but tallies if the various dues
following the defect are taken together, assuming that one nogata equals one-twentieth of a grivna:
Dues taken: 2 (unclear) + 2.5 (inn fees) + 15 (dan’ [?] vira) + 7 (gost’) = 26.5
Tithe granted: 3 – (7 0.05) = 2.65 = 10 %
On the coinage of pre-modern Rus’, see: V. L. Ianin, “Den’gi i denezhnye sistemy,” Ocherki russkoi
kul’tury XIII–XV vekov, ed. by A. V. Artsykhovskii and others, 2 vols (Moscow, 1969–1970), , 317–347.
47‘Выведеть свободна два мужа или мытника’:
Typologies of Trading Taxation in Pre-Mongol Rus’
include all four in the tithe42. Kopys’, which lies on the Dnipro in modern-day
Belarus, around twenty kilometres south-west of Orsha, passed from Polotsk to
Smolensk in 1116; its position on the Dnipro would seem to explain the presence
of trading dues, especially perevoz, which was charged on river crossings43. The
precise fiscal aim of torgovoe is less obvious, but its etymological link to torg
would seem to situate it at markets44.
Less ambiguous is the record for Luchin, which features the single attestation
of myt(o) in Rostislav’s charter:
…а мыта и корчмити не вѣдомо, но что сѧ снидет(ь), ис тог(о) еп(и)ск(о)пу
десѧтина.
…and the customs tax and the inn taxes are not known, but whatever is taken [into the
prince’s treasury], from that [sum] a tenth [belongs] to the bishop45.
Here myt(o) forms part of the tithe, and is hence implicitly included in vse dani,
as can be presumed for perevoz and torgovoe at Kopys’46. The issue is what
distinguishes torgovoe from myt(o), if anything. Perhaps I am making a mountain
out of a semantic molehill, and the compiler’s ignorance of how much myt(o) is
collected at Kopys’ is testament to bureaucratic uncertainty. Yet it seems odd to
use two discrete labels in the same text without an assumed practical distinction
between them.
Trying to pinpoint the exact location of Luchin does not particularly elucidate
the problem. It is tempting to locate it on the Dnipro, at the site of an identically
named village south of Rahachow (in present-day Belarus); Leonid Alekseev
instead situates it on the banks of Luchanskoe Lake, between Smolensk and
Novgorod47. Both possibilities would feasibly be situated along trading routes
either north or southwest from Smolensk, which may explain why myt(o) was
charged there. But what differentiated myt(o) from, for instance, torgovoe or gost’?
My suggestion is that myt(o) and torgovoe were functionally discrete forms of
income in areas under Smolensk’s control: while the latter was affiliated with
markets as centres of exchange, myt(o) was instead collected along trading routes,
as in later Muscovite sources.
Such an arrangement is borne out by the treaty concluded in 1229 between
Smolensk, Riga and Gotland. This agreement reflects its parties’ interest in
keeping trading routes free from tolls, rather than focussing on points of exchange.
42 DKU, 143 (‘whatever comes in’, from Laws of Rus’, 53).
43 L. V. Alekseev, Smolenskaia zemlia v IX–XIII vv. (Moscow, 1980), 164–165.
44 Like peredmer and istuzhnitsy, torgovoe is seemingly only attested in this charter: Slovar’ russkogo
iazyka, , 59. Iushkov argues that torgovoe was equal to myt(o) in Smolensk, but does not address
the latter’s attestation in the Rostislav statute: Iushkov, Obshchestvenno-politicheskii stroi, 389.
45 DKU, 143; Laws of Rus’, 53.
46 Shchapov, Gosudarstvo i tserkov’, 81.
47 Alekseev, 166–167.
48 Angus Russell
The two redactions of the treaty (Gotland/Visby and Riga) both attest myt(o), albeit
in slightly different forms. The earliest Gotland/Visby copy — labelled ‘A’ and
found in a manuscript drafted at the time of the agreement itself — makes plain
that myt(o) is perceived as a due extracted at points ‘in between’, rather than in the
act of exchange:
Всѧкому латинескомоу ч(е)л(о)векоу свободѣнъ путе из гочкого берега до
смольнеска без мыта. тая правда есть роуси изъ смольнеска до гочкого берега48.
Every Latin [German] person is to [have] free passage from the Gothic coast [Riga and
Gotland] without [paying] myto. The same right [holds for] a Rus’ person [travelling
from] Smolensk to the Gothic coast.
The drafter of the 1229 treaty evidently considered the primary realm of myt(o)
to be outside towns. The syntactical formulations employed in the treaty underline
this mode of extraction: the routes themselves are emphasised (‘свободѣнъ
путе’), and twice the treaty repeats iz and do (rather than, for instance, u or na)49.
All three copies of the so-called Riga redaction — the earliest of which, copy D,
dates to the 1270s — similarly express myt(o) in terms of iz and do50. Notably,
neither myt(o) nor mytniki are attested in those parts of the treaty concerning
activity at the point of exchange, where the primary focus lies on payments to the
weigher (vesets).
This view mirrors Leopold Goetz’s conclusion that the primary fiscal obligation
on traders at Smolensk constituted weighing fees, rather than trading dues per se;
in any event, there is no evidence in the treaty of myt(o) otherwise being collected
at markets, as would be expected from the Kyivan material51. Attending to
linguistic use in this way is supported by Elena Bratishenko’s argument that the
treaty was indeed drafted in Old East Slavonic by a native speaker, rather than
being rendered ‘clumsily’ by someone more confident speaking the languages of
Smolensk’s interlocutors (such as Middle Low German)52. In this context, there is
no reason to doubt that the compiler of the 1229 treaty was somehow insecure in
their knowledge of myt(o) versus other fiscal dues: Smolensk seems to offer a
qualitatively distinct form of trading tax to Kyiv, collected not at points of
exchange but along routes.
From this discussion it is evident that myt(o) was a bureaucratically flexible
term that was far from static across sources claiming their origins in pre-Mongol
Rus’. Despite the volume of extant manuscripts of Russkaia pravda and the
48 Smolenskie gramoty XIII–XIV vekov, ed. by T. A. Sumnikova and others (Moscow, 1963), 23–24.
49 Compare the altered syntax in copy B, dating to the late thirteenth century (‘до вашихъ городовъ’,
‘to your towns’ — not ‘in’ them); copy C, in a fourteenth-century manuscript, follows the model of
copy A: Smolenskie gramoty, 29, 34.
50 Smolenskie gramoty, 38, 43, 50.
51 Leopold Karl Goetz, Deutsch-russische Handelsverträge des Mittelalters (Hamburg, 1916), 280–281.
52 Elena Bratishenko, “On the Authorship of the 1229 Smolensk–Riga Trade Treaty,” Russian Linguistics
26 (2002), 345–361 (345).
49‘Выведеть свободна два мужа или мытника’:
Typologies of Trading Taxation in Pre-Mongol Rus’
‘church statutes’, in which myt(o) and mytniki are anticipated at points of
exchange, in the single document that can be confidently dated to before the
Mongol invasions — the ‘A’ copy of the Smolensk treaty — myt(o) is instead
understood as a due on transit. My intention here has not been to resolve this
discrepancy, but to admit its possibility and interrogate its implications for pre-
Mongol Rus’.
First is to acknowledge the fluidity of terminology across these sources.
If Simon Franklin has contrasted the ‘polyphony of rules’ in early Rus’ with the
threat of ‘random cacophony’, such polyphony emerges not merely between
overlapping legal texts, but within terms themselves: there is no obvious structural
unity53. But why should there be? There was no obvious structural unity engaging
the processes implied in these texts, either politically or geographically. While
myt(o) is uniformly associated with trade, in its concrete application the term is
marked by heterogeneity. Its use in the 907 ‘treaty’, generalising Byzantine trading
taxation into a single word, is not the same as its affiliation with exchange in the
Iaroslav statute, or its presence along routes in the Smolensk treaty: there was no
single typology of myt(o).
This sounds self-evident, and yet the dictionary definitions I invoked at the
beginning of this article risk conflating distinct fiscal practices, and more
especially distinct hierarchies of fiscal practice. To take Rostislav Mstislavich’s
charter together with the 1229 treaty evidence, myt(o) at Smolensk could be
considered among wider tributes (vse dani); no such inclusion is attested at Kyiv,
where the ‘church statutes’ explicitly mark off the judicial and trading tithes from
other income. Simultaneously, there is no explicit evidence of the tithe at Novgorod
being derived from a due labelled myt(o), or that this due was ever collected there
at nodes of exchange.
Recognising this variety of fiscal models equally entails allowing for
unexpected legacies after the Mongol invasions, when myt was almost invariably
collected at toll barriers along trading routes. Such practice mirrors not the
voluminous copies of Russkaia pravda or the ‘church statutes’, but its extraction
at pre-Mongol Smolensk. By tracing terminological change in the laws of early
Rus’, I have sought to show that how legal sources term their provisions can be as
enlightening as what they stipulate. Beneath the apparent similarity of myt(o)
between Kyiv and Smolensk, or the apparent similarity of trading tithes between
Kyiv and Novgorod, lay markedly divergent fiscal models that can only be teased
out by setting the texts alongside each other — and asking if their provisions really
were so similar.
Trinity College, Cambridge
53 Simon Franklin, “A Polyphony of Rules and Categories: the Case of Early Rus,” Legalism: Rules and
Categories, ed. by Paul Dresch and Judith Scheele (Oxford, 2015), 177–203 (177).
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