Nikon’s chronicle (1200 – 1278)

Nicholas Zharkikh

Shortened text of the section. Full text in ukrainian version.

Other chronicles of the end of the 15th century: Typographical [PSRL, 1921, vol. 21] and Vologda-Perm [PSRL, 1959, vol. 26], Annals of 72 languages of the older (1497) and younger (1518) recensions [PSRL, 1962, vol. 28] – present the events of the 13th century in great reduction. It is not my task to find out how these abbreviations were formed.

Instead, it is worth looking at how the events of interest to us are presented in a large chronicle compilation of the early 16th century – in the Nikon’s chronicle (NikL), which in its older recension (M. Obolensky’s copy) is dated to 1520 [PSRL, 1885, vol. 10]. NikL’s extravagances against previous chronicle texts are highlighted in bold. Episodes that are not in older annals are highlighted in sandy background.

We can see that the text of the excerpts from the Nikon’s chronicle is densely filled with bold, even black. But the selected fragments, absent in previous annals, do not carry any new information.