Poloni and Rutheni, Catholics and Orthodox Christians, natio and confession in Medieval chronicles of Eastern Europe

Abstract

This article analyses evidence from Old-Russian, Ukrainian-Belarusian and Polish chronicles of the 12th–16th centuries, which displays how confessional and ethnic elements interacted, when authors were constructing their representations about Poles, Russians and Ruthenians. Analysis has shown that in the Old-Russian chronicles confessional references were somehow effacing discourses of tribal and ethnic belonging, whereas in Polish and Ukrainian-Belarusian texts Christian references were not in odds with ethnic ones.