Christian scribe or buffoon? To the question of the social status of the author of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”

The problem of the authorship of the ancient Russian poem “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” has been the subject of debate in the scientific community for several centuries. Despite the great interest of researchers in this topic, at present not only has the identity of the author of “The Tale” not been reliably established, but there is also no single consolidated opinion about what social group he belonged to. In the course of the study, special methods of cognition were used (historical-analytical and problem-chronological). The materials that form the basis of the study were studied and analyzed taking into account the chronology of events, the need to obtain historical information from the studied scientific sources. When comparing various theoretical views on the analyzed problems, the method of comparative-retrospective analysis was used. The study presents a historiographical and source study analysis of the problem. The author has consistently refuted the hypotheses that the author of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign was an ancient Russian Orthodox clergyman (the scribe Timofey, hegumen Moses, etc.), one of the warriors who escaped with Prince Igor Svyatoslavich from captivity (the Polovtsian Ivlar, a certain son of the thousand-man Raguil Dobrynich, or Raguil Dobrynich himself, a certain philologist-falsifier of the second half of the 18th century. Based on the analysis of the text of the poem The Tale of Igor’s Campaign, descriptions of the campaign of Prince Igor Svyatoslavich in 1185 from the Laurentian, Ipatiev, Voskresensk and Novgorod Fourth Chronicles, excerpts from several teachings against paganism of the second half of the 12th century, as well as graffiti mentioning the singer Boyan on the wall of St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, an original hypothesis about the social status of the author of the poem in the Old Russian society of the second half of the 12th century. As a result of the study, it was concluded that at present it is not possible to establish the identity of the author of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”, but it can be assumed that he was a buffoon poet who professed Christianity, but at the same time actively used pagan themes in his works. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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