Receptions of the Сoncept of “Yoke” in the Era of the Establishment of the Mongol/Horde Rule

Modern historiography notes that the term “yoke” was first used in connection with Russia’s dependence on the Horde in the late fifteenth century by the Polish chronicler Jan Dlugosz. The contemporaries of the Horde’s rule over Russia did not know the term “Tatar yoke” or its equivalents: “Tatar yoke”, “Mongolian-Tatar yoke”, “Horde yoke” – they are considered anachronisms. Since anachronism is a false or conditional dating of events and features of one epoch to another, their use in relation to the period of Russia’s dependence on the Horde does not seem quite correct. The author highlights the evidence for the use of the term in relation to the phenomenon synchronous with the establishment of the system of Russia’s dependence on the Horde. The broad cultural and religious aspect of understanding the geopolitical situation in Eurasia, which changed after the Mongol conquest, suggests that the concept of the “Babylonian yoke” was known in the Catholic and Orthodox worlds. At the same time, all the participants in the formulation of the image of the “Babylonian yoke” – both the Catholic and the Orthodox worlds – were directly or indirectly connected with each other. Sacred biblical plots and concepts were quite naturally used to solve the difficult ecclesiastical and inter-state relations of the thirteenth century. It is quite understandable that in the written tradition of the second half of the thirteenth century one finds traces of the borrowing of the idea of the “Babylonian captivity” from the Bible in order to adapt it to the realities of the Horde rule, connected with the activities of Metropolitan Kirill II, who led the Russian Church from the 1240s to the 1280s. Thus, the article examines the problem of the origin of the term “yoke”, drawing conclusions about the reception of this concept from biblical sacred history or ancient Roman history; the question is raised as to the adequacy of this term to describe Russian-Horde relations in this period. The author comes to the conclusion that the opinion about the anachronism of the term is refuted by the available evidence and allows further application of the epistemological potential of the concept when considering the history of Russian-Horde relations in the thirteenth-fifteenth centuries. In addition, the author reveals the mechanism of the emergence of various “Latinised” terminologies in the context of the international discourse on the relationship between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches and pagan, and then Muslim, nomadic society and the state.