Florin Curta, ed. <i>Medieval Eastern Europe, 500–1300: A Reader</i>

It is always admirable when a piece of Eastern European history is published and made accessible in English to a wide international audience. This applies especially to the region’s medieval history, which has begun to attract global interest over the last few decades. The lack of attention of English-speaking academics to the matters of Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages has manifested itself in many forms. For instance, Christian Raffensperger has demonstrated how numerous maps of Europe and the Mediterranean in English publications depicted territories east of the Rivers Elbe and Leitha as almost a no-man’s land.1 Florin Curta addresses the same problem in the present volume (xix), and it is one of the main reasons for the volume’s publication.As the title clearly shows, Curta’s new reader is a collection of translated primary sources from medieval Eastern Europe. This raises the question of what Eastern Europe is and how we can identify the Middle Ages in this region. He provides a broad definition of Eastern Europe that includes the territories of today’s Poland and Czechia, the Pannonian Basin, the Balkans (even the Byzantine territories), Kyivan Rus’, and the Baltics. He faced more issues defining the chronological range for his collection. He introduces the Slavic migration (ca. 500) as the beginning of the medieval period. However, he explains his decision to use 1300 as the final year of the selection by noting the fact that the different polities of the region more or less simultaneously experienced significant changes and transitions around that time. It is worth noting that Curta does not seek to settle any disputes about the geographical definition of the region or the periodization. His choices are shaped by the primary goals of this particular volume—namely, to fill a gap in historical studies and (for this purpose) to arouse the interest of an international audience.Curta has admittedly attempted to include the greatest possible diversity of material in terms of genres and subjects. The source collection includes chronicles, annals, histories, official documents, letters, inscriptions, reports, and travel diaries, and the list does not end there. The translations (made by Curta himself and other contributors specifically for the volume, or adopted from previous publications) are arranged into thirteen chapters and 118 documents. Although most documents correspond to individual sources, some include multiple works—as we see in the case of the lives of Saint Stephen of Hungary (186–90) and the birchbark letters from Kyivan Rus’ (285–87). In effect, most of the translations are extracts from primary sources, due to the extent of the selected material. In addition to translations constituting the main part, the book also contains a chronology, a selected bibliography of secondary literature, a list of sources, and an index of topics.The chapters are arranged following a composite method. On a basic level, they are in a somewhat chronological order, but there is also a thematic character to the division. While they generally deal with events sequentially (from late antiquity to the Mongol conquest), most cannot be distinguished by clear chronological borders. Furthermore, the chronological progression is sometimes disrupted by clearly thematic sections, such as chapter 7 on the economy and society and chapter 8 on religion. The internal structure of the chapters also often lacks a strict chronological order. In these cases, the sequence of documents is based on specific aspects or topics arising from the source texts. The thematic approach of the volume also means that some longer sources are extracted according to the distinct themes associated with the selected passages in different sections. All in all, abandoning the chronological arrangement in favor of thematic connections may be useful in a work that will (at least partly) be used for educational purposes. It is not the objective of the reader to crystallize the chronology of events, even if the book deals with material less known in a given milieu.Since a thorough survey of the content would surpass the limits of a review, I intend to focus more on some interesting elements. I have already mentioned the great variety of genres in the collection, but the texts reveal an even broader range of subjects. Some sources, especially those in the early chapters, demonstrate how the Byzantines acquired information about the migrating people of Eastern Europe through diplomacy. There is also a section in the third chapter that sheds light on the difficulty of the editing of such readers. The issue is related to the translation of gyula and künde as separate titles in Ibn Rusta’s account of the nomad Magyars (47). A recent study argues that the Arabic text, in truth, refers to an individual named Gyula and holding office as künde.2 Some carefully selected sources effectively demonstrate how some new powers in the region tried to build different narratives of their origins (105–12). The chapter on religion subtly calls readers’ attention to various hagiographic narrative tools, an understanding of which is crucial for analyzing saints’ lives as historical sources (178–92, 195–203, 214–23). Lastly, I should highlight Curta’s decision to include a section about the region’s literature and literacy. This chapter goes beyond the narrowly defined historical sources and deals with some interesting subjects, such as the argument about the Glagolitic script (281–82) and the use of Old Church Slavonic in Christian rites (283–84), as well as a contemporary analysis of a didactic tale (290–93). These examples show the richness of the subordinate topics treated in this volume, which will deepen readers’ understanding of life in medieval Eastern Europe.The volume primarily aims to be an introduction for students of history to the world of Eastern Europe. This goal has led to some editorial choices that have significantly determined the characteristics of the volume. The most noticeable elements of this approach are the questions at the end of each document that are intended to provoke and lead related discussions. Curta admits that he has deliberately tried to minimize his commentary on the sources. This may be the reason he uses intertextual remarks between square brackets instead of in footnotes. Intertextual remarks suit his purposes, yet they require a reduced use of notes; in my opinion, the translations need more commentary here and there.Although Curta’s edition provides excellent material for readers, the volume may not pass without some critique. In Document 7 (an extract from the work commonly known as De Administrando Imperio), the word Tourkia, used by tenth- and eleventh-century Byzantine authors for the land of the Magyars, is translated as “Turkey” (18). The excerpt is taken from the translation by Romilly J. H. Jenkins, so the choice of the word is not Curta’s responsibility. However, an editorial note identifying this “Turkey”—one of the earliest references to the Magyar tribes in the book—with the territory of the Hungarians would have been useful, especially to a student reader. In Document 23, Curta wrongly refers to the office of anthypatos as “provincial governor” (65). This became a court title in the ninth century, and the given source narrates some events from the reign of Basil II, Byzantine emperor (976–1025), long after the transition. Otto I of Germany is mistakenly mentioned as the suppressor of the Diocese of Merseburg in the introduction to Document 46 (123)—the bishopric was abolished rather by Otto II in 981. This mistake may be a typo or may have been caused by confusing the two emperors, father and son. Lastly, Document 23 (64–66) about the war between the Bulgarians and the Byzantines (ca. 976–1018) mistakenly refers to the so-called Skylitzes Continuatus as the source. The Skylitzes Continuatus is a term used for a section of the manuscript tradition of John Skylitzes’s historical work (Synopsis historion or Epitome historion), which narrates Byzantine history from 1057 to 1078. Yet, the passage selected by Curta is, in fact, in an earlier part of the Synopsis historion. However, this mistake does not come from him but from another volume, edited by Vasilka Tăpkova-Zaimova, that he has used for this document.3 The cases mentioned here are, in truth, small errors in comparison to the huge effort that manifests itself in the volume.Florin Curta has created an essential compilation for the study of Eastern European history in an English-speaking milieu. The book includes a well-composed collection of sources that demonstrate the diverse world of Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, and he has successfully defined the limits of his work, since a larger collection and a more extensive commentary would have required the involvement of a whole group of contributors. Furthermore, creating a longer book would probably not have achieved the goal of the project nor been of greater value to the target audience. I therefore recommend this volume to anyone who is interested in the scholarly exploration of the medieval history of Eastern Europe.

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