Names of Rus', Russia and Ruthenia
The term gradually acquired the meaning of the aforementioned dynastic polity itself, and also the geographic region of its heartlands Kiev, Pereiaslavl' and Chernihiv.
The name Ruthenia originated as a Latinized form of Rus' and was commonly used in Western European documents to refer to the eastern Slavic lands during medieval times.
[7][8] The Finnish scholar Tor Karsten has pointed out that the territory of present-day Uppland, Södermanland and Östergötland in ancient times was known as Roðer or roðin.
[9] Ivar Aasen, the Norwegian philologist and lexicographer, noted proto-Germanic root variants Rossfolk, Rosskar, Rossmann.
Rusia or Ruthenia appears in the 1520 Latin treatise Mores, leges et ritus omnium gentium, per Ioannem Boëmum, Aubanum, Teutonicum ex multis clarissimis rerum scriptoribus collecti by Johann Boemus.
It is a source of beeswax, its forests harbor many animals with valuable fur, and the capital city Moscow (Moscovia), named after the Moskva River (Moscum amnem), is 14 miles in circumference.
[13][14] Danish diplomat Jacob Ulfeldt, who traveled to Russia in 1578 to meet with Tsar Ivan IV, titled his posthumously (1608) published memoir Hodoeporicon Ruthenicum[15] ("Voyage to Ruthenia").
The Annales recount that Louis the Pious's court at Ingelheim am Rhein in 839 (the same year as the first appearance of Varangians in Constantinople), was visited by a delegation from the Byzantine emperor.
As for the Rus, they live on an island ... that takes three days to walk round and is covered with thick undergrowth and forests; it is most unhealthy...
Sources written in Latin routinely confused the Rus' with the Rugii, an ancient East Germanic tribe related to the Goths.
Olga of Kiev, for instance, was called "queen of the Rugii" (regina Rugorum) in the Lotharingian Chronicle compiled by the anonymous continuator of Regino of Prüm.
George Vernadsky has suggested a derivation from the Roxolani or from the Aryan term ronsa[verification needed] (moisture, water).
Danilevskiy suggests that the Rus' were originally not a nation but a social class, which can explain the irregularities in the Primary Chronicle and the lack of early non-Slavic sources.
[23] Initially, the Rus' lands referred only to the Middle Dnieper region centered on Kiev, and forming a triangle with Pereiaslav, and Chernihiv.
[1][24][25] The 12th century chroniclers "record princes from Vladimir–Suzdal’ in the Northeast, Novgorod in the North, and Galicia–Volhynia in the Southwest, among others, as going to the Rus’ Land when Kiev is meant.
In the 14th–16th centuries most of northeastern Rus' principalities were united under the power of the Grand Duchy of Moscow,[26] once a part of Vladimir-Suzdal, and formed a large state.
[33] In the following century Russia co-existed with the old name Rus' and appeared in an inscription on the western portal of the Transfiguration Cathedral of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery in Yaroslavl (1515), on the icon case of the Theotokos of Vladimir (1514), in the work by Maximus the Greek,[34] the Russian Chronograph written by Dosifei Toporkov (?–1543/44[35]) in 1516–22 and in other sources.
[citation needed] Later, Rus' — in the Russian language specifically — evolved into the Byzantine-influenced form, Rossiya (Russia is Ῥωσσία (Rhōssía) in Greek).
[citation needed] In 1547, Ivan IV assumed the title of "Tsar and Grand Duke of all Rus'" (Царь и Великий князь всея Руси) and was crowned on 16 January,[37] thereby proclaiming the Tsardom of Russia, or "the Great Russian Tsardom", as it was called in the coronation document,[38] by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Jeremiah II[39][40] and in numerous official texts,[41][42][43][44][45][46] but the state partly remained referred to as Moscovia (English: Muscovy) throughout Europe, predominantly in its Catholic part, though this Latin version of the term was never used in Russia, instead it was referred as Moscow State (Russian: Московское государство.
[57] Pointing to the difference between Latin and Russian names, French captain Jacques Margeret, who served in Russia and left a detailed description of L'Empire de Russie of the early 17th century that was presented to King Henry IV, stated that foreigners make "a mistake when they call them Muscovites and not Russians.
[63] The Gesta Hungarorum (c. 1280) stated that the Carpathian mountains between Hungary and Halych were situated in finibus Ruthenie ("on the borders of Ruthenia").
[63] Galicia–Volhynia declined by mid-14th century due to the Galicia–Volhynia Wars after the poisoning of king Yuri II Boleslav by local Ruthenian nobles in 1340.
Iohannes Victiensis Liber (page 218) records the death of Boleslav as Hoc anno rex Ruthenorum moritur (...) ("In that year the king of the Ruthenians died (...)").
On the other hand, the southwestern territories of former Kievan Rus' would undergo Polonisation and experience the 1596 Union of Brest, leading to the creation of the Ruthenian Uniate Church (Belarusian: Руская Уніяцкая Царква; Ukrainian: Руська Унійна Церква; Latin: Ecclesia Ruthena unita; Polish: Ruski Kościół Unicki).
