Status of the Novgorodian Annals in the 1110s — the Early 1130s

The author discusses the status of the Novgorodian annals in the late 1110s — the early 1130s. According to Aleksey Gippius, one author kept the annals from 1115 to 1132, and he was a princely annalist (as opposed to archiepiscopal annalists who continued his work in the 1130s and later). Mikhail Pechnikov suggested an alternative hypothesis: the annalist of 1115—1132 worked in Antonii’s Monastery of the Nativity of St Mary near Novgorod. The present paper suggests new case in support of Pechnikov’s hypothesis. First of all, it is argued that five notes on Antonii’s Monastery and it founder, St Antonii “of Rome”, are not later additions and must be attributed to the annalist active in the late 1110s — the early 1130s. Secondly, the very concept of “princely annalistic writing” is questioned.