Gertrude Psalter (Egbert Psalter / Codex Gertrudianus)
Psalterium Egberti / Codex Gertrudianus
Domine Iesu Christe, suscipe orationem meam et filii mei Petri [Yaropolk].
Our renderingLord Jesus Christ, receive my prayer and that of my son Peter [Yaropolk].
What it is
This is the personal prayer book of Gertrude of Poland (c. 1025-1108), consort of Kievan Grand Prince Iziaslav I Yaroslavych and thus a member of the Rurikid household. She took the lavishly illuminated Egbert Psalter (created c. 980 at Reichenau for Archbishop Egbert of Trier) to Kiev as a family relic, then between 1078 and 1086 commissioned the addition of approximately ninety Latin personal prayers and five stunning Byzantine-influenced miniatures. Six of her prayers explicitly name her son Yaropolk ('unicus filius meus'), recording her maternal intercession for his safety and salvation. The manuscript now held at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Cividale del Friuli, Italy, is the sole surviving personal prayer book of any Rurikid-court consort and the only direct devotional manuscript in a woman's hand from the entire Kievan period.
Why it still matters
Gertrude's maternal intercessions, drawn from Western Latin devotional practice but used within the Orthodox Rurikid court, model a rich tradition of parental prayer for children by name; a parent today could imitate this form of naming children before Christ in personal daily prayer.
Kept alongside
Instruction to My Children (Pouchenie)
Поучение Владимира Мономаха
Vladimir II Monomakh, Grand Prince of Kiev (r. 1113-1125), composed this autobiographical testament-instruction addressed directly to his sons and any prince who might read it, preserved uniquely in the Laurentian Codex (1377) now held at the National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg. It combines practical moral counsel with explicit Orthodox devotional instruction: Monomakh commands his heirs to say the Jesus Prayer (Kyrie eleison) whenever riding without company, to perform nightly prostrations, and to model constant humility before God. Drawing on John Chrysostom's penitential theology and Basil the Great's asceticism-in-the-world, it is one of the earliest vernacular mirrors-for-princes in Slavic literature. It directly tutored the Rurikid line in the integration of princely duty with Orthodox spiritual practice.
Kiev Psalter of 1397 (Spiridon Psalter)
Київський Псалтир 1397 року
The Kiev Psalter of 1397, also called the Spiridon Psalter, is one of the most magnificent surviving illuminated East Slavic manuscripts: 228 large parchment folios containing the complete Psalter with 293 colored miniatures following an 11th-century Byzantine model. It was written in Kiev by Archdeacon Spiridon 'at the command of Bishop Mikhail,' patron and scribe both recently arrived from Moscow, with decorations added in Moscow. Representing the apex of late-Kievan/early-Muscovite court devotional book-production, it is preserved at the Russian National Library (formerly Saltykov-Shchedrin Library), Saint Petersburg, and was published in facsimile in Moscow in 1978. It demonstrates the Psalter tradition of the Rurikid/Muscovite princely milieu at the transition from Kievan to Muscovite rule.
Sermon on Law and Grace (Slovo o Zakone i Blagodati)
Слово о Законе и Благодати
Metropolitan Hilarion — personal presbyter to Yaroslav the Wise and the first native-born Metropolitan of Kiev, appointed 1051 — composed this masterpiece of Old Slavic homiletic rhetoric for the Kievan royal court, almost certainly delivered in the Tithe Church around 1049. The sermon contrasts Mosaic Law with Christian Grace using typology drawn from Galatians, celebrates Vladimir I's baptism of Rus, and concludes with a panegyric prayer for Yaroslav and his dynasty. It was both a theological manifesto for the independence of the newly Christianized Rus church from Byzantium and a devotional model of Christian kingship for the Rurikid heirs. Its use as a formation text at the Kievan court is attested by its careful preservation and repeated copying.