The Papal Letters

In 1248 Pope Innocent IV addressed two bulls to Alexander Yaroslavich, inviting him into the obedience of the Roman Church, offering alliance against the Mongols, and proposing — on the model of the union the pope had just concluded with Prince Daniel of Galicia — that a Latin bishopric be established at Pskov. The Life of Alexander Nevsky records that Alexander received the two papal legates, heard them out, and refused, answering that Rus’ knew sacred history “from Adam” but would accept no doctrinal teaching from Rome. This file sets out what the papal registers attest of the overtures, how the Life tells the story of the refusal, and the instructive contrast with Daniel of Galicia, who made the opposite choice.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (Right-Believing Prince)

The Setting: Rome’s Eastern Diplomacy After 1240

The papal approach to Alexander belongs to a wider moment of Latin diplomacy toward the Orthodox East in the wake of the Mongol catastrophe. The invasion of 1237–40 had shattered the principalities of Rus’ and carried the Mongol armies through Poland and Hungary to the edge of the Adriatic in 1241–42, and the papacy of Innocent IV (1243–1254) responded to the steppe threat with a sustained effort of embassy and intelligence — the missions of John of Plano Carpini (1245–47) to the Great Khan among them — and with a parallel effort to draw the rulers of the Orthodox borderlands into communion with Rome and into a common front (Fennell, The Crisis of Medieval Russia, 1983; Martin, Medieval Russia, 2007). The fall of the Rus’ lands to the Horde, and the simultaneous pressure of the Northern Crusades along the Baltic, opened the northwest of Rus’ to Latin overtures both armed and diplomatic; the letters to Alexander are the diplomatic face of that same eastward turn whose military face he had met on the ice of Lake Peipus in 1242 (see Lake Peipus, 1242).

The overture to Alexander cannot be understood apart from its immediate model. In the same years Innocent IV was negotiating a union with Daniel of Galicia (Daniil Romanovich of Galich-Volhynia), the most powerful prince of the southwestern Rus’ lands, holding out the prospect of a royal crown and of Western help against the Mongols in exchange for the recognition of papal authority (Galician-Volhynian Chronicle [Hypatian]; Fennell 1983; Martin 2007). The letters to Alexander propose, in effect, that the prince of the north enter the same arrangement.

The Two Bulls of 1248

The principal documentary evidence is two bulls of Innocent IV addressed to Alexander, both dated to 1248 and preserved in the papal registers of the Vatican Archive. They are conventionally cited by their dates: one of 22 January 1248 and one of 15 September 1248 (the bulls of Innocent IV to Alexander, 1248, preserved in the Vatican registers; Fennell 1983; Schenk, Aleksandr Nevskij, 2004).

The first letter, of January 1248, addresses Alexander as a prince of Rus’ and invites him to acknowledge the Roman Church as mother and the Roman pontiff as the vicar of Christ — that is, to submit to the authority of the Apostolic See — holding out the spiritual benefits of communion with Rome (the bull of 22 January 1248, Vatican registers; Fennell 1983). The pope, on the reading the letter encourages, had been informed (the tradition runs, by the Latin archbishop of Prussia and Livonia) that Alexander was disposed to receive the Roman obedience.

The second letter, of September 1248, is the more concrete. It returns to the invitation and ties it to the Mongol danger and to practical provisions: it commends Alexander for a reported willingness to receive the faith of Rome, proposes that he permit the erection of a cathedral church of the Latin rite at Pskov as the seat of a Latin bishopric, and — in the framework of the anti-Mongol alliance Rome was assembling — holds out the prospect of Western aid, with the Teutonic Order to render assistance, and asks that Alexander give warning of any Mongol advance so that Christendom might be prepared (the bull of 15 September 1248, Vatican registers; Fennell 1983; Martin 2007). The package is thus union on the Galician model: recognition of papal authority and a Latin episcopal presence in the prince’s territory, in return for alliance and aid against the Horde.

The precise contents, the exact number, and the interrelation of these documents are not beyond dispute, and the secondary literature is not uniform in its summaries. [Disputed: the standard account counts two bulls of Innocent IV to Alexander, dated 22 January and 15 September 1248 (preserved in the Vatican registers; cited so in Fennell, *Crisis of Medieval Russia*, 1983, and Schenk, *Aleksandr Nevskij*, 2004); the exact wording — in particular how far the September bull's reference to Alexander's reported willingness to submit reflects a real overture from Alexander's side rather than the pope's informants overstating his receptiveness — is read variously, and some popular Russian accounts conflate or renumber the letters or speak loosely of a single "papal embassy." The repository follows the two-bull dating attested in the registers and reported by Fennell and Schenk, and flags the contents of the bulls as known from the Latin registers rather than from any Russian record.]

It should be stressed that the bulls survive on the Latin side, in the papal chancery’s own registers; the Russian sources do not preserve the texts. The Russian witness to the episode is not the letters but the narrative of the Life, and the two kinds of evidence must be kept distinct.

The Refusal in the Life of Alexander Nevsky

The Russian memory of the overture is carried by the Life of Alexander Nevsky, composed in the Vladimir-Suzdal milieu within a generation or so of Alexander’s death and reworked thereafter (on the source see The Life of Alexander Nevsky). The Life narrates that the pope sent two cardinals (legates) to Alexander, learned and eloquent men, to instruct him in the Latin faith and to draw him to Rome (the Life records this; trans. Zenkovsky, Medieval Russia’s Epics, Chronicles, and Tales, 1974).

The Life has Alexander receive the legates and take counsel with his wise men, and then return an answer cast as a recitation of sacred history. In the Life‘s account he rehearses the whole sweep of salvation history — from the creation of Adam, through the Flood, the dividing of the nations, Abraham, the Exodus and the giving of the Law, the Incarnation, the Passion and Resurrection, the Ascension, and the establishment of the Church and the seven Ecumenical Councils — and concludes that all of this “we know well,” but “from you we will accept no teaching” (these words are the Life‘s account of Alexander’s reply, not a verbatim transcript; trans. Zenkovsky 1974). The point of the speech, as the Life frames it, is not a rejection of Christian history — which Rus’ shares — but a refusal of Rome’s claim to teach Rus’ the faith: a rejection of doctrinal tutelage and of the authority that the papal letters had asked Alexander to acknowledge. The legates, the Life says, departed without success.

This set-piece must be received as what it is. It is the Life’s narrative of the refusal, shaped to its hagiographical purpose of presenting Alexander as the defender of Orthodoxy against the Latin West, and the speech is reported here as the Life’s composition and not as a stenographic record of what Alexander said to the cardinals (METHODOLOGY §3.5). What can be said with more confidence, on the joint testimony of the Latin registers and the absence of any resulting union, is the bare outcome: the overture was made and it failed — Alexander did not enter the Roman obedience, no Latin bishopric was established at Pskov, and the relationship with Rome went no further (Fennell 1983; Martin 2007; Schenk 2004). Whether a second exchange or a third letter followed the refusal is not securely attested. [Disputed: some accounts posit further correspondence or a renewed papal approach after the initial refusal; the firmly attested documents remain the two 1248 bulls of the Vatican registers, and the existence of any additional letter is not established — it is treated here as unverified rather than asserted.]

The Counter-Example: Daniel of Galicia

The force of Alexander’s refusal is best measured against the opposite choice made, in the same decade and under the same Mongol pressure, by Daniel of Galicia. Daniel, the dominant prince of the southwestern Rus’ lands, did enter into negotiation with Rome, and Innocent IV granted him a royal crown: Daniel was crowned king — the sources place the coronation at Drohiczyn in 1253 — receiving the diadem from a papal legate in exchange for recognition of the Roman primacy and the promise of a crusade and Western aid against the Mongols (Galician-Volhynian Chronicle [Hypatian]; Fennell 1983; Martin 2007).

The union proved hollow in the event. The promised Western help against the Horde did not materialize in any effective form; Daniel remained, like the other Rus’ princes, subject to Mongol overlordship, and his rapprochement with Rome lapsed without producing either a durable Latin allegiance in Galicia or deliverance from the Horde (Fennell 1983; Martin 2007). The Galician experiment thus supplies the historical control for Alexander’s decision: a Rus’ prince did take the crown and the union that Rome offered, and the alliance delivered words and a diadem but no army against the Mongols. Whether that outcome vindicates Alexander’s refusal as far-sighted, or merely shows that both princes faced the same hopeless arithmetic against the Horde and chose differently within it, is the interpretive question taken up in the companion file (see East vs. West: The Choice).

What the Episode Establishes and What It Does Not

Stripped to the firmly attested core, the papal overture amounts to this: Innocent IV, in two bulls of 1248 preserved in his registers, invited Alexander into the Roman obedience, offered alliance and the prospect of aid against the Mongols on the Galician model, and proposed a Latin bishopric at Pskov; the overture failed, and no union followed (the bulls of 1248, Vatican registers; Fennell 1983; Martin 2007). Beyond that core, the celebrated scene — the two cardinals, the recitation of sacred history, the ringing refusal to accept teaching from Rome — is the property of the Life, and the confessional reading of the episode (Alexander as the prince who guarded Orthodoxy against the Latins) is a later and tradition-specific interpretation rather than a datum of the 1248 documents themselves (the Life, trans. Zenkovsky 1974; Schenk 2004). The wider question of how to weigh that refusal — as religious fidelity, as political realism, or as the construction of a later memory — is the subject of the next file.

References

Zenkovsky, Serge A., trans. and ed. Medieval Russia’s Epics, Chronicles, and Tales. Rev. ed. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1974. (The Life of Alexander Nevsky: the embassy of the two cardinals/legates, Alexander’s recitation of sacred history “from Adam,” and the refusal “from you we will accept no teaching” — given here as the Life’s account, not a transcript.)
The bulls of Pope Innocent IV to Alexander Yaroslavich, dated 22 January 1248 and 15 September 1248, preserved in the registers of Innocent IV in the Vatican Archive. (The invitation to the Roman obedience, the proposal of a Latin bishopric/cathedral at Pskov, the offer of alliance against the Mongols with the assistance of the Teutonic Order, and the request for warning of a Mongol advance.)
The Galician-Volhynian Chronicle, in the Hypatian Codex. (The negotiation of Daniel of Galicia with Rome and his coronation, placed at Drohiczyn in 1253.)
Fennell, John. The Crisis of Medieval Russia 1200–1304. London: Longman, 1983. (The papal overtures of 1248; the dating and contents of the bulls; the parallel and the failure of Daniel of Galicia’s union; the reading of Alexander’s refusal as prudent realpolitik.)
Martin, Janet. Medieval Russia 980–1584. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. (The setting of Latin diplomacy after the Mongol invasion; Innocent IV’s eastern policy; Daniel of Galicia’s crown and its emptiness.)
Schenk, Frithjof Benjamin. Aleksandr Nevskij: Heiliger – Fürst – Nationalheld. Eine Erinnerungsfigur im russischen kulturellen Gedächtnis (1263–2000). Cologne: Böhlau, 2004. (The 1248 bulls and the later construction of the refusal of Rome into a defining act of Orthodox fidelity.)