BYZANTINE IMPERIAL POLICY IN HAGIOGRAPHY OF THE MEDIEVAL CRIMEA

Abstract

The article is devoted to the disclosure of the political aspect of the Crimean hagiographic works in the context of the Byzantine claims to the South Crimea of the iconoclastic period. The Byzantine Empire has always attached particular importance to the Crimean region, which was a strategically important outpost and an important center of international trade between West and East. However, direct Byzantine rule here was often replaced by invasions of barbarian tribes, which Constantinople, due to the remoteness of this province and its own foreign policy problems, could not control, which ultimately led to the formation of a condominant region here, which lasted until the middle of the 9th century. Many questions of the life of the Southern Crimea, which was in the sphere of imperial interests, are shedding light by the small local hagiographic tradition, which was compiled as the Byzantine ecclesiastical authority was established in the region. Based on the "Life of John of Gothia" and "Life of John of Sourozh" in the publication of the prominent byzantinist Vasilievsky G. it is traced how the personalities of these saints and their activities are connected with the establishment of Byzantium in Crimea and how the Empire used the figures of the "Crimean" bishops for its utilitarian purposes. The legal formulation of the borders of Byzantine statehood had to be supported ideologically, which allows us to consider the lives from a special angle and draw a conclusion about the contribution of the church to imperial construction.