Byzantium and Moscow Rus'. Meyendorf I.

This book is unusual for the angle, in which the author considers the events of Russian history from the second half of the XIII to the XV century: relations with the Golden Horde, the rivalry of Moscow and Tver, the war with Lithuania and ultimately the collection of lands around Moscow. He seems to be looking from Byzantium, sometimes even through the prism of its interests, and help him, along with Russian chronicles and other materials of the era, preserved, despite the death of the archive of the Patriarch Chancellery, the documents of the Patriarchate of Constantinople over the XIV century, in which Rus' is mentioned quite often. They testify to extreme activity on Russian lands, by that time politically divided between Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Golden Horde, not only Byzantium, who directed the spiritual life of Rus', but also the Italian resources, primarily Genois, concerned about the preservation of their trade. < /p>