Ruthenia

Ruthenia is an exonym, originally used in Medieval Latin, as one of several terms for Rus'. The ethnonym Ruthenians was used to refer to the East Slavic and Eastern Orthodox people of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, and later the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Austria-Hungary, mainly to Ukrainians and sometimes Belarusians, inhabiting the territories of modern Belarus, Ukraine, Eastern Poland and some of western Russia. Historically, in a broader sense, the term was used to refer to all the territories under Kievan dominion (mostly East Slavs). The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (1772–1918), corresponding to parts of Western Ukraine, was referred to as Ruthenia and its people as Ruthenians. As a result of a Ukrainian national identity gradually dominating over much of present-day Ukraine in the 19th and 20th centuries, the endonym Rusyn is now only used among a minority of peoples on the territory of the Carpathian Mountains (Carpathian Ruthenia). In 1844, Karl Ernst Claus, Russian naturalist and chemist of Baltic German origin, isolated the element ruthenium from platinum ore found in the Ural Mountains. Claus named the element after Ruthenia to honor Russia.

Etymology

The word Ruthenia originated as a Latin designation of the region its people called Rus'. During the Middle Ages, writers in English and other Western European languages applied the term to lands inhabited by Eastern Slavs. Rusia or Ruthenia appears in the 1520 Latin treatise Mores, leges et ritus omnium gentium, per Ioannem Boëmum, Aubanum, Teutonicum ex multis clarissimis rerum scriptoribus collecti by Johann Boemus. In the chapter De Rusia sive Ruthenia, et recentibus Rusianorum moribus ("About Rus', or Ruthenia, and modern customs of the Rus'"), Boemus tells of a country extending from the Baltic Sea to the Caspian Sea and from the Don River to the northern ocean. It is a source of beeswax, its forests harbor many animals with valuable fur, and the capital city Moscow (Moscovia), named after the Moskva River (Moscum amnem), is 14 miles in circumference. Danish diplomat Jacob Ulfeldt, who traveled to Muscovy in 1578 to meet with Tsar Ivan IV, titled his posthumously (1608) published memoir Hodoeporicon Ruthenicum ("Voyage to Ruthenia").

Early Middle Ages

In the 9th and 10th centuries, the tribe of the Polanians was known as the Rus' (Ukrainian: Русь). The Polanians' principal city was Kiev, and the tribe and its territory played an important role in organizing the Kievan Rus' state. Eventually, the name Rus' was applied to refer to all the tribes in Kievan Rus'.

In a narrow sense, the term Rus' land (Ukrainian: Руська земля, romanized: Rus'ka zemlia) referred to the region of Central Dnieper Ukraine encompassing the areas around Kiev, Chernigov, and Pereyaslav. In a broader sense, this name also referred to all territories under control of Kievan princes, and the initial area of Rus' land served as their metropole, yet this wider meaning declined when Kiev lost its power over majority of principalities. After the Mongol Invasion of Kievan Rus' and a massive devastation of the core territory, the name Rus' was succeeded by Galician-Volhynian principality, which declared itself as Kingdom of Rus'. European manuscripts dating from the 11th century used the name Ruthenia or Ruthenorum to describe people from Rus', the wider area occupied by the early Rus' (commonly referred to as Kievan Rus'). This term was also used to refer to the Slavs of the island of Rügen or to other Baltic Slavs, whom 12th-century chroniclers portrayed as fierce pirate pagans—even though Kievan Rus' had converted to Christianity by the 10th century: Eupraxia, the daughter of Rutenorum rex Vsevolod I of Kiev, had married the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV in 1089. After the devastating Mongolian occupation of the main part of Ruthenia which began in the 13th century, western Ruthenian principalities became incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, after which the state became called the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Ruthenia. The Polish Kingdom also took the title King of Ruthenia when it annexed Galicia. These titles were merged when the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was formed. A small part of Rus' (Transcarpathia, now mainly a part of Zakarpattia Oblast in present-day Ukraine), became subordinated to the Kingdom of Hungary in the 11th century. The Kings of Hungary continued using the title "King of Galicia and Lodomeria" until 1918.

Late Middle Ages

By the 15th century, the Moscow principality had established its sovereignty over a large portion of former Kievan territory and began to fight Lithuania over Ruthenian lands. In 1547, the Moscow principality adopted the title of The Great Principat of Moscow and Tsardom of the Whole Rus and claimed sovereignty over "all the Rus'" — acts not recognized by its neighbour Poland. The Muscovy population was Eastern Orthodox and preferred to use the Greek transliteration Rossiya (Ῥωσία) rather than the Latin "Ruthenia". In the 14th century, the southern territories of Rus', including the principalities of Galicia–Volhynia and Kiev, became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which in 1384 united with Catholic Poland in a union which became the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569. Due to their usage of the Latin script rather than the Cyrillic script, they were usually denoted by the Latin name Ruthenia. Other spellings were also used in Latin, English, and other languages during this period. Contemporaneously, the Ruthenian Voivodeship was established in the territory of Galicia-Volhynia and existed until the 18th century. These southern territories include:

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