Nikon Chronicle

The Nikon Chronicle (Никоновская летопись) is a compilation of Russian chronicles undertaken at the court of Ivan the Terrible in the mid-16th century. The compilation was named after Patriarch Nikon of Moscow, who owned a copy. In the 18th century, it was published under the name The Russian Chronicle According to Nikon's Manuscript.

The chronicle covers the years from 859 to 1520, with additional information for 1521–1558, as well as many detailed tales about the most important events, such as The Tale of the Battle of the Neva, The Tale of the Battle of the Ice, The Tale of the Invasion of Tokhtamysh, and The Tale of the Death of Mikhail of Tver. Some of these tales have obvious parallels with Russian folklore and Orthodox hagiography.

The chronicle contains a large number of claims not found in earlier sources. Some of these interpolations are thought to reflect a political ideology of the nascent Tsardom of Russia. The 12th-century Polovtsy and the 16th-century Kazan Tatars, for instance, are regularly conflated.



The Academic copy of the Nikon Chronicle is currently being preserved in the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint Petersburg, with registration number "32.14.8". The Library acquired it in 1741 from the personal collection of Theophan Prokopovich, bishop of Moscow.

An English translation by Serge Aleksandrovich Zenkovsky and his wife Betty Jean Zenkovsky was published in five volumes in the 1980s. It was faulted by academic reviewers for omitting some material and adding material from other chronicles.

Publications

 * Руская летопись по Никонову списку. / Изданная под смотрением имп. Академии наук. СПб, 1767–1792. (Russian Cronicle According to Nikon's Copy. Published under the supervidion of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, 1767–1792) Ч.1, Ч.2, Ч.3, Ч.4, Ч.5, Ч.6, Ч.7, Ч.8
 * The Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles, vols. IX-XIV, editions of 1863, 1918, 2000