Rusian genealogy

Maintained by: Christian Raffensperger (craffensperger@wittenberg.edu) and David J. Birnbaum (djbpitt@gmail.com) Last modified: 2021-03-01T12:11:00-0500 About this site: http://genealogy.obdurodon.org/about.php

Introduction

Genealogies have been constructed and used for hundreds of years to help families understand their ancestry and more recently to help scholars understand the relationships between medieval people and families. The Rusian genealogical database offers an update on this traditional discipline. The research underlying this database is new and is built on the primary sources in Old East Slavic, Latin, Greek, and Old Norse, as well as a thorough reading and understanding of the modern secondary literature. That information is then accessed through an XML database that allows the user to search through the variety of information presented here, including parentage, regnal dates, place of rule, and other data points. The end result is the most accurate genealogy of Rus′ yet developed, presented in an accessible and intuitive way for use by scholars, students, and others.

Related digital project

Rusian genealogy map http://gis.huri.harvard.edu/historical-atlas/rus-genealogy/about-the-project.html

Related publications

Raffensperger, Christian. Reimagining Europe: Kievan Rus′ in the medieval world. Harvard historical studies 177. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2012.
Raffensperger, Christian. Ties of kinship: Rusian genealogy and dynastic marriage. Harvard series in Ukrainian studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, to be published in 2016.
Raffensperger, Christian and David J. Birnbaum, Mapping history: Using technology to showcase medieval familial interconnectivity. Festschrift in Honor of Orysia Karapinka in Russian History/Histoire Russe 37:4 (2010), 305–21.

[mda logo] Part of Medieval Digital Resources (MDR), a curated database of peer-reviewed digital materials for the study of the Middle Ages maintained by the Medieval Academy of America.