New Evidence on the History of the Perm Diocese in the Mid-15th Century

Abstract

This article introduces into scholarly circulation a unique testimony regarding the death of Saint Pitirim of Perm “and those with him slain and burned in the Ust-Vym town”, which is read as part of the 16th century of the Vologda Synodicon during the Week of Orthodoxy. It is shown that this entry is consistent with archaeo­logical evidence regarding the fire of the original defensive fortification in Ust-Vym. Furthermore, the Vologda Synodicon’s status as an official commemorative document of the Perm Diocese presupposes a high degree of reliability for the information it contains. Thus, the testimony being introduced regarding those killed in Ust-Vym during the Vogul invasion of 1455 appears generally credible. St. Pitirim himself was likely killed not in Ust-Vym, but somewhere in the surrounding area, as follows from a comparison of the entry in the Vologda Synodicon and the text of the short Life of Pitirim. St. Pitirim’s death outside of Ust-Vym is also indirectly indicated by a chronicle entry regarding the day of his burial in an early 16th-century collection from the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery, which contains materials on the Perm hierarchs. The article also analyzes the testimony of the Vychegda-Vym Chronicle about Saint Pitirim’s murder “in a place called Kafedrail on the Pomos River”. It is argued that the reliability of this account is extremely questionable, and the name Kafedrail, likely a corruption of Fedrail’ or something close to it, was originally a hydronym.