The Petition (čelobitnaja) as an Old Russian Literary Genre

Abstract

The Old Russian words biti celom 'to knock (or beat) with the forehead' may strike modern readers as a curious way to say petition. But when we read the accounts of foreigners who visited Moscow in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we learn that was the style in which a Russian ruler expected his subjects to greet him: whether their purpose was to make a request of him or simply to acknowledge his presence, subjects were to knock their foreheads on the ground at the sovereign's feet when he appeared before them.1 Written were known as forehead-knocking charters (c~elobitnye [gramoty]). The first celobitnye were, of course, documents, yet by the mid-sixteenth century some official petitions began displaying such verbal artistry that one may regard them as representatives of a new genre. We have long known that most Old Russian genres had non-literary origins (i.e., that literary works were primarily intended as, or evolved from, liturgical sources, historical records, administrative and judicial documents, and the like).2 Thus developed the genre of petitions, which came to include remarkable works of literature. The evolution of the genre had some other results-violent, tragic results which, at first glance, seem hard to reconcile with the foreheadknocking posture originally associated with submitting a celobitnaja. A closer look, however, reveals a connection between the features of certain and the circumstances which precipitated riots in Moscow, armed uprisings in northern Russia, and executions in Siberia.

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