International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Andrey Vinogradov
National Research University, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russian Federation; 
[e-mail]
Denis Jolshin
State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation; 
[e-mail]
The Tithe church in Kiev: A Byzantine trace
The Byzantine origin of the architecture of the first masonry church in the Old Rus, built by 
Prince Vladimir in the late 10
th
century and preserved only at foundation level, is widely claimed. 
However, this influence shows difference in various aspects of design and building technology of 
the church. The more accurate tracing of the Byzantine features could help in the definition of the 
origin of the Tithe church.
The building technique of the church is Byzantine in a rather wide sense, it includes the wooden 
logs and piles at the base of the foundations, the wooden reinforcements, and 
opus sectile
floor 
pavement, widely used in Middle Byzantine period. The brick used in the masonry was made locally 
after the one of Byzantine techniques, with the skew edges (using the unmountable moulding box). 
The closest analogs for the brick type can be found in the churches of Asia Minor : Uchayak and, 
partly, Dere Ağzı, however, the dating of the building ceramics of the latter is not clear. The Tithe 
church still stays one of the earliest known examples of the recessed brickwork technique, which is 
usually considered as a feature of Constantinopolitan origin.
The constructions of the church were not complicated as in Byzantine capital. Narrow 
foundations (not wider that 1 m) of the spacious central core could not bear any sophisticated and 
clustered masonry conglomerates. The absence of the bema and the widely opened pastophoria 
point to the possible reconstruction of a provincial type of the building. Cross-shaped buttresses 
(one of them revealed in the gallery) were used in Middle-Byzantine church buildings mostly on 
the Black Sea : in Trebizond (St. Anna, Nakip Camii), Abkhazia (Lykhne, Mokvi, etc.) and Cherson 
(churches No. 21 and 34). The latter is mentioned in chronicle in connection with the Tithe church: 
the Cherson priests, liturgical vessels and ancient statues were brought to the church after Prince 
Vladimir had captured Cherson in 988, and he himself founded a church in Cherson.

---

903
The role and quantity of the Byzantines at the building site of the Tithe church stay questionable. 
The problem can be enlightened by Greek inscriptions revealed in the course of the archaeological 
excavations from 19
th
to early 21
st
centuries. The new interpretation is given for the Greek text stamps 
on the building ceramics of the church, which probable contents is “ΠΛΑΤΙΣ Θ(ΕΟΤΟ)ΚΟΥ” (“Of 
the tiles of the God-Bearer”) and is pressed on the original ceramic rooftiles. The fragmented and 
unreadable façade Greek inscription, composed of blocks made of local stone, had been preserving 
on the old wall of the church till 1828. Recent research made it clear that this wall was the result of 
the repairing of the early 12
th
century, with the inscription blocks inserted secondarily and out of 
order, while the palaeography of the inscription points to the 10
th
century dating, being very close to 
that of the rooftile stamp inscription. Finally, the previously unknown Greek graffiti, on the fresco 
fragments, with the liturgical quotations from Psalms are considered, which belong to the earliest, 
Greek period of the history of divine service in the Old Rus.