Abstract:
In 2015 in Pons, in the former province of Saintonge, an Old Russian pilgrim graffito
was found on the wall of the parish church of St. Vivien, a monument of the
mid-12th century. It is the second graffito found in France after the one discovered
at St. Gilles Abbey. The town of Pons is located on the westernmost route of
Santiago de Compostela (via Turonensis) and is noteworthy because of the preserved
pilgrim almshouse of the latter half of the 12th century. On the walls of
its long archway are horseshoe drawings made by medieval pilgrims, the latest
of which, dating from the 16th–17th centuries, bends around a name that is also
apparently written in Cyrillic script. The earlier inscription, which appears at the
base of the northern end wall of the original façade of the St. Vivien church, is
made in the name of one Ivan Zavidovich: “Ivano ps[а]lo Zavi|doviche ida ko |
svętomu Ię|kovu” (= ‘Ivan Zavidovich wrote this when going to Saint James’). The
most probable palaeographic dating is in the 1160s–1180s. As suggested by birch
bark manuscripts, the name of Ivan’s father, Zavid, was popular among Novgorod
boyars. Novgorod is also the place with the greatest indirect evidence of the occurrence
in Old Russia of the western cult of St. James. This well preserved inscription
is an important epigraphic discovery, but its main value lies in the direct
evidence of pilgrimages by Russians to the shrine of St. James in Galicia.
