‘When Going to Saint James’: An Old Russian Graffito from the 12th Century in Aquitania

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.