Russian Scroll Text – Ordre de Cheval et Lion for Ivan Leskov

Occasionally, I get asked to do scrolls for awards from other kingdoms. This one came from An Tir, and is given by the Crown upon an individual’s completion of a term as Kingdom Equestrian Champion. It looks like maybe the spelling of the award name has changed since 2016.

The text was inspired by Charter # 81, p. 140-141 – 1130, Charter of Great Knyaz Mstisla Bladimirovicha and his son Vsevoloda to the Novgorod Yuriev monaster for the village of Byutsi and a silver dish.  From Gramoty Velikogo Novgoroda i Pskova (Charters of Great Novgorod and Pskov), Moscow, 1949.

This is one of the earliest Charters I have found, and I often use it, or elements from it, for early-period Russian texts.

Russian Scroll Text:

Се ѧзъ Князь Кѧртан Даега сын и Княгиня моя Шая дьржа Ан Тировγ землю, и отдать Иванγ Лесковγ Орден Коня и Льва, съ данию, и съ вирами, и съ продажами.  Да же котори кнѧзь по нашимъ кнѧжении хотѣти отѧти γ него, а бог бγди за тѣмь γ него отимаеть.  И ты Иван Лесков продолжаи же защищать и за нас и за наших дѣти и при животѣ и въ съмьртию  А мы дали рγкою своею на Короннои Тγрнире Третева Сентѧбря лета пѧтьдесѧть-один, или 7524, или 2016.  Да же кто запъртить тγ даньб да, сγдить емγ богъ в день страшного сγда.

English translation:

And so, we, King Kjartan Daegarson, and my Queen, Sha’ya, holding the lands of An Tir, are granting Ivan Leskov memebership in the Ordre de Cheval et Lion, accompanied with the appropriate taxes, death tolls, and rights to collect fines as befits his new station.  And should even another noble in our kingdom try to take this from him, god shall punish any who so try.  And you, Ivan Leskov, are charged with continuing to defend us and our heirs, in life and in death.  So we set our hand upon this at our Crown Tournament on the Third day of September, AS 51, or the year 7524 since the creation of the world* or the year 2016 in the common era.  And any who seek to forbid this grant shall answer to god on the day of the great judgment.

Final Scroll:

(I cannot seem to find the name of the calligrapher/illuminator. If anyone knows, please let me know.)

Notes to the calligrapher

These are my standard notes to the calligraphers working on my Russian texts:

Period Russian used some additional characters and did not use some standard moder characters.  A good overview can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Cyrillic_alphabet

In period Russian, the letter “y” did not exist.  Instead, either of the following symbols was used: (the one on the left is a combination of the letter o and the letter izhitsa, the one on the right is a single character digraph – I recommend using the digraph).  Since this symbol is not found in standard computer fonts, the greek character gamma (γ) is used in the text.  One of the correct symbols should be substituted in the scroll.

In period Russian, the letter “я” did not exist.  In the middle of a sentence it’s replaced by the “small yus”, written “ѧ”, at the ends of a sentence it is written using the “Iotated A”, which looks like this:  (upper and lower case).  I made the small yus replacements.  Anywhere a “я” appears, the iotated A should be used instead.

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