# Trinity Chronicle

The Trinity Chronicle (Russian: Троицкая летопись, romanized: Troitskaya letopis', abbreviated TL, Tro, or T) is a Rus' chronicle written in Church Slavonic, probably at the Trinity Lavra near Moscow by Epiphanius the Wise (died 1420).

## Manuscript

The manuscript of the Trinity Chronicle may or may not to have contained a 'Short Redaction' of the Kulikovo Chronicle Tale. The Chronicle ended with Edigu's invasion of 1408. Its tendenz has been tentatively described as pro-Muscovite and pro-Cyprian. The text appears to have been an early 15th-century copy of a text that was close to the Laurentian Codex of 1377. The Trinity Chronicle was often cited by 18th-century historians.
The only known manuscript was lost in the fire of Moscow in 1812.

## Priselkov reconstruction

After its destruction in 1812, the text was partially reconstructed by Mikhail D. Priselkov [ru] (posthumously published in 1950) from quotations in Nikolay Karamzin's History of the Russian State (1816–1826) and in the 1804 critical edition of the Laurentian Codex by Chebotarev and Cherepanov, which only reached the year 906. The published reconstruction, however, contains much speculative borrowing from other chronicles and is not entirely reliable. Especially Aleksey Shakhmatov's assumption that 'the Simeon Chronicle was identical to the Trinity Chronicle through 1390' turned out to be a great flaw in Priselkov's efforts, as was the assumption that it had to have been similar to the Rogozh Chronicle in other places. Priselkov acknowledged as much himself by indicating his 'reconstruction' was not really a 'restoration', but an 'approximation'; the material with a higher degree of 'probability' was printed in a larger font size, and less reliable readings called 'conjectured segments' in a smaller font.

## Value for historical and textual criticism

   "[T]extual comparisons of reconstructed non-texts [the Trinity Chronicle] with hypothetical non-texts [the Compilation of 1448] in order to determine textual primacy cannot be definitive. (...) Inventing new hypothetical compilations or redating old hypothetical compilations is fun, but not terribly productive."
– Charles J. Halperin (2001)
The reconstructed text of the Trinity Chronicle is considered by some scholars to be one of the six main copies that are of greatest importance for textual criticism of the Primary Chronicle (PVL), 'which aims to reconstruct the original [text] by comparing extant witnesses.' Because the original is lost and its text can only be indirectly reconstructed, as Priselkov attempted in 1950, it is considered the least reliable of the six main witnesses, and is sometimes excluded (reducing the total number of "main witnesses" to five). Dmitry Likhachev (1957) criticised 'inattentive scholars' who carelessly utilised Priselkov's 'reconstruction', treating all parts of it as equally reliable and running with it. Similarly, Iakov Lur'e (1976) rebuked uncritical readers for not understanding the differences in probability as expressed by Priselkov in the two font sizes, and treating it as if it were a 'text'.
Charles J. Halperin (2001) accused Lur'e of doing precisely what he told others not to do, namely, using Priselkov's tentative reconstruction of the Trinity Chronicle as a source. He also argued that, although her chronology was widely accepted by Soviet and Western scholars alike, Marina A. Salmina's 1960s–1970s textual analysis of the Trinity Chronicle should equally be considered invalidated by the fact that Priselkov's reconstruction was far from the reliability required to make such bold claims. He concluded that the reconstructed Trinity Chronicle was useless for dating purposes. Margaret Cecelia Ziolkowski (1978) had voiced similar arguments against Salmina's poor use of sources. Noting that in earlier publications of 1976 and 1981, Halperin himself had also tried to draw untenable historical conclusions from Priselkov's reconstruction before shifting his position by 2001 and criticising others for doing so, Serhii Plokhy (2006) argued that these earlier works 'are clearly in need of reexamination, given the hypothetical nature of Priselkov's reconstruction of the Trinity Chronicle'. In a 2010 review of Plokhy's book, which he generally praised, Halperin acknowledged using the reconstruction 'without much precision' for dating the translatio of the "Rus' land" concept, which he hadn't yet 'revised following the reclassification of the Trinity Chronicle as a invalid source because it is a reconstruction, not a "text."' Plokhy and Halperin agreed that of the three passages mentioning the "Rus' land" in the reconstruction, those under the years 1308 and 1328 were Priselkov's interpolations, while the sub anno 1332 passage – known from Karamzin's notes – appeared authentic, but too weak by itself to count as conclusive evidence of the translatio. In 2022, Halperin 'replaced citations to the Trinity Chronicle with references to the Simeonov Chronicle.'
Ostrowski (1981) remarked: 'Priselkov's reconstruction must be used cautiously because we do not know whether he always checked his readings against the manuscripts.' In their 2003 interlinear collation of the entire PVL, Ostrowski et al. 'included readings from Priselkov's reconstruction only up to the entry for 906. These readings are based on the plates of the early nineteenth-century attempt by Chebotarev and Cherepanov to publish the chronicle while the manuscript was still extant. [Since they] worked directly from the manuscript, the readings they present have a high probability of actually having been in the Trinity Chronicle, in contrast to the readings Priselkov has after 906, which, because they are conjectural, have a lower probability.' Halperin 2022 invoked Priselkov's reconstruction only one more time for an entry sub anno 955, commenting that 'This passage appears in large type, meaning it was quoted verbatim by Karamzin.'