The Power of Amusement and the Amusement of Power: The Princely Frescoes of St Sophia, Kiev, and their Connections to the Byzantine World
The largest Orthodox church of the eleventh century, St. Sophia of Kiev, challenges the boundaries between the sacred and profane spheres. It unites under one roof carefully constructed representations of the sounds, movements, amusements and merriments of the Byzantine court and invocations of the stillness, silence and tears of Orthodox piety. These two irreconcilable realms were brought into dialogue for prince Jaroslav the ‘Wise’ (died 1054), a second-generation Christian who prevailed over his rivals after decades of fratricidal conflict. While in Byzantium these two spheres had long ago established a clear modus vivendi, in Iaroslav’s Rus’ their relationship was just being formulated. St. Sophia of Kiev had to adapt to its prince and Christian decorum had to accommodate to the princely patron.