German Merchants in Novgorod: Hospitality and Hostility, Twelfth–Fifteenth Centuries

Abstract

Relationship between Novgorodians and Hanseatic merchants in the twelfth–fifteenth centuries present a striking example of long-term and ongoing interaction between communities differing in ethnicity, culture and Christian denominations in Northern Europe. There is a unique corpus of sources allowing to study contacts between them—numerous documents dating mostly from the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries, written in Middle Low German, related to the activities of the Hanseatic Kontor in Novgorod. Some very important evidence can also be found in Novgorodian sources: chronicles, hagiographical texts, laws and charters. The following issues are addressed in the chapter: the infra-structure of hospitality in Novgorod (first of all, history of the main residences of the Hanseatic merchants in Novgorod—the so-called “trading yards”); legal aspects and rhetoric of hospitality and hostility towards the guests and securitization of both hosts and guests; everyday practices of hospitality and hostility in Novgorod towards German merchants. The author comes to the conclusion that the “Black Legend” widespread in the mainstream scholarship in the nineteenth and in the first half of the twentieth centuries which assumed that relations between Novgorodians and German merchants had been almost exclusively hostile and based upon mutual distrust has to be revised. Novgorod was able to shape a variety of notions and practices, which allowed, despite conflicts, to efficiently keep contact with the numerous German merchant community for centuries.