Sexuality of the inhabitants of 12th-century Ruthenia in the light of “The Life of (St) Moses the Hungarian”

As a research issue, sexuality of Ruthenians in the Middle Ages has not aroused special interest of medievalists. In historiography, considerations of the mentioned issue appeared marginally in works devoted to the institution of marriage, and in studies on the development of canon law. The aim of the article on „Sexuality of the inhabitants of 12th-century Ruthenia in the light of »The Life of (St) Moses the Hungarian«” is to analyse intimate life in Ruthenia in the pre-Mongol period in the light of „The Life of (St) Moses the Hungarian”. The juxtaposition of the mentioned hagiographic work with its plot almost entirely set in the context of sexual behaviour, with other Old Russian writings (both normative and narrative in nature) has led to a conclusion that Old Russian customs were not only the result of local tradition and the effect of adopting Byzantine legal norms, but that contacts with Latin Europe also played an important role. The close family affinities of the Rurikids with other European dynasties, the influx of people from the Latin cultural milieu into the local elite, were conducive to the persistence of phenomena considered in literature on the subject to be typical of the Latin culture.