11 Galicia-Volhynia and the End of Kievan Rus’

The last stage in the history of Kievan Rus’, its era of political transformation (1240-1349), coincides with the rise to prominence of the principality, and later Kingdom, of Galicia-Volhynia.

The initial pre-unification phase began in the 980s, when Galicia and Volhynia were brought into the sphere of Kievan Rus’ by Volodymyr I “the Great.” Volodymyr’s interest in these western Rus’ lands, dominated at the time by the Dulibian and White Croat tribal unions (see Map 6), was prompted by their economic value. Both were located along an overland international trade route that connected Kiev with Cracow and central Europe. As well, Galicia was eventually valuable in its own right. Mines near Halych produced salt, an essential element in the human diet and in medieval times an invaluable means of preserving food. The name Halych is derived from the Indo-European word for salt, *hal. Therefore, Galicia (the Latin name derived from the Rus’-Ukrainian form Halychyna) was by its very name the “land of salt.”

During the first phase of Galicia-Volhynian history, the princes of each territory were frequently locked in a struggle that derived from controversies over to whose sons these territories were assigned following the death of grand prince Iaroslav I “the Wise” in 1054. While Volhynia was assigned according to Iaroslav’s testament to his fifth son Ihor, Galicia was not mentioned at all. Nevertheless, Iaroslav assigned Galicia to his grandson Rostyslav, an arrangement that was formally recognized by the other Rus’ princes at the Diet of Liubech (1097). Since Rus’ princes were not prone to abide by agreements they concluded, it is not surprising that Ihor and his descendants (the Ihorevyches) in Volhynia continued to claim authority over what they considered a single Galicia-Volhynia patrimony.

11.1 Reconstruction of the Dormition Cathedral (1157), seat of the eparchy and (from 1306) the metropolitanate of Galicia, at Halych, the capital of Galicia-Vol-hynia from 1144 until ravaged by Mongols in 1241.

MAP 11 GALICIA-VOLHYNIA, circa 1250

Despite such claims the Rostysla-vych dynasty managed throughout the twelfth century to maintain Galicia as an independent principality. Among its most important rulers was Iaroslav Rostyslavych (Osmomysl/of Eight Minds, r.1153-1187), who helped realize Galicia’s economic potential by extending its sphere of influence southward to the Black Sea. Thanks largely to his leadership, for nearly a century (1160-1240) Galicia and Volhynia functioned as pivotal points in the east-west trade from Kiev via Cracow to central Europe or via Sanok southwestward to Hungary. Both principalities were also central to an important north-south trade route connecting the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. From Toruń the route went up the Vistula and Buh Rivers to Volodymyr in Volhynia and from there to Halych and after 1256 to L’viv. From Halych traders descended the Dniester River to Bilhorod where they boarded ships to cross the the Black Sea to Constantinople (see Map 10).

11.2 Danylo Romanovych (1201-1264), from 1238 prince of Galicia-Volhynia and from 1253 king of Rus’, one of several monumental statues—here on a prominent square in L’viv—erected in his honor since Ukraine’s independence.

In the course of the on-going military struggle between the Ihorevych dynasty of Volhynia and Rostyslavych dynasty of Galicia, both Rus’ rulers frequently invited the Hungarians to assist them. For its part, Hungary hoped to extend its political influence north of the Carpathians.

The second phase of Galician-Volhynian history began in 1199, when Galicia’s politically influential landowning social stratum (the boyars) invited the ruler of Volhynia, Roman (r. 1197-1205), to rule over them. Both principalities were now united through his person and were to be ruled as a single political entity by his successors, the Romanovych dynasty, until the disappearance of Galicia-Volhynia as an independent kingdom in the 1340s. But Roman’s presence was relatively brief, and after his death in 1205, the Galician boyars challenged princely authority and tried to dominate political life, with the result that Galicia-Volhynia became subject to nearly four decades of civil war and external invasions. In this sense, Galicia-Volhynia was experiencing much of the same disintegrative discord as were other principalities of Kievan Rus’ during the first half of the thirteenth century.

Finally, in 1238, after two short-lived attempts, Roman’s son Danylo acceded to the throne. During Danylo’s “third” reign, which lasted from 1238 to 1264, and that of his son Lev (r. 1264-1301), Galicia-Volhynia reached the apogee of its political power and economic influence. This was achieved, moreover, at a time when the Mongols had just arrived in eastern Europe and established their hegemony over most of Ukraine and southern Muscovy. Danylo (at least initially) and Lev were among those Rus’ princes who acquiesced to the Golden Horde.

11.3 Reconstruction of medieval L’viv, founded in 1256 by King Danylo and named for his son and successor Lev, who made it the capital of the Galicia-Volhynian kingdom in 1272.

Danylo, nevertheless, resented his subordination to the Golden Horde and he hoped to entice his former enemies—Hungary and Poland—into joining him in an antiMongol crusade. As a further enticement to this alliance with his Roman Catholic neighbors, Danylo, together with Galicia’s Orthodox Church hierarchs and some boyars, considered acknowledging the pope as head of their church. In response, a papal delegation arrived in Galicia in 1253 to crown Danylo king of Rus’ (rex Russiae). By this act, Danylo became the only ruler of Kievan Rus’ to be recognized as a full fledged monarch within the context of the western European political order. In the end, Danylo’s foreign policy ventures were to be crushed by a punitive Mongol invasion, while the tentative feelers toward church union led nowhere.

11.4 Lev Danylovych (ca. 1228-1301), prince of Galicia from 1264.

Under Danylo’s son and successor, Lev (r. 1264-1301), Galicia-Volhynia became once again a loyal vassal of the Golden Horde. In return, the kingdom was left to direct its own affairs. Aside from continuing economic prosperity and general urban growth, Lev made the recently established city of L’viv (founded by Danylo in 1256) the new capital of Galicia-Volhynia.

Galicia-Volhynia’s prestige was further enhanced by church politics. The phenomenon whereby religious and territorial identities converged—that is, one was of the Rus’ land because one was of the Rus’ (Eastern Orthodox) faith, and vice versa—was of particular importance in Galicia-Volhynia which bordered on Roman Catholic Poland and Hungary. Furthermore, Danylo and Lev both recognized the prestige that came with control of a city which at the same time was the seat of a bishop or, better still, the seat of the metropolitan or head of the entire Rus’ church. In the wake of the Mongol invasions, when the metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus’ moved temporarily—and after 1299 permanently—to the northern principality of Vladimir-Suzdal’, Galicia’s rulers succeded in obtaining their own metropolitan. In 1303, six eparchies of the Kievan metropolitanate (Halych, Przemysl, Volodymyr, Luts’k, Chelm, Pinsk-Turaü) were detached to form a distinct Galician Metropolitanate with its seat in the old capital of Halych.

Yet no sooner had Galicia-Volhynia attained the height of its political, economic, and religious influence than it entered a period of decline. Its last two Romanovych kings, who ruled from 1301 to 1323, initiated an anti-Mongol policy with disastrous consequences. The country’s last ruler, Iurii II (r. 1323-1340, a Roman Catholic prince from Polish Mazovia whose mother was a Romanovych princess), was poisoned in 1340 most likely by Galicia’s politically influential aristocratic landowners, or boyars.

In effect, it was during the 1340s that the era of Kievan Rus’ finally came to an end in Ukrainian lands. From then on those Ukrainian territories that were not already under the control of the Golden Horde were to become part either of Poland or annexed by the newest state that was soon to dominate eastern Europe, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

11.5 Casimir III (1310-1370), known by the epithet “the Great,” last king (from 1333) of the founding Piast dynasty of Poland.