«Жоўтыя русіны» антычнасці: магчымы этымалагічны продак «Белай Русі»?

Abstract

Yellow Ruthenians (flavi Rutheni) are first mentioned in the Western scholastic literature in Otia Imperialia treatise by Gervasius of Tilbury, English scholiast of the XII century who worked in Arles in the southern France. But flavi Rutheni of this treatise are mentioned in the direct citation of the Roman poem of the I century AD by Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, - Pharsalia or The Civil War. Lucanus surely did not know anything about Ruthenia, the land of the Eastern Slavonic peoples. His Rutheni are one of the Gallic tribes that settled in the south of today's France, in Rhone basin, long ago before Christ. There is no direct relation between this Rutheni and the Ruthenians of the scholarly literature of the Middle Ages and the New Time, except for the perceived continuity which existed only in minds of the scholars. The term flavi seems to be the first known ‘colour’ attribute of Ruthenia (Rus), mentioned more than 100 years before the Ruscia Alba of the Descriptiones terrarium in the so-called Dublin manuscript. It is possible that Ruscia Alba and rutheni albi of the XIII century emerged in the consciousness of the Western scholastic monks as a further development of the flavi Rutheni of Gervasius - Lucanus.