ABSTRACT
The protagonist of this portrait is a twelfth-century Minsk princess whose name we do not know. Little was recorded in contemporary sources about the life of Rus’ women, even of elite women like her. Compared to others, however, our Minsk princess is exceptional because the Kievan Chronicle (ca. 1200) devoted an encomium to her upon her death. Through it we learn many bits of precious information, like that she died at age eighty-four in the night of January 3, 1158, and that she had been a widow for forty years; it explains where she was buried and provides details of her donations to the monastery in her life and in her testament. The wording of the Kievan Chronicle allows for the interpretation that she may have actually ruled in Minsk during the decades of her widowhood. Other circumstances make this option a possibility: on the one hand, for most of the years of her widowhood, there seems to be no other prince of Minsk; on the other hand, also at around the same time, other princesses of Polotsk would take over leadership roles while the male members of their families were exiled in Constantinople.
