ABSTRACT
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the empire of the Palaeologi, restored after the Latin occupation of Constantinople, was politically and economically a very minor power, but its intellectual and cultural prestige remained remarkably strong. Indeed, the so-called 'second South-Slavic' (Serbian and Bulgarian) influence upon Russian civilization, which occurred in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and which admittedly had a widespread impact upon cultural, religious, literary and artistic developments in northern Russia, had its initial source in Byzantium. This chapter presents important examples of Russian literary influence upon Southern Slavs, which show that the Slavic Orthodox world, together with Byzantium, really constituted a multinational religious and cultural community, conscious of its unity and allowing for great mobility of persons and ideas. The major factor in the development of the liturgy in Russia is the generalized transfer, from Constantinople to Russia, of the Typikon of Jerusalem, or, more precisely, the Typikon of the monastery of St Sabbas in Palestine.
