Daniel the Traveller

Also known as Daniel of Kiev, Daniel the Pilgrim, Igumen Daniel

Russian Orthodox abbot of Chernigov whose long Hozhdenie ('Journey') is the earliest surviving travel narrative in Old East Slavic and the most detailed early-twelfth-century pilgrimage account of the Holy Land.

Daniel was the abbot (igumen) of a small monastery in Kievan Rus' — probably in the Chernigov principality, though the identification is not secure — who travelled to the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem about 1106 and stayed for sixteen months. He was received in person by King Baldwin I, was given a candle to place at Christ's tomb on behalf of 'all the Russian Land', and was permitted to inspect the Holy Sepulchre during the Easter ceremony of the Holy Fire — for which he is the earliest detailed western witness.

His Khozhdenie (Old East Slavic for 'a going') is the earliest surviving travel narrative in the Russian language. It is at once a route-book — distances in days, river crossings, the practical question of which roads were safe under Frankish patrol — and a working pilgrim's guide, with detailed reverent descriptions of the holy sites at Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron, the Jordan, Galilee, and Mount Tabor.

Daniel is also a Russian historical witness for the texture of life in the early kingdom: his sympathetic but observant account of King Baldwin, of the Frankish patrol that escorted him to the Jordan, and of the small Greek and Russian Christian communities he met in the streets of Jerusalem make him an indispensable counterpoint to the Latin chronicles of the same years.

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