Excavations of Ivan Mazepa’s Palace in Baturyn

By Volodymyr Mezentsev

Last summer, the Canada-Ukraine archaeological expedition conducted research in the town of Baturyn in Chernihiv Oblast, Ukraine. From 1669 to 1708, Baturyn was the capital of the Cossack Hetmanate and the seat of the distinguished cossack Hetman Ivan Mazepa (1687–1709). It rivalled Kyiv and Chernihiv, the largest cities in Central Ukraine. Baturyn’s rise was disrupted when Mazepa’s rebellion for the independence of the Hetmanate from Muscovy was brutally suppressed by Tsar Peter I. In 1708 the Russian army seized and burned Baturyn and massacred between 11,000 and 14,000 Cossacks and townspeople.

Last year, excavations concentrated on the site of Mazepa’s residence in Honcharivka, a suburb of Baturyn. Before 1700, the Hetman commissioned a fortified palatial complex there to house his private quarters, halls for official audiences, councils and banquets, a library, archives, and collections of portraits and rare weapons.

Archaeological explorations of the debris of two structures of this complex in 2009 revealed that they were burned during the Muscovite assault. Researchers excavated the foundations of the main brick palace’s inner walls and remnants of stairs leading to its basement. They then prepared graphic reconstructions of the building’s exterior. The palace measured 20 m by 14.5 m and had a basement with four rooms, three floors, and an attic. The front elevation was crowned with a pediment and flanked by semi-columns with composite capitals. This is the earliest known multi-storey residence in the Cossack State to have been built and decorated mainly in the Vilnius baroque style. The Western ornamentation of the palace was supplemented with elements of the Kyivan architectural school of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Its entablature friezes were adorned with circular ceramic tiles featuring multi-coloured glazed relief rosettes. This is an exclusive feature of early modern masonry structures in Kyiv and the Middle Dnipro region.

The floors of Mazepa’s palace were paved with figured terra-cotta and blue-green glazed tiles. The heating stoves were revetted with fine tiles (kakhli) decorated with floral relief patterns and images of angels with extended wings. This particular representation of angels (putti), popular in Cossack art, was adopted from Western Renaissance or baroque painting and sculpture. Many tiles have green or multi-coloured glazing.    

In 2009, near the main palace, archaeologists partly unearthed the remnants of a costly residence of the period. It had a basement 10 x 9.5 m in size and probably a larger masonry superstructure. Further excavations are needed to determine its parameters, plan, and architectural design.         

Among the debris of both palatial buildings in Honcharivka, fragmented ceramic plaques (41 x 33.5 cm) depicting Hetman Mazepa’s coat of arms have been found. Archaeologists have graphically reconstructed the design of this heraldic plaque.  It bears reliefs of a crescent with a human face, a star, and a cross surrounded by baroque-style scrolling garlands. Around the heraldic symbols, there are six Cyrillic letters representing the initials and abbreviated title of the owner: “Pan Ivan Mazepa, Het’man Viis’ka Zaporiz’koho” (Lord Ivan Mazepa, Hetman of the Zaporozhian Army). Some plaques are covered with blue, green, white, and yellow glazing, while others have a terra-cotta facing. They may have surmounted the portals of both palaces or have been arranged on their façades in series, like a frieze.       

This is a unique ceramic depiction of Mazepa’s coat of arms executed in shallow relief and employing polychrome glazing techniques. The ornate faade plaques and stove tiles of the Honcharivka palaces are remarkable examples of Ukrainian elite applied and heraldic arts. Specialists believe that these details were fashioned by the best ceramists of the Cossack State, whom Mazepa brought to Baturyn from Kyiv.

Excavations of the Trinity Cathedral Cemetery within the former fortress in 2008–9 established that some victims of the 1708 onslaught on Baturyn were buried there. Last summer, our expedition uncovered 65 graves of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Four of them contained casualties of this attack. These are skeletons of a middle-aged man and woman and teenagers with fatal fractures and musket bullet holes in their skulls. Skulls of women and a child bearing bullet holes were also found at this cemetery, as well as in the graveyard of the Church of the Resurrection in the citadel in 2001 and 2008. The archaeological discoveries in Baturyn have led some Russian historians to acknowledge that in 1708 tsarist troops slaughtered inhabitants of the town irrespective of age and gender.          

While excavating these graves and Mazepa’s palace, archaeologists unearthed other artefacts of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: a gilt copper icon of St. Nicholas produced at the Kyivan Cave Monastery, an iron decorative detail of a church chandelier, five silver and copper Polish coins, a fragment of an expensive Venetian wine glass with engraved floral patterns - part of the Hetman’s refined imported tableware, and a carved bone ornament and button of local manufacture (of the type used by ordinary burghers). Near the citadel, many iron cannonballs have been found, fired by Russian artillery during the shelling of the besieged town.

The 2009 Canada-Ukraine expedition has yielded valuable archaeological information about the architectural design and ceramic embellishments of Mazepa’s most ambitious palatial residence, as well as about the rise and fall of this capital of Cossack Ukraine. For ten years, the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) at the University of Alberta, the Shevchenko Scientific Society of America (NTSh-A), and the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (PIMS) at the University of Toronto have co-sponsored this undertaking. Professor Zenon Kohut, Director of CIUS and an eminent historian of the Hetmanate, heads the Baturyn project. Professor Orest Popovych, President of NTSh-A, is its patron and academic advisor. Dr. Volodymyr Kovalenko (Chernihiv University) leads the expedition. Dr. Volodymyr Mezentsev (CIUS) is its associate leader and Canadian executive project director. A noted historian of Kyivan Rus’, Professor Martin Dimnik (PIMS), participates in the investigations of medieval Baturyn. Altogether, 152 students and scholars from universities and museums of Chernihiv, Kyiv, Nizhyn, and Lviv (Ukraine), Toronto and Edmonton (Canada) took part in the 2009 expedition.  

Excavations in Baturyn continue this summer. To support the project with donations, please contact Professor Zenon Kohut, Director of CIUS (tel.: (780) 492-2973; zenon.kohut@ualberta.ca ). For further information, please call 416-766-1408 or email v.mezentsev@utoronto.ca.

 PHOTOS

On the top from L. to R.:

1. Glazed ceramic plaque with Ivan Mazepa’s coat of arms from the exterior embellishment of his palace in Baturyn (ca. 1700). Graphic reconstruction by Yu. Sytyi, V. Mezentsev, and S. Dmytrienko, 2010.  

2. Frontal and lateral (longitudinal) façades of the main palace of the Mazepa residence in Honcharivka, a suburb of Baturyn (before 1700). Reconstruction by V. Mezentsev; drawing by S. Dmytrienko, 2010.    

3. Fragments of a glazed tile (kakhlia), featuring an angel, from the stove facing in the palace. Excavations of 2009. Photo by V. Mezentsev.