Why Novgorod's crosses have no crescent
Editorial contextCochrane was told that Novgorod was proud of the plain crosses on its steeples: they meant the Tartars had never entered the city. Cities re-conquered from the Tartars, he says, carry a crescent under the cross. This is a popular explanation that Russians told travellers; historians usually read the crescent at the foot of Orthodox crosses as an older Christian symbol, not a mark of Tatar rule.
The steeples of Novgorod present a monument of considerable pride in the estimation of its inhabitants. Their distinction is in the cross, at the top, standing alone, unaccompanied by the crescent, and this is an emblem intimating, that the Tartars, in all their invasions, never succeeded so far, as to enter the city.
About Russians remembering the Tatar (Mongol) invasions
Keep in mind
Local lore repeated as fact. Novgorod was indeed never taken by the Mongols, but the cross-and-crescent explanation is a legend.
The census: Tatars ride the streets writing down houses
Editorial contextNovgorod split over the Mongol census. The Tatars threatened to leave ('give us the number, or we go') while the common people swore to die for St Sophia rather than be counted. In the end the boyars gave way, and the census takers 'began to ride through the streets writing down the Christian houses'. The chronicler complains that the boyars made it easy for themselves and hard for the poor.
and the Tatars said: give us the number, or we will run away; and the common people would not give the number, but said: let us die honourably for St Sophia and for the houses of the angels … and the accursed ones began to ride through the streets, writing down the Christian houses
Working translation
Original wording
и рѣша Татарове: даите намъ число, или бѣжимъ проче; и чернь не хотѣша дати числа, но рѣша: умремъ честно за святую Софью и за домы ангелскыя … и почаша ѣздити оканьнии по улицамъ, пишюче домы христьяньскыя
About Tatar census officials of the Golden Horde
A note on this quote
The scan is too rough to double-check this quote by machine. Compare it with the page.
'Tartaric battlements' where no Tartars came
Editorial contextAt Novgorod, Alexander saw citadel walls topped with what he calls 'Tartaric battlements', copied from the Kremlin's, and notes that the Tartars never reached Novgorod, so its church crosses have no crescent beneath them. He repeats the popular idea that a crescent under a cross marks the Tatar period, and calls Moscow's Kremlin battlements 'Tartaric' as well. He also uses the label for a tower in the Genoese fortress at Balaklava.
The walls of the citadel were surmounted by Tartaric battlements, in imitation of those of the Kremlin; yet the Tartars in their invasions never penetrated to Novogorod, and the crosses on the churches do not, therefore, surmount a crescent
About Medieval Tartars (Mongol-Tatar invaders of Rus)
Keep in mind
'Tartaric' is his style label: the Moscow Kremlin's brick walls and swallow-tail merlons were built by Italian masters in the 1480s and 1490s. The crescent-under-the-cross explanation is a popular belief that most historians reject.
Tatar prisoners in Novgorod: baptism or the river
Editorial contextThe Second Novgorod Chronicle, a terse 16th-century town record, notes that in 1552 sixty Kazan Tatars were brought from Moscow and three new prisons were built for them. On this page, under the winter of 7065 (1556 to 1557), it records that clerks handed the Tatars held in the prisons who wished to be baptised over to the monasteries, while 'those who did not wish to be baptised, they threw into the water'.
the clerks gave out to the monasteries the Tatars who sat in the prisons and wished to be baptised; those who did not wish to be baptised, they threw into the water.
Working translation
Original wording
давали дьяки по монастыремъ Татаръ, которые сидѣли въ тюрмѣхъ и захотѣли креститись; которые не захотѣли креститись, ино ихъ метали въ воду.
About Tatar prisoners (Kazan Tatars brought to Novgorod after 1552)
Keep in mind
This is the Second Novgorod Chronicle, not the First, though it is bound in the same volume. The chronicle does not say explicitly that these were the Kazan prisoners of 1552.