“Idleness Is the Mother of All”: Monomakh’s Instruction to His Children

“Idleness is the mother of all.” Volodymyr Monomakh (Володимир Мономах), 12th-century grand prince of Kyiv (reigned 1113-1125), wrote this to his children. Don’t forget what you know, and learn what you don’t. Don’t let the sun find you still in bed in the morning. Don’t let your retinue harm villages or fields wherever you travel. He then goes on to set out, in detail, all the travels, battles, and hunts of his life.

In Ukrainian, this text is called Povchannia ditiam (“Instruction to [My] Children,” Повчання дітям). The National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine’s Енциклопедія історії України (Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine, “EIU” below) calls it the only secular literary work to survive from the second decade of the 12th century. Below, drawing on EIU, the University of Alberta’s Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU), and a 1926 critical edition of the chronicle, this article covers the author, the manuscript, and theories of when it was written, as of September 2026.

The Author, Volodymyr Monomakh

According to IEU and EIU, he was born in 1053 and died in Kyiv on May 19, 1125. His father was the later grand prince of Kyiv, Vsevolod Yaroslavych, and his mother is said to have been a daughter of the Byzantine emperor Constantine IX Monomachos — the name “Monomakh” comes from his mother’s side — though both encyclopedias note that her origin is disputed.

While his father lived, he ruled Smolensk, then Chernihiv (1078-1094), and from 1094 became prince of Pereiaslav (IEU). EIU states that he made roughly 100 trips from Chernihiv to consult his father in Kyiv. When Grand Prince Sviatopolk of Kyiv died in April 1113 and the townspeople rose up, Monomakh accepted a second invitation and became grand prince of Kyiv, at age 60 (EIU).

IEU describes him as a figure who tried to restrain the princes’ internal quarrels and unite them against the nomadic Polovtsians (Cumans) of the southern steppe, and states that it was he who convened the Liubech princely congress of 1097. In Kyiv, he issued legislation limiting interest on loans, which was incorporated into the law code Ruska Pravda (IEU). The law code itself is covered in our article on Ruska Pravda. His first wife was Gytha, daughter of King Harold II of England (IEU, EIU). He was buried, after his death, in Kyiv’s St. Sophia Cathedral (IEU; see our article on St. Sophia Cathedral).

A Text in Three Parts

According to EIU, this work consists of three parts.

• The “instruction” proper: teachings for his children.
• An autobiography (EIU also calls it a “chronicle of his life”): an ordered account of his travels, battles, and hunts.
• A long letter to his cousin, Prince Oleh Sviatoslavych of Chernihiv.

EIU states that scholars believe Monomakh himself compiled the three parts together. The letter to Oleh, per EIU’s entry “Volodymyr Monomakh,” was written after Monomakh’s son was killed in the conflict with Oleh.

What the Instruction Says

In the manuscript text, about four and a half lines are missing right after the opening (per the critical edition’s notes). After that, the author writes that “sitting in my sled, I pondered in my heart” and praised God for keeping him alive to that day, and asks his children, and anyone else who hears this modest writing, to take it to heart rather than laugh at it. A note by the scholar Leonid Makhnovets explains “sitting in my sled” as a way of saying one is preparing for death.

Here are a few lines translated from the instruction section.

• “Do not forget what you do well, and learn what you cannot. My father, staying at home, mastered five languages; for that, he is honored by other lands.”
• “Idleness is the mother of all” (Makhnovets’s Ukrainian translation supplies “of all [bad things]”).
• “Do not let the sun find you in your bed.”
• When traveling through his own domain, he told his retinue not to let harm come to villages or fields, whether belonging to his own people or to others.

The translations are this article’s own, made by cross-checking the text of the 1926 critical edition of the chronicle (Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles, volume 1, the Laurentian Codex text) against historian Leonid Makhnovets’s Ukrainian translation (1989).

The Autobiography: “Eighty-Three Great Journeys”

In the autobiographical section, Monomakh, per EIU, describes the large and small campaigns and the diplomatic and state duties he undertook from around age 13 or 14. Near the end, he counts up his travels: “of all my journeys, the great ones number eighty-three, the small ones I do not remember,” and writes that he made peace with the Polovtsian princes “one short of twenty” times, that is, 19 times (the critical edition’s text; the numbers are written in the old letter-numerals).

The hunting stories are vivid too: binding a wild horse with his own hands, being tossed with his horse by the horns of two aurochs, having his knee bitten by a bear through the saddlecloth. He also writes that he fell from his horse many times, breaking his head twice and injuring his limbs, yet God kept him safe throughout. Makhnovets’s note suggests the “tur” (aurochs) here was probably the European bison.

Surviving Only in the Laurentian Codex

According to EIU, Instruction to Children survives in only one manuscript: the Laurentian Codex, copied onto parchment in 1377 by the monk Laurentius for Grand Prince Dmitrii Konstantinovich of Suzdal-Nizhny Novgorod. The work appears within the chronicle Tale of Bygone Years, inserted into the entry for the year 1096, interrupting a passage about the origins of the Polovtsians.

According to the foreword to the 1926 critical edition, the codex has 178 folios, and the Instruction occupies folios 78 to 85, placed in the middle of the story of Alexander the Great shutting a people away in the mountains. IEU’s entry “Laurentian Chronicle” places it at the same location. EIU states that the work does not appear in any other chronicle or source.

Why is it there? EIU suggests that in the late 12th century, a chronicler in Vladimir (a town on the Kliazma River, in what is now Russia) inserted it, together with a “prayer” of St. Andrew of Crete, the patron saint of that region’s Prince Andrei. IEU’s entry “Chronicles,” on the other hand, states that it was more likely added to the chronicle at the Vydubychi Monastery in Kyiv. The three redactions of the chronicle and the manuscript as a whole are covered in our article on the manuscripts of Tale of Bygone Years.

The Manuscript’s Owners, and the 1793 Publication

According to EIU’s entry “Laurentian Codex,” the manuscript belonged to the Nativity of the Theotokos Monastery in Vladimir until the early 18th century, was later brought to St. Petersburg, and was acquired in 1792 by the nobleman Aleksei Musin-Pushkin (IEU states he found it at the monastery that same year). Musin-Pushkin presented the manuscript to Emperor Alexander I, and it entered the public library. The foreword to the 1926 critical edition records its holding as “National Public Library (Leningrad), F°.п.IV, No. 2.”

The same foreword states that Musin-Pushkin extracted the Instruction from the manuscript and published it separately in St. Petersburg in 1793. The chronicle as a whole was first published in 1846 (IEU, EIU).

When Was It Written?

Being placed under the chronicle’s entry for 1096 doesn’t mean it was written in 1096. EIU states that events later than 1096 appear within the work, so that year cannot be taken as its date of composition, and that only the letter to Oleh can be dated to 1096 based on its content.

1099, 1117, 1118: What Each Date Points To

The date of composition is written differently by different encyclopedias.

• IEU’s entries “Volodymyr Monomakh” (reprint of an entry published on paper in 1993) and “Literature”: “around 1117.”
• EIU’s “Volodymyr Monomakh” (2003): “around 1118.”
• EIU’s “Volodymyr Monomakh’s ‘Instruction'”: the original instruction section was written around 1099 and substantially reworked late in his life; the last event mentioned in the autobiography is a campaign against Prince Hlib Vseslavych of Minsk in 1117, so the autobiographical section was completed that year.

The year 1099 comes from a passage within the work itself. According to EIU, the author writes that in 1099 envoys from senior princes visited Monomakh and asked him to send troops against the younger princes, the brothers Volodar and Vasylko Rostyslavych. EIU regards this as when the first part was likely written. In other words, “1099” marks when writing began, “1117” the last event recorded, and “around 1118” a rough estimate for when the whole work took shape — three different things, not one and the same date.

Timeline

Year	Event	Source
1053	Volodymyr Monomakh is born	IEU, EIU
1078-1094	Prince of Chernihiv	IEU, EIU
1094	Becomes prince of Pereiaslav	IEU, EIU
1096	The Instruction is placed under the chronicle’s entry for this year. The letter to Oleh dates to this year	EIU
1097	The Liubech princely congress	IEU
Around 1099	Said to be when the instruction section began to be written	EIU
1113	Becomes grand prince of Kyiv	IEU, EIU
1116	The second redaction of Tale of Bygone Years (at Vydubychi Monastery)	IEU
1117	The last event mentioned in the autobiography (the campaign against Minsk)	EIU
Around 1117-1118	The work’s composition (IEU: around 1117; EIU: around 1118)	IEU, EIU
May 19, 1125	Dies in Kyiv	IEU, EIU
1377	The monk Laurentius copies the chronicle	IEU, EIU, the critical edition’s foreword
1792	The manuscript passes into Musin-Pushkin’s hands	IEU, EIU
1793	The Instruction is published for the first time (St. Petersburg)	The critical edition’s foreword
1846	The whole chronicle is published for the first time	IEU, EIU

The Work’s Name, and the Author’s Name

From “a Small Writing” to “Instruction”

The author himself calls this text a “gramotitsa” (грамотиця, a small piece of writing; per the critical edition’s text). The name “Instruction” (Повчання, Povchannia) was attached later. The 1793 printed edition’s title was “Поученіе Владиміра Мономаха своимъ дѣтямъ” (per the critical edition’s foreword). In today’s Ukrainian, EIU writes it as “Повчання” (Povchannia). IEU transliterates the older form as “Poucheniie ditiam” and translates it into English as “Instruction for [My] Children.” No settled Japanese title for this work could be confirmed, so this article calls it Instruction to His Children.

Vasilii and Volodymyr

At the opening of the work, the author identifies himself as christened Vasilii, called Volodymyr in the Rus’ tradition, and beloved of his father and his mother Monomakh (per the critical edition’s text). EIU’s own entry likewise opens by calling him “Volodymyr-Vasilii Vsevolodych Monomakh.” The same name is read as Vladimir in Russian.

Whose “Cap of Monomakh”?

Later in Moscow, Russia’s tsars were crowned with a crown called the “Cap of Monomakh.” EIU states that it was used from Ivan IV to Nicholas II, but that this crown, said to have been inherited from Byzantine relatives, was in fact made by a Samarkand goldsmith in the late 13th or early 14th century. Though it bears his name, it has nothing to do with the 12th-century grand prince of Kyiv.

What Was He Trying to Pass On to His Children?

According to EIU, texts in the form of “instructions to children” were widespread across medieval Europe, and Monomakh’s work draws on this same genre as well as on the Psalms and John Exarch’s Hexaemeron from Bulgaria. EIU reads Monomakh as accepting that the land of Rus’ would be divided among the princes of his clan, while urgently insisting that they keep the agreements needed to fight the Polovtsians together, and sees running through the work both love for one’s own land and the bond of brotherhood among princes.

IEU describes it as a literarily accomplished work combining instruction and autobiography, cautioning against the princes’ internal quarrels and preaching the idea of a unified state. The voice of the writer, IEU adds, is that of a brave warrior and a wise, thoughtful sovereign. That words warning against idleness and urging learning sit in the same text as a story of being tossed by an aurochs is part of what makes this work worth reading.