Izgoi is a term that is found in

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...

Kievan Rus' Kievan Rus', also known as Kyivan Rus,. * was the first East Slavs, East Slavic state and later an amalgam of principalities in Eastern Europe from the late 9th to the mid-13th century.John Channon & Robert Hudson, ''Penguin Historical At ...

. In primary documents, it indicated orphans who were protected by the church. In historiographic writing on the period, the term was meant as a prince in Kievan Rus' who was excluded from succession to the Kievan throne because his father had not held the throne before, as exemplified by

Yaroslav the Wise Yaroslav I Vladimirovich ( 978 – 20 February 1054), better known as Yaroslav the Wise, was Grand Prince of Kiev from 1019 until his death in 1054. He was also earlier Prince of Novgorod from 1010 to 1034 and Prince of Rostov from 987 to 1010, ...

's two youngest sons becoming izgoi. In Kievan Rus', as well as Appanage and early Muscovite Russia,

collateral succession An order, line or right of succession is the line of individuals necessitated to hold a high office when it becomes vacated, such as head of state or an honour such as a title of nobility.linear succession, was practiced, with the throne being passed from the eldest brother to the youngest brother and then to cousins until the fourth in line of succession (not to be confused with "fourth cousins") in a generation before it was passed on to the eldest member of the senior line if his father had held the Kievan throne. The princes were placed in a hierarchy or "ladder" or "staircase" of principalities, which Sergei Soloviev called the "

rota system The rota (or rotation) system or the lestvitsa system (from the Old Church Slavonic word for "ladder" or "staircase") is a historiographical concept introduced by historian Sergei Soloviev in 1860, attempting to describe a system of collateral su ...

" (rota being the

Old Church Slavonic Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic ( ) is the first Slavic languages, Slavic literary language and the oldest extant written Slavonic language attested in literary sources. It belongs to the South Slavic languages, South Slavic subgroup of the ...

term for a ladder or staircase), with Kiev as the pinnacle. When the grand prince of Kiev died, the next prince on the ladder moved up the ladder, and the rest advanced a rung as well. Any prince whose father had not held the throne, such as for having predeceased the grandfather, who was then grand prince, was excluded from succession and was known as ''izgoi''. The term is also found in the expanded version of the '' Russkaya Pravda'', where it meant an orphan or exile; thus, an izgoi prince is in some sense seen as an "orphaned" or "exiled" prince since he was left outside of the succession to the Kievan throne. However, he was not, usually, landless, unlike what is sometimes stated, as he still held the patrimonial land granted to him in the provinces. An example of an izgoi prince would be

Vseslav of Polotsk Vseslav Bryachislavich ( 1029 – 24 April 1101; also known as ''Vseslav the Sorcerer'' or ''Vseslav the Seer'') was Prince of Polotsk (1044–1101) and Grand Prince of Kiev (1068–1069). Together with Rostislav Vladimirovich and voivode Vys ...

, whose father, Briacheslav () and grandfather Iziaslav () both predeceased Vseslav's great-grandfather,

Vladimir the Great Vladimir I Sviatoslavich or Volodymyr I Sviatoslavych (; Christian name: ''Basil''; 15 July 1015), given the epithet "the Great", was Prince of Novgorod from 970 and Grand Prince of Kiev from 978 until his death in 1015. The Eastern Orthodox ...

(). Thus, Vseslav was izgoi since he could not legitimately claim the grand princely throne in Kiev: neither his father nor his grandfather had sat on the throne. He however, remained prince of Polotsk, in northeast Belarus. Furthermore, in spite of his excluded status, Vseslav briefly seized the throne of Kiev in 1069 but held it only six months before he was ousted. Another example (there are many others) would be Rostislav Vladimirovich, the son of Vladimir Yaroslavich. Since Vladimir had died in 1052, two years before his father,

(), he had never held the Kievan throne, and Rostislav was an izgoi. His descendants, however, became princes of Galicia, in northwestern Ukraine. They were excluded from holding the grand-princely throne in Kiev but were not landless.Martin, ''Medieval Russia'',96

References

{{Reflist Kievan Rus' law Majority–minority relations Succession