p The Tver principality, closely tied economically and politically with Vladimir and Suzdal, had a politically dominant position, due to its favourable situation on the crossing of merchant routes from East to West. Starting with the early fourteenth century, the Tver princes rivalled their Moscow counterparts striving to 209 win the title of great princes of Vladimir. In the first half of the fifteenth century, during the feudal strife between the princes Vasily the Blind and Dmitry Shemyaka, Tver grew especially important in terms both of politics, and of literature and architecture.

p The Tver chronicles started from the late thirteenth century parallel to a number of vitae. One of the most noticeable works was the Life of Prince Mikhail Alexandrovich of Tver that extolled his feats, told of his outstanding political role, and traced the Tver dynasty back to the Kievan prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich. At about the same time the early fourteenth century tale of Prince Mikhail Yaroslavich’s assassination in the Golden Horde was revised. The Genealogy (Rodoslovets), the forerunner of the sixteenth century Book of Generations, (Stepennay kniga), that substantiated the hereditary right of the Tver princes to the throne passed to them from the Kievan princes, is another important work of the local literature.

p The Eulogy of the Pious and Great Prince Boris Alexandrovich was written about 1453 by the monk Foma, according to A. A. Shakhmatov’s hypothesis, the court chronicler to the Tver prince. He took as his models the Discourse on the Life and Passing of Dmitry Ivanovich, the Life of Alexander Nevsky, the anonymous Tale of Boris and Gleb, and Marion’s Sermon on Law and Grace to compose his ornamental laudation of Boris of Tver, the “autocratic tsar enthroned by the Lord to succeed his father”. To make it more weighty, Foma made the participants to the Council of Florence praise the “autocratic monarch”, an impressive gathering of John, Emperor of Byzantium, a patriarch and twenty-two metropolitans. He also compares the prince of Tver to the emperors Augustus, Constantine, Justinian, Leo the Wise sand the Scriptural Moses and Joseph. The author praises the prince’s patronage of architecture as it was under his rule that the Kremlin was built in Tver as well as churches and monasteries likened by Foma to a “glittering and shapely crown".

p The prince is treated in The Eulogy as the ruler and monarch of the entire land of Rus. Foma describes the aid he rendered to Vasily the Blind, the prince of 210 Muscovy, against Dmitry Shemyaka, and tells how their friendship was sealed by Vasily’s marriage to Boris’ daughter.

Thus The Eulogy emphasises the idea of Tver as the political centre of Rus and its princes as the autocratic tsars of the entire country, rightful heirs to the Kievan princes—an idea which could not but displease the Muscovite princes. That was why The Eulogy lost its actuality after Tver was incorporated into Muscovy in 1485, and only one copy, and that damaged, is now extant.