Ivan the Terrible (13 page)

But if Greek influence was strong, there was a fundamental difference between the East Roman and the Russian conception of the relationship between the Church and the Tsar. In the expressive phrase of Uspensky, in Byzantium the functions of the tsar and the patriarch (who was to be appointed in Russia in 1598) were defined by a special juridical ordinance, while in Russia they were accepted as the manifestation of a specific charisma, the charisma of power. Full powers expressed in juridical formulae became charismatic powers, the symphony of power became the symphony of charisma.
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Not content with the coronation by a mere metropolitan, Ivan strengthened his symbolic and practical position by appealing to the Patriarch of Constantinople for ‘a blessing’ of his right to the title of tsar, namely Caesar, and after long drawn out negotiations he finally received confirmation of his new title from the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1561. It came in a form which implied that a metropolitan had no right to crown a tsar, for only two patriarchs, that of Rome and that of Constantinople, had such a right. The missive invited Ivan to be crowned again by the Metropolitan of Chalcis, the patriarchal emissary who had carried it to Moscow. Ivan quietly suppressed this part of the missive and arranged for alterations to the Greek text in its Russian translation, which went to show that the Patriarch's approval had been
given on his own initiative and not at the request of Ivan. It also introduced the argument that not merely his people were in duty bound to obey the Tsar but that his ‘princes’ were specifically bound to remain in obedience to him, a principle which was also put forward by the priest Sylvester in 1561.
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Though in theory patriarchal approval may not have much affected Ivan's authority, it undoubtedly contributed to raising the spiritual aura of the Russian Tsar in the Orthodox world.

Makarii, who evidently enjoyed at this time considerable moral authority over the young Tsar, may also have been instrumental in pressing him to marry in order to keep him from base companions. On that same 13 December 1546 when Ivan's coronation was openly discussed in the meeting of the joint Council, the young Grand Prince stood up and declared his wish to be married. He had at first considered marrying abroad into some royal or imperial family, he said, but since he had no family of his own in Russia, he would be very lonely if he did not get on well with his foreign bride. Therefore, he had decided to marry a Russian.

A bride-show was at once organized. Inevitably it took time and careful planning. Suitable families in the provincial towns, princely and boyar, or belonging to the patrician groups in the towns, had to be notified so that their nubile daughters could be inspected. The daughters of court magnates and run-of-the-mill courtiers could be inspected in Moscow. Around 12–18 December 1546, orders were sent to
okol'nichi
, princes and boyars to proceed to some twenty-eight towns, ranging from Rostov to Kostroma, Yaroslavl' to Novgorod, in order to view the young ladies assembled there. Meanwhile, letters were sent out to the local princes and service gentry, announcing the forthcoming inspection as follows:

The response of the provincial nobles seems to have been somewhat half-hearted. Prince I.S. Mezetskoi and
d'iak
G. Shenka Bely reported in early January 1547 that they had been in Viaz'ma for two weeks and not a single prince or service man had brought in his daughters, while among
the townspeople the girls were all too young. They were able to report on only one young lady. Such letters were evidently shown to Ivan himself, who followed the inspection with interest.
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His choice eventually fell on Anastasia Romanovna Iur'ieva Zakhar'ina, niece of the boyar Mikhail Iur'evich Zakhar'in, who had been one of the witnesses to Vasily III's will and a member of the Regency Council, and who had died in 1539. One may wonder whether the decision had been taken in advance, and indeed whether Ivan already knew the young lady. The choice had the advantage of not introducing a new boyar family into the delicate balance at court, since it was already there. What led Ivan to choose Anastasia is not known, but it was from the personal point of view an excellent choice, though of course it altered the existing balance between the Iur'ev Zakhar'ins and the Glinskys.
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The wedding was celebrated with all due solemnity on 3 February 1547. In accordance with usual Russian ceremony, the proceedings lasted three days. Weddings were one of the occasions when married women took an active part in court life. Princess Evfronsin'ia of Staritsa had a prominent role, as did her son and various important princes and boyars and their wives. Places by the bed were occupied by two figures who were to play an important part in the future, Aleksei and Daniil Adashev. Aleksei, with many other high-ranking boyars, also accompanied the Tsar to the bathhouse on the eve of the wedding. Metropolitan Makarii issued an admonition to the newly-weds in which he adjured the young couple to visit churches and prisons, love their families, respect priests, be generous to boyars and people, refrain from listening to slanderers, observe Sundays and all saints' days and all fasts, and to couple only on favourable days.
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Evidently Ivan felt his marriage to be so successful that he wanted to share the experience with his brother, the fifteen-year-old Iuri. Aleksei Adashev's closeness to Ivan at this time is further documented by his presence together with his wife at the wedding of Iuri on 3 November 1547. Iuri was undoubtedly handicapped but he was not unfit for marriage. Already in September, after consultation with Makarii, Ivan had summoned the boyars and princes to bring their daughters to his court, and after inspecting the girls Iuri expressed his preference for Princess Ul'iana Paletskaia. The Tsar appointed the best men, one of whom was a boyar, and their wives were appointed matrons of honour to the Princess. Two prominent officials and three prominent ladies were to be by the bed, one of whom was the wife of Adashev; other boyars were appointed to bathe with the bridegroom, and to prepare the bed, where again we find Adashev and his brother Daniil. What is striking in
the description of these weddings is the active participation of women of boyar rank, and in the case of Iuri's wedding of the Tsaritsa herself, who dressed the hair of the bridal couple, while Ivan embraced them and lavished gifts on them, and after dinner the next day, they made merry.
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In November the Tsar authorized the marriage of his first cousin, Prince Vladimir of Staritsa (even though the Tsar still had no male heir), but the wedding was postponed because of the impending campaign against Kazan'. The boyars and princes were again ordered to produce their daughters, who were inspected on 24 May 1550. Prince Vladimir chose a girl from the Nagoy clan and the wedding took place on 31 May with similar celebrations in the presence of several boyar and princely ladies.

There is no study of the Russian court as a political or social institution such as exists in French or English historiography, and there is no intimate portrayal of a day in the life of the Tsar.
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There is thus an extensive gap in our knowledge of the life of Ivan. Some court lists have survived, with the names of some of his personal servants, which show that many of them served him for many years. One of his gentlemen of the bedchamber, Istoma Osipovich Bezobrazov, served him for twenty-one years. The courtiers who served the Tsar in a personal capacity, as cupbearers, carvers, servers, waiters, tasters, body servants in the bedchamber, gentlemen-at-arms, keepers of the treasure, and purveyors of food, jewels and clothing, had titles that do not translate easily from Russian into English, but which correspond roughly with the same functions performed in Western courts. The personal attendants of the Tsar comprised the
postel'nichi
, or gentlemen of the bedchamber, the
spal'niki
, or bedroom attendants, the
stol'niki
, who served at table in the banquets for two or three hundred people, the
chashniki
, or cupbearers. But there were others – tasters, washerwomen, cooks – about whom we know nothing. There was certainly a very large staff necessary to procure and produce food for the Tsar's family, for banquets and for contingents of troops guarding the palaces. There were also many outdoor court servants, grooms, huntsmen, houndsmen, falconers, coachmen etc., and some three thousand
zhiltsy
, senior service gentry, the lowest court rank, charged with the defence of the Kremlin, who also acted as the private soldiers in the Main Regiment of the armed forces. The Master of the Horse was responsible for the care of the vast number of horses.

The Tsaritsa also had her ladies-in-waiting, the mistress of her robes, the mistress of her court and of the nursery and even her own boyars. She and her women rarely ate in public, usually only on the occasion of
weddings and christenings, but they travelled extensively, in company with the Tsar, sometimes even on foot, on pilgrimages, and in considerable discomfort. The principal residence of the Tsar was inside the Kremlin, a fairly large walled area comprising within its boundaries the three principal cathedrals, many other churches and several monasteries, and the palaces of the Tsar and of many of the magnates. Typical of Russian palace construction was its disjointed higgledy-piggledy character in comparison with Western architecture. Separate buildings were erected, each for its own purpose and with its own style of windows and roof, which were joined together by halls, landings, corridors, galleries and stairs. The most typical of this kind of building was the much later wooden palace of Kolomenskoe. Stone had begun to replace wood in the Kremlin, notably in the Granovitaia (or Facet) palace, built in the reign of Ivan III, where banquets took place. There was also a dining hall, and a number of official buildings. In an adjacent palace, was the
brusiannaia
(beamed) chamber in which Ivan received foreign ambassadors and envoys informally and where the Boyar Council met, and the Golden Chamber (so called because the frescoes decorating the walls had a golden background), where foreign envoys were also received. In each room a throne was set up on a richly carpeted dais for the Tsar, located near the corner in which the icons were displayed, reminiscent of the place occupied by the throne in an imperial throne-room in Constantinople – which suggests that the ceremonial might have been brought over by Sofia Paleologa, or possibly introduced by Ivan III under Ottoman influence.
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In the Golden Chamber, to the right of Ivan's throne, was an icon of the Lord of Hosts, with a sceptre, and to the left a painting of Joasaf talking in the desert with Varlaam.
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There were benches along the walls, covered with velvet or damask, on which the boyars took their seats in the strictest order of precedence dictated by the system of
mestnichestvo
. The boyars maintained a motionless silence during the audiences of foreign envoys, which deeply impressed the latter. Tatar tsarevichi were often present at these audiences, particularly if Tatar envoys were being received, in order to underline the reversal of situations, for it was Russia which now disposed of the Tatar thrones to the various claimants. Four, sometimes two,
ryndy
or armed pages in their white garb were placed around the Tsar, at a distance calculated according to their rank in the
mestnichestvo
placing. The presence of armed men on such occasions was unusual in diplomatic practice, but as was explained to the papal envoy Antonio Possevino in 1579, this was a habit taken over from the Emperor Manuel Paleologus – not in self-defence, but to impose.

The Tsar received foreigners dressed in his great habit or his lesser habit; both were lavishly ornamented with jewels and weighed down with gold, but the lesser habit was lighter. He also always wore a jewelled crown, and might have beside him on a bench the crowns of some of his subsidiary realms, such as eventually the crown of Kazan', so that he could change crowns during a banquet. Foreign envoys were not expected to prostrate themselves or even to kneel, merely to bow.

Ceremonial banquets for foreign embassies played a big part in the life of the court. As many as two hundred boyars and lesser ranks might attend in rich golden garments, sitting on benches all around the banqueting room, with Ivan on a raised dais, alone at first, later in life accompanied by his sons. Tablecloths were spread over the tables, but there were no napkins or plates, the only cutlery was a spoon, and a drinking cup was also provided. Guests brought their own knives. Three or four guests ate straight from one large, usually golden, dish placed before them, which was carried in by three or four men. Meat was carved into pieces, and guests ate with their fingers – as elsewhere in Europe at that time. Forks were not yet in general use in courts. Food was said to be very monotonous in Russia, consisting of baked, boiled or roast meats, pies of many kinds, fresh and salt fish and ‘roots’, the usual name for vegetables, overwhelmingly flavoured with garlic and onions. Poultry and eggs were widely used, though not on fast days, and there were sweets of various kinds based on honey, flour, fruit and berries.
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Sour cream took the place of lemons. During the great fasts no dairy produce was consumed.

The
terem
, or private apartments of the Tsar were usually on the upper stories and the buildings reserved for the tsaritsas and the children were usually of wood – which is much warmer than stone. They had their own chapels and their own baths. On the ground floor vast quantities of stores were kept, including the rich robes in cloth of gold which were lent to boyars for official receptions. The living quarters were hung with tapestries or carpets; there were, of course, many icons, but also other wall paintings and frescoes of scenes drawn from the Bible, or historical scenes, or scenes depicting the seasons, and some rudimentary portraits. There were canaries, other singing birds and parrots.