Ivan the Terrible (48 page)

On 13 February Ivan left for Pskov, to continue the good work. He stayed in the Nikol'sky monastery outside the city and was met without the gates by a respectful procession with crosses, icons, bread and salt and other signs of welcome. Abbot Kornilii of the great Pskov Pechersky monastery came to meet the Tsar, but was unable to ward off his wrath. As in Novgorod it fell first on the church hierarchy, of which Ivan was particularly suspicious, since Vassian Muromtsev, the correspondent of A.M. Kurbsky, was a distinguished priestly writer in the monastery,while Abbot Kornilii had for many years composed an anti-Muscovite chronicle of Pskov. One of the Pskov chronicles states that on 20 February 1570 the earthly Tsar dispatched Kornily to the heavenly Tsar.
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According to a
Sinodik,
some thirty to forty service gentry were executed as well as various monks and elders of monasteries, and a number of officials including a woman, Elena, the mother-in-law of the Governor of Novgorod who rejoiced in the most apposite name of Neudacha (failure).

The Tsar seemed to be particularly enraged at the ecclesiastical hierarchy in Pskov and pillaged it more furiously than elsewhere. But the assault by the
oprichniki
on the city itself did not last long for a reason of which many contemporary versions exist, though many historians – and
others – disbelieve it. There was in Pskov a
iurodivyi
, or holy fool, by name Nikola, so well-known that the Tsar visited him in his cell. Offering him bread and salt, Nikola warned the Tsar: ‘you have tortured the people enough. Go back to Moscow, otherwise the horse you rode here will not carry you back to Moscow.’ And the holy fool issued many warnings to the Tsar to stop the bloodshed and the ravaging of the holy places. Whether this happened, and whether it had any effect on the Tsar is hard to prove.
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But it is the kind of intervention which might well have influenced his credulous temperament, and he moved off to Staritsa and thence to Aleksandrovskaia Sloboda.

While these atrocious events were taking place Ivan was continuing his cautious diplomacy to stabilize the situation in the north and build up his defences in the south. An impressive embassy, led by Jan Krotowski and escorted by 718 men and 900 horses, together with 643 merchants and their servants arrived from the Commonwealth on 3 March 1570 and was lodged in the Lithuanian diplomatic palace in Moscow. But the Tsar, explaining that he was tired after having put down disturbances in Novgorod and Pskov, apologized for keeping the ambassador waiting while he rested, and remained shut up in Aleksandrovskaia Sloboda until 4 May. He received the Lithuanian ambassador on 7 May with a number of officials headed by Viskovaty, three of whom would be executed in a few weeks.
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During the ensuing weeks the two sides discussed terms for an armistice, in a situation rendered tense by a renewal of threats from the Crimean Khan, which required the movement of troops to defend the southern border and the presence of the Tsar himself. Fortunately for Ivan, by 21 May the Tatar troops had been defeated and he was able to return to Moscow, leaving substantial forces and the three senior generals in the
zemshchina
, Bel'sky, Mstislavsky and Vorotynsky, behind. (It is here that the anecdote belongs of the incompetent general, who withdrew before the Tatar attack began and was thrown to a bear to be eaten.
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)

The talks with the Lithuanian envoy were now influenced by news of the illness of King Sigismund Augustus which gave immediacy to the whole question of the succession to his throne. The possibility that Ivan might be considered as a claimant had long been at the back of people's minds, but now, on 10 June 1570, the Polish-Lithuanian envoys openly mentioned the subject to Ivan who replied, ‘Our realm is big enough, why should I want yours?’
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But the news of the declining health of Sigismund Augustus hastened the need for a truce.

However, the presence of a large Polish-Lithuanian embassy in Moscow led to a series of unpleasant and violent diplomatic incidents.
Nowhere in Europe was diplomatic etiquette as yet formally laid down by treaty but certain habits of convenience and courtesy were gradually being formed. They were still often disregarded by, for instance, the Eastern powers (the Ottoman Porte), of which Russia was one. It was also still the practice in the East for embassies to be lodged and fed at the expense of the host country, and to use the opportunity for extensive private trade. This made it easy to put pressure on the visiting embassy by providing inadequate lodging, not enough food, and preventing freedom of movement. In this case the problem was created by a member of the Commonwealth embassy who lashed out at the Tsar's confessor with his whip. He explained in vain that it was an accident, but the Tsar protested at the dishonour to his priest and repaid the Lithuanians in kind by dishonouring the members of the embassy, forcing them, when they obeyed his summons to the Kremlin, to dismount in a lowly place and enter the Kremlin on foot. It ended in an assault by Ivan's
oprichniki
musketeers on the Lithuanians who lost their clothes and hats. Ivan placed a Lithuanian hat on the head of his fool, and told him to kneel in Lithuanian fashion, then showed him how to do so to his favourite cry:
Hoyda, hoyda
. In a quarrel over the value of presents, a thoroughbred horse presented to the Tsar was cut to pieces.
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Nevertheless, a three-year truce was patched up between the Commonwealth and Russia on 20 June 1570, for Ivan was anxious to get rid of this large Lithuanian armed presence which merely increased the tension over foreign policy. There were close family connexions between Lithuanians and Russians, and it was impossible for Ivan to prevent the two sides from talking unofficially together and indeed plotting, and there was no language barrier. Many Russians opposed the truce with Lithuania on the grounds that the absence of war would untie Ivan's hands and enable him to proceed against his subjects.

The agreement for the three-year truce with the Commonwealth was presented on a salver by Viskovaty to the Tsar for his ratification on 22 June 1570, and the Polish embassy departed at last on 3 July 1570.
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This embassy was noteworthy for the presence of Jan Rokyta, the Hussite Elder of the Bohemian Brethren, as a chaplain attached to the Polish-Lithuanian embassy, and the dialogue which took place between him and the Tsar on the subject of religion. So convinced was Ivan of his knowledge of theology that he twice at least in his life embarked on a public dispute with a leading representative of a foreign faith. The first was with Jan Rokyta, the second was with the Jesuit, Antonio Possevino, who argued publicly with Ivan on several occasions in March 1582.
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Jan Rokyta's debate with Ivan took place on 10 May 1570, just after
the Union of Lublin and the creation of the Commonwealth of Poland–Lithuania. The Polish-Lithuanian Protestants at the time were testing the ground in Russia for the possible candidature of Ivan IV to the Polish throne in the event of the death of the King. Rokyta was a very senior, experienced and highly respected elder of the Bohemian Brethren.
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The request for a debate with the Tsar on Protestantism came from him, and Ivan consented to it rather reluctantly. The surviving documents include the reply by Jan Rokyta to a series of ten questions put to him by Ivan, inviting the Bohemian Brother to explain what he taught the faithful, what was the justification of their faith, and raising a few knotty questions on the issue of justification by faith alone and other matters of ritual or conduct, which separated Lutheranism from Orthodoxy. (Ivan: ‘If you say that we are saved by the Grace of God alone, then why say that Christ the Saviour will come to judge the living and the dead according to their deeds?’)

While denying that he was a Lutheran, Rokyta asserted in his reply to Ivan that his religion had withdrawn from obedience to the Pope, that miracles were no longer necessary to confirm faith, nor was the intercession of the saints, nor did the Brethren worship idols (icons). His views on marriage were perfectly Pauline.

On the whole this was a very moderate statement. Ivan took some time to write or commission a reply, which was delivered to Jan Rokyta in the name of Parfenii Urodivy, Ivan's
alter ego.
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In all probability there were extensive consultations with the Metropolitan or some other knowedgeable clerics, for the document, dated 18 June,
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though unmistakably written in Ivan's style (‘give not that which is holy unto the dogs neither cast ye your pearls before swine’) is a serious attempt to discuss religious differences. It is long and divided into fourteen chapters. The Tsar attacked Luther the man, whom he assumed to be Rokyta's teacher, as one who is savage (
liutorstvo
; there is a pun on the name of Luther here) and accuses him of being the Angel of Darkness, and like Satan, cast out of heaven. He accuses Rokyta of distorting the content of the Holy Scriptures, as usual relying on quotations from the Bible and the Holy Fathers. As one might expect he raises the question of faith versus works and rejects salvation by faith alone. ‘But wilt thou know, oh vain man,’ he says to Rokyta, ‘that faith without works is dead?’

Ivan also rejects the concept of predestination, arguing that predestination has been completed at the time of the incarnation and he regards the laws of Deuteronomy as tenets of Judaism. Rokyta's rejection of icons and the veneration of images is countered by the
argument that icons represent heavenly forces necessary for human salvation, and not wicked idols. The whole allocution is more imbued with sweet reasonableness than is usual, until Ivan comes to the end, when he accuses Jan Rokyta of corrupt teaching, of being a heretic, a servant of Antichrist, and forbids him ever to preach in Russia.
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Meanwhile the new Russian ambassador to England, Andrei Grigorevich Savin, arrived safely in London and was given a ceremonial reception at Tower Wharf on 27 August 1569 by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, clad in scarlet, and the ‘merchants adventurers in coates of black velvet all on horsebacke’ who escorted Savin to the Muscovy House. Savin's instructions were to conclude an agreement regarding Ivan's asylum in England, and Elizabeth's in Russia, and to finalize the alliance between the two countries which had been discussed and verbally agreed in general terms by Randolph.
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No details of the negotiations are known, which dealt both with relations between states (the Russian right to trade freely in England, recruitment of craftsmen etc.) and matters concerning the Russia Company. The difficulties encountered by the negotiators are suggested by Savin's request on 6 May 1570 that the Queen's ‘letters of secrit’ be written in ‘Rousse word for word’, and that the Queen should sign and take an oath to the letters and hang her seal on them, and the Tsar would undertake to do the same. Ivan's distrust of English procedure is reflected in his request that the translations into Russian should be made in the presence of his ambassador.
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Again, in Ivan's name, Savin requested that Anthony Jenkinson should be sent on a ‘grand embassy’, for he had followed the negotiations from the beginning and ‘therefore the Emperour will better creditt his wordes’.
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By May 1570 Elizabeth delivered to Savin a formal reply to the demand for an alliance, couched in terms so devious and ‘Elizabethan’ that it is difficult really to be sure of what the Queen meant. Elizabeth speaks of her acceptance of Ivan's offer of a ‘league and confederation’, and her decision to accept such a friendly offer as he had made ‘so far furth as the treaties and confederations which we have had of long time and receaved by succession of our progenitors kings of England’ would permit her. Hence her existing foreign relations took priority over her ‘amity’ with Ivan which, she also hinted, was offered in reciprocation for his grant of trade privileges. Yet in the end, her offer was generous: she would enter a friendly and sisterly league with Ivan, which she would keep forever, which league would bind them both to withstand all their common enemies with all their forces, and to help each other against their common enemies, ‘as farfurth as the effect of these our letters shall
stretche’. The sting again was in the tail: ‘And we will not ayde comefort or suffer any parson or potentate to offend you or youre contreys, that we may to our power and by justice with reason stay or impeache’, which meant that Elizabeth would attempt to protect Ivan by verbal rather than military means. At the same time a second highly secret letter of the same date repeated Elizabeth's offer of asylum to Ivan and his ‘noble empresse and deare children the princes’, signed by the principal members of her Council.
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Elizabeth refused to commit herself to asking for asylum in Russia in the event of her people rising against her.

Yet in spite of the English commitment to act with Russia against their common enemies, Ivan was still not satisfied that the proffered alliance was precise enough to meet his needs. For Elizabeth, who did not want to be forced to take part in any wars, let alone wars in Eastern Europe, did leave herself a loophole by accepting to assist Ivan insofar only as her assistance did not infringe her engagements with other Christian powers, in fact she would decide whether the treaty applied or not. That the Queen obviously thought agreement had been reached is reflected in her decision not to send an ambassador, whether Jenkinson or anyone else, to Russia to continue talks with Ivan.
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Savin returned to Russia bringing with him an important addition to Ivan's court, the physician Dr Eliseus Bomelius who was to play a prominent part, acquire a sinister reputation, and suffer an excruciating death in Russia. He was of German extraction, son of a Lutheran preacher in Westphalia, who was a friend of the English Bishop Bale. He took a medical degree at Cambridge, and was a popular practitioner in English society, but was arrested in 1567 for practising without a licence. He was also skilled in astrology and alchemy. He was released from the King's Bench prison in 1570, possibly because Savin offered him employment in Russia. Lord Burleigh had used his services, and is said to have consulted him on Elizabeth's length of life. He is also said to have arranged that Bomelius should supply him with information about Russia.
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