Ivan the Terrible (72 page)

15
‘Muscovite Folkways’,
The Russian Review
, 45, 1986, pp. 115–81.

16
In a posting on the Early Slavic Studies Internet channel.

17
See the evidence of Possevino on their manner of negotiating, in which discussions were recorded on scrolls and the boyars took them back to Ivan and read them to him.

18
See
SIRIO (Sbornik imperatorskogo russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva
), 71, introduction. The letter allegedly from the fourth boyar, I.P. Fedorov, was probably written by Fedorov. See below, Chapters XIII and XIV.

19
Henry VIII did not like the physical chore of writing either. Writing with a goose quill must have been a much more slow and tedious performance than with a ball-point pen.

20
For those who read Russian see R.G. Skrynnikov,
Perepiska Groznogo i Kurbskogo, paradoksy Edvarda Kinana
, Leningrad, 1973; see also the extensive discussion in his
Tsarstvo Terrora,
St Petersburg, 1992, pp. 10ff, ch. I, ‘Istochniki’, which also analyses the foreign sources, such as Taube and Kruse, Staden, and Schlichting. In English, I include a selection in chronological order: C.J. Halperin, ‘A Heretical View of Sixteenth-Century Muscovy’. Edward L. Keenan: the Kurbsky-Groznyy Apocrypha',
JGOE,
22, 1974, pp. 162–86; by the same author, ‘Keenan's Heresy Re-visited’,
JGOE
, 28, 1986, pp. 482–99; idem, ‘Edward Keenan and the Kurbskii-Groznyi Correspondence in Hindsight’, and Edward L. Keenan, ‘Response to Halperin, “Edward Keenan and the Kurbskii-Groznyi Correspondence in Hindsight”’,
JGOE,
46, pp. 376–403, 404–15; Professor Halperin's articles cover works by many authors, survey the discussion from many angles and he refers to a vast amount of further literature in his footnotes. For a recent Russian discussion see V.V. Kalugin,
Andrey Kurbsky i Ivan Groznyi,
Moscow, 1998, pp. 157–8, 252–3 and passim.

21
This could of course be called imperialism.

22
See Isabel de Madariaga, ‘La monarquía rusa, una monarquía compuesta?’ in
Las Monarquías del Antiguo regimen, monarquías compuestas?
, ed. Conrad Russell and Jose Andres Gallego, Editorial Complutense, Madrid, 1996.

23
The German equivalent is much more accurate:
Selbstherrscher
.

1
The role of the Scandinavian Vikings in the formation of the Russian principalities is now accepted in Russia, but more attention has been paid to the possible influence of the Mongols on Russian political culture than to the possible influence of the Vikings, or the Ottomans, at any rate in the work of Western historians. See in general S. Franklin and J. Shepard,
The Emergence of Rus 750–1200
, Longman, London, 1996.

2
See N. de Baumgarten, ‘Généalogie et mariages occidentaux des Rurikides russes du Xe au XIIIe siècles’,
Orientalia Christiana
IX, no. 35, 1927, pp. 5–94; and ‘Genealogy of the Riurikids in the period covered by the Primary Chronicle’ in S.H. Cross and O.P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor,
The Russian Primary Chronicle
, Laurentian Text, Medieval Academy of America, Cambridge, Mass., 1953, p. 298.

3
I shall use the word Mongol until the final overthrow of the Golden Horde in 1480 as more convenient, using Tatar thereafter.

4
See map on pp. xii–xiii.

5
M. Roublev, ‘The Periodicity of the Mongol Tribute as Paid by the Russian Princes During the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries’,
Forschungen zur
Osteuropäischen Geschichte
, Osteuropa Institut an der Freien Universität Berlin, Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden (
FOG
), 15, pp. 7–13.

6
At the other end of Europe, in the Christian Spanish mountain kingdom of Asturias, the Moslem invaders were also known as the Hagarenes (
Agareños
).

7
A share in the empire allotted to a member of the Golden Kin.

8
See J. Martin,
Medieval Russia, 980–1584
, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 239ff, for an intelligible account of a very confused situation.

9
C.J. Halperin,
Russia and the Golden Horde: The Mongol Impact on Russian History,
London, 1987, pp. 59–60.

10
V.A. Kuchkin and B.N. Floria, ‘Kniazheskaia vlast’ v predstavleniakh tverskikh knizhnikov XIV–XV vv' in
Ot Rima k tret'emu Rimu
(
Moscow, 1989
),
IX Mezhdunarodnyi seminar istoricheskikh issledovanii ‘Ot Rima k tret'emu Rimu’,
Moscow 1995, p. 188.

11
This may be the origin of the bride-shows (see Chapter II) held in Russia to choose brides for the grand princely family; but it is usually held that this practice comes from the Eastern Roman Empire. However, Runciman thinks the Byzantine bride-shows may have had a steppe origin (S. Runciman, quoted in D.G. Ostrowski,
Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier
, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1998, p. 83).

12
J.I. Fennell, ‘Princely Executions in the Horde, 1308–1339’,
FOG
, 38, 1986, pp. 9–19. ‘Appanage’ princes are the descendants of Riurikids who inherited sovereign rights over a principality or part of a principality.

13
C.J. Halperin, op. cit., p. 111 and n. 28, stresses that many of these genealogies must be rejected, notably that which ascribes Tatar origin to Boris Godunov.

14
The Russians had been officially converted to Orthodox Christianity from Constantinople in 988 in the reign of Vladimir I (predictably canonized later, like St Stephen of Hungary and Good King Wenceslas).

15
Gedimin (Gediminas in Lithuanian), Grand Prince of Lithuania, 1316–41, is regarded as the founder of the Lithuanian dynasty.

16
All Lithuanian princes descended either from Gedimin or from Riurik except for the Radziwills, who were given their princely title by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I; there were no native Polish princes and all their titles were imperial.

17
The Livonian Order was the remnant of two Germanic Military Orders, the Livonian Order of the Sword and the Teutonic Order, in which many of the knights had been converted to Lutheranism; the Order had to a great extent disintegrated, but its control of the Finnish Gulf and the Gulf of Riga made its lands into desirable conquests. It was a dependency of the Holy Roman Empire.

18
The central diets and the local dietines.

19
B.N. Floria,
Russko-pol'skie otnoshenia i baltiiskii vopros v kontse XVI–nachale XVII vv.
, Moscow, 1978, pp. 23ff.

20
See D. Strémooukhoff, ‘Moscow, the Third Rome: Sources of the Doctrine’, repr. in M. Cherniavsky, ed.,
The Structure of Russian History: Interpretive Essays,
New York, 1970, pp. 108–25; see also M. D'iakonov,
Vlast' moskovskikh gosudarei: Ocherk iz istorii politicheskikh idei drevnei Rusi do kontsa XVI veka
, St Petersburg, 1889, repr. Mouton, The Hague, 1969, pp. 66ff.

21
V.A. Kuchkin and B.N. Floria, ‘Kniazheskaia vlast' v predstavleniakh tverskikh knizhnikov’, in
Ot Rima k tret'emu Rimu
, p. 186; ‘zhaleiu kogo khochu, kaznuiu kogo khochu,’ are the words used by Boris Alexandrovich.

22
See L.A. Dmitriev,
Literatura drevnei Rusi: Khrestomatia
, St Petersburg, 1997, pp. 174–6.

23
The influence of the Byzantine deacon Agapetus (early seventh-century) on the order of the coronation of Ivan IV will be dealt with in Chapter IV.

24
V.O. Kliuchevsky,
Sochineniia: Kurs russkoi istorii
, 8 vols. vol 2, Moscow, 1957, p. 123: ‘samoderzhets … at that time did not signify a ruler with unlimited power within his realm, but a ruler free from any external control and paying tribute to no one.’ See also I. de Madariaga, ‘Autocracy and Sovereignty’ in
Politics and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia: Collected Essays,
London and New York, 1998, pp. 40–56; J. Lehtovirta,
Ivan IV as Emperor: The Imperial Theme in the Establishment of Muscovite Tsardom
, Turku, 1999, p. 69, n. 1; Marc Szeftel, ‘The Title of the Muscovite Monarch up to the End of the Seventeenth Century’,
CASS
, 13, nos 1–2, 1979, pp. 59–81. According to Szeftel,
autokrator
, the Greek original of
samoderzhets
, means ‘a sovereign monarch holding his power directly from God, and not by delegation of any other ruler’. See also G. Elton in the
New Cambridge Modern History
, Cambridge University Press, 1958, vol. II,
The Reformation
, p. 234, on Cromwell's theory of the empire of Henry VIII: as ‘the civilian concept of imperium existing in any polity whose ruler did not recognise a superior on earth, and which he called the “empire of England” i.e. imperium, was not concerned with authority over other nations but over his own’.

25
See Shevchenko, op. cit., p. 80.

26
Quoted in his own words by N.M. Karamzin,
Istoria gosudarstva Rossiiskogo,
12 vols, St Petersburg, 1892, VII, p. 140 and notes, p. 61, n. 410, from the
PSRL
, II, pp. 205, 206, 213.

27
See Shevchenko, op. cit., passim, for a fascinating pursuit of Agapetus through the Tale of Barlaam and Josaphat, the ‘Admonition on Good Rulership also addressed to Boyars, Bishops and Abbots, and becoming to Monks’, to Chapter 16 of Iosif Volotsky's
Prosvetitel'
(‘The Enlightener’) Shevchenko, op. cit., pp. 88ff. Agapetus indeed served as an ideological source for writers of very different ideas, often without attribution.

28
S.F. Platonov,
Ocherki istorii smuty v moskovskom gosudarstve XVI–XVII vv
, St Petersburg, 1910, pp. 96–7, though to my mind he goes too far in linking Ivan's patrimonial rights to Moscow's championship of the national Russian cause, and thus embodying an ‘absolute and democratic power’. R. Pipes, in
Russia under the Old Regime
, London, 1974, puts forward the same theory from a more Weberian point of view. But he does not consider that other European monarchs, such as William the Conqueror and Louis XIV, were also residuary owners of all the land in their realms.

29
See e.g., R.O. Crummey,
The Formation of Muscovy, 1304–1613
, Longman, London and New York, 1987, passim.

30
A.A. Zimin,
Formirovanie boiarskoi aristokratii v Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XV – pervoi treti XVI v
, Moscow, 1988, pp. 143ff. Among Riurikids these princes included the Vorotynskys and Odoevskys; among Gediminovichi, the Mstislavskys, Bel'skys, Trubetskoys, etc.

31
The post of
koniushii
(Master of the Horse or High Constable) is sometimes treated as hereditary, but if so appointments were very unsystematic. The title is sometimes translated ‘equerry’, but seeing that the holder was in charge of the horses for the court and the armed forces, it was a much more important task.

32
See Chapter II, p. 36–7. The first Russian prince to be created by a tsar was Prince A.D. Menshikov by Peter the Great. The second was Prince A.A. Bezborodko by Paul I.

33
Zimin,
Formirovanie
, on whom I have largely drawn in these pages: see pp. 19ff and entries under the various families. In common with aristocracies elsewhere at this time mortality was very high and families often died out naturally.

34
On the tradition of giving advice see S.N. Bogatyrev,
The Sovereign and His Counsellors: Ritualised Consultations in Muscovite Political Culture, 1350s–1570s
, Helsinki, 2000.

35
Zimin, op. cit., p. 18.

36
S. von Herberstein,
Zapiski iz Moskovii
, Moscow, 1988, p. 120.

37
Kliuchevsky, op. cit., p. 123.

38
Compare the Russian titulature with that of the Holy Roman emperors or Philip II of Spain, not precisely parvenus.

39
S.M. Solov'ev,
Istoria Rossii s drevneishikh vremen
, III, Moscow, 1961–5, pp. 135–6. The full text is: ‘We by the grace of God are lord of our lands from the beginning, from our first ancestors, and were placed here by God, both our ancestors and ourselves, and we pray God that he should grant to us and our children to the end of time [
i do veka
] to be there as we are now rulers in our land and to be placed above this we did not wish and do not wish.’ Quoted in N.V. Sinitsyna, ‘Itogi kontseptsii “Tret'ego Rima”’ in
Ot Rima k tret'emu Rimu'
, Rome and Moscow, 1995, pp. 16ff.

40
Despina was the title given to Zoe (Sofia) by the many Greeks and Italians in Moscow. It is the feminine of
despotes
.

41
S.M. Solov'ev,
Istoria Rossii
, III, pp. 55ff; V.O. Kliuchevsky,
Sochinenia: Kurs russkoi istorii
, II, pp. 120ff.

42
P. Pierling,
La Russie et le Saint Siège: Etudes diplomatiques
, 2 vols, Librairie Plon, Paris, 1891, vol. I. The bride was inspected on Ivan III's behalf.

43
For a description of Sofia's journey see Robert M. Croskey,
Muscovite Diplomatic Practice in the Reign of Ivan III
, Garland Publishing Inc., New York and London, 1987, pp. 240ff. Other Paleologus marriages took place at this time, notably between the daughter Maria of Andrei Paleologus and Prince Vasily Mikhailovich of Vereya. Ibid., p. 246.

44
E. Skryzhinskaia,
Barbaro i Kontarini v Rossii – k istorii italo-russkikh sviazei
, Leningrad, 1971, p. 204; ‘Pouchenie Vladimira Monomakha’ in Cross and Sherbowitz-Wetzor,
The Russian Primary Chronicle
, p. 37.

45
Herberstein,
Zapiski iz Moskovii
, p. 66.

46
Solov'ev is wrong.

47
Solov'ev,
Istoria Rossii
, vol. III, p. 58.

48
Kurbsky's
History of Ivan IV
, tr. and ed. J.L.I. Fennell, Cambridge University Press, 1965, p. 3.

49
For more information on Maxim Grek see Chapter II.