Ivan the Terrible (74 page)

8
Ibid.

9
One is reminded of the speedy way in which Henry VIII removed all possible Yorkist claimants to the throne, including eventually the aged Countess of Salisbury, niece of Edward IV, who was beheaded in 1540 in the aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace.

10
The rumour is still current today, and tests have been made for the presence of mercury on her bones and hair. H. Rüss in ‘Elena Vasil'evna Glinskaja’ is very critical of Herberstein's negative portrayal of Elena Glinskaia and does not believe she was poisoned, see passim. He also argues that conflict with the boyars was held in check as long as Telepnev Obolensky was in power.

11
I have drawn largely on Karamzin,
Istoria,
VII, ch. 3, pp. 5574ff. and 597ff., for the account in these pages.

12
The Correspondence between Prince A.M. Kurbsky and Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, 1564–1579
, tr. and ed. by J.L.I. Fennell, Cambridge University Press, 1963, pp. 75ff.

13
D.B. Miller, ‘The Coronation of Ivan IV of Moscow’,
JGOE
, 15, 1967, pp. 559–74; L.A. Iusefovich,
Kak v posol'skikh obychaiakh vedetsia
, p. 102, quoted from Antony Jenkinson.

14
See Kurbsky,
Correspondence
, p. 74, n. 2; the phrase is used by Ivan to convey confusion.

15
Ibid., pp. 75ff.

16
N.S. Kollman, in ‘Pilgrimage, Procession, and Symbolic Space in Sixteenth Century Russian Politics’,
Medieval Russian Culture
, II, ed. M.S. Flier and D. Rowland, University of California Press, 1994, pp. 163–81, attempts a ‘social anthropological’ analysis of these journeys. But like those of Queen Elizabeth I, they were often caused by the need to consume local produce on the spot and to clean up the living quarters vacated by princes and servants.

17
Karamzin,
Istoria
VIII, p. 19, n. 153.

18
A.I. Ivanov,
Literaturnoe nasledie Maksima Greka
, Leningrad, 1969, pp. 147ff, nn. 216 and 217. L.E Morozova, ‘Ivan Groznyi i publitsisty XVI veka’, in ‘Ot Rima k tret'emu Rimu’, p. 237, holds to the idea that Maksim Grek favoured a monarchy limited by representative estates (
soslovno-predstavitel'naia monarkhia
), because he argues in favour of a conciliar monarchy, i.e. a
monarchy in which the monarch rules with a
sinklit
. The two concepts are totally different.

19
B.N. Floria,
Ivan Groznyi: Zhizn' zamechatel'nikh liudei
, Moscow, 1999, p. 18.

20
Not only in Russia; barons, knights and men-at-arms employed clerks or clerics for this work in medieval England.

21
See above, pp. 28–9 and n. 28.

22
See Dmitriev,
Literatura drevnei Rusi
, pp. 236–46.

23
M.J. Trow,
Vlad the Impaler: In Search of the Real Dracula
, Sutton Publishing, Stroud, 2003. See also M. Cazacu,
L'Histoire du Prince Dracula en Europe centrale et orientale
, Librairie Droz, Geneva, 1988, for Matthias Corvinus's part in blackening Vlad
epe
's reputation.

24
For the modern Russsian text see Dmitriev, op. cit., pp. 241ff.

25
Jerome Horsey in
Rude and Barbarous Kingdom: Russia in Accounts of Sixteenth-Century English Voyagers
, ed. L.E. Berry and R.O. Crummey, University of Wisconsin Press, 1968, referred to in future as Horsey,
Travels
.

26
For a fuller discussion of the
Secretum secretorum
see Chapter X, p. 169. I am grateful to Professor W.F. Ryan for allowing me to make use of an unpublished lecture on apocalyptic literature in Russia and of the MS of his translation of the
Secretum secretorum
.

27
The Italian version of the
Iliad
by Guido de Columna was available in Russia by the end of the fifteenth century: see Kalugin,
Andrei Kurbsky
, pp. 60 and 96. I owe this reference to the kindness of Professor Ryan.

28
M.V. Kukushkina,
Kniga v Rossii v XVI veke
, St Petersburg, 1999, p. 45.

29
Kurbsky,
Correspondence
, p. 27.

30
Kurbsky,
History
, pp. 11ff.

31
It is difficult to know what to believe with these tales, which show people led like lambs to the slaughter. See Kurbsky,
History
, pp. 12–13, and n. 1 and Schmidt,
Rossiya Ivana Groznogo
, pp. 323ff., at pp. 331–3. Reports were current according to the Chronicles that Ivan suffered from ungovernable rages, ‘like a lion’.

32
The copies of the
Velikii Che'ti Minei
for the month of December, in
Pamiatniki slavyano-russkoi pis'mennosti, izdannye arkheograficheskoiu kommissieiu: Velikii Chet'i Minei
, Moscow, 1–5 December, 1901; 18–23 December, 1907, contain extensive excerpts from the writings of Greek Church Fathers in Slavonic and from a debate between a Jew and an Orthodox Christian, Arkhiepi (Orthodox) and Orkan (Jewish).

33
See P. Hunt, ‘Ivan IV's Personal Mythology of Kingship’,
Slavic Review,
52, 1993, no. 4, pp. 769–809. Hunt notes that Ivan made use of materials to be found in the
Great Menology
. See p. 809.

34
Dmitriev and Likhachev, eds,
Pamiatniki literatury drevnei Rusi XVI veka,
I, Moscow, 1985, pp. 550 and 635. The poem quoted is at p. 551.

35
Makarii, though he was a priest, was put in charge of the government in Moscow while Ivan was in Kazan' for the campaign. There are also occasions in which Ivan ‘beats his forehead’ to Makarii.

36
See Boris Uspensky,
Tsar i patriarkh: Kharisma vlasti v Rossii (Vizantiiskaia model' i ee russkoe pereosmyslenie
), Moscow, 1998, p. 31 and n. 53.

37
See the section ‘Letopisets’ in ‘Iz velikikh miney – Chet'ikh Makaria’ in Dmitriev and Likhachev, op. cit., p. 479.

38
A derivation which Karamzin, for instance, rejects.

39
It should be noted that anointing the emperor was not traditional in Byzantium but came in with Baldwin of Flanders, the first Latin emperor, in 1204; the first Western ruler to be anointed was Pepin le Bref. See Uspensky,
Tsar i patriarkh
. Herberstein remarked that Vasily III ‘
se regem et dominum totius Russiae vocat'
,
i.e. he used
tsar
’ as equal to ‘king’, which in Russian is actually
korol'
. V.I. Savva,
Moskovskie tsari i vizantiiskie Vasilevsy
, Khar'khov, 1901, p. 284, n. 3.

40
The Jesuit Possevino, who was in Russia to mediate the peace with Poland in 1582, translates ‘
hospodar’ i tsar'
into Latin as ‘
sen'or i imperator’
. V. Podzhi (Poggi), ‘Ioann Pavel Kampana i Ivan Groznyi’ in
Ot Rima k tret'emu Rimu
, pp. 272ff.

41
For the further development see my article, ‘Tsar into Emperor: the Title of Peter the Great’, reprinted in my
Politics and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia: Collected Essays,
London and New York, 1998, pp. 15–39.

42
See E.V. Barsov,
Drevne-russkie pamiatniki sviashchennago venchania tsarei na tsarstvo, v sviazi s grecheskimi ikh originalami: S istoricheskim ocherkom chinov tsarskago venchania v sviazi s razvitiem idei tsaria na Rusi
, Moscow, 1883. For a full discussion see Miller, ‘The Coronation of Ivan IV of Moscow’,
JGOE,
15, 1967, pp. 559–84.

43
I have already explained my reasons for preferring to translate
samoderzhavie
as ‘sovereignty’ in pre-nineteenth-century contexts.

44
I.M. Sokolova, ‘“Monomakhov tron” pervogo russkogo tsaria: Zamysel i forma’ in
Rossia i khristianskii vostok,
vypusk 1, Moscow, 2001.

45
Miller, ‘The Coronation of Ivan IV of Moscow’, p. 568.

46
Val'denberg,
Drevnerusskie uchenia
, pp. 59–61. Val'denberg points out (p. 56) that the formula (from Justinian), ‘
quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem’
was found in the documents of the Office of Foreign Affairs no earlier than 1673. It is worth noting that many of the writings of Agapetus were known and quoted, without acknowledging the author, by many monks and prelates in Russia, and even by Ivan IV himself. See Ihor Shevchenko, ‘A Neglected Byzantine Source of Muscovite Political Ideology’,
Harvard Slavic Studies
, II, 1954, reprinted in M. Cherniavsky, ed.,
The Structure of Russian History: Interpretive Essays
, pp. 80–107, at p. 87. There are seventy-two so-called hortatory chapters by Agapetus, of which Chapter XXI is the most often quoted in Russian texts, with no acknowledgement. The whole work is dedicated to the Emperor Justinian, and evidently played an important part in Russian political thought. There is an English translation by Canon Thomas Paynell (from the Latin) dated 1546, and a French translation by King Louis XIII, Paris, 1612 (Shevchenko, p. 106, n. 124).

47
Val'denberg,
Drevnerusskie uchenia
, p. 277, comments that this thought has never been so clearly stated as by Maksim Grek. The passage was probably written by Makarii himself and reflects his ideas, or it may have been a later interpolation.

48
Skrynnikov,
Velikii gosudar'
I, p. 139.

49
Uspensky,
Tsar i patriarkh
, p. 44

50
Val'denberg, op. cit., pp. 278–81, p. 292.

51
Letter sent to all the districts (
pyatiny
) of Novgorod around 12–18 December 1546. Karamzin,
Istoria
, vol. VIII, ch. 3, note 164, p. 21.

52
Solov'ev, III, p. 432. In these same terms 150 years later Peter I would summon young noble children to a
smotr
to be inspected for military service. Henry VIII's rapid search for a replacement for Jane Seymour (d. 24 October 1537) has some characteristics of a bride-show. ‘Nine women were seriously considered, several more glanced at, and five of them required to sit for portraits.’ Henry at one point proposed that ‘a bevy of French ladies’ should be brought to him at Calais for him to make his choice. It was not French practice, said Francis I of France, to ‘send damsels of good birth to be passed in review like horses for sale’. Scarisbrick,
Henry VIII
, pp. 355ff.

53
There is a suggestion that Anastasia had already been chosen because her name
is included in the version of the coronation ritual published in
Drevniaia rossiiskaia vivliofika
, 1774, pt 7, pp. 4–35. See Ya. N. Shchapov, ‘K izucheniu “china venchania na tsarstvo Ivana IV”’ in
Ot Rima k tret'emu Rimu
, pp. 213ff.

54
Karamzin,
Istoria
, VIII, notes, p. 22, n. 165:
‘blagopoluchnye dni
’ is the phrase used by Karamzin, quoted from
Drevniaia rossiiskaia vivliofika,
pt 14, p. 227.

55
Karamzin,
Istoriya
, VIII, p. 2, n. 165.

56
The nearest we come to it is an article by S.O. Schmidt dating from 1954, and it may well be that the sources no longer exist on which to base such a study. See Schmidt, ‘Pravitel'stvennaia deiatelnost' A.F Adasheva’, repr. in
Rossiia Ivana Groznogo
, Nauka, Moscow, 1999, pp. 50–84.

57
See Iusefovich,
Kak v posol'skikh obychaiakh vedetsia
, ch. 6,
passim
. The Ottoman sultans adopted much of the preceding East Roman ceremonial. In Poland–Lithuania the thrones in Cracow and Vilna were placed in the middle of a wall.

58
The tale of the prince's son Josaphat converted by the hermit Barlaam, based on the life of the Buddha, was very popular in Russia. See
St. John Damascene, Barlaam and Josaphat,
ed. G.R. Woodward and H. Mattingley, London, 1914.

59
N.I. Kostomarov,
Ocherk domashnei zhizni i nravov velikorusskogo naroda v XVI i XVII stoletiakh,
Moscow, 1992, pp. 176ff.

60
See Schmidt, ‘Issledovanie N.N. Zarubina, “Biblioteka Ivana Groznogo i ego knigi”’ in
Rossia Ivana Groznogo,
pp. 404–19, for a survey of the question of Ivan's library in 1978, and for references to later studies.