Ivan the Terrible (75 page)

61
The uncertainty about the whereabouts of any remaining books which might have belonged to Ivan has led to the proliferation of legends such as the existence of a subterranean library in which treasures from Constantinople, brought by Sofia Paleologa, were buried to protect them from fire. For a survey of the state of knowledge see W.F. Ryan, ‘Aristotle and Pseudo-Aristotle in Russia’ in
Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages: The Theology and Other Texts
, ed. W.F. Ryan et al., Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts, XI, London, 1986, pp. 115ff.

1
See D. McCulloch,
Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation
, London, 1999; by a stroke of irony the portrait of Edward VI which prefaces this work is in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.

2
See description in the Kazan' chronicle,
PSRL
XIX, p. 43.

3
Skrynnikov,
Sviatiteli i vlasti
, p. 170.

4
A.A. Zimin,
Reformy Ivana Groznogo
, Moscow, 1960, p. 296.

5
Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora
, p. 92.

6
Ibid.

7
It is not surprising that an old woman should have been cast for the role of a witch.

8
This account is put together from a number of different sources, including the interpolations in the Tsarstvennaia kniga chronicle (
PSRL
, XIII, 2, pt, 2), which according to some authors are by Ivan IV himself, see Skrynnikov,
Velikii gosudar',
I, pp.140–41;
Tsarstvo terrora
, p. 93 (though other authors disagree); and Ivan IV's letter to Prince A.M. Kurbsky, see Kurbsky,
Correspondence
, pp. 81–2.

9
D.S. Likhachev and Ya. S. Lur'e, eds,
Poslania Ivana Groznogo
, Moscow-Leningrad, 1951, p. 523; from Ivan's speech at the meeting of the Stoglav council in 1551.

10
Kurbsky,
Correspondence,
p. 81. Ivan's relations with Prince A.M. Kurbsky will be dealt with in Chapter X below.

11
Karamzin,
Istoria
, VIII, pt 2, pp. 63ff and nn. 177, 178, bases himself on Kurbsky's
History
and on Ivan's own words in the meeting of the Church Council (Stoglav) in 1551.

12
A.I. Filiushkin,
Istoria odnoi mistifikatsii: Ivan Groznyi i izbrannaia rada
, Moscow, 1998, suggests that this speech was probably made by Makarii, and not by Sylvester, pp. 37ff.

13
See A.A. Zimin, ‘O sostave dvortsovykh uchrezhdenii Russkogo gosudarstva kontsa XV i XVI v,’ in
Istoricheskie zapiski
, no. 63, Moscow, 1958, pp. 180–205. The structure and status of these appanages ruled by
dvortsy
can be compared to the palatinates in England.

14
Quoted from S.V. Bakhrushin, ‘Izbrannaia rada Ivana Groznogo’,
Istoricheskiie zapiski
, no. 15, Moscow, 1945, pp. 45ff, in A.S. Usachev, ‘Obraz tsaria v srednevekovoi Rusi’, Drevniaia Rus',
Voprosy medievistiki
, Moscow, 2001, vyp. 3 (5), pp. 93–103.

15
In the term preferred by Kivelson, ‘The Effects of Partible Inheritance’.

16
Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora
, pp. 78–9.

17
‘frankpledge – the system by which every member of a tithing was answerable for the good conduct of, or the damage done by, anyone of the other members,’
OED
.

18
In England, Henry VIII abolished the suretyships imposed by Henry VII on great nobles.

19
See the essential article by H.W. Dewey and A.M. Kleimola, ‘Suretyship and Collective Responsibility in Pre-Petrine Russia’,
JGOE
, 18, 1970, pp. 337–54, particularly at pp. 343ff, which follows suretyship down through various social levels.

20
H.W. Dewey, ‘Political
Poruka
in Muscovite Rus’,
Russian Review
, vol. 46, 1987, pp. 117–34, at p. 118. See also, as regards denunciation, H.W. Dewey and A.M. Kleimola, ‘From the Kinship Group to Every Man His Brother's Keeper: Collective Responsibility in Pre-Petrine Russia’,
JGOE
, 30, 1982, pp. 321–35. These two articles and the one by Dewey and Kleimola in n. 19 above provide in my view by far the most illuminating analyses of the early Russian relationship between state and society.

21
Not many are known to have enjoyed this title: Prince D.I. Bel'sky, a Gediminovich, who spent most of his life campaigning; Prince Alexander Borisovich Gorbaty-Shuisky, a prominent soldier; Ivan Petrovich Fedorov Cheliadnin, who was not a prince; and later Prince M.I. Vorotynsky, who was a soldier. On
sluga
see Schmidt,
Rossiya Ivana Groznogo
, p. 96.

22
Sir Francis Walsingham was described as a ‘
d'iak
’ in the dispatches of F. Pisemsky from London in the 1580s. See
SIRIO
, 38, passim. He would have been delighted! See in general Schmidt, ‘D'iachestvo v Rossii serediny XVI veka’ in
Rossia Ivana Groznogo
, pp. 103ff., at p. 109.

23
See I. Gralia,
Ivan Mikhailov Viskovaty
, Moscow, 1994, p. 462, for a list of
d'iaki
and clerks in the 1560s in the Office of Foreign Affairs. There were two principal
d'iaki
, who were members of the Council, and four ordinary
d'yaki
; there were thirteen clerks and eleven translators, not counting translators from Eastern languages and Polish.

24
I would argue that the English gentry provided through its younger sons, the universities, and the Inns of Court a social class similar to a
noblesse de robe
. However, in an unpublished article, ‘Entail and Noble Power in Early Modern Europe’, which he has kindly allowed me to refer to, Professor H.M. Scott has pointed out that entail (
mayorazgo, Fideicommiss
etc.) was not in the sixteenth century as yet widely or firmly established throughout Europe. The first systematic attempts occurred in Spain in the early sixteenth century.

25
There is some evidence that strategies of avoidance of the impoverishment following on the division of estates had been worked out by the lower service gentry, but the assault on the landholdings of the aristocracy was severe in the reign of Ivan IV. See V.A. Kivelson, ‘The Effects of Partible Inheritance’. See also Chapter XXI.

26
PSRL
XIII, pt 2, p. 131.

27
See above, Chapter II, p. 32.

28
Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora,
pp. 98–9.

29
Schmidt,
Rossiya Ivana Groznogo
, p. 55.

30
Ibid., p. 58.

31
Ivan suggests that he had been promoted from a very lowly position. Ibid., p. 56.

32
Ibid., p. 56 and n. 6. From Russian
spat'
, to sleep, and
postel'
, bed.

33
See, for example, the works of D. Starkey or R.J. Knecht on the structure and influence of the court in sixteenth-century England and France. No such detailed studies have been produced in Russia. They did not fit into the Marxist paradigm.

34
Zimin,
Reformy
, p. 312; cf. Schmidt, ‘Pravitel'stvennaya deyatel'nost’ A.F. Adasheva' and additions by I.I. Smirnov,
Ocherki politicheskoi istorii Russkogo gosudarstva 30–50kh godov XVI veka
, ANSSR, Moscow-Leningrad, 1958, pp. 212–31.

35
Ivan's first letter to Kurbsky, see Kurbsky,
Correspondence
, pp. 13ff.

36
A.A. Zimin,
I.S. Peresvetov i ego sovremenniki: Ocherki po istorii russkoi obshchestvennoi mysli serediny XVI veka
, ANSSR, Moscow 1958, p. 42.

37
See her portrayal in Eisenstein's film
Ivan the Terrible
. But this suggestion is a late interpolation in the Tsarstvennaia kniga, itself a later chronicle. Ibid., p. 44. A comparison between what Zimin wrote in 1958 and what he wrote later is very instructive. According to Zimin in 1958, Sylvester was a supporter of Prince Vladimir of Staritsa, of the non-possessors, and was supported by boyars and supported them; he was engaged in the early 1550s in a constant ‘struggle’ with hostile forces at court, namely the possessors led by Metropolitan Makarii. The evidence for this portrayal is derived from interpolations long after the event in the Chronicles. The atmosphere in Zimin's account in
I.S. Peresvetov i ego sovremenniki
, pp. 46ff is redolent of the struggles of the 1950s in Moscow between different factions in the Party and the nomenklatura. The language is the same, and recalls the language of kremlinology.

38
Ivan seems to have been impressed with the wickedness of Manasseh, for he reverts to him in his first letter to Kurbsky. For the discourse see D.N. Al'shits,
Nachalo samoderzhavia v Rossii: Gosudarstvo Ivana Groznogo
, Leningrad, 1988, pp. 65–6. See also Floria,
Ivan Groznyi
, pp. 26–7.

39
I am not suggesting that corporal punishment was not extremely severe, but so it was elsewhere, at the time.

40
C.J. Pouncy, ed. and tr.,
The Domostroi: Rules for Russian Households in the Time of Ivan the Terrible,
Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 1994, pp. 143–4. The tale that a Russian wife does not believe her husband loves her unless or until he beats her, as related by Herberstein, has been disputed by a later traveller, Olearius.

41
A.A. Zimin, ‘Sostav boyarskoy dumy v XV–XVI vekakh’,
Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik, za 1957
, Moscow, 1958, pp. 41–87, at p. 63, remarks that for a long time after the disgrace of Prince S. Rostovsky there were few changes among the boyars. According to Skrynnikov,
Velikii gosudar
', 1, p. 207, the only magnate to have incurred disgrace in the period 1550–59 was Rostovsky, see p. 113, below.

42
See Thyret, ‘Blessed is the Tsaritsa's Womb’.

43
K.G. Holum,
Theodosian Empresses: Women and Imperial Dominion in Late Antiquity
, University of California Press, 1989, ch. II, ‘Aelia Eudoxia Augusta’, pp. 48–78, at pp. 70ff.

44
Kurbsky,
History
, pp. 19ff.

45
Quoted from the Russian historian E.A. Belov by Anthony M. Grobowski, ‘
The Chosen Council’ of Ivan IV: A Reinterpretation
, New York, 1969, pp. 139ff. at p. 142.

46
Quoted in Grobowski, op. cit., pp. 2ff., from V. Sergeevich,
Russkie iuridicheskie drevnosti
, St Petersburg, 1900, II, pp. 366–9. The names of members given include Sylvester, Adashev, Prince A.M. Kurbsky, Prince Dmitri Obolensky Kurliatev, Prince Semen Lobanov Rostovsky, Mikhail, Vladimir and Lev Morozov, Metropolitan Makarii and ‘several presbyters’.

47
Zimin, ‘ostav boyarskoi dumy v XV–XVI vekakh’, pp. 41–70.

48
Nancy Shields Kollman,
Kinship
, passim.

49
Grobowski, ‘
The Chosen Council
’, Addenda, pp. 147–55. Grobowski does not believe that the Chosen Council was the same as the Blizhniaia Duma, he simply does not believe it existed at all. He also states that the term ‘Blizhniaia Duma’ is not found in the sources until the seventeenth century.

50
Kurbsky,
Correspondence
, pp. 45ff.

51
Grobowski, ‘
The Chosen Council
’.

1
See Schmidt, ‘Pravitel'stvennaia deiatel'nost' A.F. Adasheva’, pp. 50ff.

2
See Chapter VI.

3
Zimin,
Reformy
, passim.

4
Karamzin,
Istoria
, VIII, pt 3, pp. 64–5, and p. 24 of notes, n. 182. See also S.O. Schmidt, ‘Sobory serediny XVI v.’ in
Istoria SSSR,
no. 4, 1960, pp. 66–92. According to L.V. Cherepnin, ‘Zemskie sobory i utverzhdenie absoliutizma v Rossii’ in
Absoliutizm v Rossii XVII–XVIII vv.
, ed. N.M. Druzhinin, Moscow, 1964, pp. 92–133, Ivan introduced a powerful element of demagogy into proceedings in view of the acute class contradictions between various feudal classes, in order to prevent a recurrence of the riot in Moscow and to rally the forces of the ruling class.

5
Zimin,
Reformy
, pp. 325–6.

6
Ibid., p. 326, suggests that this was the first step in defining the privileges of the noble class (as distinct from the aristocracy).

7
A useful general survey of the development of representative institutions will be found in A.R. Myers,
Parliaments and Estates in Europe to 1789
, Thames and Hudson, London, 1975.

8
See A.E. Pollard,
The Evolution of Parliament
, London, 1964, and Myers, op. cit. The presence of Makarii on this occasion is confirmed in L.V. Cherepnin, ed.,
Pamiatniki Russkogo prava IV
, Moscow 1956, pp. 575–6.

9
Zimin,
Reformy
, pp. 325–6, ‘Soslovno-predstavitel'naia monarkhia’.

10
Skrynnikov laments that ‘legislation’ in Ivan's Russia did not take legal form, but simply appeared in the form of orders. This was at times also the case in parliamentary England, where by no means all legislation came before Parliament in the sixteenth century (see J. Guy, ‘The Privy Council: Revolution or Evolution’ in C. Coleman and D. Starkey, eds,
Revolution Reassessed: Revisions in the History of Tudor Government and Administration,
Oxford, 1986, pp. 59–86). It was possible to issue laws by proclamation in England. S.N. Bogatyrev notes that of thirty-eight laws enacted in Russia between 1550 and 1572, sixteen were decided on ‘with the consent of the boyars’ (
The Sovereign
and His Counsellors,
p. 79). But of course the implication is that twenty-two Acts did not need the consent of the boyars, though they might have had it.

11
See Myers, op. cit., for parallel developments in Serbia and Bulgaria, where representative institutions failed to develop before the Ottomon conquest. In Latin Christendom they were widespread from the early Middle Ages. The influence of the Catholic religious orders on the development of constitutional thought and practice is analysed by Leo Moulin, ‘Policy-Making in the Religious Orders’,
Government and Opposition
, 1, no. 1, October, 1965, pp. 25–54.