Ivan the Terrible (89 page)

7
Fragmentation was much greater in Spain and France at this time. The German-speaking lands remained fragmented until 1870.

8
For the harmful effects of this intensified defence policy on the
pomeshchiki
, and other kinds of military servitors of different social ranks, and the multiplication of cossack hosts, see Dunning,
Russia's First Civil War
, pp. 47ff.

9
See tables in M.D. Zlotnik, ‘Muscovite Fiscal Policy, 1462–1584’,
Russian History
, 6, pt 2, 1979, pp. 243ff., at pp. 252–3. The
sokha
was a measure of taxable land. There were also increasingly heavy commercial duties. Monasteries often enjoyed considerable immunities, but during the period of the
oprichnina
the situation became chaotic.

10
Hakluyt,
Principal Navigations and Discoveries of the English Nation
.

11
See J. Blum,
Lord and Peasant in Russia
, Princeton, 1961, pp. 249ff.

12
See the perceptive remark of Stökl, in ‘Die Würzeln des Modernen Staates in Osteuropa’, pp. 255–69 at p. 265. ‘It is not accidental that the modern word for “state” in Russian derives its origin from “Land of the Lord” (Land des Herrn, Herrschaft) in the sense of “Grundherrschaft”’. Elsewhere Stökl has argued, as have others, that the notion of state only really arose after the extinction of the dynasty, when the separation between the ruler and the land became obvious.

13
I have borrowed from R.J. Knecht,
Francis I
, p. 19. But it must be said that they might not necessarily survive, e.g., the closure of the monasteries in England or the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France.

14
The election of a new dynasty by a representative assembly was a new departure in the politics of the succession to the crown in monarchies which had become hereditary. Dunning argues in
Russia's First Civil War
, p. 93, that the Assembly and the election of 1598 took place after Boris Godunov had been crowned Tsar.

15
Moscow the Third Rome is a concept of importance in relation to the Orthodox world of eastern Europe. As far as western Europe was concerned, the first Rome dominated politics and religion.

16
See Lehtovirta,
Ivan IV as Emperor,
pp. 358ff. The author points out that Ivan was never portrayed with a halo, and was never called holy. There is now however an embryonic attempt to portray him as a saint.

17
See ibid., pp. 327ff.

18
The Donation of Constantine dates from the early ninth century, in the Papacy of Sylvester II, and had allegedly been issued by the Emperor Constantine to Pope Sylvester I in
AD
327, granting the Popes spiritual supremacy and temporal dominion over the Christian world. Sylvester II was the last Roman Pope to be recognized by the Orthodox Church. The Donation was often made use of during the Middle Ages to support papal claims, though it was attacked as a forgery by Lorenzo Valla in 1440. The incorporation of the Donation in the
Stoglav
in 1555, probably by Metropolitan Makarii, when the Russian Church may already have realized that it was a forgery (through Maksim Grek) was part of the defence of the Russian Church against any encroachment by the Tsar in Russia. See A.D. Gorsky,
Rossiiskoe zakonodatel'stvo X–XX vekov,
II, pp. 333ff and pp. 465–6.

19
See above, Chapter XV, pp. 251ff. and Chapter XX, pp. 346ff.

20
Ryan, ‘Alchemy and the Virtue of Stones in Muscovy’, p. 226. Ryan also quotes Horsey's description of Ivan's staff, which was inset with magical stones. See the Tale of the Princes of Vladimir in Dmitriev,
Literatura drevnei Rusi,
pp. 283ff.

21
Contrast the painting of the seventeenth-century surrender of the Russian General Shein to the Polish army, lying with his generals face down, flat on the ground outside Smolensk, reproduced on the cover of Frost's
The Northern Wars,
with the portrayal of the surrender of Breda to the Spanish commander, Spinola, by Velázquez.

22
Review by A. Filiushkin in
Kritika
, 3.1., 2002, pp. 89–109, of A.L. Yurganov,
Kategorii russkoi srednevekovoi kul'tury,
Moscow, 1998.

23
I find it strange that there is still so much confusion about the right of succession of the Riurikid heirs to the Russian throne. The dynasty which had died out in 1598 was not that of Alexander Nevsky, the founder of this particular branch, but that of the Danilovichi of Moscow who, as all the Riurikides knew, was junior for instance to the Shuiskys who had a better right to the all-Russian throne (and knew it). Nikita Romanovich Iur'ev Zakhar'in had no claim at all. He was not a Riurikid, he was merely the brother-in-law of Ivan IV, just as Boris Godunov was the brother-in-law of Fedor. The Lithuanian Gediminovichi (Mstislavkys, and the extinct Bel'skys) also had no claim to the throne. The Riurikides were not very consistent about the succession, hovering between descent by father to son, and brother to brother. But they knew quite well who were the rank outsiders. See the reference in
Vremennik Timofeeva
to Timofeev's links with Mikhail Skopin Shuisky (D. Rowland, ‘Towards an Understanding of the Political Ideas in Ivan Timofeev's
Vremennik
’,
SEER
, 62, no. 3, pp. 371–99, at p. 375).

24
The clearest account of the systematic elimination of princes is in Grobowski, ‘
The Chosen Council
’, pp. 104ff.

25
See Perrie,
The Image of Ivan the Terrible in Russian Folklore
, pp. 96–101, and see also her reference to the sadistic imagination of the seventeenth century in the context of the Time of Troubles in her
Pretenders and Popular Monarchism in Early Modern Russia,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995, pp. 137–8.

26
For European practice see
inter alia
the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina, issued by the Emperor Charles V for the Holy Roman Empire, and fairly mild by the standards of the time. See also R.J. Evans,
Rituals of Retribution. Capital Punishment in Germany, 1600–1987
, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996, pp. 27–108; E. Peters,
Torture
, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1985. Perhaps England suffered relatively less, for after the battle of Bosworth no wars were fought by invaders on its own territory in this period.

27
The illustrations to the
Litsevoi Svod
are also a harrowing source of evidence of (unidentified) executions in the presence of the young Tsar, and in some cases of the Tsaritsa also. See for instance endpapers of Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora.

28
Much has been written about the effect of the all-pervading culture of denunciation in the world of the Gestapo, the KGB, the Stasi,
et al
.

29
According to Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora
, p. 259, Ivan recognized descent from Grand Prince Vsevolod ‘Big Nest’ (d.1212) as giving the right to sit in the Tsar's Council.

30
Dunning, op. cit., p. 183. Petr Basmanov's father Fedor is generally supposed to have been Ivan's homosexual partner. He was allegedly compelled by Ivan to behead his father Aleksei. See above, Chapter XV, p. 260.

31
See Rowland, ‘Towards an Understanding’, p. 378.

32
As foretold by Giles Fletcher,
Of the Russe Commonwealth
, p. 26.

33
See above, Chapter XIII.

34
Prinz von Buchau, ‘Nachalo Rusi, i vozvyshenye Moskvy’, p. 68: ‘They never write their name as even simple people consider it shameful for them to do so.’

35
See Ivan Groznyi,
Sochineniya
, ed. Chumakova, pp. 172ff. for a modern Russian translation. Possevino confirms that Ivan dictated all replies to foreign envoys or rulers (ibid., p. 6). See also Bogatyrev, ‘Battle for Divine Wisdom’, p. 5, quoting B.M. Kloss on the existence of Ivan's scriptorium in Aleksandrovskaia Sloboda. For the boyars' letters, see above, Chapter XIII.

36
Many Russian and non-Russian authors have written on the mental and psychological state of Ivan IV. Without following them in every particular, I have found the following particularly helpful: on Kurbsky and Ivan, Inge Auerbach; on the process by which Ivan justifies his actions to himself and to his people, Priscilla Hunt, ‘Ivan IV's Personal Mythology of Kingship’,
Slavic Review,
no. 52, 4, Winter 1993, pp. 769–809; Uspensky,
Tsar' i patriarkh
; Bogatyrev, ‘Battle of Divine Wisdom’, and ‘Groznyi Tsar ili groznoe vremia?’; Lehtovirta,
Ivan IV as Emperor
(a particularly penetrating exposition); A.L. Yurganov, ‘Oprichnina i strashnyi sud’,
Otechestvennaia istoria
, 3, 1997, pp. 52–75; Crummey, ‘New Wine in Old Bottles’ (remarkable for straightforward common sense); Rowland, ‘Muscovite Literary Ideology’. I have also used V. Lossky,
The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church,
James Clarke, Cambridge and London, 1973, passim.

37
Taube and Kruse, ‘Poslanie Ioganna …’, pp. 39–40.

38
See Iurganov, ‘Oprichnina i strashnyi sud’, p. 52.

39
‘Nemini subjectus sum quam Christo filio dei’, Prinz von Buchau, op. cit., p. 62. The word ‘tsar’ he adds is of Scythian provenance. Buchau's original text is in Latin and has been translated into Russian. The English version of
samoderzhavie
at that time was usually ‘self-upholder’. Prinz is the first foreigner I have come upon who comments on the true meaning of
samoderzhets
, even if he does not recognize tsar as deriving from Caesar.

40
See Podobedova,
Moskovskaia shkola zhivopisi
, for a development of the portrayal of the wisdom theology in icon painting.

41
Hunt argues that Ivan's first letter to Kurbsky shows that he was familiar with the writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius in the
Velikie Chetii Minei
; see also in
Poslania Ivana Groznogo
, pp. 531–2.

42
See Iurganov, ‘O date zaveshchania Ivana Groznogo’, pp. 125–41.

43
See Hunt, ‘Ivan IV's Personal Mythology of Kingship’, passim and Bogatyrev, ‘Battle for Divine Wisdom’, passim. Both these essays are closely argued and I hope I have done the authors justice.

44
Kurbsky,
Correspondence
, pp. 20–1.

45
Quoted from the film critic, Vsevolod Vyshnetsky, referring to Eisenstein's film,
Ivan the Terrible
, by Perrie,
The Cult of Ivan the Terrible in Stalin's Russia
, p. 151.

46
Kliuchevsky,
Sochinenia
, II, Moscow 1957, p. 199.

47
Kurbsky,
History
, p. 85; Ivan Timofeev,
Vremennik
, p. 173.

All sources will be mentioned in full in footnotes when first quoted and subsequently with shortened titles.

Al'shits, D.N.,
Nachalo samoderzhavia v Rossii. Gosudarstvo Ivana Groznogo
, Leningrad, 1988.

Alef, G., ‘Belskies and Shuiskies in the XVIth Century’,
FOG
38 (Berlin 1986), pp. 221–40.

—— ‘Das Erlöschen des Abzugsrechts der Moskauer Bojaren’,
FOG
10 (Berlin 1975), pp. 7–74.

Amosov, A.A.,
Litsevoi letopisnyi svod Ivana Groznogo. Kompleksnoe kodikologicheskoe issledovanie
, Moscow, 1998.

Andreyev, N.E., ‘Kurbsky's Letters to Vasyan Muromtsev’, reprinted in his
Studies in Muscovy
, Variorum Reprints, London, 1970, pp. 414–36.

——
Studies in Muscovy: Western Influence and Byzantine Inheritance
, Variorum Reprints, London, 1970.

Arel, M.S., ‘!“The Lawes of Russia Writte” ’. An English Manuscript on Muscovy at the End of the Sixteenth Century’,
Oxford Slavonic Papers
, ns 23 (1999), pp. 13–38.