Ivan the Terrible (65 page)

Elizabeth did consent however to Ivan's request to send an ambassador, and she made the not very happy choice of Sir Jerome Bowes, a xenophobe of impatient temper. Towards the end of May 1583, Pisemsky was finally allowed a glimpse of Lady Mary Hastings, in the Lord Chancellor's garden. Pisemsky gazed at her, and remarked ‘it is enough’, then walked away.
³¹
Elizabeth had felt some compassion for
her niece, and she now backpedalled on the marriage, and instructed Bowes to try to dissuade the Tsar from pressing it on the grounds of Lady Mary's poor complexion and bad health, and her reluctance to leave her friends. She also embarked on a new policy by offering to mediate between the Tsar and the King of Sweden at a time when peace with Sweden was not at all desirable for the Tsar.

Meanwhile Possevino, who had arrived in Moscow on 14 February 1582, left for Rome in March. In the interval he had discussed a whole range of little problems left over from the peace negotiations, and his own wider views on encouraging the formation of a coalition of Russia, the Commonwealth, the Empire and the Papacy against the Ottoman Turks under the military command of Stephen Bathory; indeed he seems even to have envisaged the conquest of Russia by the Commonwealth, and of course its conversion. Bathory, however, was more interested in the conquest of Russia than in war with the Porte and losing his amicable links with the Sultan, who was after all the overlord of his principality of Transylvania, and with whom he shared a deep hostility to the Habsburgs. For Ivan, however, a truce was a truce, not a peace, and he was by no means resigned to the idea of abandoning his claims to Livonia and Polotsk. Meanwhile he drew back on the idea of a coalition and an anti-Turkish crusade. It was probably not so much a diplomatic ploy
³²
as recognition that Russia was not fit for a renewed campaign, particularly when a truce with the Crimeans had just been achieved. Nor can he have had any sympathy with any of Possevino's more wide-ranging plans – if he was aware of them. Let all the European powers agree to launch a crusade against the Ottomans and then send their ambassadors to him, inviting him to join them, was his response

In spite of his indifference to plans for a crusade against the Ottomans, the world in which the Tsar acted, thought and felt was permeated at every turn by religion, and his day was taken up with religious services, and his life with pilgrimages This is an aspect of sixteenth-century Russia which the contemporary secular mind finds most difficult to grasp, particularly when it was associated with the breach of every known religious commandment. Ivan prided himself on his knowledge of the Old and New Testaments, other sacred books, and religious history and debate, derived from manuscript copies of separate books of the Bible and the Apocrypha, collections of miscellaneous religious writings and homilies, psalters, chronicles and chronographs copied in monastic scriptoria and sold in monasteries, and eventually from the first Slavonic printed Bible of 1581.
³³

It is interesting to contrast Ivan's attitude with that of Possevino in
1582. The Jesuit father was determined to use his talents and to embark on a public religious debate with the Tsar, to prove the greater authenticity of Roman Catholic dogma. But his efforts were undermined by his arrogant and condescending behaviour and, as he well realized, by the reports of the Russian envoy who had been sent in 1580 to Vienna, Venice and Rome. Shevrygin had informed Ivan about many external aspects of Roman ritual and behaviour in the world, which would prove highly offensive to Orthodox Russians. When Possevino was finally able to embark on his first religious debate with Ivan – for there were three – in the great hall in the presence of the boyars and 100 nobles, on 21 February 1582, Ivan greeted him courteously and pointed out that as he had not much longer to live (he was fifty-two), and the Day of Judgment was approaching, he could not change his religion, but let Possevino say what he wished. Possevino assured the Tsar that he did not want to propose any changes in the Greek religion, but rather to urge the Tsar to ‘embrace it in its pristine form’ which would lead to the union of the Western and Eastern Churches. He also reminded the Tsar that the Metropolitan of Kiev and all Russia, the Greek, Isidore, at the Council of Florence in 1439, had acknowledged the union of faiths, but he presumably forgot or did not know that the Metropolitan was arrested and deposed for it.

As in the debate with Jan Rokyta, Ivan replied that he did not want to discuss matters of faith in case he offended Possevino. But his reply to the Jesuit was very acute: ‘I do not believe in the Greeks. I believe in Christ.’ He did not consider the union of the Christian Churches to be necessary before the conclusion of an alliance between the powers against the Turks, and he would allow Catholics to enter Russia and to worship, but only in private. Tsar and ambassador were both somewhat at sea over the date of Russia's conversion. Ivan said that Russia had been converted when the Apostle Andrew passed through Russia on the way to Rome; Possevino replied that Italy had been Christian for 1,200 years before Russia ever heard the name of Christ.

Ivan admitted that the Orthodox Church recognized some of the popes, but many had led evil lives. Yet again the two differed on the succession to the Papacy, and Possevino suspected that Ivan had been briefed by an ‘Anabaptist doctor’ in English pay (almost certainly the Flemish Dr Eyloff). When he heard the Tsar exclaim: ‘The Roman Pope is no shepherd’, in a furious voice, Possevino asked why then had the Tsar asked for the Pope's help to make peace with Poland? Whereupon ‘the Prince flew into a rage and stood up from his throne’ and all expected him to strike the priest. But he calmed down, and in a clear
attempt to turn the whole discussion aside he concentrated on superficial questions, derived from the information he had received from Shevrigin: Why was the Pope carried in a chair? Why did he wear a cross on his slippers? Why did he shave his beard? And why does he pretend to be God?

The questions caused uproar, but even when Possevino again tried to reply simply to them, the Tsar took up other superficial issues, notably the fact that Catholics allowed their crosses to hang down below the belt, a practice regarded as sacrilegious in Russia, or that the Pope shaved his beard (which Possevino strongly denied; he was himself bearded). Fortunately the uproar left no ill feeling, but to make sure, Possevino took the precaution of giving the sacraments to his companions, ‘and fortified them with relics of the Saints in case the Muscovites should harm them’. The Russians now laid a little trap for Possevino, intending to manoeuvre him into attending an Orthodox church service. He was able to evade it, and on his return to the council chamber, he and his fifteen associates intoned the Te Deum in thanks for their escape. But he did not depart without leaving a long written document containing a ‘brief, clear, and firm refutation of the Errors of the Greeks and the Muscovites’. It was a draw.
³⁴
But it cannot be said that any of the participants distinguished himself for real intellectual mastery of the subject. All we learn is that Ivan was willing, in principle, to allow members of other faiths to practice their religion in private, but that he might destroy their chapels if the fit took him, as in the case of the German church in the Livonian suburb in Moscow.
³⁵

The Tsar, in fact, proved responsive to all Possevino's requests for commercial concessions, but was adamant in refusing the slightest concession regarding religious toleration and the building of Catholic churches.
³⁶

On 14 March 1582, Possevino left for Rome accompanied by Iakov Mol'vianinov, envoy to the Emperor, the Pope, and Venice. The only person who benefited from this mission was probably Possevino, whose stature as a diplomat rose with every step, though he did not actually achieve any of his ultimate hopes. Fulfilling his self-appointed task of shepherding the Russian party, and aware of the existence of a substantial Greek colony in Venice, Possevino personally prevented the Russians from attending a service in San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, the church allocated by the Serenissima to the Orthodox. The visit of the Russian party to the baths in Padua left an impression of riotousness not unlike that of Peter the Great's stay in Sir John Evelyn's house in Deptford. From the beginning Possevino had been anxious to shelter the
Russians from the full impact of the high Renaissance paintings which adorned churches and palaces with nude Saint Sebastians and Virgins suckling the infant Jesus, and had tried to confine the party to a secluded residence where only paintings in Fra Angelico's style were displayed. But it was not possible, and the Russians, shocked by, and contemptuous of, the licentiousness of the Catholic capital were also caught up in affrays when stones were thrown at them. At the papal reception Possevino felt himself obliged to force the Russian ambassador physically to take off his sable hat and to kneel and kiss the cross embroidered on the Pope's mule. The Russians were offended because they were not invited to a banquet by the Pope, as was the Russian practice. Ivan's mission to Rome proved a complete waste of time and money.

Charged with Elizabeth's instructions, outlined above, Sir Jerome Bowes and Fedor Pisemsky sailed for Russia on 22 June 1583, and arrived on 23 July; Bowes was attended by ‘five English dvoriane’ and an escort of forty-one. The details of this diplomatic episode can be followed in the report on his mission by Pisemsky, and in the equally full report by Bowes, or ‘Kniaz’ Ieremei’, as he is styled in the Russian report.
³⁷
As usual in Russia, Pisemsky got off to a good start, travelling at once to Moscow, while Bowes was kept at Kholmogory for five weeks. In his report, Bowes indicates that he had discovered during this waiting time the intrigues of a number of Dutch traders, who had bribed leading Russian officials, and secured the backing of three of them, Bogdan Bel'sky, Nikita Romanovich Iur'ev Zakhar'in, and the influential
d'iak
, Andrei Shchelkalov, often called ‘Chancellor’ in English reports, as head of foreign affairs.
³⁸

Bowes was not given a formal audience until October, but it was then very lavish indeed, with a large armed escort, a train of nobles clad in cloth of gold, ‘rich furres, their caps embroiderd with pearle and stone’. From the very beginning one can note the tone of irritation underlying Bowes's speeches, a determination not to be pleased. He refused to allow Shchelkalov to take from him and deliver to the Tsar the letters written by Elizabeth, saying ‘that her Majesty had directed no letters to him’. When Ivan asked him what the Queen had said about the marriage with Lady Mary, Bowes replied: ‘Nothing. She waits for you to speak and give me a message for her.’ The Tsar replied, ‘We want to take her unto ourselves, but what has the Queen said about her changing her faith to mine?’ To this Bowes replied: ‘Mary is not well, she is very ill and I believe she will not change her faith, and see, she is a Christian.’ Ivan answered: ‘I do not want to talk about religion, any princess who
marries me must first be baptized in our Christian faith, it is clear that you came here to refuse us and we will speak no more with you.’ And he blamed Dr ‘Roman’ (Robert) Atkins for creating confusion, for telling him about this girl, which was why he had written to the Queen. Following his instructions to discourage Ivan's marital hopes, Bowes replied that the Lady Mary was the most distant of all the Queen's nieces, she was ill, her complexion was rough, she was not handsome, she had suffered from smallpox and there were ten maidens who were more closely related to the Queen. Ivan asked to hear about them, whereupon Bowes replied that he had no instructions from the Queen and therefore could not name them.

After this unpromising beginning, the talks on an alliance proved no more satisfactory. Ivan criticized Elizabeth for refusing to support him unless an army had actually already been sent against him. He expected Elizabeth to become his ally against Poland–Lithuania and Sweden, though not Denmark, and in a fit of anger against Bowes he exclaimed to him that ‘he did not reckon the Queene of England to be his fellow’. Bowes exploded, and ‘tolde him that the Queene his Mistress was as great a prince as any was in Christendome … Yea quoth he [Ivan], how sayest thou to the French King and the king of Spaine? Mary, quoth the ambassador, I holde the Queene my Mistresse as great as any of them both' and moreover the Queen's father had had the Emperor in his pay. Ivan replied that were ‘Bowes not an ambassador he would throw him out of the doores’, whereupon the party broke up.

Yet Ivan did not hold his language against the English ambassador, indeed he seemed rather to view it as an admirable proof of his loyalty to his mistress, and supplied Bowes with a greatly increased quantity of food and drink. He still held to his determination to marry an English wife, though Maria Nagaia had given birth to a son.

In further talks with the boyars, Bowes, striking while the iron was hot, obtained a number of favourable decisions in pending suits, such as the repayment of the taxes amounting to 1,500 rubles and compensation for a robbery.
³⁹
But no progress at all was made with the treaty, and Bowes's efforts to secure confirmation of the English trade monopoly met with considerable hostility in Russia, now that Russia had been approached by France and by traders from the Spanish Netherlands. Ivan's increasing familiarity with international diplomacy was also leading him to resist England's efforts to maintain Russian isolation. The boyars now demanded that Russian envoys to the West and European envoys to Russia should be allowed to travel freely through England and the North Sea to Russia, while England refused point-blank to allow
representatives of Catholic powers to pass through her territory. Ivan agreed to the exclusion of envoys from the Papacy but not to the exclusion of envoys of other powers. As the boyars put it: ‘Faith is not an obstacle; your Lady is not of the same faith as our Lord, but our Lord wishes to be in friendship and brotherhood with her.’
⁴⁰