Ivan the Terrible (76 page)

Read Ivan the Terrible Online

Authors: Isabel de Madariaga

Tags: #Non-Fiction, #Eurasian History, #Geopolitics, #European History, #Renaissance History, #Political Science, #Amazon.com, #Retail, #Russia, #Biography

BOOK: Ivan the Terrible
12.67Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

12
C. Given-Wilson,
The English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages: The Fourteenth Century Political Community
, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1987, pp. 177–8. See also R.F. Treharne, ‘The Nature of Parliament in the Reign of Henry III’,
English Historical Review
, IXXIV, 1959.

13
But see Chester Dunning,
Russia's First Civil War
, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001, pp. 92ff, who downplays the importance of the election of Boris Godunov to the throne, and states that it took place after his coronation in ‘a sham zemskii sobor’.

14
G. Vernadsky,
The Tsardom of Moscow, 1547–1682
, V, pt 1 of
A History of Russia
, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1969, pp. 33–4, quoting E.F. Maksimovich in ‘Tserkovno-zemskii sobor 1549 goda’, in
ZRNIB
, 9, 1933, pp. 1–15. See also Bogatyrev,
The Sovereign and His Counsellors
, pp. 137ff for discussion of the origin and nature of the
zemskii sobor
and for the suggestion that Makarii introduced the notion of a church
sobor
(a well established institution) into the government of the state.

15
Aleksei Adashev does not figure in the list of heads of
prikazy
in 1549 in Filiushkin,
Istoria odnoi mistifikatsii,
pp. 50–51, and he appears for the first time in the list for 1550 as a
kaznachei
, or treasurer, which may have implied that he was in charge of the Tsar's personal effects, and papers in the bedchamber. These government offices and their locations had various names at various times:
palata
(chamber),
dvorets
(modern tr. is palace, but better ‘court’),
izba
(bureau),
prikaz
(office); there is no indication of the kinds of buildings they were housed in.

16
Schmidt,
Rossia Ivana groznogo
, p. 55.

17
E.g. Smirnov, in
Ocherki
, pp. 222ff, who also doubted that Adashev and Sylvester would actually work together in a government office.

18
Filiushkin,
Istoria odnoi mistifikatsii,
pp. 56ff.

19
M.V. Kukushkina points out that a copy of the 1550 code was first discovered by V.N. Tatishchev, Petrine statesman and historian, in 1734. In a note on the MS Tatishchev says that the Grand Prince, seeing the great extortion prevailing in the judicial process, had ordered the towns each to send one good man, who, together with the boyars,
okol'nichie
and
dvoretskie
, were to produce a new code.
Kniga v Rossii,
pp. 68–9. See also Zimin,
Reformy
, p. 350, n. 2.

20
Kukushkina,
Kniga v Rossii
, p. 109.

21
Zimin,
Reformy
, p. 351.

22
It has been suggested that there was an intermediate code of Vasily III's, but this has been rejected by Soviet experts. See
Pamiatniki prava perioda ukreplenia Russkogo tsentralizovannogo gosudarstva, XV–XVII vv,
ed. L.V. Cherepnin, Moscow, 1956, p. 231.

23
I have drawn extensively on H.W. Dewey, ‘The 1550
Sudebnik
as an Instrument of Reform’,
JGOE
, 10, 1962, pp. 161–80. Dewey argues that the
Sudebnik
was not really effective, as it was overtaken by the lawlessness of the
oprichnina.

24
See the interesting comparison by S.N. Bogatyrev, ‘Administrativnye sistemy Tiudorov i Riurikovichei: Sravnitel'nyi analiz’,
Zerkalo istorii: Sbornik statei
, ed. N.I. Basovskaia, Moscow, 1992, pp. 74–84.

25
But see above, n. 10.

26
That the code was regarded as an essentially practical document is confirmed by the fact that some fifty MS copies have survived, whereas only one copy of the code of 1497 still exists. Kukushkina,
Kniga v Rossii,
p. 73.

27
See ‘
Stoglav
’, n. 33 below.

28
Ivan attempted to send delegates to the Council of Trent, but the Polish-Lithuanian government did not allow them free passage through the Commonwealth.

29
Skrynnikov,
Sviatiteli i vlasti
, p.173, suggests that the questions were drafted by Sylvester and Aleksei Adashev; the evidence of Sylvester's participation is all internal, but it is not improbable that he was involved.

30
Skrynnikov, op. cit., pp. 172ff; Skrynnikov states that copies of speeches by Ivan have been preserved among the papers of the
Sobor
, the main burden of which is criticism of the dereliction of duty by the boyar government.

31
I am drawing, among other sources, on P. Bushkovitch,
Religion and Society in Russia, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
, Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1992.

32
Ivanov,
Literaturnoe nasledie Maksima Greka
, pp. 170–71 mentions that Maksim Grek thanks Makarii for sending him money, complains of the persecution he has suffered by the deprivation of his books and personal comforts and is sending some writings on church teachings.

33
See ‘Stoglav’ in A.D. Gorsky, ed.,
Rossiskoe zakonodatel'stvo X–XX vekov
, 10 vols, Moscow, 1985, II,
zakonodatel'stvo perioda obrazovania i ukreplenia Russkogo tsentralizovannogo gosudarstva
, n. 242ff. and N.V. Sinitsyna,
Maksim Grek v Rossii
, Moscow, 1977, pp. 155–8.

34
Gorsky,
Zakonodatel'stvo, Stoglav
, p. 267. It is worth noting that Ivan finished his appeal to those present with the words: ‘I ia vam ottsem svoim i s brateiu i s svoimi boyary chelom b'iu’, i.e. he ‘beats his forehead’ to his ‘father’ with his brothers and boyars.

35
See Jack Kollman, ‘The Stoglav and Parish Priests’,
Russian History,
7, 1980, pp. 65–91, and Gorsky,
Zakonodatel'stvo, Stoglav
, pp. 269 and 438.

36
Gorsky, op. cit., pp. 290–91.

37
It was
de rigueur
for donors of sums of money for prayers for the dead to donate sufficiently to provide for a feast on the name day of the person concerned. See seminar paper by L. Steindorff, in Professor Hughes's seminar series, at SSEES in the Centre for Russian Studies on ‘Death and Immortality in Russian Cultural History’, 2001–2002 in 2002, on the very large number of feast days entered in
Sinodiki
for the commemoration of the dead. The monks must have been feasting every second day throughout the year.

38
Gorsky, op. cit., p. 210, and see for a second example, p. 420, a miniature of the Church
Sobor
of 1555.

39
It should be noted that wearing beards was normal throughout Europe at this time.

40
Gorsky, op. cit., p. 426, pp. 440–41. These replies are usually attributed to Sylvester.

41
Ibid., p. 426. But see Zimin,
Reformy,
p. 474, miniature of Ivan IV from the Kazan' Chronicle, mounted, crowned and beardless, but with a faint moustache, rather like the young Peter I.

42
Gorsky, op. cit., pp. 437–8. The editor of the
Stoglav
comments that this was regarded as necessary because the common people often married six or seven times. So, of course, did Ivan IV eventually.

43
Ibid., p. 333, ch. 60; see also pp. 338ff, chs 60, 64, 65, 66. On the Donation of Constantine see below.

44
See Horst Jablonowski,
Westrussland zwischen Wilna und Moskau,
E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1961; V.O. Kliuchevsky,
Istoria soslovii
v Rossi, repr. by Academic International, p. 133; and S.B. Veselovsky, ‘Poslednye udely v severovostochnoi Rusi’,
Istoricheskie Zapiski
, no. 22, 1947, pp. 101–31 at pp. 113ff. According to Zimin,
Formirovanie
, p. 143, these princes were known as service princes as distinct from appanage princes, and they had no claim to the grand princely throne.

45
From 1714 Peter I paid salaries to officers and men, but did not deprive officers of the landed estates originally granted to enable them to serve.

46
Veselovsky, ‘Reforma 1550g. i tak nazyvaemaia tysiachnaia kniga’,
Issledovania po istorii oprichniny
, Moscow, 1963, pp. 77–91.

47
A.V. Chernov,
Vooruzhennye sily russkogo gosudarstva v XV–XVII vv.
, Moscow, 1954, pp. 46ff.

48
R. Hellie,
Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy,
University of Chicago Press, 1971, pp. 156–7.

49
For information about this somewhat obscure character see W. Philipp,
Ivan Peresvetov und seine Schriften zur Erneuerung des Moskauer Reiches
, Königsberg (today Kaliningrad), 1935; A.A. Zimin, comp., and D.S. Likhachev, ed.,
Sochinenia I. Peresvetova,
Moscow and Leningrad, 1956; and Zimin,
I.S. Peresvetov i ego sovremenniki
, Moscow, 1958.

50
The use of ‘Wallachia’ to describe Moldavia is frequent at this time.

51
For a very knowledgeable discussion of the Russian army and armament see Lt. Col. Dianne Smith, Xenophon Group International, 24 January 1984, ‘The Sixteenth-Century Muscovite Army’. (
www.xenophongi.org/rushistory/muscovy/htm
).

52
On Peter IV of Moldavia see above, pp. 31–2 and below n. 59.

53
Lt. Col. Dianne Smith, op. cit.

54
The German ‘
Gerechtigkeit’
conveys more exactly the many meanings of ‘
pravda
’.

55
‘The Tale of Prince Peter IV of Moldavia’ in Zimin and Likhachev,
Sochineniya I. Peresvetova
, p. 189.

56
Zimin and Likhachev,
Sochinenia I. Peresvetova
, p. 167.

57
Ibid., p. 153.

58
M.N. Tikhomirov,
Rossiiskoe gosudarstvo XV–XVII vv
, Moscow, 1973, pp. 70ff.

59
See also A.L. Iurganov, ‘Idei I.S. Peresvetova v kontekste mirovoi istorii i kul'tury’,
Voprosy istorii
, no. 2, Moscow 1996, pp. 15–27; Lehtovirta,
Ivan IV as Emperor
, pp. 239ff.

C
HAPTER
VI The Conquest of Kazan'

1
See J. Pelenski, ‘The Origins of the Official Muscovite Claims to the Kievan Inheritance’,
Harvard Ukrainian Studies,
I, 1977, pp. 29–52.

2
The khans of Kazan' and of the Crimea had to be chosen from among the descendants of Genghis Khan.

3
See G. Vernadsky,
The Mongols and Russia
, vol. III of
A History of Russia
, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1953, p. 431 for the ancestry of Kasim.

4
Skrynnikov,
Velikii Gosudar'
, I, p. 180 lists apart from the ‘tsarstvo’ of Kasimov, the appanages of Iur'ev and Romanov, and lands held by baptized Tatars in Zvenigorod.

5
Ibid., p. 181.
Kormlenie
, it will be remembered, was a form of living off the income and produce of a particular town or province.

6
PSRL
, XIII, no. 2, p.1, 1506.

7
See Tikhomirov, ‘Petr Raresh i Ivan Groznyi’.

8
See the careful analysis by Lehtovirta,
Ivan IV as Emperor
, op. cit., pp. 91ff. But see also P. Mansel,
Constantinople: City of the World's Desire, 1453–1924
, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1997, p. 50, for the hint by Patriarch Theoleptus in 1516 that a ‘Russo-Byzantine empire might be created’.

9
See D.N. Bantysh Kamenskii,
Obzor vneshnikh snoshenii Rossii po 1800 god
, Moscow, 1902; see also on the diplomatic relations of Poland–Lithuania with Russia and of Russia with the Nogai Horde, Crimea and the Porte the relevant volumes of
SIRIO
, i.e. 35, 59 and 71, and 41 and 95. There is an excellent overview in Hans Übersberger,
Österreich und Russland seit dem Ende des 15 Jahrhunderts,
vol. I: 1488–1605, Wilhelm Braumüller, Vienna and Leipzig, 1906.

10
Iuzefovich,
Kak v posol'skikh obychaiakh vedetsia
, pp. 51ff. Iuzefovich comments that a similar attitude is found in the Manchurian rulers of China, which leads me to speculate whether the habit of speaking of oneself in derogatory terms which Herberstein and others so disapproved in Russia originates far back in Mongolian/Chinese custom. Iuzefovich provides a perceptive and entertaining survey of Russian diplomatic practice in pre-Petrine days.

11
Ibid., p. 82.

12
The word ‘international’ was coined by Jeremy Bentham.

13
Garrett Mattingly,
Renaissance Diplomacy
, Penguin Books, London, 1965, p. 26.

14
It is noteworthy that in Mattingly's excellent survey this is the only mention of the Orthodox world in connexion with the development of diplomatic practice.

15
See in later chapters the difficulties which arose between Russia and Sweden in this respect.

16
N.A. Kazakova, ‘“Evropeiskoi strany koroli”: Issledovania po otechestvennomu istochnikovedeniu’ in
Sbornik statei posviashchennykh 75-letiu S.N. Valka,
Moscow, 1964, pp. 418–26. There are fourteen copies of this document attached to various collections or chronicles. Kazakova argues that it cannot be dated earlier than 1506, when Ferdinand of Aragon became king of both Aragon and Castile – but in fact he never did. On the death of Queen Isabel the throne of Castile went to her daughter Joan the Mad.

17
See A. Bérélowitch,
La Hiérarchie des égaux: La Noblesse russe d'ancien régime XVIe–XVIIe siècles
, Seuil, Paris, 2001, pp. 352ff. Sir Jerome Bowes, whose relations with Ivan IV could not have been worse, was told by the Tsar: ‘I doo not esteme the Queen your mystris for my fellow; ther bee that are her bettars, yes her worstars, wheruntto answering as I thought fytt (wheche no was vnreasonable) he told me in furye hew would throwe me owt of the doores and bad me gett me home’. G. Tolstoy,
England and Russia: Rossia i Anglia, 1553–1593
, St Petersburg, 1875, p. 232.

18
Mattingly, op. cit., p. 17.

19
Iuzefovich,
Kak v posol'skikh obychaiakh vedetsia
, pp.138ff. The display of large quantities of plate on ‘buffets’ at official banquets was also practised by Henry VIII. See Alison Weir,
Henry VIII: King and Court
, Jonathan Cape, London, 2001, p. 74.

Other books

How to Land Her Lawman by Teresa Southwick
Radio Boys by Sean Michael
After the Moon Rises by Bentley, Karilyn
Canciones que cantan los muertos by George R. R. Martin
Who Stole Halloween? by Martha Freeman
The Heirloom Murders by Kathleen Ernst.