Ivan the Terrible (73 page)

50
Solov'ev, III, p. 59.

51
Ibid.

52
Elena is usually known in Russian as Elena Voloshanka, i.e. Elena of Wallachia, but her father was Stephen the Great of Moldavia.

53
A summary of the state of play in 1961 will be found in Appendix A in J.L.I. Fennell,
Ivan the Great of Moscow
, Macmillan, Glasgow, 1961.

54
It is noteworthy in view of the later connection of Elena of Moldavia with the alleged Judaizers that Mikhail Olel'kovich's sister Yevdokia was the wife of Stephen of Moldavia and Elena's mother. (Fennell,
Ivan the Great
, Appendix E, descendants of Vasily I.)

55
W.F. Ryan,
The Bathhouse at Midnight
, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999, p. 16, and n. 55, which refers to a number of studies by Moshe Taube.

56
Gennady used the services of Dmitri Gerasimov, who had resided in Rome for some years and played an important part in the transmission of Western culture to Russia, Nicholas Bülow, the Grand Prince's physician (and astrologer), and the translator from Latin, the monk Benjamin, a Serb or Croat Dominican in his service.

57
R. Tsurkan,
Slavianskii perevod Biblii
, St Petersburg, 2001, pp. 188ff. The translation was based on Greek texts, on the Vulgate, and also on the German edition of Cologne, 1478, and on some Hebrew originals. See also Alastair Hamilton,
The Apocryphal Apocalypse: The Reception of the Second Book of Esdras (4 Ezra) from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment
, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1999, for an explanation of the numbering of the books of Esdras. 2 Esdras was important as a source of prophetic interpretation, notably of the advance of the Turks, one of the signs of the end of the world, together with the books of Daniel and Revelations. Among the admirers of the book of Esdras were Pico della Mirandola, and those who sought to reconcile Judaism with Christianity (Hamilton, op. cit., p. 9ff).

58
Croskey,
Muscovite Diplomatic Practice
, pp. 238ff.

59
In addition to Croskey, see L.A. Iusefovich,
Kak v posol'skikh obychaiakh vedetsia
, Moscow, 1988.

1
Solov'ev,
Istoria
, III, p. 63.

2
For the wills of Ivan III and Vasily III see Robert Craig Howes,
The Testaments of the Grand Princes of Moscow
, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1967. Ivan III may have had a stroke.

3
Ivan III had left his brother Andrei the Elder to die in prison in 1493; Ivan's two younger sons were kept by their brother Vasily in prison in Pereiaslavl' in chains, where they both died. They could of course have become rivals for the throne. Henry VIII's policy of eliminating possible Yorkist claimants to his throne in England provides a parallel.

4
See Martin,
Medieval Russia, 980–1584
, p. 248.

5
It was regarded as wrong to shed the blood of a member of the ruling family, but starvation supplied a practical alternative.

6
Louis XII, King of France from 1498 to 1515, also divorced his wife, a daughter of Louis XI, in order to marry Anne of Brittany in 1499.

7
N.A. Kazakova,
Ocherki po istorii russkoi obshchestvennoi mysli, pervaia tret' XVI veka
, Leningrad, 1970, pp. 116–18, and p. 210. The sources on Vasily's marriage are extremely confusing since chronicles have been edited to please Vasily by portraying Solomonia as asking him to repudiate her and send her to a monastery.

8
See D.G. Ostrowski, ‘Church Polemics and Monastic Land Acquisition in Sixteenth-Century Muscovy’,
SEER
, 64, no. 3, 1986, pp. 355–79. Ostrowski argues very cogently against the existence of ‘church based’ parties, and suggests that the concept took hold so easily in the later historiography because ‘it conveniently paralleled the conservative vs liberal political arguments of the late nineteenth century’. The arguments bandied back and forth in Russian historiography do suggest some of the worst excesses of kremlinology of the 1950s and 1960s.

9
For a general outline of his life and works see Jack V. Haney,
From Italy to Muscovy: The Life and Works of Maxim the Greek
, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich, 1973; see also R.G. Skrynnikov,
Sviatiteli i vlasti
, Leningrad, 1990, pp. 143ff.

10
See L.E. Morozova, ‘Ivan Groznii i publitsisty XVI veka o predelakh i kharaktere tsarskoi vlasti’ in
Ot Rimu k tret'emu Rimu
, pp. 236–51, at p. 237. Morozova assumes that this means Maksim Grek was a supporter of government by representative institutions; government by ‘council’ does not enter her horizon, though the word used by Maksim Grek is ‘
sinklit
’ (Council, from the Greek).

11
See V. Val'denberg,
Drevnerusskie uchenia o predelakh tsarskoi vlasti
, Petrograd, 1916, p. 258.

12
Ibid.

13
Skrynnikov,
Sviatiteli i vlasti
, who calls it a club, pp. 141ff.

14
See Haney, op. cit., pt I, section 3, pp. 64ff.

15
G. Alef, ‘Das Erlöschen des Abzugsrechts der Moskauer Bojaren’,
FOG
, 10, Berlin, 1975, pp. 7–74, at p. 66.

16
Skrynnikov,
Sviatiteli i vlasti
, p. 142.

17
Herberstein,
Zapiski
, pp. 105–6, who adds that though Vasily liked Maksim, the latter vanished and was probably drowned. He was not, but he did die in prison.

18
See J.J. Scarisbrick,
Henry VIII
, Methuen, London, 1983, p. 350 for the Act of Supremacy passed by Parliament in 1534 allowing Henry to appoint any successor at any time by letters patent or by will.

19
Marc Szeftel, ‘Joseph Volotsky's Political Ideas in a New Historical Perspective’,
JGOE
, 13, 1965, pp. 19–29.

20
Skrynnikov,
Sviatiteli i vlasti
, pp. 150–52.

21
Ibid., and see also Herberstein,
Zapiski
, p. 87 and n. 235. Needless to say, the Chronicles are silent on an episode casting such an unpleasant light on Vasily. Solomonia is portrayed as anxious in every way to please her husband. The editors of Herberstein argue that Metropolitan Daniel was not concerned in the divorce because he was a supporter of Iuri Ivanovich, Vasily's brother and heir to the throne, and thus did not care whether Vasily had children or not.

22
V.D. Nazarov, ‘Svadebnye dela XVI veka’,
Voprosy istorii
, 1976, no. 10, pp. 116ff, at pp. 121–2 publishes an order from the Grand Prince to S.I. Lyatsky to investigate carefully that a potential bride should not be related in any way, however distant, to the Shcheniatev and Pleshcheev clans, thus suggesting that political considerations weighed heavily in the choice of bride. The Shcheniatevs were descended from the Patrikeev clan, which had been disgraced in 1499. See also Zimin,
Formirovanie
, pp. 33ff.

23
A.A. Zimin, ‘Sluzhilye knyaz'ia v russkom gosudarstve kontsa XV-pervoi treti XVI v.’ in
Dvorianstvo i krepostnoi stroi Rossii XVI–XVIII vv
, Moscow, 1975, pp. 28–56.

24
Herberstein,
Zapiski
, pp. 69 and n. 135; p.188 and variants; and n. 698.

25
H. Rüss, ‘Elena Vasil'evna Glinskaja’,
JGOE
, 19, 1971, pp. 481–98, genealogical chart at p. 487. The sister of Peter Raresh's wife married Ivan Vishnevetsky, and was the mother of Dmitri Vishnevetsky, the Lithuanian prince who played a big part in the cultural world of Russia and Lithuania. Rüss rejects the idea that Elena Glinskaia had a Western education on the grounds that she was too young when she came to Russia to benefit from it.

26
See M.N. Tikhomirov, ‘Stranitsa iz zhizni Ivana Peresvetova’ in
Rossiiskoe gosudarstvo XV–XVII vekov
, Moscow, 1973, pp. 70–73. This may also cast a light on Ivan Peresvetov's admiration for the
voevoda
of Moldavia (see below, pp. 88–90). See also article by Tikhomirov, ‘Petr Raresh i Ivan Groznyy’ in
Omagiu lui P. Constantinescu,
lasi cu prilejui impliniri, Bucharest, 1965, in Russian; and S. Simionescu, ‘Les Relations de la Moldavie avec les Habsbourgs pendant le règne de Petru Raresh, 1527–1538, 1541–46’,
Revue romaine d'histoire
, XVII, no. 2, April–June 1978, pp. 455–67.

27
Karamzin,
Istoria
, VII, ch. 3, pp. 112ff.

28
L.A. Dmitriev, ed. and tr., ‘Skazanie o kniaz'iakh Vladimirskikh’, in
Literatura drevnei Rusi. Khrestomatia
, St Petersburg, 1997, pp. 283–95.

29
See Dmitriev, op. cit., n. 35, pp. 283ff. The story goes on to describe the destiny of Gedimenik's various sons, one of whom is Jagiello, eventually King of
Poland. Scenes from the Tale of the Princes of Vladimir were incorporated in the frescoes which decorated the chapel in which the tsar's throne was installed in the Dormition Cathedral in the Kremlin. (E. Etkind, G. Nivat, I. Serman, V. Strada, eds,
Histoire de la littérature russe
, Fayard, Paris, 1992, vol. I, p. 173.)

30
See for instance Brutus in England, Francus in France and Hercules in Spain. Perhaps the most picturesque is the claim that the grand dukes of Lithuania were descended from Nero, though some people held that the Lithuanians were descended from Englishmen who fled their country after the battle of Hastings.

31
C.J. Halperin, ‘The Russian Land and the Russian Tsar: The Emergence of Muscovite Ideology, 1380–1408’,
FOG
, 23, Berlin, 1976, pp. 7–103, at p. 77, quoting the monk Akindin to Grand Prince Michael of Tver', ‘you are tsar, lord prince, in your land’.

32
Herberstein,
Zapiski
, p. 16.

33
Rüss argues that Herberstein got most of his information from circles hostile to Vasily and Elena, which accounts for his negative attitude to the Grand Prince; Rüss, ‘Elena’, pp. 481ff.

34
See Marshall Poe, ‘What did Russians Mean When They Called Themselves Slaves of the Tsar?’,
Slavic Review
, 57, no. 3, 1998, pp. 585–608.

35
There were also of course prisoners of war who had been enslaved.

36
I am grateful to Dr Jonathan Shepard for permission to use an unpublished seminar paper given at a meeting of the Society for Court Studies on 14 October 1998 and for further written communications on the subject of ceremonial in the East Roman Empire, which to my mind is undoubtedly closer to the Russian in every way, including the use of clothing, than Mongol ceremonial. On usage in Western languages see
servus
(Lat. slave) and
servus
(Austrian German: ‘your servant’, friendly greeting).

37
Zimin,
Formirovanie
, p. 289.

38
Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora
, St Petersburg, 1992, pp. 78–9. It is not clear whether Andrei was an older or younger brother of Alexander. In the entry ‘Rossia’ in the
Granat encyclopaedia
he appears as older than Alexander, in Brokhaus and Efron under ‘Alexander Nevsky’ he appears as younger.

39
See Nancy Shields Kollman,
Kinship and Politics: The Making of the Muscovite Political System, 1345–1547
, Stanford, 1987.

40
This discussion is largely taken from Zimin,
Formirovanie
, pp. 306ff, and N.A. Kazakova,
Ocherki po istorii russkoi obshchestvennoi mysli
, p. 285.

41
There was no procedure for ennoblement in Russia until the reign of Peter I. But the concept of the ‘well-born’ existed and applied to descendants of princes and boyars and of landowners in general whether of allodial estates, which ranked higher, or of service estates, which were more frequent. Service gentry were in principle offshoots of well-born families, but not always.

42
S.O. Schmidt, ‘Kniga A.A. Zimina, “Reformy Ivana Groznogo”’, in
Rossia Ivana Groznogo
, Moscow, 1999, pp. 91–102, at p. 96.

43
Skrynnikov,
Velikii gosudar' Ivan Vasil'evich
, 2 vols, Smolensk, 1993, I, p. 109.

44
Zimin,
Formirovanie
, pp. 296ff.

45
See V.A. Kivelson, ‘The Effects of Partible Inheritance: Gentry Families and the State in Muscovy’,
Russian Review
, 53, 1994, pp. 197–212.

1
I. Thyret, ‘Blessed is the Tsaritsa's Womb: The Myth of Miraculous Birth and Royal Motherhood in Muscovite Russia’,
Russian Review
, 53, no. 4, 1994, pp. 479–96.

2
Karamzin,
Istoria
, VIII, ch. 1, p. 119.

3
E. Keenan, ‘Ivan IV and the “King's Evil”:
Ni maka li to budet
?’,
Russian History
, 20, nos 1–4, 1993, pp. 5–13. Russian rulers did not touch for the King's Evil.

4
The texts of the wills of Vasily III have not survived, but a testamentary ‘writ’ (
zapis
) dated 1523 exists. See R. Craig Howes,
The Testaments of the Grand Princes of Moscow
, p. 50 and pp. 299ff.

5
Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora
, pp. 81ff, discusses the different opinions among historians on the nature of the Regency Council and the appointments to the Duma.

6
Karamzin,
Istoria
, VIII, ch. 1, p. 119.

7
PSRL
, XIII, pt 2, p. 410; Vasily's wound was dressed with a mixture of wheat, honey and baked onion, in what used to be called in English a poultice. There were rumours that he wanted to retire to a monastery before his final illness, and it is noteworthy that the one he is said to have chosen was the monastery of St Cyril of Beloozero, where Vassian Patrikeev had been exiled and which was the centre of Nil Sorsky's teachings. Skrynnikov, op. cit., p. 66, points out that once shorn, if Vasily survived, he would be unable to reign as Grand Prince. See also the dramatic deathbed scene described by Karamzin,
Istoria
, VII, ch. III, pp. 105ff.