Ivan the Terrible: Tsarist Service on the Edge of the Abyss
"Ivan the Terrible" by Klavdiy Lebedev
From Muscovy to Russia, or by way of reconquista
Let's continue what we started in the article On the way to the kingdom: Rus' in the mirror of Sacred history conversation. We stopped at the threshold of the acceptance of the scepter and orb by the great Moscow princes, which was caused by a number of objective reasons. The key one: overcoming feudal fragmentation led to the formation of a single market.
That is, the economic component in historical prevailing in the process. I consider it necessary to emphasize this in the context of the further narrative.
And since the territories controlled by Moscow turned out to be vast with a relatively low population density - for comparison: in Russia at the beginning of the 6th century there lived about 12 million people, in France - no less than XNUMX - due to the presence of risky farming zones, which often put representatives of the service class on the brink of starvation, a strict, and sometimes cruel in methods, centralization of power was needed for the survival of the state.
Let me emphasize: we are talking about the first half of the 16th century, during which the establishment of control over the Volga-Oka trade route and the reconquest of Smolensk fit into the corresponding strategy. In this case, it is appropriate to compare the campaigns of Russian troops with the reconquista in the Pyrenees.
At the same time, it seems to me that one should not exaggerate the scale of the danger coming from the west, east and southeast. For neither the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, nor the Livonian Order – the period of prosperity of both by the aforementioned century was in the past – nor the fragments of the Golden Horde possessed the military-demographic potential that would have allowed them to conquer Russia or to seize and, most importantly, to hold a significant part of its territory.
The greatest threat in the first half of the 1572th century – and it remained so until the Battle of Molodi in 15 – was posed by the Girays; the maximum number of their troops, according to military historian L. A. Bobrov, did not exceed XNUMX thousand people at the beginning of the XNUMXth century.
An impressive figure if we are talking about devastating raids, but insufficient for long-term control of the occupied territory, which requires serious financial costs and human resources.
However, the damage from the constant threat to such important military-administrative centers as Moscow, Nizhny and Veliky Novgorod, Pereyaslavl-Ryazansky, Pskov, from the neighbors was, from the point of view of disruption of the process of normal economic life, significant.
The enemy was rarely able to take cities, but was quite capable of burning the settlement and surrounding villages, ruining landowners' estates, and taking away slaves for sale at slave markets, undermining the economic base of the state. The tragic years of 1521 and 1571 were especially memorable in this regard.
The need to coordinate actions from a single center for the prompt parrying of military threats from different directions, overcoming the persistent separatism of the aristocracy - the last time it manifested itself in the most dangerous form for Russia was in the fateful 1480 rebellion of the brothers of Ivan III - the formation of a single tax system, in fact, led to the centralization of power and, as a consequence, to the increase in the political status of the ruler, who already in the last quarter of the XNUMXth century felt cramped within the framework of the grand ducal title, which did not correspond either to the scale of the state or to its increased prestige in the international arena.
A little aside: realizing the possibility of a question from respected readers regarding international prestige and in view of the fact that the answer to it goes beyond the topic indicated in the title, I recommend the excellent book by A. I. Filyushkin “Vasily III”.
And since Russia saw itself not so much as the successor to the Eastern Roman Empire that fell in 1453, but as its existential heir, the acceptance of the scepter and orb by the Grand Duke was conditioned by the logic of the historical process. And since the Horde khans were no longer tsars, the corresponding title was accepted by its sovereigns as their lands passed under the rule of Moscow.
Here it is difficult not to agree with the medievalist I. N. Danilevsky, who considered the conquest of the Kazan and Astrakhan khanates by Ivan the Terrible as the implementation of the geopolitical plans of the Khan of the Great Horde Akhmat, only in the opposite direction - the restoration of the lands that were once part of the ulus of Jochi, with the exception of Crimea, albeit in a different political and religious context. It is no coincidence that the titles of the Russian autocrats indicated: "Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan».
Execute and pardon: responsible for everyone
But there was another important component of the Grand Duke’s acceptance of the royal crown, dictated by his understanding of History – I am deliberately writing this word with a capital letter in this case.
It is not for nothing that we ended the previous conversation with the identification of Rus’ with the New Israel by the scribes and the allusions in the chronicles and hagiographic literature to biblical events.
All this was superimposed on the year 1492. Or the 7000th year of the Russian calendar from the creation of the world. After the said date, Paschalia was not compiled. The circle of earthly history will end, followed by: the Second Coming. The Last Judgment. Didn't happen? We are waiting for the 7070th.
This is the logic of thinking of the educated part of society, which was discussed in the article. Eschatology and Geopolitics: On the Eve of the First Russo-Turkish War.
Expectations were superimposed on Ivan IV’s impressionable nature, which he had suffered, as they now say, psychological trauma in childhood.
With the wedding – but not the anointing! – of the kingdom, according to the apt observation of the historian D. M. Volodikhin, in the mind of Ivan the Terrible politics was combined with mysticism.
I would, however, correct Dmitry Mikhailovich’s statement: not so much with mysticism, but with the pictures of the harsh Old Testament history drawn by the tsar’s ardent imagination.
"The Crowning of Ivan the Terrible" - painting by Klavdiy Lebedev
Imagine a young man on whose shoulders the entire weight of the world has fallen. Of course, we are not talking about the objective reality of the first half of the 16th century, but about Ivan IV's internal experience of it:
"The restraining" or - writes D.M. Volodikhin - "katechon" prevents the final fall of the world into the abyss, to complete corruption and departure from the commandments. If it is not there, then either a new one must appear, or the Last Judgment is approaching, and with it the end of the old world. Thus, a heavy, truly unbearable burden fell on the shoulders of the young man."
Within the framework of such a view of the royal service, it begins to be perceived as sacred and even priestly. However, the argument in favor of the latter should be the anointing.
Remember, we talked about it in the article Charles X: A Forgotten Rite or the End of the Long Middle Ages that it was precisely the anointing that gave rise to discussions: whether the monarch was a simple layman or a cleric girded with a sword.
How did Ivan the Terrible get out of the situation, when the corresponding ritual was not performed on him? By the way, why?
The outstanding philologist B. A. Uspensky gives the following explanation for this:
“Most likely, the Russian hierarchs knew that anointing was performed during the coronation in Byzantium, but they did not have a description of how exactly this rite was performed in Constantinople; as a result, they introduced into the rite of coronation the rite that was known to them.”
Probably, the author of the coronation rite, Metropolitan Macarius, thought it sufficient to realize that Ivan IV was the only Orthodox tsar in the world; a katechon, as D. M. Volodikhin writes, drawing the basis for the priestly understanding of the content of his power from the Old Testament words:
"The Lord has sworn and will not repent: 'You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.'"
However, was it only the sovereign who conceived of the royal service as a sacred act? No. Medievalist A. L. Yurganov draws attention to the lines from the Alexander Nevsky Chronicle, in which the tsar is directly called a saint – a word traditionally used in relation to a church hierarch, and, as a rule, a canonized one.
"Apparently," Alexander Lvovich believes, "during the oprichnina the tsar took upon himself special pastoral functions, which was not unexpected for many, as can be seen from the cited texts, and was easily accepted by the "popular multitude" due to the traditional sacredness of the tsar's power in Russia. In the Russian elite-theological environment, the position of the Grand Duke was considered quite clear, structurally formed. Christ - the True Truth - will carry out his last Judgment; every Christian is obliged to fulfill "every truth" for the salvation of his own soul; the Grand Duke in this structure was the truth of "this world". Thus, the transformation of the Grand Duke into a sovereign-saint is explainable by the coming of the time of the Last Judgment. The Truth of "this world" must give way to the True Truth."
The author of Ivan IV’s first biography, Lutheran pastor Paul Oderborn, assessed Ivan IV’s vision of the essence of monarchical power in a similar way:
“Irozny served the liturgy (the generally accepted name for the Liturgy before the revolution – I.Kh.) as a priest.”
Most likely, this is gossip, but it is important that it circulates in society.
Accordingly, in the view of both Ivan the Terrible and certain circles of the Russian educated elite, the Orthodox Tsar possesses priestly status in the earthly world, especially on the eve of its expected end.
Here, in fact, the mysticism mentioned by D. M. Volodin and politics united, becoming a kind of prologue to the emergence of the Oprichnina, with its “pitfall-makers” called to punish sinners and symbolizing the formidable angels of death.
Museum "Alexandrova Sloboda"
In this regard, A. L. Yurganov gives a very interesting description of the symbolism of the Oprichny Palace built by order of the Tsar in the Alexandrovskaya Sloboda, imbued with biblical allusions:
"The search for a typologically related (to the Oprichny Palace - I.Kh.) structure led us to the description of the City of God, which is given in the 40th and subsequent chapters of the prophetic book of Ezekiel, which has special significance for Christians. Ezekiel's vision describes the "last times", when, after many trials that befell Israel, the Lord will finally unite with his people, entering the City of God through the eastern gate. Only the "elder" ("prince" in the synodal translation) had a special right to enter these eastern gates, but only "by way of the porch". In the Oprichny Palace, the eastern gates did not have a porch, for the king allowed himself to enter the sacred gates prepared for the Lord God. The absence of the western gates is symbolic: since we are talking about the "last times", then with the coming of the Judge there will be no night, there will be no sunset. More precisely, Christ in the Second Coming is the Sun that never sets: this image is typical of all medieval literature. Thus, only the Grand Duke could enter the eastern gates of the Oprichnina Palace, but it is clear that such a privilege was symbolic: the Savior will enter these gates."
From my point of view, the above lines contain the key to understanding not only the logic of Ivan the Terrible’s thinking, but also his inner experience of the heavy burden of responsibility that fell on his shoulders.
Not just to execute, but to condemn the soul to wander
"And executions," you ask, "how do they relate to the priestly status of the monarch?" After all, not only is it forbidden for a priest to kill, but he is also forbidden to raise his hand against anyone.
Not so much answering the question as reflecting on it, I will express an assumption based on the biblical worldview of Ivan the Terrible, within the framework of which: just as the Lord punishes sinners in heaven, so does the Tsar on Earth.
The executions themselves are also symbolic. For example, the autocrat often forbade the dismembered bodies of the executed to be given a Christian burial, as if condemning their souls to eternal torment. And according to popular belief, all those who died an unnatural death were turned into pawns of the dead. The famous mermaids of Russian fairy tales are just that. Only without the tail invented by G. H. Andersen.
As a slight aside: it is curious that the belief in hostage dead was recorded by ethnographers in the 20th century.
And the executions were intended to visibly demonstrate pictures of the future Last Judgment, just as they contained not only biblical allusions, but also references to Slavic mythology.
It is not without reason that reprisals were associated, in addition to dissecting the body, also with the aquatic environment, where, according to medieval ideas, demons live, which, by the way, diverges from Christian views: according to the Apostle Paul, the prince of peace rules the air.
It is noteworthy that the river and the bridge represent the most ancient images of not only Slavic, but also Indo-European mythology as a whole.
As an example regarding the water element, I will cite the famous campaign of Ivan the Terrible against Veliky Novgorod in 1570 and the massacre on the bridge over the Volkhov, which, as A. L. Yurganov notes,
"was apparently specially chosen by the king: burning people with their hands and feet tied fall into a cold river. This bridge, apparently, was for the king a symbol of the punishment of sinners, who were destined for "eternal torment."
That is, the executions, on the one hand, symbolized the punishments that befell sinners - a kind of prototype of eternal torment. And from the same logic - the dissection of bodies as depriving the murdered of the opportunity to inherit blessed Eternity. Thus, Ivan the Terrible, as it seemed to him, doomed the unfortunate to eternal torment.
And whose prerogatives he took upon himself in this case – I suppose there is no need to explain.
It is interesting that part of society took this for granted, due to their view not even of the royal power itself, but of its bearer.
Thus, B. A. Uspensky in one of his works cites the words of foreigners on this matter:
"Isaac Massa wrote, for example, that "the Russians "consider their Tsar as the highest deity... the same was repeated by other authors. Thus, according to G. Sederberg, the Russians "consider the Tsar almost as God", and Johann Georg Korb noted that the Muscovites "obeyed their Sovereign not so much as subjects, but as slaves, considering him more as God than as Sovereign."
However, there was no unanimity in Russian society regarding the priestly nature of the tsarist power.
Alternative, or "Shui's Kingdom"
The alternative to the politics tied to mysticism, the vision of the royal service as a sacred act, was the quite down-to-earth “Shuisky kingdom” – the power of the aristocracy headed by the Shuisky clan and the prospect of the dominance of centrifugal tendencies – by the beginning of Ivan the Terrible’s reign, the generation that remembered the independence of Veliky Novgorod, Pskov, and the Grand Duchy of Ryazan had not yet passed away.
And next to it is Lithuania with its unconquered feudal fragmentation and without a hint of sacralization of the power of the Gediminids.
In 1553, when Ivan the Terrible fell seriously ill and was on the threshold of death, the history of our country could have turned back. That year, standing invisibly at the bedside of the sick tsar were: the departing appanage Rus' and the centralized Russia emerging under the monarch's scepter.
A painting worthy of the brush of P. D. Korin, only in relation to the 16th century. The last time the old Rus and the new Russia met was on the pages of the correspondence between Kurbsky and Ivan IV: two worlds, two different understandings of history and the place of the aristocracy in it.
The same people, but for the fugitive prince they are “mighty men in Israel,” and for the king they are slaves, whom he is free to execute and pardon. And not for some merit, but because he is the king, and not by “rebellious desire,” but by the power granted to him by the Lord.
However, can the worldview of the tsar who claimed pastoral functions be called fully Orthodox? It would seem that the answer is obvious, given the frequent references to the Bible in Ivan IV's epistolary legacy and the Canon to the Terrible Angel written by him under the pseudonym Parthenius the Ugly.
However, let's not rush and talk about this topic in the next article, starting with the dramatic and still not fully clarified circumstances associated with the death of the sovereign's son, Ivan.
Использованная литература:
Bobrov L.A. Tactical art of the Crimean Tatars and Nogais of the late 15th – mid-17th centuries.
Kurukin I.V., Bulychev A.A. Everyday life of the oprichniks of Ivan the Terrible. Moscow: Young Guard, 2010.
Nikolaeva I.Yu. Gender Perspective of the Tsar's Identity Deformation: Ivan IV in the Historical and Psychological Interior of the Oprichnina Crisis.
Uspensky B.A. Tsar and Patriarch: the charisma of power in Russia (Byzantine model and its Russian rethinking). Moscow: Languages of Russian Culture, 1998.
Uspensky B.A. Tsar and Emperor. Anointing to the Tsardom and Semantics of Monarchic Titles. Moscow: Languages of Russian Culture, 2000.
Uspensky B.A., Zhivov V.M. Tsar and God: Semiotic Aspects of the Sacralization of the Monarch in Russia // Uspensky B.A. Selected Works. Vol. 1. Moscow, 1994. Pp. 110 – 218.
Information