Ivan the Terrible - a treaty with the Lord
The Orthodox Tsar and the Sorcerers
In the previous conversation “Ivan the Terrible: Tsarist Service on the Edge of the Abyss,” we focused on the death of the sovereign’s eldest son, the circumstances of which have not been clarified to this day and are of interest from the point of view of analyzing the autocrat’s ideological attitudes.
At first glance, there should be no questions here that would call into question his devotion to Orthodoxy as an indisputable system of values and demonstrated, for example, in the canon to the Terrible Angel written under the pseudonym Parthenius the Urodivy, and in his epistolary legacy as a whole.
However, the external forms of monotheistic religiosity, even brilliantly expressed on an intellectual level, often coexist with ideas based on archaism, designated by C. G. Jung as the archetype of the collective unconscious.
In absolutely any nation, including those nominally professing the aforementioned monotheism, but historical whose roots go back at least to the early medieval past, the collective unconscious is inextricably linked with a layer of pagan views that have never been fully eradicated.
"Tsar Ivan the Terrible asks the abbot of the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery, Cornelius, to tonsure him as a monk." Painting by Klavdiy Lebedev
Even in the USSR they were present, most clearly manifesting themselves in the funeral culture: curtaining, in completely atheistic urban families, of mirrors; forty days after the burial an open gate in the cemetery fence, wakes reminiscent of a funeral feast, etc. What can we say about the times of Ivan the Terrible.
In the Tsar’s mind, the Orthodox picture of the world – however, based to a greater extent on Old Testament rather than Gospel ideas – coexisted with pagan archaism, which manifested itself in reprisals near water and often on a bridge, where, according to the Slavic beliefs, demons lived: let us recall the proverb about a quiet pool, as well as the meaning of a bridge in Indo-European mythology.
Constantine Christianity
Regarding Old Testament ideas, it seems important to me, somewhat digressing from the topic, to make the following clarification.
When Christian missionaries went to preach to the Germanic tribes, they assumed that war was a natural state for them.
Accordingly, to carry the message about the Savior as the God of Love, to appeal to turn the other cheek and forgive enemies was pointless.
Therefore, the emphasis was on Christ the Pantocrator, the grantor of military victory. The hero. It was about imperial, or Constantinian, Christianity, closer in its internal content to the Old Testament history - say, the Book of Joshua, than to the Sermon on the Mount.
In this case, it is necessary to take into account that already in the 1st–2nd centuries, a gradual process of Romanization of the Germanic tribes that found themselves within the boundaries of Pax Romana began.
Accordingly, the language of the sermon with its appeal to the power of Rome was quite understandable and close to them, especially the military elite, to whom, in fact, they were addressing themselves:
The public was shown a close-up image of Christ triumphant, master of the situation, Lord of the kyrios, the outstanding Italian medievalist F. Cardini writes. A hero worthy of the emperor himself. After all, only by becoming a symbol of victory, and not necessarily a spiritual victory, crowning the Roman imperial banner and standing on a par with the eagles of the Roman legions, the cross, an ancient symbol of shameful death, became an object of unanimous and zealous worship in the Roman ecumene.
The cult of such a Christ is deeply connected with the apparatus of the church, the Liturgy and the iconography of the Constantine era. His heroic transubstantiation is in the Old Testament. This is Moses and Judas Maccabeus. This is the terrible Judge of the Apocalypse.
And the text of the Gospel itself, which sounds ordinary and down-to-earth, could it compare with the intensity of the impact of the wonderful Book of Genesis, the epic breadth of the Book of Judges or the Maccabees, the profound wisdom of the Book of Proverbs of Solomon, perhaps awakening in the soul of the Goth echoes of the ancient chants of his people, the magnificence of the Psalms, the sophisticated dialectic of the Epistles of Paul, the twilight of the gods of Revelation?
The cult of such a Christ is deeply connected with the apparatus of the church, the Liturgy and the iconography of the Constantine era. His heroic transubstantiation is in the Old Testament. This is Moses and Judas Maccabeus. This is the terrible Judge of the Apocalypse.
And the text of the Gospel itself, which sounds ordinary and down-to-earth, could it compare with the intensity of the impact of the wonderful Book of Genesis, the epic breadth of the Book of Judges or the Maccabees, the profound wisdom of the Book of Proverbs of Solomon, perhaps awakening in the soul of the Goth echoes of the ancient chants of his people, the magnificence of the Psalms, the sophisticated dialectic of the Epistles of Paul, the twilight of the gods of Revelation?
It must be assumed that Helga and her grandson, the son of the stern Svendoslav - as the Eastern Roman chronicler John Skylitzes calls him; Vladimir, were raised on precisely these ideas about Christ.
And they did not so much form as correct the mental attitudes of the latter’s squad, in whose midst the layer of pagan military culture, expressed in the sagas later recorded by Sorry Sturluson, and in Rus' recorded in the epic tale of Ilya Muromets, was hardly eradicated.
In the early version of the bylinas, there is no talk of his peasant origin, but a set of weapons is described, which indicates that Ilya belonged to a military corporation. Taking this opportunity, I recommend to readers the magnificent study of both the hero himself and the origins of the bylinas, "Ilya Muromets" by the medievalist Alexander Korolev.
And such an explosive eclectic mixture coexisted in the head of the tsar. I do not claim that he was familiar with the sagas, but the ideas reflected in them were, I suppose, part of the worldview of both the Rurikovichs and the military service corporation right up until the 16th century.
For, yes, the social status of the squad changed - in fact, the word itself gradually disappeared from use already in the 12th century, being transformed into a yard, see the monograph by A. A. Gorsky, “Old Russian squad”, published in the USSR - but conservative ideas about the world of the living and the dead, about otherworldly forces were preserved completely.
The fate desired by enemies
And now is the time to talk about such a phenomenon as the pawned dead – a term introduced into scientific circulation by the outstanding folklorist D. M. Zelenin.
Last time I mentioned them, but I didn't go into detail. Incidentally, in the sagas the hostage dead appear as draugrs - see, for example, the Grettir saga.
According to the ideas of the Indo-Europeans, a person must go through the earthly path allotted to him by fate. Having died before the predetermined time, he remains to wander as an unquiet corpse, finding himself near his own grave or home.
These included suicides, drowned people, those who died from external influences - lightning strikes, in war, in a fight, etc. It was believed that they posed a danger to the living as well.
Christianity only transformed such ideas: the hostage dead were no longer buried in the church cemetery. And accordingly, they did not inherit Paradise either.
In fact, the dissection of the bodies of the executed, the executions in the water, and the ban on burial – we talked about all of this in the previous article – were supposed, according to Ivan the Terrible, to deprive his victims of the opportunity to inherit a blessed eternity, condemning them to endless torment.
It seems to me that it is permissible here – I emphasize: in this case I am following only the path of assumptions – to see an allusion to the biblical words:
The lord of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in pieces, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
I suppose: by Mr. Grozny he meant himself; by evil and, in his understanding, worthy slaves of harsh punishment – his victims.
In the modern world, obsolete (or are they obsolete?) beliefs about hostage dead are an object of study for anthropologists; in the period of Russian history up to and including the 20th century, they are a frightening reality of the world of villages and towns. We are talking about a subjective reality, of course, but no less frightening for that.
Few people know that in Rus' eggs were painted not only for Easter, but also three days before Trinity – on Semik, or, as it was also called, Rusalnaya Week. In this way, they commemorated the deceased who were buried.
And they, according to the superstitious ideas of both Ivan the Terrible and his subjects, became victims of the tsar's reprisals. The chilling details of the fates of their often unburied remains are set out in the monograph by some of the most brilliant historians, specializing in, respectively, the Russian Middle Ages and the New Age, A. A. Bulychev and I. V. Kurukin, "Everyday Life of Ivan the Terrible's Oprichniks."
And so, on November 19, 1581, Ivan died. I repeat: the circumstances of his death are shrouded in darkness. There are plenty of conjectures, but no reliable information. But what Ivan the Terrible had no doubt about was that his son had become a hostage deceased. A terrible fate. You wouldn’t wish it on your enemy. Although the Tsar himself wished it on his enemies.
Now is the time to talk about the other side of the sovereign’s religiosity.
Despite his good book education, write A. A. Bulychev and I. V. Kurukin, Ivan IV, like thousands of his subjects, remained an extremely superstitious person until the last day of his life, believing that both the prayers for health of Orthodox monks and the protective divination of sorcerers were equally salutary for him. Moreover, his boundless trust in the latter forced the Moscow autocrat to commit acts that were quite unusual for the "anointed of God." For example, he seriously hoped to be cured of a fatal illness with the help of the witchcraft of more than fifty Lappish and Karelian sorceresses.
"The Witch". Painting by Mikhail Petrovich Klodt
You must admit that Karelian sorceresses are the least consistent with the idea of Ivan the Terrible as a katechon, who almost on his shoulders holds not only Rus', but also the Universe in general, from the coming of the Antichrist. And here you go: fortune telling, moreover condemned by the Tsar himself, who adopted the Stoglav, as a demonic deed, and sorcerers, writes A. A. Bulychev,
Until 1736 they were subjected to the torturous “fiery execution”.
The accidental, in the truly medieval sense of the word, death of his son plunged the king into a state that, I believe, is defined by modern psychotherapists as severe depression, or in Christian terminology – despondency:
every night – A. A. Bulychev quotes the Swedish diplomat and memoirist Petrei de Erlesund – …under the influence of grief (or pangs of conscience), he would rise from his bed and, clutching the walls of the bedroom with his hands, would let out heavy groans.
However, as the famous saying goes, which I will allow myself to rephrase a little: moaning won’t help the grief.
And then, as luck would have it, the new king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the energetic and talented commander Stefan Batory, laid siege to Pskov.
The people saw this, as well as the military failures on the fields of the Livonian War as a whole, as God’s punishment of the monarch, including for infanticide – yes, the fact of this has not been established, but rumors, which at that time were more important than any facts, began to spread.
And it’s not just a matter of rumors: the Tsar was truly afraid for his son’s posthumous fate.
The monarch's first step was to distribute unprecedentedly generous monetary contributions to monasteries so that monks could pray for the repose of the soul of the deceased. Moreover, donations were also sent to foreign Orthodox monasteries.
It is interesting that the nature of the memorial services for the deceased in the elite Joseph-Volotsky Monastery corresponded to the commemoration of the righteous man. Although Ivan did not give any reason for such an attitude towards himself during his earthly life.
But even this seemed insufficient to the Tsar. And he decides to conclude with the Lord, within the framework of his, as we have seen, magical understanding of religion, something like a contract: the Tsar allows people in the monasteries to pray for the repose of the souls of people killed by his order, in return the fate of his son changes, and Ivan does end up in Paradise.
By the way, the worldview of the monks was also not alien to the archaic. For example, the brethren of the Borisoglebsky Monastery held a memorial meal on December 12, the day of the winter solstice, when, according to popular belief, the border is almost erased - another such date is the summer solstice - between the world of the living and the dead, and the dead can even visit relatives. Although in the Orthodox tradition, the boundary between the worlds is leveled on Easter.
To commemorate those executed by order of Ivan the Terrible, a synodicon of the disgraced was created, which, according to the figurative expression of A. A. Bulychev, was intended to become:
just a kind of pledge, with the help of which the monarch hoped to “redeem” the soul of the deceased prince from the clutches of demons.
It is difficult to say whether the unprecedented generosity of the donations to the monasteries in an economically exhausted country calmed the sick soul of the Tsar himself, in whose head, if not Orthodox theology, then, let's say, good pedantry coexisted in a strange way, which allowed him to polemicize with heterodox opponents - a dispute with Jan Rokita - and hardly literate Karelian sorceresses.
Katechon and buffoonery
A few words about another layer of pagan culture, to which the first autocrat was not alien, and Peter I, who was similar to him in a number of aspects of behavioral models – buffoonery.
The "oprichnina monastery" of Ivan the Terrible and the most humorous cathedral of Peter are similar to each other, write the outstanding Russian philologists B. A. Uspensky and A. M. Panchenko, despite the fact that both of these institutions have no precedents in Russian history. From the point of view of the traditional audience, they look like outright sacrilege.
In the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda, Ivan the Terrible imitates monastic rituals, plays the role of the abbot himself, and the oprichniks dress up as monks. Along with parodying monastic life, which in itself should have been perceived as blasphemy, the oprichnik monastery usurped real elements of church life and everyday life.
Thus, Metropolitan Philip Kolychev saw blasphemy in the fact that the oprichniks wore "tafyas", i.e. monastic skufia; it is necessary to keep in mind that wearing monastic clothing by non-monks was considered completely unacceptable in Rus'. Anyone who put on this clothing even by accident was obliged to take the tonsure.
In the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda, Ivan the Terrible imitates monastic rituals, plays the role of the abbot himself, and the oprichniks dress up as monks. Along with parodying monastic life, which in itself should have been perceived as blasphemy, the oprichnik monastery usurped real elements of church life and everyday life.
Thus, Metropolitan Philip Kolychev saw blasphemy in the fact that the oprichniks wore "tafyas", i.e. monastic skufia; it is necessary to keep in mind that wearing monastic clothing by non-monks was considered completely unacceptable in Rus'. Anyone who put on this clothing even by accident was obliged to take the tonsure.
By the way, when comparing Ivan IV and Peter I, A. A. Bulychev and I. V. Kurukin, referring to the Byzantinist Ya. N. Lyubarsky, make an interesting observation about the similarity of not only the behavioral models, but also the fates of both monarchs:
Ivan the Terrible and Peter I lost one or both parents. In their adolescence, having received nominal supreme power, they constantly experienced humiliation, forced to endure the brutal dictates of rival court factions.
Finally, in their still tender years, they all became witnesses to the bloody and dramatic events that unfolded around them. This last experience, we will add, had the most negative impact on their psyche, cementing in their minds the conviction that terror was effective in eliminating political contradictions.
At the same time, they were all people by nature power-hungry, cruel, eccentric, had a very changeable character, and were also prone to the vice of drunkenness.
Finally, in their still tender years, they all became witnesses to the bloody and dramatic events that unfolded around them. This last experience, we will add, had the most negative impact on their psyche, cementing in their minds the conviction that terror was effective in eliminating political contradictions.
At the same time, they were all people by nature power-hungry, cruel, eccentric, had a very changeable character, and were also prone to the vice of drunkenness.
However, it is difficult to reproach the first emperor for pagan archaism, his most humorous council is another matter; we will talk about this later.
"Skomorokhi", miniature. In general, the buffoon culture was never completely eradicated, only changing over time
But a reconstruction – of course, very approximate and incomplete – of the inner world of Ivan IV is unthinkable without an appeal to the Bible, and to medieval ideas about the correlation of royal service with priestly service, and to pagan archaism, often expressed in a primitive form.
Under a thin layer of culture
And finally, a small remark regarding the comments to the previous material.
First of all, I am grateful to the respected readers for their attention to my articles and their comments – including critical remarks. Regarding monarchs – not only Ivan the Terrible: I am going to continue the cycle. In addition, I did not set the goal of either criticizing Ivan IV or apologetics for him.
And it is unscientific to criticize from the perspective of the 21st century a figure who lived in a completely different world of meanings, significantly different from our postmodernist categories of culture and thinking in general.
For as soon as a historian puts on the mantle of a judge, he ceases to be a historian.
My goal is different: to try to reconstruct, as far as possible, the religious and political ideas of the tsar in the context of an era in which the boundaries between the world of the living and the dead were seen as much thinner, and the fate of the latter was of much greater concern than that of modern man, which predetermined Ivan the Terrible’s steps in trying to prevent his son from becoming a pawn of the dead.
It seems that we are faced with a case where the Tsar’s mind, the sophistication of which he brilliantly demonstrated in his polemic with Prince A. M. Kurbsky, gave way to the superstitious, often illogically analytic, primitive fears, phobias, and even horror hidden in each of us, the grin of which sometimes appears from under the thin veneer of culture generated by civilization.
Использованная литература:
Bulychev A. A. Between Saints and Demons. Notes on the Posthumous Fate of the Disgraced Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Moscow, Znak, 2005.
Kurukin I. V., Bulychev A. A. Everyday life of the oprichniks of Ivan the Terrible. Moscow: Young Guard, 2010.
Panchenko A. M., Uspensky B. A. Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great: Concepts of the first monarch // From the history of Russian culture. T. II. Book 1. Kievan and Moscow Rus'. – M.: Languages of Slavic culture, 2002, p. 457–478.
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