Fearful Majesty

by Benson Bobrick

  As with Henry VIII, dynastic considerations took precedence over imperatives of faith, but in order to retroactively sanctify the act later official court chronicles made Solomonia insist upon her tonsure over Vasily’s objections: “Knowing that she was barren,”11 we read, “like Sarah of old, the Grand Princess entreated the Grand Prince to allow her to enter the cloister. He said: ‘How can I sunder my marriage and take another? I am a pious sovereign who fulfills God’s commandments and the prescribed law.’ But she tearfully and earnestly entreated, and finally begged the Metropolitan to intercede. He did, and the Grand Prince obeyed him.” In fact, when Daniel came to the convent to cut off her hair, he found her weeping and sobbing, and when he tried to place the cowl on her head, she fought him off, hurled it to the ground and stamped on it. One of Vasily’s councilors sternly upbraided her and struck her with his staff: “ ‘How dare you oppose our Lord’s will or delay to execute his behests?’ But she declared before everyone that she was forced to take the veil against her will, and called on God to avenge the monstrous wrong that had been done to her.”12

  Subsequently, Solomonia declared that she was pregnant. Alarmed, Vasily sent a commission to the convent to ascertain if it were true. It wasn’t, and he was probably relieved; for dynastic considerations aside, he had lately fallen in love with a Lithuanian exile and princess of royal Mongolian descent, Elena Glinskaya, whom he hastened to marry on January 21, 1526. The wedding took place in the Kremlin Cathedral of the Assumption, and after the metropolitan recited their vows, Vasily drank a glass of wine at a draught, let the glass fall to the ground and crushed it under his heel. The fragments were carefully collected and cast into the Moscow River. After the ceremony, choristers chanted long life to the newlyweds, the grand prince made a quick round of the local monasteries and churches, presided at the palace over a great feast of roast chicken, and was afterward escorted with his bride to their nuptial suite. There, thirty sheaves of rye were spread under the bed, candles stuck into tubs of wheat by the headboard, and the royal pair sprinkled with hops to assure their fertility. All night long outside their chamber the master of the horse patrolled with his sword drawn.

  At the time of their wedding, Vasily was forty-seven, Elena twenty-three. Not long afterward, the grand prince began to dandify his dress, and in an unprecedented affront to Orthodox tradition, shaved off his beard to please her.

  It was a very Western thing to do, and called attention to the fact that Elena, although raised in Moscow, had grown up in the household of her uncle, Mikhail Glinsky, a man of broad European education who had made a name for himself as a soldier, statesman, linguist, apothecary, and wit. As a condottiere or “knight errant,” he had served in the army of Albrecht, duke of Saxony and under the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. Returning to Lithuania, where his property and lineage made him a great lord of the land, he had been prized as a warrior and councilor of state. However, in 1506 he revolted against the crown in a bid to carve out a Lithuanian duchy for himself. Sigismund I of Poland “rode straight from his coronation in Kraków to drive him into exile,” and Glinsky, unable to oppose the king’s men, crossed with his family into Muscovy.

  Elena Glinskaya, in a 1994 facial reconstruction by Sergei Nikitin

  Vasily, who had connived at his rebellion, welcomed him with open arms – yet not with a complete embrace: in 1514, after the Muscovites took Smolensk, he failed to make him governor; and to ensure that Glinsky would not re-defect, imprisoned him in a Kremlin tower.

  Glinsky had majesty in him, however, and after Elena’s marriage prompted his release, his conspicuous abilities soon enabled him to emerge as one of Vasily’s righthand men. He was appointed to the Boyar Duma, the chief administrative and legislative body of the realm, where he ranked third, and Vasily counted on his valor to safeguard his children’s possession of the throne. The grand prince’s brother, Yury, was especially to be feared. From the earliest days of Vasily’s accession he had worn a lean and hungry look, and had all but openly rejoiced in Solomonia’s sterility. When Elena then failed to produce an heir after three and a half years, there was probably no one more delighted in the kingdom – and none more chagrined when at six o’clock in the evening on August 25, 1530, she at last gave birth to a boy. The child’s advent seemed a miracle.

  At Trinity Monastery he was baptized “Ivan” on the tomb containing the relics of St. Sergius, whose powerful spiritual protection was invoked; and a year later on his name day, “The Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist” (August 29, in the Orthodox calendar; Ivan is the Russian version of “John”), Vasily fulfilled a vow he had made in accordance with ancient Russian custom and helped erect and consecrate in a single day a simple church of thanksgiving.

  In 1532, a second son, Yury, was born – a deaf-mute, whose incapacities inevitably caused his parents to dote more assiduously on Ivan as the hope of the realm.

  Many omens, prophecies, and dreams (most concocted later) embellish the story of Ivan’s birth. But perhaps one or two are true. On the eve of his delivery, Elena reputedly dreamed that she was approached by a monk who “threw” an infant boy at her, and on the day of his birth, it is said, “the whole country was filled with the noise of thunder, and with awful flashes of lightning,”13 presaging the “thunderous shocks” of his reign. It was reported, too, that a monk named Galaktion had predicted Vasily would have a son who would one day conquer Kazan; and indeed, far away in Kazan itself, the wife of the khan, upon learning of the child’s birth, reputedly had a premonition and declared to the Muscovite envoy: “A Tsar is born among you: two teeth has he. With one he will devour us; but with the other – you.”14 This agreed unpleasantly with a curse the patriarch of Jerusalem was said to have laid upon Vasily when he went through with his divorce: “If you do this evil thing, you shall have an evil son. Your nation shall become prey to terrors and tears. Rivers of blood will flow, the heads of the mighty will fall. Your cities will be devoured by flames.”15

  The court, however, was astir with more mundane if salacious gossip, for it was rumored that Elena, slow to conceive, had taken a lover to save herself from Solomonia’s fate. Therefore (it was said), “the child had two fathers, like Svyatopolk the Accursed.”16

  For all that, his parents greeted his advent with unadulterated joy.

  Yet Ivan was an ambiguous child, even as his genealogy brought together the clashing forces of medieval Russian history. In addition to the Byzantine strain contributed by his Greek grandmother, he was through his father a direct descendant of Dmitry Donskoy, who had defeated the Tatars on Kulikovo Field, but through his mother of Donskoy’s antagonist, Khan Mamay of the Golden Horde.†

  IVAN’S TWO TEETH must have poked through slowly (he had incredibly late dentition, not complete before his fiftieth year!), and his infant lack of appetite was a matter of concern.‡ In the summer of 1533, a carbuncle appeared on the nape of his neck. Elena wrote to Vasily, away at the time, who responded immediately with a flurry of questions: “Is it serious? What causes it? Is it hereditary? Can you tell me? Consult with other mothers you know; ask them to ask their friends. Tell me at once what you learn.”17 Elena replied that the carbuncle was healing, but that she was suffering from various aches and pains. Vasily replied: “Are you better? Is there a mark on Ivan’s neck? Tell me nothing but the truth.”

  Ivan recovered without complications; Elena’s aches and pains disappeared. But late that September the inconspicuous pimple that had appeared on Vasily’s thigh ripened into a boil. By the beginning of October, when he reached Volokolamsk, he was unsteady on his feet. Though he took the field with his dogs, he complained constantly of pain and returned to his lodge after an hour. Glinsky was sent for, and Vasily’s two Western physicians, Theophilus (about whom little is known) and Nicholas Bulev, or “Nicholas the German,” from Lübeck, a mystic mathematician, court astrologer, and herbalist. Though a Catholic (and therefore an apostate in the eyes of the Orthodox Church), Bulev’s long service to
Vasily had been exemplary, and the grand prince did not hesitate to put his life in his hands.

  The three men consulted together and applied a poultice of meal, honey, and boiled onion to the sore to make it suppurate. Next an ointment was tried and “a great deal of pus oozed out.”18 The pain increased, and his breath grew short. They administered a purgative of seeds, which left him exhausted. Divining that his days were numbered, Vasily secretly sent to the Kremlin for a copy of his father’s will. He now redrafted his own and though he could barely sit up, made an effort to deliberate with his advisers about a Regency Council to rule during Ivan’s minority. Meanwhile, the boil had developed into a huge abscess and “the pus filled a basin.” Vasily had begun to fail when part of the core, “more than an inch and a half in diameter,” came out. The swelling subsided, and in gratitude for his reprieve he suddenly announced his desire to become a monk. (As symbolized by a change in name, tonsuring was considered a real sacrament which even on one’s deathbed bestowed pardon for the sins of the foregoing life. Not surprisingly, many a grand prince had taken advantage of it.)

  Plans were made to return to the capital. Borne aloft on a horse-drawn litter, Vasily was turned repeatedly from side to side to ease his discomfort, but as they approached the village of Vorobyovo south of Moscow on November 21, he suffered a relapse. A bridge was thrown across the Moscow River opposite the Novodevichy Monastery, but when the horses clattered onto the span a beam snapped and the traces were cut just in the nick of time. A few days later, he was ferried across below Dorogomilov.

  Propped up in bed in the Kremlin Palace, Vasily gathered his principal advisers around him and began “a ceaseless round of conferences on the disposition of the realm.”19 In addition to Glinsky and his youngest brother, Andrey Staritsky, the key boyars summoned to his bedside were Mikhail Zakharin, Prince Mikhail Vorontsov, Princes Vasily and Ivan Shuysky and Mikhail Tuchkov – the Regency Council of seven he designated to rule. Also consulted were the treasurer Peter Golovin and Ivan Shigona, his trusted courtier from Tver, while his confidential secretaries, Menshoy Putyatin and Fyodor Mishurin, drafted the final version of his testament.

  Notably absent from this inner circle was Prince Yury, who had hovered about like a vulture since learning of Vasily’s decline. The grand prince had gone to extraordinary lengths to keep the true situation from him. Now the die was cast. To prepare the stage for his departure, Vasily made a series of deathbed speeches to his brothers, the metropolitan, and the boyars. He demanded that they swear fidelity to his son Ivan, “stand together to keep order,” and remain united against Mohammedans and Catholics. Looking straight at the boyars he said:

  You know that our power descends directly from Grand Prince Vladimir of Kiev. We are your natural rulers and you have always been our boyars. I commend Mikhail Lvovich Glinsky to you. Although he was an adult when he came to us, you must not call him a sojourner, but regard him as though he were born here among us, because he is my close aide. Prince Glinsky, you must be ready to shed your blood to protect my wife and sons.

  Gangrene set in, and the putrefying sore gave off an intolerable stench. Zakharin offered to pour vodka on it. Vasily rolled his eyes helplessly toward Bulev, who said: “I would cut myself to pieces to help you, but I am afraid only God can help you now.”20

  Blood poisoning consumed him. Vasily “dozed and dreamed. He awoke and murmured: ‘It is the Lord’s will.’ ”21

  On the following day, December 3, he rallied, and discussed with Shigona, Zakharin, and Glinsky “what Elena would do and how the boyars should treat her.” Toward evening he asked for some crushed almonds, but could do no more than raise them to his lips. Elena and little Ivan were brought to him for his blessing, accompanied by Agrafena, Ivan’s nurse. Vasily commanded Agrafena never to let Ivan out of her sight. Elena became hysterical. “In whose hands have you left me?” she asked. “To whom do you remand our children?” Vasily replied: “I have designated Ivan as grand prince, and made arrangements for little Yury; and also for you according to custom,” meaning he had bequeathed her a widow’s appanage estate. He had more he wished to say to her, but she wailed so loudly that he was unable to make himself understood and she had to be taken from the room.

  Night drew on. The miracle-working Icon of the Virgin of Vladimir was fetched. Someone asked Vasily’s confessor if he had ever been present when the soul left the body. Not often, he said. A deacon began to sing the canon in honor of St. Catherine the Martyr. Vasily awoke, beholding a vision: “Catherine, mighty Christian martyr, thy will be done. Mistress, it is time!” He grasped her icon and kissed it, and kissed her relics, which were also placed in his hands.§ Then he embraced the boyar, Mikhail Vorontsov, and forgave him some past offense.

  “Tonsure me now!” he commanded, when suddenly a dispute arose: not everyone wanted him to become a monk. Some said: “Vladimir of Kiev was not tonsured before he died. But surely he went to the rest he deserved. And so too have other grand princes found righteous peace.”

  “Metropolitan,” exclaimed Vasily, “am I to be left lying here?” He grasped his coverings and kissed them and stared at an icon of the Virgin above his head. Metropolitan Daniel sent for the robe and cowl and with the help of Abbot Joasaf of Trinity Monastery fastened a collar around his neck. As the procedure was hastily completed, Vasily’s spirit, according to an eyewitness, left his body “in the form of a fine cloud.” “And instead of a stench from the sore,” claimed a posthumous panegyric, “the room was filled with perfume.”22

  Thus did Grand Prince Vasily III, by the grace of God Lord of all Russia, of Vladimir, Moscow, Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk, Tver, Yugorsk, Perm, Vyatka, Bulgaria,¶ Nizhny Novgorod, Chernigov, Ryazan, Volokolamsk, Rzhev, Belaya, Rostov, Yaroslavl, Beloozero, Udorsk, Obdorsk, Kandinsk, and other places (for so his title read) pass at midnight, Wednesday, December 3, 1533, as the monk Varlaam, from this world.

  Wrapped in a black taffeta cloth, his body was laid in a white-stone sarcophagus and carried the following morning, with all the city’s church bells tolling, into Red Square. The three-and-one-half-year-old Ivan was crowned in the Cathedral of the Assumption and officials were dispatched throughout the country to administer the oath of allegiance to the entire population.

  But the dominions enumerated in the grand prince’s title were rather too much for an infant’s shoulders to bear; and of course the regents thought so too, and soon ignored him and went about their affairs.

  * * *

  * The name then given indiscriminately by the Russians to any Mongol, Turkic, or Islamic people.

  † Elena was a great-great-great-granddaughter of Mansur Kiyat, Mamay’s son.

  ‡ Louis XIV, also considered a miracle at his birth and likewise the occasion of a thanksgiving church, was supposedly born with two fully developed teeth, and “one wet nurse after another proved unable to sustain the punishment of feeding him.” Hugo Grotius, the Swedish minister to France in 1638, wrote: “It is for the neighbors of France to fear this precocious voracity.” The story about Ivan carried a similar but more ominous message.

  § Catherine (the “spouse of Christ” in a dream) converted outstanding pagan philosophers at an audience with the Roman emperor in Alexandria in 305, and subsequently converted the empress herself. For this, she was tortured on a spiked wheel and beheaded. Angels transferred her relics to Mt. Sinai. How they happened to be in the Kremlin is a mystery.

  ¶ Referring to an ancient Bulgar state in the region of the middle Volga, near Kazan.

  * * *

  2

  The Realm of Muscovy

  THOUGH THE KINGDOM Ivan inherited was not yet the transcontinental empire it was destined to become, it already occupied much of the great Central European plain that sweeps from the foot of the Carpathian Mountains to the Urals. In sheer land mass at least, if not in industrial concentration and might, it was one of the largest nations on earth, roughly equivalent in size to France, Spain, the British Isles, and Italy combined. It e
xtended from the Pechora River in the north to the mouth of the Neva and Lake Ilmen in the west, from the upper Volga in the east, southwest to the Dnieper, to 200 miles south of Ryazan on the Don. Much of this territory, however, was sparsely inhabited wilderness, and most of Russia’s ten to twelve million inhabitants were peasants who lived and worked in a condition of semienserfment on large aristocratic or monastic estates or in tiny villages and hamlets scattered over the land. Less than ten percent of the population lived in cities or towns, of which there were about 150 in the year of Ivan’s birth. The most prominent of these were Novgorod, Moscow, Pskov, and Smolensk, with populations ranging from up to 50,000.

  Though Muscovy had an excellent pony express, there were no inns across its vast hinterland to accommodate the traveler, who had to provide food and shelter for himself. At the very least he carried some ground millet in a bag, a few pounds of salt pork, a hatchet, a tinderbox, a bottle of water, and a kettle. A long journey was easiest in winter, when on hard, smooth snow a horse-drawn sled could cover 400 miles in three days. A great noble would do this in style, in a great sled carpeted with a white bearskin or a thick Persian rug.