Fearful Majesty

by Benson Bobrick

  Battlefield precautions are not necessarily appropriate to everyday governance, but they seemed increasingly warranted by the hazards of Ivan’s life. We cannot but sympathize with him. Maxim’s dire prediction came true. As Ivan and his party were boarding boats to take them down the Sheksna River, Dmitry’s nurse stumbled near the landing stage and pitched the child into the water.

  The heir around whom all the recent furor had swirled perished in the twinkling of an eye.

  * * *

  * There is no question of his guilt. His son, Nikita, had been caught at the border near Toropets on an errand to the king of Poland to obtain a writ of safe conduct to assist his father’s flight.

  † The ambassador had reportedly told Maxim: “Let my beard be tied to a dog’s tail if I do not lead the Sultan onto the prince’s land.”

  ‡ Maxim wrote voluminously. Some 350 works have been attributed to him, including dictionaries, grammars, philological and polemical treatises which ‘introduced unfamiliar literary genres, such as the Dialogue, as well as new methods of textual criticism into Russian culture.

  * * *

  13

  Art and Heresy

  MAKARY REMAINED CONSPICUOUSLY absent from the scene. The confrontations at the Stoglav Council had been bitter, and subsequently he had been preoccupied with how to reduce the influence of Sylvester, who had spearheaded the campaign against Church estates. In Viskovaty, who had been chafing under Sylvester’s overlordship, he discovered a volatile ally.

  Makary’s objective, like that of Joseph of Volokolamsk fifty years before, was to stamp the Non-Possessor movement with heresy so that Ivan IV as Orthodox tsar could not proceed with the land reforms to which the movement was linked.

  An opportunity soon arose which Makary (with unusual daring) exploited to the hilt.

  Sylvester had recently been consorting with a freethinker by the name of Matvey Bashkin, an up-and-coming member of the minor nobility enrolled in the Chosen Thousand. Like Sylvester, Bashkin held progressive views, but also voiced opinions apparently influenced by contact with Lithuanian Calvinism. His confessor, Simeon, Sylvester’s colleague in the Church of the Annunciation and a Non-Possessor himself, found them so extreme that he felt obliged to call them to Ivan’s attention. Ivan referred Simeon to Makary, who had Bashkin arrested and “confined in a shed in the Kremlin courtyard.”1 In June 1553, an investigation conducted by two monks, Gherman Polev, abbot of the Monastery of the Dormition in Staritsa, and Gerasim Lenkov of the Monastery of Volokolamsk, scrutinized Bashkin’s writings for Orthodoxy and found them wanting. Viskovaty also denounced him, and Sylvester himself began to say, “heresy is abroad in Moscow,”2 to put Bashkin at arm’s length.

  Meanwhile, Feodosy Kosoy, a runaway slave who had gained a considerable following by his attacks on the organized Church and the oppression of the peasantry, had been similarly accused, along with Artemy, whom Ivan had recently appointed abbot of Trinity Monastery. This was a dramatic and extremely dangerous development, for it was said of Artemy that “the tsar loved him greatly and talked with him many times.”3

  On October 25, 1553, Makary convoked a Church Council Against the Heretics, attended by both tsar and Duma, and packed it with Josephians. Their numerical advantage increased when the Non-Possessor bishop of Ryazan, rising in protest, collapsed from a stroke. Though there was sufficient “evidence” to convict Bashkin and Kosoy, some of the counts against Artemy were absurd. For example, he was charged with a journey he had once made to Neuhausen in Livonia for a dialogue on the differences between the Catholic and Orthodox creeds. The council thought “he ought to have known all the advantages of the Orthodox faith over the Catholic without discussion.”4

  Nevertheless, all three were variously tortured and condemned to life imprisonment for rejecting the Trinity, the miracle of Christ’s redemption, and icon worship. Artemy was placed in solitary confinement in a cell of the Solovetsky Monastery on an island in the White Sea.

  Sylvester did not emerge unscathed. In October 1553, with Bashkin under arraignment, Viskovaty had charged that Sylvester, Artemy, and Simeon all belonged to the same cabal. Specifically, he asserted that the new icons in the Cathedral of the Annunciation, executed under Sylvester’s care, reflected Bashkin’s ideas, communicated to Sylvester through Artemy. “Bashkin consulted with Artemy and Artemy with Sylvester. And the priest Simeon is the spiritual father of Bashkin and was instructed to speak about and to justify their association out of fear.”5 In November, Viskovaty repeated his accusations in greater detail in a memorandum submitted to Metropolitan Makary. Ironically, Simeon and Sylvester were thus caught in the net they’d thrown. Makary turned Viskovaty’s memorandum over to Ivan, who summoned Viskovaty before the court.

  Viskovaty was a man of conservative, political and religious convictions. He believed in a hierarchical organization of society; and he believed in hieratic art. “I am horror-struck,” he once said, “when the small is equated with the great. If everything becomes equal, then no distinctions in rank will remain.”6 A pious and knowledgeable art connoisseur, he accurately discerned in the new icons painted for the Cathedral of the Annunciation and in the new palace frescoes, un-Orthodox innovations, especially in concrete representations of the divine nature of God. The Stoglav Council had forbidden icon painters to “invent” or to paint “out of their own understanding,” especially with regard to the Divinity: God the Father was not to be portrayed, “for we only have the description of Christ Our Lord in the flesh.”7 Sacred tradition had already established what was permissible, in the standard images of the Savior, the Virgin Mother of God, and the saints. Timeless and powerful, these images “allowed the illiterate faithful to comprehend the Christian drama and recognize the figures of their visions.”8 On such terra firma did Viskovaty take his stand.

  What had been frescoed on the walls of the Golden Chamber was like nothing he had ever seen:

  Upon the gates of Heaven were Chastity, Reason, Purity, and Right: on those leading to Hell, Lechery, Unreason, Wrong, and Uncleanness. Then came the circle of the Earth with waters, winds, &c: the fiery circle of the Sun and the circle of the Moon: the Air in the shape of a Maiden: the circle of Time winged with the four seasons: the circle of Creation: the Year in the form of a Man: Death with a trumpet in his hands….9

  and so on. Such mystic didactic, allegorical iconography was alien to Russo-Byzantine tradition and obviously reflected influences from the Renaissance West. Instead of the truths of the Gospels, he found Old Testament “types” or “shadows,” which had been superseded by the reality of the Incarnation. “Let the glory of Our Lord Jesus Christ’s human form not be diminished,” he warned, or idolatry would arise from venerating “images more than truth.”10 He called attention to unapproved interpretations of sacred texts, the use of untraditional texts, naturalistic portraiture, and an un-Orthodox stress on contemporary history and settings. “And when I behold these things,” he declared, “I am seized with terror of contamination and every sort of cunning.”11

  Specifically, Viskovaty took exception to God the Father portrayed according to the vision of Daniel as a gray-haired elder, the “Ancient of Days”; to Christ depicted with wings, like an angel, at Creation, because it demeaned him; to the representation of the Holy Spirit as a dove; to the Lord in imperial garb; and to an image of a warrior Christ, in armor and sword, sitting atop a cross. In other icons he found evidence of Latin heresies: in a pietà composition, where Christ’s palms were closed (as if to deny his offer of healing and salvation to the world), and in another where “The Word,” inscribed on the Cross, implied that Christ had suffered in divine as well as human form.

  However, he tactfully refrained from criticizing the overtly political murals in the throne room of the palace that depicted, for example, the conversion of Russia under St. Vladimir and the legendary coronation of his descendant, Vladimir Monomakh, even though both were based on secular sources.

  In answer to Viskovaty’s accu
sations, Sylvester claimed that his links to Artemy and Bashkin were exaggerated and that he hadn’t consulted with either about the frescoes. He reminded the court that it was Simeon who had discovered Bashkin’s heretical ideas in the first place, and that he and Simeon together had told the tsar about them in July 1553. Moreover, it was through the tsar that he had met Artemy two years before. This attempt on Sylvester’s part to seek sanctuary behind the throne created anxiety all around.

  Simeon, however, now detached himself from Sylvester. Yes, it was true he had been the one to discover Bashkin’s heresy, but he had told Sylvester about it in February or March, not July; and Sylvester had urged him to keep quiet because, as Bashkin’s confessor, it would be “improper to relate” what he knew.

  Sylvester’s motives, however, may not have been pure. Bashkin and Sylvester were both close to the Staritskys, and all through the spring, as uncertainty about Ivan’s health continued, it still appeared that Vladimir might become tsar. It was not until summer that his cause was obviously lost; and this may explain why Sylvester suddenly “changed his mind about the sanctity of the confessional and denounced Bashkin and Artemy before anyone could use his political mistake to denounce him.”12 He was, after all, a master politician as well as a priest.

  But Viskovaty had gone too far. Makary had encouraged him to link Sylvester to Bashkin and Artemy, but he had not expected, and could not condone, his attack on the new art. The frescoes represented but one of many official projects undertaken (after the fashion of The Great Menology) to glorify the Russian tsardom, while both Makary and Ivan had helped select the icon painters and approve their themes. Viskovaty had managed to call everyone’s orthodoxy into question. Provoked, Makary warned him: “You started with a crusade against the heretics, and now you turn to pseudo-philosophizing about the icons. Take care not to be caught as a heretic yourself.”13

  Viskovaty, in turn, was placed under investigation, as Makary prepared a learned brief to rebut his charges. He cited numerous church fathers to disprove that only icons on the themes of the Crucifixion, the Mother of God, and the saints were permitted, and claimed that rule one of the Seventh Ecumenical Council justified the dramatization of canonical writings. He upheld the pictorial rendering of prophetic visions, and explained that “The Word” in the image of the Cross meant only that the invisible person of God was present, not crucified. To justify the image of the “warrior” Christ, he quoted: “He shall put on righteousness as a breastplate and true judgment as a helmet” (Wisdom of Solomon 5:18-19 in the Septuagint); and showed that the allegory of virtues and vices had been inspired by Biblical proverbs. Nevertheless, he conceded that he could find no authority for depicting the Holy Spirit as a dove; that he knew of no precedent for the image of the Lord as David, in imperial garb; or for that of a crucified Christ with closed palms. And he ordered those icons corrected.

  As character witnesses, meanwhile, Viskovaty had called in Vasily Zakharin and Mikhail Morozov, both related to Ivan’s wife, Anastasia, and probable enemies of the Staritskys and Sylvester; while it is likely that Ivan’s growing affection for his foreign minister, on whom he had leaned so heavily in March, was also felt.

  The council found Viskovaty guilty of blasphemy, not heresy; compelled him to recant his charges; and after hearing his appeal for mercy, on January 14, 1554, imposed penance upon him for three years.

  Sylvester was acquitted. But as a result of the trials, political alignments within the Duma were significantly affected. The Staritskys and their allies had been exposed twice over as a danger to both State and Church, while the position of the Zakharins was enhanced. Sylvester had been compromised and, in the wake of the trials, the whole Non-Possessor movement was checked. Under cross-examination, Bashkin had implicated many Trans-Volgan hermits in his heresies, and over the next five years they were hunted down by constables throughout the North. Hundreds of monks and elders were dragged from their cells and hauled before tribunals as the dungeons of Muscovite monasteries were filled with those awaiting trial or already condemned. The Russian Inquisition Gennady had once dreamed of had finally come to pass.

  The conservative Viskovaty, on the other hand, manifestly suffered no political disgrace. He retained his high state rank in the bureaucracy, continued as a member of both the Duma and the Privy Council, was a frequent guest at the weddings of the court elite, and in negotiations with Sweden and Denmark in 1554 was described, together with Adashev, as one of “the [two] close and trusted counsellors of the tsar.”14

  * * *

  14

  On to Astrakhan

  INFIGHTING EVENTUALLY AFFLICTS every executive cabinet, and the triumph of one individual or faction does not necessarily entail another’s fall. Sylvester’s acquittal apparently enabled him to maintain a firm, if diminishing, grip on state affairs, even as he also kept Ivan more or less convinced that “if I did not acquiesce [to his advice], it would lead to the downfall of my soul and the destruction of the Tsardom.”1 Moreover, Ivan remained apprehensive that certain advisers might meet in secret behind his back and take independent action – “deeming me incapable of judgment” – which later prompted him to charge: “In word I was sovereign, but in fact I ruled nothing,” since they had “taken the splendor of my power away.”2 Ivan’s actual situation, however, is to be distinguished from his own description of it, as belied by all the evidence of his active and intelligent involvement in a broad range of affairs. Certainly by 1554, as private disagreements gave way to public confrontation among his advisers, the informal cabinet that helped him to govern had begun to come apart. And as the reins of power gradually slipped from other hands, he skillfully gathered them in.

  Meanwhile, the birth of Ivan’s second son and heir, Ivan Ivanovich, on March 28, 1554, strengthened his position and perhaps fueled his determination to hold on to Kazan.

  An all-out effort was made. To the massacres of 1553, the Russians had retaliated in kind. In Svyazhsk, 112 rebel tribesmen were hanged; and in the winter of 1553-4, huge punitive expeditions carried out a scorched-earth policy with indiscriminate slaughter and devastation. In the summer of 1554, natives struck back with large-scale reprisals aimed chiefly at Tatar collaborators. This brought another Muscovite army into the field, which rampaged through twenty-two districts, followed by three more brutal campaigns in 1556. Russian colonization was pushed, with tax exemptions and other enticements, as tribal territory was gradually occupied and dotted with forts. Many Tatars were also deported into the Russian interior, while a vigorous program was launched for converting the infidel.

  The newly created post of archbishop of Kazan, in fact, ranked second only to that of Novgorod, and considerable land and revenue within the khanate were allotted to help subsidize the missionary work. Utemysh Giray, the former infant khan, and Yadigar, his successor, both converted and in the winter of 1553 were thrice immersed in the icy Moscow River and emerged as Christians.*

  It was, not incidentally, chiefly the need to rapidly furnish the khanate with accurate religious texts, free of discrepancies due to scribal error, that finally brought printing to Russia one hundred years after Gutenberg. Ivan had written to Christian III of Denmark for a master typographer and equipment, and in 1552 one Hans Meissenheim (later expelled as a Lutheran agent) arrived and established a small printing press in the Church of St. Nicholas in the Kremlin. There he expertly trained the deacon Ivan Fyodorov and his assistant Peter Mstislavtsev. The first book to roll off the press (in 1564) was the Apostol, in Maxim the Greek’s edition.

  Gury, one-time abbot of the Volokolamsk Monastery, was appointed the first archbishop of Kazan. In declining health, he “accepted the see as a cross,” yet bravely served for eight and a half years, presiding justly over his diocese, and without coercion brought some 20,000 “infidels” to Christ.

  Ivan saluted his exceptional piety in a grateful letter to him on April 5, 1557, in which he also singled out Makary for praise.

  THE CONQUEST OF Kazan had bro
ken the power of the Tatars in the middle Volga region, and by opening the way south plunged the Russians directly into Astrakhan politics. All the surrounding tribes saw Russia as the power to appease. Bashkiria, a Nogay territory to the east of Kazan, gradually came under Russian domination, driving the Nogays southward between the lower Volga and the Yaik. The horde itself split into two camps: the Great Nogays, allied to Moscow, and the Little Nogays, who migrated toward the Kuban River and linked their fortunes to the Crimea. In the northern Caucasus, Circassians and Kabardians sought Moscow’s protection. In 1555, the khan of Western Siberia, east of the Urals, acknowledged Ivan’s suzerainty – although Siberia was still a long way from being under Moscow’s control. Persia and Central Asia likewise became part of Russia’s immediate political world.

  Devlet Giray, the Crimean khan, was understandably agitated and sought by whatever means possible to hold on to the wandering tribes. In 1555, he contemplated an attack on the Circassians, but Ivan sent a regiment south to give him pause. The regiment met up with a raiding party galloping toward Tula and pursued them, but in a battle at Sudbishchi 100 miles to the south suffered a terrible defeat. In a moment of hysteria, Ivan called it “a disaster for Orthodox Christianity.”3

  The Russians were soon to reconfirm their strength. Two opposing candidates were put forward for the Astrakhan throne. One was the khan in power, Yamgurchey, supported by Devlet Giray and the Little Nogay chieftain, Yusuf; the other, Derbysh-Ali, supported by Moscow and Yusuf s Great Nogay brother, Ismail. Ismail encouraged Ivan to intervene, and wrote to his brother: “Your men go to trade in Bukhara, and mine to Moscow. Were I to fight with the Tsar, I might end up with nothing – not even shrouds for the dead.”4 Meanwhile, Russian propaganda had begun to build up a claim to Astrakhan by erroneously identifying it with ancient Tmutorokan,† which had belonged to Kiev in the time of Vladimir I.