235

p The consolidation of a centralised Russian state occurred under tense conditions of a fierce political struggle between the hereditary nobility, gradually deprived of its role in government, and the service nobility, gradually becoming the basic class support for the autocratic power of the Muscovite tsar.

p The struggle between the hereditary nobility, departing from the political arena, and the rising service nobility was vividly reflected in polemics. Discourses, epistles and pamphlets were put out by different groups to express their interests and expose their opponents.

In the early sixteenth century Vassian Patrikeyev and Maxim the Greek defended the interests of the hereditary nobility; their opponent was the ideologist of the service nobility, Metropolitan Daniil.

Maxim the Greek (1480-1556)

p Maxim the Greek was a prominent figure in the history of Old Russian literature and social thought. He was born in Arta, Italy, to the noble family of Trivoli, closely related to the Paleologi. In Florence he ecstatically attended to the speeches of Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican monk, and became one of his admirers. Savonarola helped Maxim to clarify the difference between the former Christians and the papist interpretation of Christianity.  [235•1  His youth was spent wandering through the cities of Northern Italy: he lived in Ferrara, Padua, Milan and Venice where he joined the circle of 236 the renowned publisher Aldo Manucci. He became a monk at the Dominican Monastery of St. Mark. After some time, Maxim the Greek returned to Orthodoxy and went to live in the Vatoped Monastery on Mt. Athos. In 1518 he was recommended to Vasily Ill’s envoy.

p In the same year he arrived in Moscow. The great prince greeted the scholarly monk with great honours. By order of Vasily III, Maxim the Greek began a new translation and revision of the Russian Explanatory Psalter. He was provided with the help of other “learned men": Dmitry Gerasimov and Vlasy, both of whom were well acquainted with Latin. Maxim the Greek first translated the Greek text into Latin, and his helpers from Latin into Russian. The entire project took a year and five months to complete. Maxim took a new approach to the translation; he discovered many mistakes in the Russian text of the Explanatory Psalter and boldly corrected them. His daring displeased the followers of losif. But the translation was approved by Vasily III and Metropolitan Varlaam (a follower of Nil); for his work, Maxim the Greek was rewarded handsomely. He was then assigned to translate compiled commentaries on the Acts of the Apostles and to correct the Triodions, the Book of Hours and the Service of Menaea used for the worship service.

p Maxim’s cell in the Miracle Monastery was the site of heated arguments and discussions, evidently not only about religious dogma, but about politics as well. He could not simply function as the great prince’s librarian and translator, but actively participated in the social life and issues. He became close friends with Vassian Patrikeyev who persuaded him to join the followers of Nil Sorsky who were against accumulation of property.

p Maxim the Greek’s first original works dealt with an expose of the black clergy and a defense of noncovetousness. The Awesome and Edifying Tale of Life of Perfection Among Monks (Povest strashna i dostopamyatna o sovershennom inocheskom zhitelstve) discusses the fall of morals among Russian monks. Drunkenness, gluttony, greed for money, idleness and simony flourish in the monasteries. The debauchery of 237 Russian monks was contrasted by Maxim the Greek with the virtues of Catholic Cartesian monks and the religious-political reformer Savonarola. But Maxim the Greek was no sympathiser of the “Catholic enticements”. His tale had a didactic purpose: to urge Russian monks to strictly observe the rule and try to be no worse than their Catholic counterparts.

p His philosophical polemic Dialogue of Mind and Soul (Beseda Uma s Dushoi) is a defense of noncovetousness. Mind is an allegory for the highest moral principles of monasticism; Soul is the embodiment of vices. The soul perishes, as Maxim the Greek shows, from covetousness. Like Savonarola, he exposes the luxurious, idle life of the church hierarchs. This life was built upon the “blood of the poor”, and through unjust, immoral deeds.

p In his Sermon on Repentence (Slovo o pokayanii) Maxim the Greek speaks with great sympathy about the peasants of the monasteries, worn out from working beyond their strength. Here he echoes Vassian Patrikeyev.

p A Debate of the Covetous with the Non-Covetous (Stezanie Lyubostyazhatelya s Nestyazhatelyem) depicts the harmful influence of estates on the morality of monasteries.

p His active defense of “non-covetousness” and expose of monastic life were held against Maxim at the Holy Conclave of the Church of 1525. He was accused of heresy, and moreover, of relations with the Turkish sultan, and condemned to incarceration in the losif- Volokolamsk Monastery. Under difficult conditions he remained there for sixteen years. His many requests to be released and handed over to Mt. Athos were never answered. When in 1531 Vassian Patrikeyev was convicted, Maxim the Greek was transferred to the Page’s Monastery of Tver where he was released five years before his death due to the interference of Abbot Artemy of the Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery. Maxim the Greek died in 1556.

p Even during his imprisonment, Maxim did not cease his literary and polemical activities, but continued to write discourses and sermons criticising religious 238 formalism, abuse of courts, superstition, astrology, and the like; he demanded a logical approach to the texts of Scripture.

p Maxim also dealt with political questions in his works, such as the Discourse Setting Forth at Length and with Sorrow the Disorder and Indecorum of Tsars and Authorities of the Latter Age (Slovo, prostranne izlagayushche s zhalostiyu nestroeniya i bezchiniya tsarei i vlasteiposlednego zhitiya) written between 1534 and 1539.

p Maxim the Greek depicts the Russian state in the allegorical image of a lonely, disconsolate, weeping widow. Dressed in black she sits in the wilderness surrounded by lions, bears, wolves and vixens. After long, persistent questions, the woman tells the wayfarer her name and tells why she grieves. She is called Vasilia Kingdom. She has been made to mourn and grieve by unworthy rule where the tsars are made tormentors, and lovers of power and luxury command the kingdom. Through her lips Maxim mercilessly condemns the powerful and explains the allegory. The wilderness and wild beasts represent the last accursed age when there will be no pious rulers; today’s rulers are only concerned with increasing their domains and for that purpose shed blood. Thus did Maxim the Greek denounce the disorders and chaos of the 1530’s when the nobles took advantage of Ivan the Terrible’s youth to squander the state’s property and attempted to recover lost privileges.

p But the Discourse has a wider application: Maxim the Greek discusses the need for rational government without bloodshed, cruelty and usury. “Where people truly fear their lord there is no joy,” writes Maxim. He believed that both imperial and ecclesiastical power were given by God and developed a theory of their close relation. The clergy should occupy itself with spiritual enlightenment; the king should defend the state and deal with the building of a peaceful society. The king should rule on the basis of truth and justice. Maxim propounded the idea of the king’s moral responsibility before God for the fate of his country and his subjects. The king relies on the nobility and the military whom he generously rewards for their services. Thus Maxim 239 worked out a programme for compromise between two groups of the ruling class engaged in a struggle for power. This compromise was, to a certain degree, implemented during the rule of the “Select Council".

p All of Maxim the Greek’s works are written in strict correspondence to the rules of rhetorical and grammatical art. He develops his ideas with logical consistency and argues each position. His language is literary and he permits no colloquialisms to creep in.

Maxim the Greek’s style was extremely influential on his students and followers: Andrei Kurbsky and Zinovy Ottensky.

The Works of
Metropolitan Daniil

p Quite different in style from Maxim the Greek was the zealous ideologist of the losiflyans and worthy follower of losif of Volotsk, Daniil, who served as metropolitan from 1522 to 1539. An active supporter of the secular authorities, he had no rest until he was rid of his opponents.

p Daniil left us sixteen sermons dealing with religious questions of dogma, ritual and daily life.

p Unlike Maxim the Greek, Daniil did not follow the rules of rhetoric in his works and was fairly free with his language. His sermons contain colloquial words and for this very reason help to pave the way for the subsequent democratisation of literary language and style.

p His wide use of colloquial, vivid intonation makes Daniil’s sermons lively and figurative in their depiction of life. One example is the vivid image of the debauchee and fashion plate in Daniil’s twelfth sermon: “You perform a great feat in your desire to please harlots: changing your clothing and impeding your movements with scarlet boots that are much too small so that your feet are terribly cramped because they are so tight, thus you gleam and gallop and hop, whinnying like a stallion.... You do not cut your hair with a razor and remove it from your flesh, but use a tweezers and pull it out from the roots shamelessly, as if you envied women, 240 and are trying to make your male face look like that of a female.”

p By calling his sermons “teachings”, Daniil stressed their didactic function. He addressed them to those being denounced and contrasted their behaviour to the ten commandments.

p Daniil demanded a strict observance of Christian morality and condemned those who violated these norms. He was distressed by society’s indifference to Holy Scripture and the worship service (a very noteworthy symptom!).

p In his sermons religious moralising combines with a naturalistic description of vices. He attempts to create a collective portrait of drunkards, debauchees, gluttons, parasites, dandies, false prophets and “teachers”. Typically, the main incarnations of these vices were the wealthy young noblemen.

Daniil’s works are a vivid document of the morals of Russian society in the early sixteenth century. Their free literary manner foreshadows Ivan the Terrible’s biting style. Daniil’s passion for expose and vivid, figurative language have made his works very popular among Old Believers.

Ivan Peresvetov’s Tale
of Magmet-Saltan

p Ivan Peresvetov was a prominent writer, polemicist and ideologist of the service nobility. He came to Rus from Lithuania in 1538 during the heyday of boyar “rule”, and immediately joined the political struggle: in “insults” and “the hustle" “frittering away" all of his property. Peresvetov repeatedly submitted petitions to the young great prince and wrote allegorical polemical tales showing the need for an autocratic form of rule and the elimination of boyar interference in state affairs. By means of historical parallels he depicted essential faults in Muscovy’s political life and gave practical advice for their correction.

p His own experience of the Lithuanian state and his stay in Muscovy convinced him that boyar rule had a 241 disastrous influence on the fate of the country. Peresvetov pointed this out in his Tale of King Constantine. He set forth his own positive political programme, a bold project for the transformation of the state, in a polemical pamphlet written in 1547: the Tale of Magme t-Saltan.

p This pamphlet is constructed according to a fairly transparent historical allegory: Emperor Constantine is contrasted with Magmet-Saltan.

p The description of the rule of Emperor Constantine, who inherited his kingdom at the age of three and was exploited by the nobility, was recognised by contemporaries as illustrative of recent events: Ivan the Terrible’s youth, the struggle for power between boyar families of Belskys and Shuiskys. Until the tsar came of age, these noblemen “grew rich from evil deeds”, they violated the tenets of justice, condemning innocent men for a price, and “grew wealthy from the tears and blood of their fellow men”. The main reason for the fall of Constantinople was the behaviour of the boyars who “surrounded the wise tsar with their enmities and tricked him with their cunning and subdued his army”. As Peresvetov saw things the nobility was the reasori for the impoverishment and disorder in the Russian state.

p His political ideal is embodied in the terrible autocrat and wise leader Magmet-Saltan. Peresvetov seems to be offering a political lesson to the young Ivan IV, only recently solemnly crowned as the “Tsar of all Russia".

p Magmet-Saltan relies on the wisdom of Greek books and on his own “army”—the service nobility. His motto is: “A king can’t rule without terror.... If a king makes a blunder and becomes meek, calms down even the slightest bit, his kingdom will be impoverished and another king will conquer it.” The sultan’s personal guard consists of 40,000 janissaries “so that his enemies would not enter his land and ferment treason and did not fall into sin.” Magmet understands that he is strong and glorious only thanks to his army—those who “play the game of death against the enemy...”. “And no one knows who their fathers are. Whoever serves me faithfully and fights against my enemy shall be highest 242 for me,” declares Magmet-Saltan.

p This is a clear expression of the viewpoint of a member of the service nobility who wishes to be rewarded by his sovereign for faithful service, for his personal merits and not the merits of his family. Magmet rewards his soldiers for military prowess, even those who are lowest in rank; these he raises to higher ranks.

p Peresvetov believes that the army should be governed by means of special commanders which allows the morale of the men to be strengthened and therefore makes them a reliable source of support for the state. His pamphlet anticipates the institution of the oprichnina, a personal force of devoted janissaries, faithful dogs, ready to execute the king’s every wish.

p Peresvetov proposes a series of changes in the internal government of the country: the regional apparatus, the courts, and the king’s treasury. He believed that the system known as kormleniye, “feeding”, whereby the local regent could collect taxes for himself, should be destroyed and instead all taxes from the cities, regions and estates to be collected in the king’s treasury; the collectors would be salaried, and the regents would, accordingly, become ordinary state officials.

p City government was to be like that of the army which, in Peresvetov’s view, would help fight against evildoers.

p Magmet-Saltan fights for justice and truth. He gets to the roots of injustice, simony and bribery in the courts through harsh measures: judges who take bribes are to be skinned alive. “If the skin on their bodies grows anew they will be judged not guilty.” He orders that their skin be stuffed with paper and posted in the courts with the inscription: “Without such threats, justice cannot be maintained in my domain.” Such “radical measures”, believes Peresvetov, will help to establish fair courts. Magmet-Saltan takes similarly cruel measures to stamp out the thievery and brigandage in his realm: “The Turkish king has no prison for thieves or bandits; on the third day they are executed so that evil will not increase.”

p Peresvetov opposes slavery, with serfdom in mind: 243 “In a kingdom where people are enslaved, they will not be brave or daring in battle against the enemy; for a slave fears not shame and earns himself no honours whether he is strong or weak, but says, ’Since I am a serf I shall gain no other name.’ " This sixteenth century pamphlet-writer’s position anticipates A. N. Radishchev’s remarkable Meditations on Those Who Are Sons of Their Fatherland.

p As A. A. Zimin notes  [243•1  Peresvetov’s social, religious and philosophical views expand the limitations of the service nobility’s viewpoint. He does not make the traditional references to the Church Fathers, or to theological arguments, and is a harsh critic of monasticism, opposing the Church hierarchy. People found heretical his declarations such as, “God does not love faith, but truth,” and “Not God, but man governs the fate of a country.”

p Peresvetov had a humanistic faith in the power of human reason, conviction and the word. His ideal autocratic regime of Magmet-Saltan is related to this humanistic faith. Himself a wise philosopher, Magmet adds Greek books to Turkish ones and for this reason “the king gained great wisdom”. “Thus should a Christian king conduct himself and stand up firmly for the truth and the Christian faith,” concludes MagmetSaltan. These words summarise the themes of the work.

p While the author of the Dracula Tale had a dualistic attitude toward his hero, Peresvetov has an apologetic approach to Magmet-Saltan. He shows the need for an “awe-inspiring” autocratic rule, the only way to ensure order within the country and defend it against foreign enemies.

p His faith in the power of the word to convince forced him to write petitions and submit them to the tsar, as well as to compose political pamphlets.

p Peresvetov did not explain his allegories as did Maxim the Greek, and they were purely secular and 244 historical. For history, as he saw it, gave a clear political lesson to the present. By means of antithesis he was able to reveal his basic political ideas. Vivid, colloquial language, with no rhetorical adornments, and abundant aphorisms made these ideas clear and extremely forceful.

p By means of pamphlets, Peresvetov tried to rely on the power of the tsar to change the status quo.

p As D. S. Likhachev notes,  [244•1  in court polemics the spirit of social transformations was combined with the idea that the sovereign is responsible for the welfare of his subjects. The active nature of such views among the nobility was most fittingly expressed in active forms of official writing which began to abundantly penetrate literature and to enrich it.

The polemical pamphlets of Ivan Peresvetov presented a political programme which was, in part, implemented by Ivan the Terrible.

The Correspondence Between Andrei Kurbsky
and Ivan the Terrible

p Ivan the Terrible’s policies oriented to consolidating the autocracy, increasing the role of the service nobility and infringing upon the interests of the hereditary nobility were opposed by the latter. This struggle can be seen in the correspondence between Andrei Kurbsky and Ivan the Terrible.

p A descendant of the princes of Yaroslavl who could trace his line back to Vladimir Svyatoslavich, Kurbsky in 1563 fled to the Livonian city of Volmar after losing a battle and surrendered himself to the armies of Sigismund Augustus. From there in 1564 he sent his first epistle to Ivan the Terrible. The epistle was aimed at a wide audience and its purpose was to expose the autocratic policies of the tsar. A reproach could be seen in the address: “To the Tsar, glorified by God, and who 245 was more exalted in Orthodoxy, and today, for our sins, is acting in an unfitting manner.” The tsar has lost his image of the ideal ruler.

p Kurbsky takes the part of the public prosecutor, accusing the tsar in the name of boyars who have “perished or been murdered for no crimes, imprisoned and exiled unjustly”. He writes with a bitter heart, and his accusations are set forth severely and in measured tempo according to all the rules of rhetoric and grammar: “Why, o Tsar, have you smitten the strong men of Israel and given up the regents provided by God to various forms of death? Why have you shed their triumphant, holy blood in God’s shrines and festivals and made the porches of the churches scarlet with their martyr’s blood? Why have you conceived of unheard-of miseries and exile and death for those who wish you well and have laid their lives down for your sake? "

p Kurbsky accuses Ivan of unjust exiles, of tormenting and exterminating the nobility who, as he sees it, are the foundation of the state and its strength. Then he accuses the tsar of abusing of his autocratic power. Kurbsky knew that it was impossible to re-establish the old order completely and did not demand decentralisation, but tried only to weaken the autocratic rule of the tsar, believing that power should be divided between the tsar and the hereditary nobility. Finally, he lists misfortunes which he has suffered at the hands of the tsar and speaks of his military services to the country which, he believes, Ivan does not value sufficiently.

p The exiled boyar declares that the tsar will not set eyes on him until the Last Judgement and that he will take “these writings, wet with tears" to the grave so that he can show them to the terrible, just Heavenly judges.

p According to legend, the epistle was handed to the tsar himself by Kurbsky’s faithful servant Vasily Shibanov on the Red Porch. The outraged tsar pierced the envoy’s foot with his staff, and leaning on the staff listened to the text of his enemy’s epistle. Overcoming his agonies, Shibanov did not so much as moan. Later he was thrown into a dungeon and tortured to death for he would give no evidence.

p Kurbsky’s epistle distressed and wounded Ivan. His 246 answer reveals his complex, contradictory personality. Ivan’s epistle shows, first of all, his extraordinary intelligence, broad education, and familiarity with a wide range of books; at the same time it shows his proud, embittered, rebellious spirit. His response is addressed, not only to Kurbsky, but to “the entire Russian kingdom”. For his rebuttal of Kurbsky’s charges was to apply to all who broke oaths made by the cross. This resulted, on the one hand, in an emotionally charged condemnation of boyar traitors, and, on the other hand, in a passionate affirmation, justification and defense of autocratic rule.

p Ivan is speaking as a politician, a statesman, and his speech is, at first, restrained and official. The answer to Kurbsky begins with a proof of the legality of his autocratic power, inherited from his forefathers: Vladimir Svyatoslavich, Vladimir Monomakh, Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, his grandfather Ivan Vasilyevich, and his father Vasily. Ivan proudly declares: “As I was born to reign, I did mature and become the tsar by God’s will and with the blessing of my parents; I did not seize another’s throne.” This is his refutation of Kurbsky’s charge that he has used his power illegally. Through quotations from Scriptures Ivan shows that the authority of the tsar is sanctified by God Himself, and that any man who opposes this, opposes God. losif’s idea of the divinity of the rule of kings was firmly adopted by the tsar, and, on this basis, he characterises Kurbsky’s deed as treason, apostasy, and a crime before the sovereign, and therefore before God. In the tsar’s opinion Kurbsky has gained notoriety when he “like a treacherous mut broke his oath on the cross”, thereupon destroying his own soul. The tsar contrasts the boyar’s treason to the selfless devotion of his serf Vasily Shibanov who has died a martyr’s death for his lord. Such loyalty is greatly admired by Ivan, and he demands the same from all of his subjects whom he views as his serfs. “And we are free to take mercy on our serfs and to execute them,” he declares.

p Ivan is irritated by Kurbsky’s venomous reproaches and the severe Condemnation in his epistle; in turn the tsar’s answer is incendiary. He tosses sarcastic questions 247 at the traitor: “Why are you writing and expressing your pain, you dog, when you have performed such an evil act? " “What can I liken your counsels to when they have a worse stench than excrement? "

p With sarcastic perplexity, Ivan says that he did not destroy the strong men of Israel and does not even know “who is strongest in Israel”. He does not agree with Kurbsky’s assessment of the nobility which does not, in his view, comprise the power and the glory of the state.

p To give his arguments greater weight, Ivan includes many elements from his own life. He recalls how in his youth many of his father’s supporters were exterminated; how his mother’s, father’s and grandfather’s wealth was plundered by the boyars; how palaces and lands were taken from his uncles; and how princes Vasily and Ivan Shuisky ruled and took cruel measures against their rivals. “My brother Georgy, may he rest in peace, and I were raised like alien or like the lowest members of the household,” bitterly recalls Ivan. “We play childish games while Prince Ivan Vasilyevich Shuisky sat on the bench, leaning on one elbow, his foot on our father’s bed, and leaning down toward us, not like a parent, but as though he was a lord and we his slaves....” Ivan bitterly asks his enemy, “How can I count the miserable sufferings that I endured in my youth? "

p Ivan also recalls the great Moscow fire of 1547 when the treacherous boyars pretended to be martyrs and spread rumours that Anna Glinskaya set the city on fire by black magic; the rebellious Muscovites murdered Yuri Glinsky in church and were ready to murder the tsar himself.

p No, Ivan concludes, the boyars do not support the tsars, but are inhuman dogs and traitors who oppose their sovereign in every way they can. Therefore, reasons Ivan, these and other dogs and traitors “have nothing to brag about with regard to bravery on the field of battle”. In his attempts to parry Kurbsky’s accusations Ivan often cites the former’s letter in order to play upon his phrases. For example: “What do you mean when you claim that your blood has been spilled 248 by foreign enemies for us, when with your sham insanity, you cry out against us to God; if foreigners spilled your blood, then cry out against them.” Or: “You write that you won’t show your face to us until the Last Judgement. Who would ever want to gaze upon such an Ethiopian face? "

p Openly mocking his enemy without shame, Ivan pours out his heart in his epistle, ignoring the rules of rhetoric and poetics. His style is very close to that of losif’s literary school: jerky, agitated, witty, sarcastic and filled with vivid, concrete images from daily life. To prove that he is right, he freely cites the Scriptures by heart. His freehanded style which ignored all the canons of literature was sarcastically mocked by Kurbsky. In the latter’s brief answer, he does not attempt to refute Ivan, but merely continues to insist that his accusations in his first epistle are true. He repudiates the tsar’s “evil, biting" words and pictures himself as a man “who has been greatly insulted and banished unjustly”, setting his hopes on Divine judgement.

p A student of the Elders from beyond the Volga, raised in a strictly literary tradition, Kurbsky cannot adopt Ivan’s “broadcasting and noisy" style. He regards the style of Ivan’s epistle as unworthy, not only of a great tsar praised throughout the world, but of a miserable, simple soldier. Kurbsky reproaches Ivan for his inability to quote: the tsar’s epistle “has seized words from many holy books with rage and violence,... and not lines or stanzas, as artful, learned men do... but beyond all bounds, unnecessarily and boringly, in whole books and whole parts from the Holy Writ and epistles".

p Kurbsky also reproaches Ivan for mixing literary and colloquial styles: “And at the same time you speak of beds and padded jackets and innumerable other things, like a foolish woman babbling; and so barbarously, not like a learned, artful man, but like a simpleton and a child with wonderment and laughter....”

p In his reproaches Kurbsky claims that the tsar should be ashamed to send an epistle like that into a foreign land where “some people are learned not only in grammar and rhetoric, but in dialectics and philosophical works".

249

p Kurbsky’s polemic against Ivan’s literary style shows the difference in their approaches to the word and to life.

p After Kurbsky’s answer, the correspondence ceased for thirteen years. It was renewed by Ivan in 1577 when Russian troops took the Livonian city of Volmar, behind the walls of which Kurbsky had sought refuge.

p In his Volmar epistle, Ivan reiterated the misfortunes and adversities which he had suffered at the hands of the boyars during the rule of the “Select Council" by Adashev and Silvestr. “The miseries you have caused me cannot be listed,” he cries out and painfully asks: “And why have you separated me from my wife? Why did you want Prince Vladimir to rule and to exterminate me as a child? " Sorrowful, bitter questions, setting for the crimes of the nobility, alternate with sarcastic mockery of the fugitive.

p In his answer to this epistle, Kurbsky mainly justifies himself, with the help of abundant quotations from the Scriptures. His final blow to his enemy had been the historical pamphlet, The History of the Great Prince of Muscovy written in 1573. Here Kurbsky stresses morality: the tsar’s personality is the cause of all evils and misfortunes. He was able to convince historians for a long time that Ivan the Terrible was the scion of “a family that has long sucked the people’s lifeblood”, and that although his reign began magnificently, its second period was possessed by malice and violence and stained his hands with the blood of innocent victims.

The contradictory complex character of Ivan and his remarkable talent as a writer can be seen, not only in his polemical epistles to Kurbsky, but in many other letters.   [249•1 

250

Ivan’s Epistle to
the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery

p Ivan’s epistle to Abbot Kozrna of the Kirillo- Belozersky Monastery (written around the year 1573) on the violation of monastic rule by boyars Sheremetyev, Khabarov and Sobakin, exiled to that monastery, is one of his more interesting efforts.

p Steeped in biting irony which, at times, becomes outright sarcasm with regard to the disgraced boyars, the epistle describes how, when they arrived in the monastery, “they introduced their own lecherous Rule".

p Ivan’s pen sketches a vivid, satirical picture of monastic life: “Today in your cloister Sheremetyev sits in his cell like a tsar; Khabarov and other monks come to him and drink and eat as though they were laymen, and Sheremetyev—whether from weddings or births, I don’t know—sends sweets and cakes, and other spiced delicacies around to all the cells, and behind the monastery is a courtyard, and in it are supplies for a year.” On the basis of this picture, Ivan concludes that today boyars have violated the strict monastic Rule in all the monasteries for the sake of their own worldly pleasures. There should be no social inequality in a monastery: “Or is that the path to salvation, that boyars do not give up their rank when they became monks and serfs do not give up their bondage? "

p Ivan pours out his irony on the monks who haven’t the strength to rein in the wilful boyars. This irony is made more powerful by the self-denigration with which Ivan begins his epistle: “Alas, I am a poor sinner! Woe to me, the accursed one! For I am vile ... and a stinking dog and whom shall I teach and what shall I preach and how shall I enlighten anyone? " The more emphatically Ivan expresses his respect for the Kirill Monastery, the more stinging are his reproaches. He shames the brothers for allowing the boyars to violate the Rule, for, he continues, it is no longer clear whether the boyars took the vows at the hands of the monks or vice versa.

p Ivan concludes his epistle wrathfully, forbidding the monks to bother him with such questions: “And with 251 regard to Khabarov, I have nothing to write about: let hirn do whatever he wants ... and in the future don’t bother us with reports on Sheremetyev and other nonsense....” As D. S. Likhachev  [251•1  notes, the “Epistle to Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery" is a freehanded improvisation, at first didactic and then incendiary; it turns into an accusation written with bitter conviction in its own justice.

p Ivan’s unusual personality and his unique style can be seen in his relations to one of his close companions and a member of his personal guard, Vasily Gryaznoy, to whom the tsar wrote in 1574.

p The severe leader’s disturbed soul, his pangs of conscience and his fear of approaching death can be seen in his repentent Canon to the Terrible Angel.

p Ivan’s closest descendants characterised him as “a man of marvellous intellect, well read and eloquent”. All of his works show the profound, subtle and mocking mind of a Russian, a leading state figure and politician, and also a despot ruling according to his own autocratic desires. Ivan’s lively powers of observation, temperament, benevolence, cruelty, ironic smile and trenchant sarcasm, sharpness and quick temper all are reflected in his works.

p Ignoring literary canons and traditions, and boldly violating them, his works contained concrete scenes from life. To convey the scale of his emotions, Ivan made much use of colloquialisms, conversational intonation and even expletives. This made Ivan’s style an unparalleled example of “stinging” prose which struck his opponents every time.

p His epistles testify to the beginning of the disintegration of the old literary style developed in the fourteenth-sixteenth centuries. True, only the tsar of Russia could proclaim his individuality in the realm of style. In view of his position he could boldly violate the established stylistic norms and play the role, now of a wise philosopher, now of God’s humble servant, now of 252 the cruel, implacable leader, free to execute or spare his “serfs” and subjects.

p Among the polemics of the sixteenth century, not only the defenders of various interests of the ruling classes spoke out. At the same time the first ideologists of democratic strata of Russian society began to appear. Matvei Bashkin, a nobleman, spoke out against slavery. Through citations of Scripture he showed that it was against the law to own slaves. Bashkin himself allowed his slaves to go free. The fugitive serf Feodosy Kosoy went even further: he denied Church dogma (the Trinity, veneration of shrines and icons, the Church hierarchy) and opposed all exploitation of one man by another, zealously defending full equality of all men and decrying war and civil authorities.

p Feodosy Kosoy’s heresy was “exposed” by two polemical works written by Zinovy Ottensky: Showing the Truth (Istiny pokazanie) and A Long Epistle (Poslanie mnogoslovnoye).

p In 1554 the Holy Conclave of the Church condemned the “heresies” of Matvei Bashkin and Feodosy Kosoy, as well as Elder Artemy, former abbot of the Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery, a zealous opponent of Church property connected with Maxim the Greek and Matvei Bashkin. They were sentenced to life’s seclusion in various monasteries. But Artemy and Feodosy Kosoy were able to flee to Lithuania.

p In this way the polemics of the sixteenth century treated the cardinal political issues of the day: the nature of state government, the role of the tsar in government, as well as that of the nobility, the service nobility and the clergy. Here for the first time the question of the position of the Russian peasant was posed, and people spoke out against slavery.

p Polemicists closely linked these political problems with moral and philosophical problems. In their efforts to prove their points and disprove those of their opponents, they did not confine themselves to the authorities of the Scriptures or the Church Fathers, but relied on logic and appealed to reason, drawing on facts from life and even their personal experience.

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p Sixteenth century polemics were characterised by many genres: the polemic discourse, the teachings, the response, the dialogue, the petition and the pamphlet.

p We find two trends: the first exemplified by Vassian Patrikeyev, Maxim the Greek and Andrei Kurbsky, the second by losif of Volotsk, Metropolitan Daniil and Ivan the Terrible.

p The first sort of polemics were carefully composed in high literary style based on a literary lexicon, strict observance of syntax, avoidance of colloquial language and common conversational lexicon, abstract, symbolic images.

p The second sort of polemics violated the norms of rhetorical art, and in these works literary style freely mixed with colloquial style. At times the exposes turned into satire; these writers boldy introduced elements of daily life and mores into their works, and even, as Ivan the Terrible did in his epistles, reveal their own personalities.

p A special place is occupied by Ivan Peresvetov, who created a new genre: the pamphlet with a concrete- historical allegory.

Sixteenth century polemics played an important part in the formation of the Russian literary language and Russian literature. The traditions were reflected in the historical tales of the late seventeenth century and in Avvakum’s polemical epistles and dialogues.

Sources

p 1. I. U. Budovnitz, Russkaya publitsistika XVI veka (Russian Sixteenth Century Sixteenth Century Polemics), M.-L., 1947.

p 2. N. A. Kazakova, Ocherki po istorii russkoi obshchestvennoi mysli. Pervaya tret XVI veka (Essays on the History of Russian Social Thought in the Early Sixteenth Century), L., 1970.

p 3. G.B.Plekhanov, 1storiya russkoi obshchestvennoi mysli (The History of Russian Social Thought), vol. I. 2nd edition, M., 1925.

p 4. Poslaniya Ivana Groznogo (The Epistles of Ivan the Terrible). Prepared by D. S. Likhachev and Ya. S. Lurye, M.-L., 1951.

p 5. Sochineniya Ivana Peresvetova (The Works of Ivan Peresvetov). Prepared by A. A. Zimin, M.-L., 1956.

6. Khrestomatiya po drevnei russkoi literature (Anthology of Old Russian Literature). Compiled by N. K. Gudzy, 8th edition, M.,1973.