DAVID B. MILLER (Chicago, U.S.A.

CREATING LEGITIMACY: RITUAL,

IDEOLOGY, AND POWER IN
SIXTEENTH-CENTURY RUSSIA*

Between 1480 and 1560 Muscovite Russia expanded its territory several
times over, came to rule many peoples, Muslims as well as Christians, and
became part of the formal network of diplomatic relations that was forming
across Eurasia. This was motivation for and the result of measures by which
its rulers, beginning with Grand Prince Ivan III (1462-1505), transformed
simple bonds of kinship and clientage and rudimentary organs of household
management they had inherited into institutionalized legal, administrative,
and military structures. Nevertheless, in the sixteenth century integrating loy-
alties in Russia were weakly developed by comparison with local traditions.
On the periphery Moscow's legitimacy was weakly perceived and liable to
subversion 1
In these respects Muscovite Russia's problem was not unlike that con-
fronting other pre-modem states and which confronts new states today; to
formulate an ideology, "a more or less systematic conception of political and
historical reality and a program of action derived from a mixture of acts and
values," that would surplant the sub-systems of parochial allegiences of its
subjects or bind them to the ruling center. This was no easy task. In pre-in-
dustrial societies literacy in a common language, effective means of commu-
nication, and other horizontal mechanisms of consensus that bind center and

* In revisingthe articleI profitedgreatlyfrom suggestionsand criticismsof Stuart Warner

of RooseveltUniversityand RichardHellieof the Universityof Chicago.
1. NancyShieldsKollmann,KinshipandPolitics:TheMakingof theMuscovite Political
System,1345-1547(Stanford,CA: StanfordUniv. Press, 1987;GustaveAlef,"The Originsof
MuscoviteAutocracy:The Age of Ivan III," Forschungen zur osteuropdischenGeschichte
[hereafterFOG] 39 (1986);P. Nitsche,Grossfarstund Throrrfolger.Die Nachfolgepolitikder
MoskauerHerrscherbis zumEnde des Rjurikidenhauses(Vienna:HermannBhlaus,1973),1-
196; V. A. Vodoff,"Zarozhdeniekantseliariimoskovskikhvelikikhkniazei(seredinaXIV v.-
1425g.)," Istoricheskiezapiski, 103 ( 1979):325-50;John Fennell,Ivan the Great of Moscow
(London:Macmillan,1961);A. A. Zimin,Formirovanieboiarskoiaristokratiiv Rossiivo vtoroi
polovineXV-pervoitreti XVI v. (bioscow:Nsnka, 1988);S. M. Kashtanov,Finansy sredn-
evekovoiRusi (Moscow:Nauka, 1988),esp. 6-91; V. B. Kobrin,Vlast' i sobstvennost'v sredn-
evekovoiRossii(Moscow:Mysl', 1985),esp. 48-89.
290

periphery, are weakly articulated. Also, hierarchical social divisions and

gemeirzschaft familial, communal, and tribal loyalties enforce high degrees of
conformity and are powerful vertical barriers to political integration into
larger units. Muscovite Russia's huge size made the task all the more diffi-
CUlt.2
The earliest claims that Moscow was the center of Rus' (meaning those
lands that at one time or another were ruled by Orthodox princes) came in the
late fourteenth century from Orthodox hierarchs of the Rus' metropolia in
Moscow to gain control of its episcopal sees. During the fifteenth century, as
they became clients of Moscow's princes, metropolitans of Rus' also so-
licited princely support for ecclesiastical centralization. In return they pro-
vided religiously sanctioned claims for Moscow's political hegemony over
Rus' modeled on Byzantine practice. The princely court, which until about
1450 still paid tribute to the Mongols, with few exceptions took no public
notice of such claims. But from the 1460s it did stamp the title "Grand
Prince of all Rus"' on coins and documents in imitation of that of the
metropolitan. Evidence of self-conscious and far reaching attempts by
Moscow to promote its status as a ruling center date from 1472 when Ivan III
.
married Sophia Palaeologa. It was a major coup in that Sophia was the niece
of the last Byzantine emperor. But initially Muscovites "cashed in" on the
union, not by claiming ties to Constantinople, but by winning the favor of
the Roman papacy. Sophia was a ward of the pope. Allowing the papacy to
think that the marriage might lead him into its anti-Turkish coalition and to
Catholicism, Ivan III gained diplomatic leverage in Central Europe and was
able to recruit Italian and other West European artisans to construct palaces,
churches and high walls for the Moscow Kremlin. By his death the Kremlin
was an awe-inspiring ruling center. Ivan's understanding of what this meant
became clear only in 1498 when, to legitimize the right of succession of his
grandson by his first marriage, Dmitrii Ivanovich, over that of Vasilii, his
son by his second, he and his advisers crafted a coronation that resembled the .
Greek rite. Vasilii III (1505-33), who succeeded Ivan, built on this tradition,
but the ritualization of power reached its apogee in the reign of his son Ivan
IV "the Terrible" (1533-84). In a burst of energy Ivan's court began new con-
structions, redecorated palace and church interiors, wrote histories, and con-
cocted court ceremonies, the most important of which was Ivan's coronation

2. RaymondAron,"On the ProperUse of Ideologies,"in Cultureand Its Creators: Essays

in Honor of Edward Shils, ed. J. Ben-Davidand Terry Nichols(Chicago:Univ. of Chicago
Press, 1977), 1; EdwardShils, The Intellectuaisand the Powers,and Other Essays (Chicago:
Univ.of ChicagoPress, 1972),23-41;idem,Centerand Periphery:Essays in Macrosociology
(Chicago:Univ.of ChicagoPress, 1975),3-90, 111-39.
 291

as tsar. These were transparently ideological and their most distinctive charac-
teristic was the emphasis on religious sanctions.3
Eric Hobsbawm has described such mythmaking as the construction,
consciously or partially so, of "a set of practices, normally governed by
overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of ritual or symbolic nature, which seek
to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which
automatically implies continuity with the past," but which is new, or utilized
in new ways. He called it "invented tradition" and noted its utility in
providing coherence to modem societies beset by rapid change and
impersonal relationships.4 In pre-industrial Russia ideologues also invented
traditions and it is not difficult to understand why they cast them mainly in
familiar images of medieval Orthodox culture.
Russians, of course, were familiar with Mongol political customs. Their
ancestors had been Mongol vassals and in the sixteenth century, when sub-
servience was past history, Moscow maintained diplomatic ties with Tatar
khanates that in some ways replicated the political culture of an earlier age.
But this "tradition" carried with it liabilities, not the least being its evocation

3. John Meyendorff,Byzantiumand the Riseof Russia(Cambridge:CambridgeUniv.Press,

1981);F. Dvomik,"Byzantium,MuscoviteAutocracy,and the Church,"in Rediscovering
Eastern Christendom,ed. A. Armstrongand E. Fry (London:Darton,Longman,and Todd,
1963), 106-18;CharlesHalperin,"The RussianLand and the RussianTsar," FOG 23 (1976):
7-103; idem,"The Conceptof the RussianLand from the Ninth to the FourteenthCenturies,"
RussianHistory2 (1975):29-38;Paul Bushkovitch,"The Formationof a NationalConscious-
ness in Early ModernRussia,"Harvard UkrainianStudies 10 ( 1986):355-so, 363-65;Iu. G.
Alekseev, "IstoricheskaiakontseptsiiaRusskoi zemli i politicheskaiadoktrina tsentralizo-
vannogogosudarstva,"in Genezisi razvitie feodalizmav Rossii,ed. I. Ia. Froianov(Leningrad:
Izdat. Leningradskogoun-ta, 1987),140-54;DimitriObolensky,"Nationalismin EasternEu-
rope in the MiddleAges,"in his TheByzantineInheritanceof Eastern Europe (London:Vario-
rum, 1982), 1-16; HildegardSchaeder,Moskau das dritte Rom, 2nd ed. (Darmstadt:Wis-
senschaftlicheBuchgesellschaft,1957),1-82; K. V. Bazilevich,Vneshniaiapolitika russkogo
isentralizovannogo gosudarstva.VtoraiapolovinaXVveka (Moscow:Izdat. Moskovskogoun-
ta, 1952);GustaveAlef, "The Adoptionof the MuscoviteTwo-HeadedEagle,"Speculum41
(1966): 1-21; Fennell, Ivan, esp. 316-23; A. V. Soloviev, "Die Entwicklungder Idee des
Staatesin den slawischenMon:uchien,"in CoronaRegni: Studienfiber die Krone als Symbol
des Staates im spdterenMittelalter,ed. M. Hellman(Weimar:HermannBhlaus,1961),156-
97 ; V. N. Lazarev,"IskusstvosrednevekovoiRusi i Zapad (XI-XVvv.)," in his Vizantiiskoei
drevnerusskoeiskusstvo.Stat'i i materialy(Moscow:Nauka, 1978),283-96;Joel Raba, The
MoscowKremlin:Mirror of the NewbornMuscoviteState (Tel Aviv:Russianand East Euro-
pean ResearchCenter,1976;GeorgeP. Majeska,"The MoscowCoronationof 1498Reconsid-
ered," Jahrbacher ffir Geschichte Osteuropas [teereafterJGO] 26 (1978): 353-61; A. A.
Zimin,Rossiiana porogenovogovremeni(Moscow:Mysl', 1974).
4. Eric Hobsbawm,"Introduction:InventingTraditions,"in TheInventionof Tradition,ed.
Eric Hobsbawmand T. Ranger(Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1983), 1; Emest Gellner,
Nationsand Nationalism(Ithaca,NY: CornellUniv.Press, 1983),on modemnationalismas in-
ventedtradition.
292

of thralldom. Not only that, the Mongol-Tatar khanates were Moslem; to

adopt their rituals would split the culture of the court from that of most of its
subjects. Moreover, little information about Mongol-Tatar political rituals
survives, suggesting that they remained custom, and perhaps largely oral cus-
tom, rather than a codified set of practices or ceremonies.5 Moscow's opening
to Central Europe from the 1450s was another matter. Although it sent en-
voys all over Europe, and welcomed diplomats, doctors, and artisans from
the West, only a handful of its functionaries and bookmen are known to have
been aware of Renaissance values. Among these, fewer still understood and
appreciated them. Most saw them as threatening and opposed such notions
with what they claimed was a reassertion of Orthodox tradition. Thus, the
court and church condemned the Italian-educated Orthodox monk Maximos
"the Greek" as a heretic, although he used his knowledge to attack Latin be-
lief. So, to invent traditions that sustained royal power and created a
"Russian" patriotism, court ideologues rummaged in the storehouse of Or-
thodox Christian rituals, texts, and esthetic conventions that originated in
Byzantine imperial tradition. That the Byzantine empire no longer existed
made it easier to mine this heritage to shape a new national political culture.6

5. MichaelChemiavsky,"Khan or Basileus:An Aspectof RussianMedievalPoliticalThe-

ory," Journal of the Historyof Ideas 20 (1959):459-76,madethe case for Mongolinfluences,
one endorsed with reservation by Charles Halperin, Russia -2nd the Golden Horde
(Bloomington:IndianaUniv.Press, 1985);idem,"KnowThy Enemy!;MedievalRussianFamil-
iarity with the Mongolsof the GoldenHorde," JGO30 (1982):161-75;EdwardL. Keenan,Jr.,
"Muscovy and Kazan: Some IntroductoryRemarkson the Patterns of Steppe Diplomacy,"
SlavicReview26 (1967):548-58.
6. John A. Armstrong,NationsBeforeNationalism(ChapelHill, NC: Univ. of North Car-
olina Press, 1982),and AnthonyD. Smith,TheEthnicOriginsof Nations(Oxford:BasilBlack-
well, 1988),viewhistoryas a constrainton the inventionof tradition.See Jack V. Haney,From
Italy to Muscovy:The Lifeand Worksof Marimthe Greek(Munich:W. Fink, 1973),and David
B. Miller, "The Liibeckers Bartholomius Ghotan and Nicolaus Billow in Novgorodand
Moscowand the Problemof Early WesternInfluenceson RussianCulture,"Viator9 (1978):
406-12about Maximand FedorKarpov,the only Muscoviteknownto have comprehendedand
sympathized with contemporary Western culture ;on Byzantine antecedents of Russian
ideological contructs: M. D'iakonov, Vlast' moskovskikhgosudarei (St. Petersburg:I. N.
Skorokhodov,1889); V. Savva, Moscovskietsari i vizantiiskievasilevtsyei(Khar'kov: M.
Zil'berberg, 1901),36-57;Ia. S. Lur'e, Ideologicheskaiabor'ba v russkoi publitsistikekontsa
XV-nachala XVI veka (Moscow-Leningrad:Izdat. AN SSSR, 1960), 357-91; Dimitri
Obolensky, Byzantium and the Slavs (London: Variorum, 1971), esp. 87-123; Helmut.
Neubauer, Car und Selbstherrscher (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1964); Michael
Chemiavsky, Tsar and People (New York: RandomHouse, 1969);Dimitri St6mooukhoff,
"Moscow the Third Rome," Speculum 28 (1953): 84-101; Ihor ev?enko, "A Neglected
ByzantineSourceof MuscovitePoliticalIdeology,"Harvard SlavicStudies2 (1954):141-79;
Bjame Norretranders, The Shaping of Czardom Under Ivan Groznyj (Copenhagen:
Munksgaard,1964);David B. b4iller,"Me VelikieMinei Chetiiand the StepennaiaKniga of
MetropolitanMakarii and the Origins of RussianNationalConsciousness,"FOG 26 (1979) :
 293

Personal and institutional factors reenforced conservative mythmaking.

Moscow's hierarchs, chief among them disciples of Iosif Volotskii, came
from the great monasteries, institutions that were guardians of traditional
theology and practices. Among Orthodox Slavs their monks had a virtual
monopoly on literacy in "highbrow" genres of Church Slavonic literature and
Orthodox iconography. Iosif's disciple Daniil became metropolitan (1522-39)
midway through Vasilii's reign. Thenceforth, Iosifites dominated the hierar-
chy and were powerful influences at court. The Iosifite Metropolitan Makarii
(1542-64) and his successor (1564-66) and former confessor to the tsar,
Afanasii, nurtured Ivan's spirituality and were his counselors, "masters of
ceremonies," and spokesmen. They must have succeeded because, even if we
disregard the revealing letters addressed by Ivan to Prince Kurbskii, there is
evidence that he was deeply religious and theologically literate. "If charisma
is a sign of involvement with the animating centers of society, and if such
centers are cultural phenomena and thus historically constructed," wrote
Clifford Geertz following Edward Shils, then "investigations into the
symbolics of power and into its nature are very similar endeavors." The
culture of Orthodoxy, so far as one can tell, shaped customary political
rituals of rulership in old Rus' and, to a lesser extent, the manner in which
its elites defined their status and possessions. Ivan IV's organizers, on the
other hand, utilized religious imagery to elaborate a "master fiction" that
would establish his legitimacy as Russia's ruler. They made the Moscow
Kremlin, where prince, metropolitan, and their magnates resided, an arena
where leading ideas and institutions of society came together in charismatic
form. Its rituals, buildings, insignia, and written texts united the trappings of
authority with its substance. They provided Moscow and its Kremlin with
"ritual signs of dominance" to make it the political center of Russia.?7

263-382;idem, "OfficialHistory in the Reign of Ivan Groznyi and Its Seventeenth-Century

Imitators," Russian History 14 (1987):333-60;A. L. Gol'dberg, "Istoriko-politicheskie idei
russkoiknizhnostiXV-XVIIvekov,"IstoriiaSSSRno. 4 (1975):60-77.
7. CliffordGeertz,"Centers,Kings,and Charisma:Reilectionson the Symbolicsof Power,"
in Cultureand Its Creators,150-7 1,
esp. 152;reprintedin Ritesof Power:Symbolism, Ritualand
Politics Since the MiddleAges,ed. Sean Wilentz (Philadelphia:Univ. of PennsylvaniaPress,
1985), 13-38 ;Shils, Center and Periphery, 111-34;Sean Wilentz, "Introduction.Teufels-
drach's Dilemma:On Symbolism,Politics,and History,"Ritesof Power,1-9;DavidCannadine,
"Introduction:DivineRightof Kings,"in Ritualsof Royalty:Powerand Ceremonialin Tradi-
tional Societies,ed. DavidCannadineand SimonPrice (New York: CambridgeUniv. Press,
1987), 1-19; ChristelLane, The Rites of Rulers: Rites in Industrial Society:The SovietCase
(NewYork:CambridgeUniv.Press, 1981),esp. 1, all-14. _ , _ _ , _
294

Such symbolics were the outward signs that a court society that was
"both the first household of the extended royal family, and the central organ
of the entire state administration" had emerged. It possessed attributes of hi-
erarchy, etiquette, and a rationale of divine-right common to court cultures of
other European ancien regimes. The singular characteristic of the Russian
court was the extreme degree to which religious sanctions defined its public
behavior and raison d'etre. The language of Christian discourse was immedi-
ately understood; it had a timelessness that clothed ritual objects with tran-
scendental authority, infusing power with the energy of primitive faith even
though the ingredients of court culture were as new as the empire and gov-
ernment that had brought them into being. Court culture, so secured, could
assimilate or exclude ingredients drawn from outside Orthodox tradition such
as those evidently proposed to Ivan IV by the soldier-of fortune Ivan Peresve-
tov.8 There is now evidence of new court rituals for the liturgical calendar in
which Ivan was the central celebrant in the manner-but not necessarily in
imitatien-of Byzantine emperors as described in "The Book of Ceremonies"
(late tenth century). I shall examine only the rituals, art and texts associated
with important moments in the life-cycle of Ivan IV. In purportedly ritualis-
tic enactments of the divine order Ivan acted out his claim to be the Lord's
vice-regent as if it were hoary tradition; his magnates basked in the light ra-
diated by the ruler and, in their actions and in formulaic expressions of popu-
lar consent, recognized and hailed his sacred power. The tsar's presence sanc-
tified his surroundings even in the clergy's absence.9

8. NorbertEias's terminology,The Court Society(Oxford:BasilBlackwell.1983),1; also

Roy Strong, Splendorat Court: RenaissanceSpectaclesand the Theatre of Power (Boston:
HoughtonMifflin, 1973);Zimin, Peresvetov, 217-455;Sochineniia1. Peresvetova,ed. and
commentaryA. A. Zimin (Moscow-Leningrad: Izdat. AN SSSR, 1956);and on the energizing
fot?ceof religioussymbols:Lane,Rites,23, 36 Emile
; Durkheim.TheElementaryForms of Re-
ligiousLife(London:Allenand Unwin,1915).esp.298, 389.
9. Foreign observerswere much taken by Russian diplomaticritual, althoughthey often
misinterpetedits particulars;Sigismundvon Herberstein,Notes UponRussia,2 vols., tr. R. H.
Major (London Hakluyt
: Society, 1851-52);Rudeand BarbarousKingdom:Russiain the Ac-
countsof SixeenthCenturyEnglishVoyagers,ed. L. Berryand R. Crummey(Madison:Univ.of
WisconsinPress, 1968);also Nancy ShieldsKollmann,"Ritualand SocialDramaat the Mus-
covite Court,"SlavicReview46 ( 1986):486-502;RobertCnunmey,"Court Spectaclesin Sev-
enteenth-CenturyRussia:Illusionand Reality,"in Essays in Honor of A. A. Zimin,ed. Daniel
Waugh(Columbus,OH: Slavica,1985),130-58,and MichaelFlier,"The Semioticsof the Palm
SundayRitualunder Ivan IV Groznyi,"Lectureat Univ.of Chicago,8 May 1989,with glosses
on G. Ostrogorsky'sinterpretationof the new PalmSundayprocession,"Zum Stratordienstder
Herrschersin der byzantinisch-slawischen Welt,"SeminariumKondakovianum 7 ( 1935):187-
204; Paul Bushkovitch,"The EpiphanyCeremonyof the RussianCourt in the Sixteenthand
SeventeenthCenturies,"RussianReview49 (1990):1-17;AvrilCamemrt,"TheConstructionof
 295

BIRTH

Even as the authority of the crown assumed a life apart from the
biological fate of kings in early modern Europe ("the king is dead, long live
the king"), the birth of a royal heir continued to be celebrated as an epochal
event assuring the unbroken and peaceful evolution of authority. The birth of
Ivan IV on 25 August 1530 was unusually significant. In November 1525,
after a childless marriage of twenty years and despite protests of her family
and within the Church, Vasilii had divorced his wife Solomoniia Saburova
and sent her to a nunnery. Two months later he married Elena Glinskaia,
daughter of a prince who had come to Moscow from Lithuania in the living
memory of his boyars. With Ivan's birth they retained the access to the
throne that was their guarantee of prestige, power and reward. No longer need
they fear that adherents of a collateral branch of the dynasty might replace
them. When Vasilii died in December, 1533, they might have anticipated
greater rewards. Ivan was only three and the Glinskies, upstarts at court,
needed their support more than ever if they were not to be shunted aside.
Ivan minority, nevertheless, set off a prolonged and vicious struggle among
relatively balanced boyar alliances. 10 No wonder that the Glinskii family and
its boyar and clerical allies sought to legitimize Ivan's inheritance by infus-
ing accounts of his birth and succession with divine sanction and a venerable
lineage.
The earliest account probably dated from the regency of Elena Glinskaia,
1533-38, and was the basis for the sophisticated tale in "Book of Degrees of
the Imperial Genealogy," a history of Ivan's line completed by 1563 for
Metropolitan Makarii, very likely by Ivan's confessor Afanasii.ll This tale

Court Ritual:The ByzantineBook of Ceremonies,"Rituals, 106-36.Keenan's argumentfor a

"chasmbetween the clerical, primarily monastic,culture and that of the court," Apocrypha,
esp. 56, and "Muscovy,"is unpersuasive.
10.Kollmann,Kinship,142-45,158, 160-77;idem,"TheGrandPrincein MuscovitePolitics:
The Problemof Genre in Sourceson Ivan's Minority,"RussianHistory, 14 (1987):292-313;
Nitsche,Grossfarst, 197-251;A. A. Zimin,ReformyIvana Groznogo(Moscow:Izd-vo sot-
siat'no-ekon,lit-ry, 1960),225-74; Harmut Rilss, "Machtkampfoder 'feudale Reaktion'?,"
and "Elena Vasil'evnaGlinskaja,"JGO 18 (1970):481-502,and 19 (1971):481-98.
11.Polnoe sobranie russkikhletopisei(hereafterPSRL1,37 vols. to date (N(oscow-St.Pe-
tersburg-Leningrad: Imp.AN, AN SSSR,1846-), 21, pt. 2: 605-15,with earliervariants:N. N.
Rozov,"Pokhvalnoeslovo velikomukniaziu VasiliiuIII," Arkheograftcieeskii ezhegodnikza
1964g. (Moscow:Nauka, 1965),278-89;Gos. istoricheskiimuzei,Sinodal'noesobr., no. 997,
1554-62;and the semi-official"LetopisetsNachalaTsarstvaTsaria i VelikogoKniazia Ivana '
Vasil'evicha,"PSRL29: 9-10, the earliest text (1550s)in which Vasilii's death-bed speech
contained "invented" claims fleshed out in the "Book of Degrees"; Miller, "Velikie Minei
Chetiiand Stepennaiakniga,"336-37.
 296

was full of monkish erudition which equated Ivan's birth with miraculous
Old Testament parallels, made special mention of Iosif Volotskii's wisdom,
and noted that monks from the Pafnut'ev Monastery,,where Iosif and Makarii
had taken their vows, were present when Ivan was bom. Prayers, it said, of
the "God-loving Vasilii, his people, and the Church" caused "the all-merciful
God [to] sever an infertile union and [to] grant him the birth of a son, the
heir to his rule, like him in wisdom and bravery tempered with piety. He was
given the blessed name Ivan. And not only the whole Russian tsarstvo, but
all orthodox believers everywhere rejoiced." Vasilii brought the infant to the
hallowed Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery to be baptized. In attendance, the
court bowed to Vasilii, saying: "Thou art blessed by God, as is thine Tsar-
itsa, that fertile vine, and as is thy son now newly seated and established in
the heart of thy great empire [tsarstvie], and good be unto thee." The author
then cut to September 1533, when Vasilii became ill while on another pil-
grimage to the Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery with his wife, child, and court.
In anticipation of his death, the author eulogized Vasilii in words that ren-
dered selectively the portrait of an ideal Christian emperor written in sixth-
century Constantinople by Archdeacon Agapatus:

The emperor's heart and mind are increasingly vigilant and wise enforc-
ing justice, and strongly repelling the currents of lawlessness so that the
ship of his great tate would not sink in waves of injustice. Thus was the
soul of the emperor, full of many cares, always pure as a mirror, and
continuously illuminated with a divine light, from which it could come
to a knowledge of things; as someone once wrote: "Though an emperor
in body be like all men, in the power of his worthy office he is like
God, who rules over all; for he has no man on earth who is higher than
he; he is inaccessible to man because of the loftiness of his earthly em-
pire, yet he readily receives supplicants by reason of the heavenly
power." As the eye is rooted in the body, so too is the emperor estab-
lished in the world, sent by God to render benefits to provide for man as
for himself that he remains virtuous and does not stumble into evil. For
verily he is affirmed emperor, who is able to rule over and master his
passions and voluptuousness, who is crowned with the crown of chastity
and clothed in the purple robe of justice. Such was also the pious tsar of
Tsars, Grand Prince Vasilii.12

12. My translationsof PSRL21, pt 2: 606, 609-11;Miller,"Velikiemineichetiiand Stepen-

naia kniga," 336. ev?enko, "Source," 161-63, identified the passage. Cf. with Rozov,
"Pokhvalnoe,"284-85.610-I 1.
 297

As death neared, Vasilii had Metropolitan Daniil and the court witness a new
will and testament bequeathing the throne to Ivan. He then requested that he
be tonsured as a monk, a custom attested in death rites of other princes of
Rus', but otherwise unusual in the Orthodox world. Daniil, who had expe-
dited Vasilii's divorce, complied and silenced objections that it was uncanon-
ical. Before the court Vasilii summoned his heir and blessed him with a
cross made from the wood of the True Cross and with crown, diadem and
staff said to have come to them from their "predecessor" Prince Volodimer
Monomakh [of Kiev, d. 1125], ruler of the "great autocracy, the Russian em-
pire." This was reference to the recently trumped-up claim that the dynasty
dated back to Kievan Rus' [and ultimately to Caesar Augustus], and that the
Byzantine emperor had dispatched with two bishops an imperial crown to
Monomakh. Thereupon Vasilii was tonsured as the monk Varlaam and
died.13
Michael Chemiavsky, referring to Vasilii's tonsure, observed that Rus-
sian ideologues failed to distinguish between the sanctity of the person of a
prince and that of his office, a distinction well known to the Byzantines. If
we accept that such a "confusion" existed in popular culture, we can appreci-
ate the calculation of our author in fusing what was familiar and customary to
Russians-the reverence accorded to the ruler's person-with the legend of
crown and lineage, a claim that was bold invention. Vasilii-Varlaam's body
testified to the validity of the tradition that made the dynasty a totem em-
bodying a power superior to society, giving it laws, judging it, aiding and
sustaining it, an authority handed down from the dynasty's mythical origina-
tor. It is also possible that tonsure signaled that moment at which the two
bodies present in the living ruler-the divine office and the corporal self-
were visibly separated; the first passing to Ivan, the other soon to die in
piety. Chronicles testify that thenceforth the court annually made processions
to the monastery for St. Sergei's name day, 25 September, and on numerous
other occasions. Each procession was an icon of tsar and courtiers
displayed
in perfect hierarchy for public veneration; each pilgrimage a reminder that the
all-Russian veneration accorded St. Sergius also bathed Ivan's birth and the
legitimacy of the new order, i4

13.PSRL21, pt. 2: 61, 2-14,and below,on the dynasticlegend.

14. Chemiavsky, Tsar and People, 5-49; Ernst Kantorowicz,The King's Two Bodies
(Princeton,NJ: PrincetonUniv. Press, 1957),423-37; Durkheim,ElementaryForms, 308-31.
Religiousleaderspromotedthe notionof saint-kingsto enhancepoliticalauthorityin societiesin
whichstate formationwas primitive;e.g., in Scandinavia,whenceit may havebeen introduced
into Rus'; Janet Nelson,Politicsand Ritual in Early MedievalEurope (London:Hambledon
Press. 1986),69-74; K. Gorsky,"La naissancedes 6tats et le 'roi-saint'," L'Europeau IX et
 298

.
COMING OF AGE

On 17 December 1547 Grand Prince Ivan Va?il'evich "by the mercy of

God and His Most Pure Tsaritsa the Mother of God, by the prayers and
mercy of the great miracle workers [former metropolitans] Petr, Aleksei, and
Iona, and the miracle worker Sergius, and all the holy Russian miracle work-
ers, made known to [his boyars] his desire and requested that [Metropolitan
Makarii] bless his intention to be married." This assemblage joyously as-
sented, and Ivan continued: "With thy blessing, my father and metropolitan,
and with the advice of our boyars, I wish prior to my marriage to assume the
regalia of my ancient forbears; just as our lineage of tsars and grand princes
and our ancestor Grand Prince Volodimer Monomakh were crowned tsar and
grand prince, by the same ceremony so too do I wish to be crowned tsar and
grand prince. And thou, my lord and father Metropolitan Makarii, bless me
in this endeavor.15 With these words the young ruler announced that he had
'
come of age. He was sixteen years old.
Ivan was crowned tsar 16 January 1547. On 3 February he married
Anastasiia, the daughter of the late Roman Iur'evich Zakhar' in (d. 1543), a
servitor of insignificant status but from a clan with a long, loyal, and
sometimes distinguished service record. Scholars often have interpreted the
events as a turning point in Ivan's reign. Before, Ivan was a pawn of warring
boyar families following the death of his mother and regent in 1538. After,
Tsar Ivan provided the political impetus for virtually every major happening
of his reign. These are verdicts of historical hindsight. What the Russian elite
witnessed in 1547 were two contrived rites by which Ivan assumed a new
social personality, rites which, in Janet Nelson's words about initiation
ceremonies, "symbolized the annihilation of the initiate's former personality
in preparation for a 'rebirth' into a new status." Their importance cannot be
overemphasized in a society without a strong normative custom of royal
succession, particularly after the anarchy of Ivan's youth. Religious sanction
was the transforming power that drove both ceremonies, although the

XI sicles. ed. T. Manteufeland A. Gieysztor(Warsaw:PatistoweWydawnictwoNaukowe,

1968),425ff. PSRL 29, and 13, pt. 1, record thirty-fiveto thirty-sevenpilgrimagesto Trinity
between1530and 1563;also NancyShieldsKollmann."Pilgrimages,Procession,and Symbolic
Spacein SixteenthCenturyRussianPolitics,"paperpresented atthe First AnnualWorkshopon
EarlyEast SlavicCulture,2-7 June 1990,UCLA.
15. PSRL 13, pL 2: 450-51, which said Ivan's "comingof age" was planned in private
meetingswith the Metropolitan(who may have initiatedthe events)on 13 December,and on
the 14thalso with boyar advisors(who presumablywouldsupporthim). Cf. with the shortac-
countof coronationand marriage,PSRL29: 49-51,and see L I. Smirnov,Ocherkipoliticheskoi
istorii russkogogosudarstva30-50khgodovXVIveka (Moscow-Leningrad: Izdat. AN SSSR,
1958),113-20.
 299

marriage rite, Daniel Kaiser observed, "even when bathed in a superficial

wash of Christian ceremony, retained strong links to the non-Christian
culture of Muscovy." Historians have overlooked how the coupling of
coronation and marriage rites to inaugurate Ivan's majority imitated those of
Byzantine Emperor Manuel in 1392 as described by the Russian pilgrim
Ignatii of Smolensk, with whose account Makarii was familiar, and paralleled
the traditional status-changing ceremonies of marriage and ordination by
which aspirants become priests in the Orthodox church. Only in that marriage
followed, instead of preceeding, inauguration did Ivan's rite of passage differ
from these. The inauguration rituals publicly indicated who were the victors
in the power struggle. They were collective celebrations, a "national
communion," by which ruler and subject reaffirmed their dedication to the
moral values that bound society together
Ivan's coronation, like that of Dmitrii Ivanovich in 1498, took its form,
symbolism, and the text of its prayers from late Byzantine models in which
the inauguration of a ruler had become thoroughly liturgified. It differed from
Dmitrii's, however, in three respects: Ivan was crowned tsar or emperor as
well as grand prince; after inauguration the presiding head of the Church an-
nointed Ivan and admitted him to the sanctuary with the clergy to partake of
the sacrament; and the ceremony sanctified the aforegmentioned legend re-
garding the origin and significance of the regalia. 17

''
.....
16. Nelson,Politics, 284, 334; DanielH. Kaiser,"Symboland Ritual in the Marria.gesof
Ivan IV," RussianHistory 14 (1987):esp. 248; Nitsche,Grossfiirst.259-76;descriptionsof the
coronation:E. V. Barsov, "Drevne-msskiepamiatnikisviashchennogovenchaniiatsarei na
tsarstvo,"Chteniiav Obshchestveistorii i drevnosteirossiiskikh[hereafterChOlDR]124,bk. 1,
pt. 1 (1883):39-90;Dopolneniiak Aktamistoricheskim,I (St Petersburg:Tip. Otd. SobsLE. I.
V. Kantseliarii,1846),no. 39: 41-53;Ignatii'sdescription:Gos.istoricheskiimuzei,Sinodal'noe
sobr.,no. 997, pp. 1524-25,and publishedtext:Pravoslavnyipalestinskiisbornik 12 (1887);P.
Schreiner, "Hochzeit und Kr6nung Kaiser Manuels II. im Jahre 1392," Byzantinische
Zeitschrift60 (1967):70-85;David B. Miller,"The Coronationof Ivan IV of Moscow,"JGO
15 (1967): 559-74; descriptionsof the marriage:Drevniaia rossiiskaia vivliofika[hereafter
DRV], ed. N. Novikov, 2nd ed., 20 vols. (Moscow:N. Novikov,1788-91), 13: 29-35; and
Durkheim,ElementaryForms,esp. 462-96;Shils,Centerand.Periphery;135-52.
17.Secularrituals inheritedby Byzantiumdroppedout wellbeforethe modelsborrowedby
the Muscovitescame into being,or survivedas anachronisms;F. Brightinan,"ByzantineImpe-
rial Coronations,"Journalof TheologicalStudies2 (1901):359-92;W. Sickel,"Das byzantinis-
che Kr6nungsrechtbis zum 10.Jahrhundert,"ByzantinischeZeitschrift7 (1898):511-57;texts
of the 1498ceremony:Barsov,"Pamiatniki,"32-38;von Herberstein,Notes, 1: 39-45;PSRL12:
246-49;and analysesby Majeska,"MoscowCoronation";Miller,"Coronation,"564-74.
300

The imperial title carried Byzantine-Orthodox theocratic concepts of

rulership. But whether Russians understood the Church's role in Ivan's
assumption of that title precisely in the manner of the Greeks, whose
ceremony they so slavishly followed, is difficult to say. Following Greek
practice, Ivan, surrounded by his magnates, stood bowing before
Metropolitan Makarii in the Cathedral Church of the Dormition. Makarii
then placed a hand on his head, intoned the prayer "King of kings, Lord of
lords...," and crowned him. In Constantinople, with its tradition of elective
emperorship, and where the Church hierarchy was a constituent part of the
imperial court, the patriarch in the absence of a reigning emperor might take
his place as representative of the community of believers in the coronation of
a co?mperor. This ritual acted out the "finding" rather than the "making" of a
new emperor. It was the public legitimization of a divinely predetermined or-
der, in Janet Nelson's formulation, an "articulated icon" of "a pregexisting
fact." But it is possible that Makarii intended and the witnesses understood
the ceremony to dramatize a "transforming" message rather than the
"discovering" message of Greek rites in order to proclaim that Ivan was in-
deed a God-crowned emperor. If so, it led them close to the spirit of me-
dieval Latin inaugurals in which the Church gave divine sanction to
prj:jaces.19
In accord with late Byzantine practice, but not the Russian rite of 1498,
Makarii offered Ivan a precept on the moral obligations of as god-crowned
tsar. He took as his texts Agapetus's maxims to Justinian I in a version used
earlier by Iosif Volotskii, and a text beholden to Agapetus but said to have
been an exhortation from Byzantine Emperor Basil I (ninth century) to his
son Leo the Wise. Ivan held office in imitation of Christ; as mediator be-
tween God and man, as upholder and protector of the divine order. This
moral exhortation of Christian duty defined royal power. Who dared suggest
'
that God's will might be subject to human legislation as Western jurists were
to assert successfully from the late thirteenth century ?19

18. Barsov,"Pamiatniki,"51-55; Miller, "Coronation,"561-62;Nelson,Politics, 266-71,

334-36; and on Greek precedents:Brightman,"Coronations,"380, 387-88,and R. Guilland,
"Sur les dignitairesdu Palaiset sur les dignitsde la Grandglisedu Pseudo-Codinos:
chapitres
14-15,17-22,"Byzantinoslavica16 (1955): 101-08.
19. Barsov, "Pamiatniki," 56-60; Miller, "Coronation,"362-64, 367-69; on sources of
Makarii's precept: Sev6enko,"Source," 157, 164-65;Poslanie losifa Volotskogo,ed. A. A.
Zimin and Ia. S. Lur'e (Moscow-Leningrad: Izd-voAN SSSR, 1959),229-30;Ch. M. Loparev,
"0 chine venchaniiarusskikh tsarei," Zhurnal Ministerstvanarodnogoprosvesh.cheniia253
(Oct 1887):314-19.Also Fritz Kem, Kingshipand Lawin the MiddleAges(NewYork, 1956),
69-84; Kantorowicz,TwoBodies, 87-192; Daniel Rowland,"Did MoscowLiteraryIdeology
Place Limitson the Power of the Tsar (1540s-1660s)?"TheRussianReview49 (1990):125-56.
 301

Ivan's annointment also followed late Byzantine practice. The Greeks

had used oil rituals to initiate and set off the annointed from others, but an-
nointment of emperors dated from no earlier the late twelfth century and
probably derived from Latin rites in which the Church had annointed rulers
on the model of episcopal initiations for almost four centuries. In the Latin
rite the Church was mediator between man and God; the presiding cleric by
annointment conferred divine office on a prostrate initiate. In Byzantium and
Moscow the aspiring emperor stood before the patriarch or metropolitan who
acted for the Christian community in annointing him. Annointment marked
the transference of a neophyte's claim to rule from a profane to a sacred
sphere. The ruler was born again (a privilege he alone enjoyed) into a Christ-
like status. The Greek Christos meant "the annointed one." Moreover, the
eastern rite had a sacredotal significance allowing the annointed to enter the
sanctuary through the "holy doors" [tsarskie vorota] in the iconostasis to cel-
ebrate the mysteries with the priesthood.2o
When Makarii told Ivan that his God-given right to the imperial sceptre
was based on "primordial imperial heritage and ancestral right," he offically
recognized the invented tradition of the "Tale of the Princes of Vladimir," re-
ferred to in the story of Ivan's birth. R. P. Dmitrieva argued that the legend
appeared between 1506 and 1525, having been cooked up by an imprisoned
Greek-appointed metropolitan of Russia, Spiridon-Savva, in the hope that
flattery might win him freedom. The legend explained that Moscow's ruler
was a descendent of Roman emperors through St. Volodimer, the baptizer of
Rus' (d. 1015), and received his regalia from the Greek emperor with the
Church's blessing through another ancestor Volodimer Monomakh. It was in-
tegrated into the rituale of the coronation, appeared in its appended descrip-
tion of the regalia, and was carved into the imperial throne [tsarskoe mesto]
completed 1 September 1551 and placed in the Cathedral Church. In sanctify-
ing this historical rationale for the imperial title, the coronation sanctified
Moscow's right to rule the lands of pre-Mongol Rus', lands that had been

20. Barsov,"Pamiatniki,"61-63;Miller, "Coronation,"564, 573. On Westernand Byzan-

tine annointments:Nelson,Politics, 137-80, 271-85;Kantorowicz,TwoBodies,42-86;Sickel,
"Kronungsrecht,"524; G. Ostrogorskyand E. Stein, "Die Kr6nungsordnungendes Zere-
monienbuches chronologische
; und verfassungsgeschichtlicheBermerkungen,"Byzantion7
(1932): 199-200;G. Ostrogorsky,"Zur Kaisersalbungjnd Schilderhebungim spatbyzantinis-
chen Krdnungszeremoniell,"Historia 4 (1955):246-56;D. M. Nichol,"Kaisersalbung.The
Unctionof Emperorsin Late ByzantineCoronationRitual,"and C. Walter,"The Significance
of Unctionin ByzantineIconography,"Byzantineand ModernGreekStudies,2 ( 1976):37-52,
53-73;Ju. Lotmanand B. A. Uspenskij,TheSemioticsof RussianCulture(AnnArbor Univ.of
Michigan,1984),260-61;Schreiner,"Hochzeit";Durkheim,ElementaryForms,362.
 302

part of the Kiev-Moscow metropolitanate, including territory then ruled by

Poland-Lithuania and the German Order. 21

21. Barsov, "Pamiatniki',"39-41, 50, 61; PSRL 13, pts. 1 150-51,

: and 2: 450-53;
Haney,"Moscow:SecondConstantinople,Third Romeor SecondKiev ?,"Canadian-American
Slavic Studies 2. (1968): 354-67; R. P. Dmitrieva,Skazanie o kniaz'iakh vladimirskikh
(Moscow-Leningrad:Izdat. AN SSSR, 1955),for texts, Englishtranslation,the tale's literary
history,and its influenceon the 1547coronationand subsequentclaims.On the throne,see O.
I. Podobedova,Moskovskaiashkolazhivopisipri Ivane IV (Moscow:Nauka, 1972), 22.A. A.
Zimin's argument,statedmostrecentlyin Rossiiana rubezheXV-XVI stoletii(Moscow:Mysl',
1982),148-59,for the primacyof a versionof the tale otherthanSpiridon's,and for datingit to
the 1498ceremony,is unconvincing.Chronicleaccountsof the 1498ceremonycontainingthe
legend(PSRL4, pt. 1: 531, 6:241, 279, 12:246, 263; 28: 330-31),originatedafter Spiridon's
versionof the Tale, and perhapsin the Novgorodcompilationof 1539of the then Archbishop
of NovgorodMakarii;A. N. Nasonov, Istoriiarusskogoletopisaniia(Moscow:Nauka, 1969),
253-58, 466-72.Lur'e, Ideologicheskaiabor'ba, 383-90,opinedthat it derivedfroma surviv-
ing fragmentfor 1498-1500of the grand princelychronicleand that Spiridon'sversion,there-
fore, postdatedthat held by Zimin to be the oldest, but offeredno proof. Von Herberstein,
Notes, 1: 44, mentionedthe legendin describingDmitrii'scoronation,of whichhe undoubtedly
saw a rituale, but he visitedMoscowconcurrentlywith the appearanceof Spiridon's version.
Zimin also noted mentionof "Monomaklt'scrown"with referenceto 1498in the ms. Gos. is-
toricheskiimuzei,Chud.sobr.,264, but it datesfrom no earlierthan 1540.The rituale for 1498
in Barsov, "Pamiatniki," 32-38, does not have the legend. See A. L. Gol'dberg, "K istorii
rasskazao potomkakhAvgustai o darakhmonomakha,"and R. P. Dmitrieva,"0 tekstologich-
eskoi zavisimostimezhdu raznami vidami rasskazao potomkakhAvgustai o darakh Mono-
makha," Trudy Otdela drevneiusskoiliteratury [hereafterTODRL]30 (1976): 204-30;Ma-
jeska, "MoscowCoronation,"360-61;Miller,"Coronation,"565-67.A strongargumentfor the
primacyof Spiridon'sversionof the Tale arevariancesfrom the Ziminversionin its rendering
of a passageof a Bulgariantext. "A Gloss on the Monk Isaiahof 1371."In the Zimin version
this consistsof only four lines and, unlikeSpiridon'sversion,the wordRus'skoiis interpolated
with referenceto lands ravagedby the Mongols;cf. in Dmitrieva,Skazanie,179,lines 14-17:
"razsypashasiaizmailtianepo vsei zemli Rus'skoi,... i glad pogubliashe,"with the Spiridon
versionfrom p. 166, tine 23: "izmailtianei poleteshiapo vsei zemli, .. ," to p. 167,line 3: "v
ellinekhlivanieneby mogl' pisaniempredstavitinuzhdu,iazhepostizhetogda khristiian,"and
with Ivan Duichev,Iz starata B" lgarskaknizhina,2 vols. (Sofia:Khemus,1955),2: 175-76:
hmailtianitese pr'snaia ... elinite Livaniinebymog'1'da opishezloto, koetopostignakhris-
tianite ot' zapadnitestrani." It is more logicalthat Spiridon,comingfrom Bulgaria,copied in
full the passage in the "Gloss"; that the editor of Zimin's version took up Spiridon's text,
thought the long passage on past events unimportantfor sixteenth-centuryreadersand his ar-
gument,and cut it drastically,but added the word "Russian"so the readerknew what land he
wrote about. Assumingthat the Spiridontext was secondary,requiresthat writersof both ver-
sionsknewthe Bulgariantext, as Spiridoncouldnot have divinedit fromthe fragmentaryZimin
 303

The court celebrated Ivan's marriage over a period of three days. The for-
mat repeated that of his father's marriage in 1526 and the rite prescribed for
elite servitors in the Domostroi, a contemporary handbook on domestic life.
What we know of three of Ivan's six subsequent unions suggests they were
cast from the same mold.22 Ivan's stage managers had little reason to alter
marriage customs that cemented unions between kin groups. Traditional in-
gredients-corteges that on day one accompanied the tsar to his bride and
both of them to the church and to the court, feasts and celebrations on all
three days, and the collective witness to Ivan's announcement of successful
coitus on day two-were occasions where the new political order, founded in
violence and intrigue in 1546 and 1547, could be reassembled to witness its
own formation and collectively recognize the enhanced political position of
the bride's kin and their adherents. Was it not a preoccupation with sanctify-
ing status and hierarchy that accounts for the survival of razriady, or ranked
rosters cf witnesses of the wedding, and that descriptions of the ceremony
gave greater attention to who accompanied whom and in what order than to
what transpired? The religious rite, also traditional, took place on day one in
the Kremlin Cathedral of the Dormition, the site of the coronation, before es-
sentially the same audience. It sanctified betrothal by exchange of rings, sig-
nifying approval of the marriage by both families, and the union with what
was literally another coronation (venchanie) in that the presiding cleric held
the wedding crown three times over the heads of Ivan and Anastasiia to make
them man and wife.23

version.This is unlikely.R. P. Dmitrieva,"0 nekotorikhistochnikakhPoslaniia Spiridona-

Savvy," TODRL13 (1957):440-45, identifiedthe source; ev&nko in a seminar,Columbia
University,NewYork, 1959,first notedits significancein datingthe Tale.
22. Kaiser,"Symbol,"248-51,256; Domostroi,ed. V. V. Kolesovaet at. (Moscow:Sovet-
skaiaRossiia,1990),91-101;DRV,2nd ed. 13 5-19,
: 86-97, 112-16;A. A. Vasil'chikov,"Chin
brakosochetaniia Tsaria Ivana Vasil'evicha s tsaritseiu Annoiu Vasil'chikovykh
(7083/1575g.),"IzvestiiaRusskogogenealogicheskogo obshchestva1, pt 3 (1903): 1-13.Grig-
orii Kotoshikhin,0 Rossii vtsarstvO,/Qlui
AlekseiaMikhailovicha,4th ed. (St. Petersburg:Tip.
Glavnago Upravleniiaudelov, 1906), 7-14, 149-56,described seventeenth-centuryimperial
marriagecustoms,emphasizingthe importanceof marriagepolitics;also M. G. Rabinovich,
"Svad'ba v russkomgorodev XVI v.," in Russkiinarodnyisvadebnyiobriad: Issledovaniiai
materialy,ed. K. V. Chistovaand T. A. Bernshtam(Leningrad:Nauka,1978), 7-31[Eng.trans.
in SovietAnthropologyand Archeology18, pt. 4 (Spring1980):32-54,and 19, pt. 4 (Summer
1981):55-72].
23. DRV,2nd. ed. 13: 29-35. 86-97, 112-16;Razriadnaia kniga 1475-1598gg., ed. V. I.
Buganov(Moscow:Nauka,1956), 10-i I; Razriadnaiakniga 1475-1605gg., 1, pt. 2, ed. N. G.
Savich(Moscow:In-t istoriiSSSR, AN SSSR, 1977),322-28;M. E. Bychkova,Sostav klassa
feodaly Rossii v XVIv. (Moscow:Nauka, 1986), 104-43;Kaiser,"Symbol,"251-54, 256-60;
Kollmann,Kinship,102-03,162-80.
 304

. ADULTHOOD

Elaborate building and artistic commissions, historical compositions,

and ceremonies by which Ivan governed and commemorated those acts for
which he wished to be remembered, reenforced the coronation imagery. Thus,
in a five-year period Ivan presided over three epochal church councils.
The first convened in February 1547, to recognize the sainthood of eigh-
teen "Russians." It was the last of the "package" of ceremonies that included
the coronation and the marriage. A year later, in February-March 1549, Ivan
convened and presided over a second council that canonized nineteen or
twenty more "Russian" saints. By comparison, there were no more than four
Rus' saints recognized prior to the Mongol invasion of 1237 and only
twenty-one before 1547. The new saints were kleimy [cameos surrounding a
central image to illustrate its miracles, a relatively recent innovation in icon
painting] to the coronation icon in which Ivan was God's vice-regent, presid-
ing over holy Russia, the "new Israel." His residence, the Moscow Kremlin
was the new cult center, both "new Rome" and "new Jerusalem." Clerical
bookmen already were at work scratching out suitable vitae for Russia's
saints.24
In 1551 (probably January), now twenty, Ivan opened another, more fa-
mous council, the Stoglav, or "Council of One Hundred Chapters." It delib-
erated in the Kremlin palace, probably in the throne room known as the Gold
Room [Zolotaia palata] under a canopy of frescos begun after the fire of
1547 and known to be complete by 1553. Although inspired by passages
from the Old Testament, the iconography and allegorical imagery of the fres-
cos were often without precedent in Orthodox tradition. In the center of one
of the room's two domes was a new Trinity image in the form of the en-
throned "Lord of Sabaoth [Armies]" on whose lap sat a young Jesus holding
a medallion depicting the Holy Spirit, and surrounded with admonitory alle-
gories, the scriptural basis for which is obscure. Below, scenes of Moses's
life adorned pendentives and arches and scenes of conquering Israelite kings

24. G. Z. Kuntsevich, "Podlinnyi spisok o novykh chudotvortsakn k Feodosiiu

ArkhiepiskopuNovogradai Pskova,"IzvestiiaOtdeler.iiiarusskogoiazykai slovesnosti15,pt. 1
( 1910):252-57; E. Maksimovich,"Tserkovnogzemskiisobor 1549 g.," Zapiski Russkogo
nauchnogoin-ta v Belgrade9 (1933):5-14;Aktysobrannyev bibliotekakhi arkhivakhrossi-
iskoi imperii ArkheograficheskoiekspeditsieiImp. akad. nauk [hereafterAAE],1 (St Peters-
burg :Tip. Otd. SobsLE. I. V. Kantselarii,1836),no. 213, pp. 203-04;Le Stoglav,tr. E. Duch-
esne (Paris: Champion,i920), 20-22; E. Golubinskii,Istoriia kanonizatsiisviatykhv russkoi
tserkvi,2nd ed (Moscow:Universitetskaiatip., 1903);A. S. Khoroshev,Politicheskaiaistoriia
russkoi kanonizatsii(XI-XVIvv.) (Moscow:Izdat. Moskovskogoun-ta. 1988),166-92;V. O.
Kliuchevskii,Drevnerusskiezhitiia sviatykhkak istoricheskiiistochnik(reprintof 1871eel.
Moscow:Nauka, 1988).
 305

covered the walls. Atop the other dome was the "The Lord Emmanuel," sur-
rounded by novel images of Creation, of holy "Wisdom [who] has built her
house, .. [and] set up seven pillars" (here tablets) of the temple of Solomon,
and has "set her table" (Proverbs 9:lg3) for the faithful, and of a gate of
virtue and vices (symbolizing man's free will?) through which Jesus as angel
(the messenger of the Grand Council in Isaiah's prophecy in the Septuagint,
9:6) pointed the way. At eye level, opposite Ivan's throne, as a parallel to
Moses and Old Testament kings, were scenes of the "new Israel": several
from the vita of St. Volodimer, including that in which a hand reached from
heavan to bless his baptism of Rus'; others of clerics bringing an imperial
crown and regalia to Volodimer Monomakh from Byzantium, of miracles of
the Vladimir icon of the Mother of God in which she is Russia's protectress,
and images of other ancestral saint-princes. Lengthy captions explained the
scenes as if an illuminated chronicle had been transcribed in damp plaster. In
fact, the opposite was true, for the conceptual scheme of Russia as "new Is-
rael" in the fresco cycles soon reappeared in two histories, the "Book of De-
grees" and the "Illuminated Chronicle," commissioned respectively by
Makarii and Ivan. The throne room, as Frank Kampfer observed, reminded
court, council, and foreign envoys alike of Russian tsardom's place in the hi-
'
erarchy of the eternal world order."
Opening the Stoglav council, Ivan precociously set before the clergy and
later supplemented a list of questions that they were to consider in renewing
the faith. Although most or all of the questions were probably prepared by
his advisers, Ivan's intelligent interest in theological questions is attested in
the sources and his domination of the proceedings was in keeping with the
theme of the new kremlin icon of "Christ in judgment," or that of Old Tes-
tament ruler as judge in the Gold Room frescos, and in accord with Byzan-

25. Although several times repainted,the scheme survivedalmost unchangedin Simon

Ushakov'sinventoryof 1672,1.E. Zabelin,Materialydlia istorii arkheologiii statistikigoroda
Moskvy,2 vols. (Moscow:Moskovskaiagorodsl:aiatip., 1884-91),1, cols. 1238-55;S. P.
Bartenev,Moskovskiikremr v starinu i teper', 2 vols. (Moscow:Sinodal'r.aiatip., 1912-16), 2:
183-93;reproducedby K. K. Lopialo in Podobedova,Moskovskaiashkola, app., 193-98.See
N. E. Andreev,"IoannGroznyii ikonopis'XVI veka,"SeminariumKondakovanum10 (1938):
187-90;F. Kampfer,"Russlandan der Schwellezur Neuzeit:Kunst,Ideologieund historisches
Bewussteinunter Ivan Groznyj,"IGO 23 (1975) :505-14, whose dating and reading of the
frescos is preferableto Podobedova,Moskovskaiashkola, 10-21,59-68, 194-98;David B.
Miller,`"I'heViskovatyiAffair of 1553-54:OfficialArt, the Emergenceof Autocracy,and the
Disintegrationof MedievalRussianCulture,"Russian History 8 (1981):293-332,on innova-
tions,rememberingthat little comparableByzantines art survives,althougha fourteenthcentury
frescoof the kingsof Israelis attested,DavidTalbotRice,ByzantinePainting,TheLast Phase
(NewYork:Dial Press, 1968),151,plate 116.See PSRL1, 2nd ed.: 111 Miller,
; "Velikieminei
cherii and Stepennaiakniga," 328, on the Khersonlegendof Volodimer'sconversion;and n.
33, on later histories.
306

tine imperial custom.26 Ivan also presided over councils on heresy in the
1550s in which there was no distinction between his sacredotal authority and
that as head of state to defend the faith. In 1581 the papal emissary Antonio
Possevino wickedly noted Ivan's merging of lay and clerical authority: "In
his attire, surroundings, and by other means he strives to project a majesty
not only regal, but almost papal. One might say that all this comes from
Greek patriarchs and emperors, but all that relates to the worship of God, he
transforms into self-apotheosis.'17
Court and clergy had even greater cause to celebrate with spectacles and
monumental, artistic, and literary commissions when it received news that
Ivan's army had conquered the Khanate of Kazan' in 1552. Metropolitan
Makarii, who more than anyone had promoted the campaign, and whom Ivan
had appointed to rule in his absence, organized Ivan's triumphal return. On 2
November, Ivan led his conquering army into Moscow along streets lined
with people cheering, "Many years to the pious tsar, the victor over barbar-
ians, and savior of Christianity." At the [Church] of the Procession of the
Most Pure [Mother of God], Makarii and the hierarchy, carrying icons,
greeted him. In 1520 Ivan's father had cooperated in the construction of the
church and in a procession (15 September) through Moscow streets of an es-
pecially holy icon of the Mother of God that gave the church its name. The
celebration there may be taken as an elaboration of a legend, probably in-
vented in the 1470s, that prayers to the icon "Our Lady of Vladimir" had
saved Moscow from Timur the Lame in 1395, making the Virgin Moscow's
__ _
26. N. Subbotin,ed., Tsarskievoprosyi sobornyeotvetyo mnogorazlichnykh tserkovnykh
chinekh(Stoglav)(Moscow:Tip. E. Lissnerai lu. Romana,1890);Le Stoglav;Jack E. Koll-
mannJr., "The MoscowStoglav("HundredChapters")ChurchCouncilof 1551"(Ph.D.Diss.,
Univ.of Michigan,AnnArbor, 1978);Golubinskii, Istoriia russkoiiserkvi,2, pL 1:esp. 773-80.
RegardingIvan's religiosityand theologicalliteracy:D. S. Likhachev,"Kanoni molitvaAn-
gelu Groznomu voevode Parfeniia Urodivogo (Ivana Groznogo),"Rukopisnoe nasledie
DrevneiRusi, ed. A. Panchenko(Leningrad:Nauka, 1972),10-27;V. Tiumins,Tsar Ivan IV's
Replyto Jan Rokyta(The Hague:Mouton, 197 1);Andreev,"loann," 185-200;the "monastic"
regimeIvan imposedon his Oprichninacourt at Aleksandrovkadescribedby R. G. Skrynnikov,
Ivan Groznyi(Moscow:Nauka, 1975), 122-24;papal envoy AntonioPossevino'saccountof
theologicalconversationswith Ivan in 1582, Istoricheskie sochineniiao RossiiXVIv. (Moscow:
Izdat. Moskovskogouniversiteta, 1983), 76-87. On Greek imperialprecedents:F. Dvomik,
"Emperors,Popes, and General Councils,"DumbartonOaks Papers 6 (1951):3-23; Walter,
"The Significance,"66-70.
27. Possevino,Istoricheskie,23; Conciliarrecords:AAE,1, nos. 238-39,pp. 241-56;Akty
istoricheskie,1 (St. Petersburg:Tip. Otd. Sobst.E. I. V. Kantselarii,1841),no. 161,pp. 296-98;
"Rozyskili spisoko bogokhulnykhstrokakhi o somneniisviatykhchestnykhikon diaka,Ivana
Mikhailovasyna Viskovatagov leto 7062,"ed. O. Bodianskii,ChOlDR26, bk. 2 (1858):lg42;
"Moskovskiesoboryna eretikovXVI veka," ed. O. Bodianski,CHOIDR3, bk. 3 (1847):1-30;
and N. E. Andreev,"O 'dele' d'iaka Viskovatogo,"Seminarium Kondakovianum5 (1932):
191-244;Miller,"ViskovatyiAffair,"293-332.
 307

protectress. The icon was one of several of Greek origin that had been
brought to Moscow from Vladimir in 1518 for restoration and which, after a
procession, had been returned there. On this spot Ivan now thanked the
metropolitan for prayers to which he attributed his providential victory. He
and the army bowed before the clergy, heads striking the ground. Makarii
replied, comparing Ivan in his victory for Christianity to Emperor Constan-
tine the Great, to his "ancestor Grand Prince Volodimer [of Kiev] who en-
lightened the Russian land with holy baptism [988] and defeated many alien
tribes," to St. Aleksandr Nevskii "who beat the Latins" [1240s], and to
Dmitrii Donskoi "who defeated the barbarians" (this Moscow prince's victory
over Mongol Emir Mamai on the Don River in 1380). Makarii, the clergy,
and the crowd now bowed to the ground before Ivan and the army. Ivan was
the embodiment of the iconographic image of "Christ in armor," warrior for
the faith, of the "Four-part icon" that Pskov masters rendered about this time
under supervision of the priest Syl'vestr for the imperial family Church of
the Annunciation in the Kremlin.28
Ivan exchanged armor for his imperial regalia to personify another icon
recounting the legend of the "crown of Monomakh." It proclaimed that God
had blessed Russia with a tsar. Ivan, Makarii and the court, with cross and
icons, marched into the Kremlin to the Cathedral Church of the Dominion of
the Mother of God for prayers before the icon of Our Lady that the "holy
apostle Luke the Evangelist had painted"-a touch borrowed from Greek in-
vented tradition. This was the "Vladimir" icon that had been brought to
Moscow for renovation in 1518g1520. Whether it just then had been brought
to the Kremlin is not known, but thenceforth it was to be symbol and proof
of another tradition invented by the metropolitan between 1552 and 1563, in
which the Virgin protected Russia against unbelievers as She earlier had
served Constantinople. This "master fiction" took form first in the "Book of
Degrees" in a reworking of the legend mentioned in the preceding paragraph
that included earlier accounts of the icon to show that it, like Monomakh's
crown, came to Kiev from Byzantium; that Ivan's ancestor Andrei the God-
loving had brought it to Vladimir in Suzdalia in the twelfth century where it

28. The earliestaccountof the reception,PSRL29: 112-16.On Makariiand the campaign:

PSRL 6: 308-09,and 29: 60, 75-78, 80, 82, 86-90;Isaak Massa,Kratkoeizvestieo Moskovii
(Moscow:Gos. sots.-ekon.izdat., 1937).22; Razriadnaiakniga, 1 15;JaroslawPelenski,Russia
and Kazan (The Hague:Mouton, 1974),esp. 194-208.On the "Four-part"icon: Padobedvva,
Moskovskaiashkola,40-58,plate 16; Miller,"ViskovatyiAffair,"esp. 307. On the tale of the
Vladimiricon: David B. Miller, "How the Mother of God Saved MoscowFrom Timur the '
Lame's Invasion in 1395:The Developmentof a Legend and the Inventionof a National
Identity," paper presented21 September 1992 at Seventh InternationalConferenceon the
Historyof the Kievanand MuscoviteStates,Berlin,Germany,and submittedfor publicationin
proceedingsof the conference.
308

brought him victory over the Volga Bulgars. After praying to the icon, Ivan
did homage to relics of metropolitan-saints Petr, who had made Moscow the
metropole of Rus', and Iona, the first autocephalous metropolitan of Russia, .
and then led the assemblage to his palace to greet his wife and their new son
Dmitrii. On 8 November in the Kremlin hall known as the "Palace of
Facets," Ivan banqueted in celebration with the same audience.29
Soon after 1552 a large horizontal icon ( 128x394 cm.) entitled "The
Blessed Host of the Heavenly Tsar" was hoisted into place opposite the im-
perial throne in the Kremlin Church of the Dormition. Its iconography re-
peated that of the victory celebration: The archangel Michael led the central of
three columns of warriors from the burning city of Kazan' "to Mount Zion
and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable
angels in festal gathering" (Hebrews 12: 22). Its cathedral church and protect-
ing image of Mother and Child tell us that the "heavenly Jerusalem" was
Moscow, whence angels brought martyrs' crowns to the returning soldiers,
many of whom had halos, and what appears to be an imperial crown for Ivan.
Scholars consider other prominent figures in the icon to represent Ivan's an-
cestors and Constantine the Great as in Makarii's speech of welcome and the
legend of Monomakh's crown, although a dissenting opinion takes as its text
a letter of Makarii to Ivan during the campaign to argue that they represented
living heros and recent martyrs. Most importantly, the iconographer em-

29. DavidB. Miller,"Legendsof the Icon of Our Lady of Vladimir,"Speculum43 (1968):

657-70;and loasafovskaialetopis', ed. A. A. Zimin(Moscow:Izdat.AN SSSR,1957),173-74,
180g81,on the 1520 procession.The monasterychurch of the Procession(sretenie) of the
[icon]of the Motherof God was locatedimmediatelyinsidethe wall of the Kitaigorod (put up
in 1534)by the Sretenskie(renamedNikol'skie)gate into Lubianka(thenDzerihinskaia,again
Lubianka?)Squareat the foot of SretenkaStreet.PeterI replacedthe originalwith a Churchto
Our Lady in 1691-92at his mother's request. The entire ensemblewas pulled down in the
1930sto make way for a station of the Moscowmetro ;anonymoussamizdat publications:
Moskvazlatoglavaia(Moscow:n.p., 1979-Paris:YMCAPress, 1980),no. 32; Razrushennyei
oskvernennyekhramy (Frankfurt:Possev, 1980), 128; and Pamiatniki arkhitekturyMoskvy.
Kreml',Kitaigorod, Tsentral'nyeploshchadi,ed A. I. Komechand V. 1.Pluzhnikov(Moscow:
Iskusstvo, 1982), 350-51 (diagram). The Vladimir icon probably resided permanently in
Moscowonly after 1552 when it became an object of special veneration.Ivan composeda
liturgicalhymn (stikhyra)in its honor and in his testamentof 1572orderedprayersto it; An-
dreev, "loann Groznyi," 186, n. 5; V. Antonova,"K voprosuo pervonachal'noikompozitsii
ikony vladimirskoibogomateri,"Vizantiiskiivremennik18 (1961): 198-205;I. N. Zhdanov,
"SochineniiaTsaria Ivana Vasilevicha,"Sochineniia,1 (St. Petersburg:Tip. Imp. Akad.nauk,
1904),esp. 101.
 309

ployed the traditional vocabulary of the Bible and liturgical service books in
his unprecedented celebration of the conquest.3o
The Church of the Intercession of Our Lady that by 1561 stood on Red
Square also was a novelty. In July 1555, Ivan and Makarii commissioned a
church to honor the victory over Kazan' and Her supernatural assistance. A
wooden church was quickly erected and Ivan publicly replayed his role as
crusader at Makarii's consecration ceremony of 30 September. It was then
pulled down and replaced with the masonry church with eight domed altars
surrounding a central altar that stands today. Although it elaborated the plan
of the suburban Church of St. John the Baptist in D'iakovo (1553-54) that
was probably built to commemorate the birth of Ivan Ivanovich, written
sources said its model was the Church of [the Holy Sepulchre inl Jerusalem.
The central altar honored the Virgin's intercession, the holiday (1 October),
on which Ivan began the final assault on Kazan'. Seven of eight surrounding
altars honored saints whose feast days coincided with lesser events of the
campaign. The eighth commemorated a saint on whose name day Ivan's army
returned to his "new Jerusalem." It is also likely that the court inaugurated
the Palm Sunday procession to the new Church that recreated an earlier tri-
umphal entry into Jerusalem to celebrate Ivan's return to his "new Jerusalem"
. .
from Kazan'.31
Finally, Ivan and Makarii commissioned bookmen who drew on tradi-
tional genres of annal, chronograph, and saint's life to write lavish histories
of "Russia" that repeated the inventions about Ivan's ancestry and God-given

30. The icon now is titled "The Church Militant." Cf. interpretationby Antonova in
Gos.Tret'iakovskaiagallereia,Katalog drevnerusskoizhivopisiXI-nachalaXVIIIvv.,2 vols.
(Moscow:Iskusstvo, 1963),2: 128-34,plates 37-41, and no. 338, app. 1; and Podobedova,
Moskovskaiashkola,22-39,92, plates:opp. p. 28, andnos. 34-43,with I. A. Kochetkov,"K is-
tolkovaniiuikony 'Tserkov' voinstvuiushchaia'(Blagoslovennovoinstvonebesnogotsaria'),"
TODRL38 (1985): 185-209,and Makarii'sletter,PSRL29: 89-90.Antonovais morepersua-
sive in that her indentificationscorrespondto labelson figuresin a similarcontemporaryicon.
Also M. K. Karger, "K voprosu ob izobrazhenii Groznogo na ikone 'Tserkov' Voin-
stvuiushchaia'," Sb. Otdeleniiarusskogo iazykai slovesnosti101, no. 3 (1928): 466-69;F.
Kampfer,"Die Eroberungvon Kasan 1552 als Gegenstandder zeitgendssichenrussischen
Historiographie,"FOG 14 (1969): 136-40;N. E. Andreev,"MitropolitMakarykak deiatel' re-
ligioznogoiskusstva,"SeminariumKondakovianum 7 (1935):235-43;Norretranders,Shaping,
110-20. Kampfer."Russland,"518-19, and Roland,paper read at meeting of the AAASS,
Chicago(Nov., 1989),suggesting that Ivan as the rider on whitehorseleadingthe centralcol-
umn was inspiredby Daniel,12 and Revelation,19:11-14;Kochetkov,"K istolkovaniiu,"204-
05, said liturgicalservicebooksinspiredthe icon.
31. Better known as the Church of Basil the Blessed. PSRL 13, pt. 1: 251-52, 255; F. '
Kampfer, "8ber die theologischeund architektonischeKonzeptionder Vasilij-Blazennyj-
Kathedralein Moskau,"JGO 24 (1976):481-98;Kochetkov,"K istolkovaniiu,"198-202;M.
A. Il'in, Kamennaialetopis' moskovskoiRitsi(Moscow:Izdat. Moskovskogoungta. 1966), 47-
55.
310

crown, about the Virgin as protectress, and had the Kazan' victory as their
culminating episode. These were the "Little Chronicle of the Beginning of
the Reign of Tsar and Grand Prince Ivan Vasil'evich," the "Book of Degrees
of the Imperial Genealogy," and the multi-volume "Illuminated Chronicle."
Despite being locked in. the source base of medieval Orthodox culture and,
lacking new models, unable entirely to transcend earlier genres, these con-
trived narratives were a bridge to modem Russian historical writing. 32
After Makarii's death in December 1563, and the inauguration of the
Oprichnina terror a year later, information about Kremlin activities became
sketchy. Ivan organized his Oprichnina court at Aleksandrovka as a monastic
regime, but it was a parody of theocratic monarchy, undermining rather than
reenforcing its "traditions." At Aleksandrovka Ivan was the dreaded
[groznyi] tsar in the guise of a guilt-ridden hegumen, arranging perpetual
prayers for those whom he had slain. His court of thugs were novices whose
symbols were dog's head and broom rather than the cross. The image of Ivan
as the groznyi tsar henceforth was to compete in folk memory with that of
the Christ-like tsar. Although he disbanded the Oprichnina court in 1572
and, according to foreign residents in Moscow, continued to celebrate the
new rituals, monarchy became less public as Ivan drifted deeper into
paranoia, and as social-economic crisis generated by terror and war placed
constraints on court culture.33 .

32. Texts (pp. for accountsof Kazan' campaign):PSRL29: 67-116;13,pt. 2: 460-522;and

21, pt. 2: 620-27,638-51.ConsultKampfer,"Die Eroberung";Pelenski,Russiaand Kazan,92-
135, 177-281;Kloss, Nikonovskiisvod, 206-65; Miller, "OfficialHistory";Miller,"Velikie
Minei Chetii and Stepennaiakniga," esp. 350-52;Edward L. Keenan,Jr., "The Troublewith
Muscovy:SomeObservationsupon Problemsof the ComparativeStudyof Formand Genrein
HistoricalWriting," Medievaliaet Humanistica,n.s. 5 (1974): 103-26;Ia. S. Lur'e, "Sud'ba
belletristikiv XVI v.," in Istokirusskoi belletfistiki,ed. Ia. S. Lur'e (L.eningrad:
Nauka,1970),
423-39;Hans Hecker,"PolitischesDenkenund Geschichtsschribung im MoskauerReichunter
Ivan IV," JGO 30 (1982) :1-15; P. Nitsche, "Translatio imperii?Beobachtungenzum Selb-
stverstindnisim MoskauerZartumum die Mittedes l6.Jahrhunderts,"JGO 35 ( 1987),321-38..
33. R. G. Skrynnikov,Oprichnyiterror (Leningrad:Izdat Leningradskogoun-ta, 1969),
249-89; Hugh Graham,ed. and tr., "A Brief Account of the Characterand Brutal Rule of
Vasil'evich, Tyrant of Muscovy,"Canadian-AmericanSlavic Studies 9 (1975):218, 232;
"PoslanielogannaTaube i Elerta Kruze,"Russkiiistoricheskiizhurnal8 (1922):39-40,on the
regimeat Aleksandrovka.Norretranders,Shaping, 130-51;RichardHellie,"WhatHappened?
How Did He Get AwayWith It? Ivan Groznyi'sParanoiaand the Problemof InstitutionalRe-
straints,"Russian History, 14 (1987): 199-224,on Ivan's paranoia.NormanW. Ingham,"The
Grozaof Ivan Groznyiin RussianFolklore,"ibid.:225-45; MaureenPerrie,TheImageof Ivan
the Terrible in RussianFolklore (New York: CambridgeUniv. Press, 1987),on Ivan in folk
memory.A. A. Zimin,Vkanungroznykh potriasenii(Moscow:Mysl', 1986), 7-103, on Ivan's
last years.
 311

DEATH

Tsar Ivan died in Moscow 19 March 1584. He had been ill much of the
previous winter, so his death at age fifty-three was not unexpected. Like his
father and other ancestors, Ivan made his testament and was tonsured, taking
the name Iona. He was buried with his forebears and their next of kin in the
Kremlin Church of the Archangel Michael. The death ritual was conven-
tional. Nevertheless, memorializing Ivan's death was at least as important to
the living--to ritualize the continuity of authority and to reafFrm the sacred-
ness of the political and social order-as it was perceived to be for the dying.
In particular, it was vital for the boyar Boris Godunov that there be collective
recognition of the transfer of power to Ivan's oldest surviving son and his
brother-in-law, the weak-minded Fedor. There was considerable opposition to
this, and Fedor's coronation did not take place until 31 May. This was not
evident, however, in a text inspired by Boris and appended to a seventeenth-
century copy of Ivan's "Illuminated Chronicle." It described the coronation as
if it had followed Ivan's death as a matter of course, with universal acclaim,
and had Fedor don the same "crown of Monomakh."34
But Ivan had anticipated his own passing in the mid-1560s by having
the interior of the family burial church repainted. As in the Gold Room,
portraits of Ivan's ancestors and relatives were nearest eye level under the
canopy of images of the Christian universe. Above the tomb that Ivan had
prepared for himself in the Chapel of St. John the Baptist within the church
we again find the scene of Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm
Sunday. The images of Ivan's ancestors of pre-Mongol Rus', including St.
Volodimer and his mother Ol'ga, adorned the church's four internal pillars.
The pillars also had portraits of Byzantine rulers--Constantine I, his mother
Helen, and others tentatively identified as Empresses Theodora and Irene, and
Emperor Michael VIII (d. 1282), progenitor of the Palaeologos dynasty of
Ivan's grandmother Sophia, as well as Sts. Simeon-Stephen and his son
Sava, and Lazar, d. 1389, the first and the last of the independent Serbian
dynasty who were ancestors of Ivan's mother. Portraits of Russian princes,
and of Ivan's mother Elena wearing an imperial crown, covered lower levels

34. Cf. PSRL 29: 219-23with 14: 34-35; 34: 194-95,with James Horsey'sdescriptionof
Ivan's death and subsequentevents in Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations,vol. 3
(reprintedNew York:AMCPress, 1965),336-43;also Zimin, Vkanun,104-13;DanielKaiser,
"SocialCohesionand DeathRitualsin Early ModemRussia,"paper read at meetingof Amer.
Hist. Assoc.,Chicago(28 Dec. 1984);Kantorowicz,TwoBodies,423-37;Durkheim,Elemen-
tary Forms,434-47.
312

of the three walls other than that behind the altar. Next to each was a
medallion with the image of the prince's name-saint.35
The restorer, E. S. Sizov, thought the ensemble of princes followed the
format of Makarii's "Book of Degrees of the Imperial Genealogy." In addi-
tion to its gallery of Ivan's forebears, a fresco cycle in the loge depicted
Volodimer's baptism of Rus' in a manner of Russian chronicles according to
which envoys of different faiths sought his conversion after which divine in-
spiration, in the form of a hand reaching from heaven. l##bless him, guided
Volodimer to Orthodoxy, an image repeated from the Gold Room of the
palace. The next fresco of the cycle contained a more recent variation on the
"Kherson legend" of divine inspiration, to wit that conversion cured
Volodimer of blindness, a miracle that duplicated the experience of Constan-
tine the Great on his baptism. In this context Ol'ga was a "new Helen" just
as Volodimer was a "new Constantine," a formula also in the "Book of De-
grees." Most of the princely visages that stare down at us had halos. This
held true for piinces who had not been canonized as for those who had, sug-
gesting that the patron desired that the viewer reify the sacredness of the dy-
nasty and, perhaps, of princely authority in general. It is an anomaly that
Volodimer Monomakh cannot be identified among images of Kievan princes
in the restoration. Although this may be the fault of later painters, in that he
was supposed to have been the first to wear an imperial crown, it was art im-
portant omission. Possibly, by the 1660s, if not in the 1560s, painters, in
emphasizing the founding role of St. Volodimer, no longer thought it neces-
sary to render literally the original scheme of the legend. Finally, in addition
to images of Ivan's "ancestors," one finds those of other "Russian" saint-

35. Built in 1504-09by Alevizio"the New" for Vasilii HI; Lazarev,"Iskusstvo,"286-95.

Between 1652and 1656 Stepan Rezanetsand Simon Ushakovrepainiedthe church to Tsar
Aleksei's order that it be "exactly as it had been." E. S. Sizov's restoration(1950s)revealed
the originalso deterioratedthat one must regard the repaintingas an approximationof the im-
ages of the 1560s ;Iu. N. Dmitriiev,"Stenopis' Arkhangel'skogosoboraMoskovskogokrem-
lia," and E. S. Sizov, "Datirovkarospisi Arkhangel'skogosobora moskovskogokremlia i is-
toricheskaiaosnova nekotorykhee siuzhetov,"in AN SSSR,In-t ist. iskusstv,Drevnerusskie
iskusstvo.XVIIveka (Moscow:Nauka, 1964), 138-74;MichaelChemiavsky,"Ivan the Tern-
ble and the Iconographyof the KremlinCathedralof the ArchangelMichael,"RussianHistory
2 (1975):3-28;E. S. Sizov,"Russkieistoricheskiedeiateliv rospisiakhArkhangel'skogosobora
i pamiatnikipismennostiXVI v.," TODRL22 (1966):264-76;idem,Voobrazheny podobiia kni-
azei. Stenopis' Arkhangel'skogosobora moskovskogokremlia (Leningrad: Avrora, 1969);
Kmpfer,"Russland,"514-17.
 313

princes who were canonized in 1547 and 1549.36 They were immortal testi-
mony that Russia was the "new Israel."

EPITAPH

If Moscow as political and sacradotal center were an icon, the tsar would
be at its center, larger than life. In a well-ordered hierarchy family, boyar ad-
visers and clergy, army commanders, and believers surrounded the tsar, rec-
ognizing that in the image of God he reigned over the sacred splendor of
Moscow, both new Jerusalem and new Rome, political and cult center of the
new Israel, and that they shared according to rank in this glory. Byzantines
would have recognized and accepted this formulation. In fact, one did. Writ-
ing to Ivan about 1545, Maximos the Greek said "that the earthly Tsar was
none other than the living and visible form of the the Tsar of Heaven Him-
self." Byzantines also would have accepted as natural the intensity of reli-
gious expression found in such an icon. So too could Russians of all classes
from whose culture the Kremlin image makers had improvised their rituals
and symbols. The tsar-icon was the master fiction that defined sovereignty.
The court might reject or, in time of crisis, the narod might remove a tsar
bodily. But they did so in the name of the tsar whose image continued to
command reverence and obedience binding society together.3?
Byzantines also would have perceived that Russians had introduced
variations on a common theme, variations which, following Hobsbawm, I
have called invented traditions. Of these, the legend of the origin of Ivan the
Terrible's crown was most important. Its translation from Constantinople to
Rus' signified the passing of divine favor to the new Rome. In the passing,
the medieval dream of universal empire, upon which the Byzantines insisted,
even as their realm was reduced to little more than Constaninople, died. The
new Rome was political and cult center of "Russia," itself the invention of
the writers, painters and stage managers who defined Ivan's authority. In their

36. Sizov,"Russkie,"265-67,and PSRL21, pt. 1: 11-12,14, 22, 95-97,whichdecodedthe

Kherson legend by adding the explanation of the first Russian chronograph (written by
MetropolitanDaniil)that on conversionSS. Peterand Paulappearedto Volodimerin Kherson,
now with sight restored,as they had to Constantineafter a similarmiracle (the late fifth-cen-
tury "Sylvesterlegend"of Constantine'sbaptism.Cf. withPSRL1, 2d ed.: 111;22, pt. 1: 263-
64, and see Miller,"Velikieminei chetii andStepennaiakniga,"328-29;CyrilMangoand Thor
Sevcenko,"Remainsof the Churchof St. Polyeuktosat Constantinople," DumbartonOaks Pa-
pers 15 (1961):244-46.
37. SochineniiaprepodobnogoMaksimaGreka, 3 vols.,2nd ed. (Kazan':Tip. Kazanskogo
imp. universiteta, 1894-97),2: 350; A. I. Ivanov, Literaturnoe nasledie Makrima Greka
(Leningrad:Nauka, 1969), 148-49;and a readingof Lotmanand Uspenskij,Semiotics,3-4, 54-
S5, 260-63,280.
314

imagination Russia came into being in Kiev when St. Volodimer baptized
Rus' making it a new Israel. Ivan the Terrible, Volodimer's descendent, ruled
this same Russia in the sixteenth century. The legend that Mother of God
was Russia's palladium was a gloss on the legend of the crown. The icon of
Our Lady of Vladimir, like Monomakh's crown, came from Byzantium to
the dynasty in Kiev, moved with it to the northeast, and was the intermedi-
ary through which the Mother of God caused Russia's rulers to defeat Bulgar,
Tamerlane, and Kazan'.
The "tsar-icon" with its historical myth was the center of a court culture
whose collective rituals and symbols were reinforced by a "common author-
ity, interlocking personnel, personal relationships, contracts, perceived identi-
ties of interest, a sense of affinity within a transcendent whole, and a territo-
rial location possessing symbolic value." Paraphrasing David Kertzer, the rit-
uals developed in the mid-sixteenth century to display the "tsar-icon" gave
meaning to the world by linking past to present and present to future. Their
vitality was selfcreenforcing for over a century after they came into being.
Godunov's ideologues at Fedor's court replicated his father's rituals and re-
produced his myths in rebuilding the Kremlin's walls and by repainting its
reception hall called the Palace of Facets. The Romanovs, to claim roots in
the old dynasty across the anarchy of the Time of Troubles (1605-13), re-
peated the process in coronation, marriage, and liturgical ceremonies, and in
refurbishing the Kremlin, while omitting or distorting those details of ritual
and iconography that came to seem unnatural or were misunderstood.38
The court culture of the Kremlin also became the image of Moscow as
political center for ordinary folk of the ethnically Russian heartland of the
state. It provided them with an authority outside themselves that "[gave]
meaning to major events of existence and [explained] why things happen and
why some things are better than other things," which bound disparate polities
together. The tolling of the great Kremlin bells on special occasions, and the
tsar's processions and pilgrimages were powerful transmitters of such values
throughout the center of the realm and beyond. Of course, the affinities cre-
ated by the central value system diminished in power and became more in-
termittant in their attraction the farther one moved away from the court,
whether geographically or down the social ladder. Indeed on the periphery,
where it was necessary, officials administered non-Russians, with consider-
able flexibility and tolerance of indigenous social and cultural values. Yet,
only images of tsar and court as political center elicited patriotism of provin-

38. Shils,Center and Periphery,the q.uotation,p. 38; David1. Kertzer,Ritual,Politics,and

Power (NewHaven,CT: Yale Univ.Press, 1988),esp. 9-13; also Bartenev,Kremel', esp. 233-
34; Zabetin,Materialy, esp. 1255-72;DRV,2d ed. 13: 137-74;Barsov,"Pamiatniki,"91-97;
Crummey,"CourtSpectacles";Miller,"OfficialHistory,"348-60.
 315

cial military servicemen, townsmen, cossacks, and even of simple peasants,

during the Time of Troubles. In Volga towns and on the southern frontier
one pretender after another organized courts that were crude replicas of Krem-
lin court culture. Nor did the founding of the "Western" capital in St. Peters-
burg entirely dislodge the image of Moscow as the "true" political center in
the collective consciousness of Russia's educated elite, let alone in that of
ordinary folk. Slavophile tradition, the "naive monarchism" of primitive
rebels into the nineteenth century, and the iconography of the Old Believer
sect testified to the power of the more ancient image.39 .
The undergraduate in the United States who has taken a survey course in
Russian history will find this outline familiar. It survived Peter the Great
and, stripped of its religious justifications, reappeared in the history of Rus-
sia written by Peter's disciple V. N. Tatishchev. Like Tatishchev, nineteenth-
century historians relied on narrative sources conceived or edited in the six-
teenth century, or influenced by them, and thus wrote histories of Russia un-
der the spell of Ivan's mythmakers: Nikolai Karamzin made dynastic continu-
ity the spinal cord of Russian history. S. M. Solov'ev, his contemporaries,
and V. 0. Kliuchevskii (and therefore, until recently, American writers of
textbooks on Russian history) followed the same scheme in "scientific" narra-
tives of "organic" development. Others, under the spell of romanticism re-
stored religion as the cultural sub-text of national history.40 ..

Roosevelt University

39. Durkheim,ElementaryForms, 261-62,and see 462-96;Shils,Center and Periphery,4;

Smith,Ethnic, esp. 6-18; Lane,Rites, esp. 25-33;EdwardV. Williams,The Bells of Russia
(Princeton:PrincetonUniv.Press, 1985), 135-47.On the penetrationof court valuesinto popu-
lar culture:S. F. Platonov,TheTimeof Troubles,trans.J. Alexander(Lawrence:Univ.Press of
Kansas, 1975);P. Longworth,"The Pretender Phenomenonin Eighteenth-CenturyRussia,"
Past and Present 66 (1975): 61-83; Paul Avrich,Russian Rebels, 1600-1800(New York:
Schocken,1972);MichaelChemiavsky,"The Old Believersand the New Religion,"Slavic
Review25 (196):1-39;Lotmanand Uspenskij,Semiotics,53-67,259-90;and on its limits:An-
drcas Kappeler,"I`Tationalismusim Viciv6lkcrreichRussland?"in Nationalismusin vori1dus-
trieller Zeit,ed. Otto Dann (Munich:R. Oldenbourg,1986),83-99;idem.,"Das MoskauerRe-
ich des 17.Jahahundertsund' seinenichtrussischenUntertanen,"paperpresentedat the Seventh
InternationalConference on the History of the Kievan and Muscovite States, Berlin, 24
September1992.See also HansRogger,NationalConsciousnessin EighteenthCenturyRussia
(Cambridge,MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1960);RichardWortman,"Moscowand Petersburg:
The Problemof PoliticalCenterin TsaristRussia,1881-1914,"in Ritesof Power,244-71.
40. V. N. Tatishchev,Istoriia rossiiskaia, 7 vols. (Moscow-Leningrad: lzdat. AN SSSR,
1962-68);Robert F. Byrnes, "Kliuchevskiion the Multi-NationalRussian State," Seymour
Becker,"Contributionsto a National Ideology:Historiesof Russia in the First Half of the
NineteenthCentury,"Carl Reddel,"S. M. Solov'evand Multi-NationalHistory," and Edward
Thaden,"V. N. Tatishchev,GermanHistorians,and the St. PetersburgAcademyof Sciences,"
RussianHistory13 ( 1986):313-98.