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Ivan IV's Personal Mythology of Kingship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Priscilla Hunt
Priscilla Hunt*
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The Five Colleges, Inc.
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Extract

Ivan IV was the head of a theocratic state and an ardent participant in the spiritual culture of his church. He nevertheless seems to have deliberately flaunted the religious standards which were the basis of his legitimacy, especially during the Oprichnina (1564-1572). He reveled in blasphemy and his cruelties often manifested the ironic twist of what is termed "glumlenie": he denigrated his victims, ostentatiously violating their status by immersing them in inverted worlds of carnival. Although scholars have explored Ivan's motivations, no one has adequately explained the contradiction between his affirmation of his official status as model Christian and his blasphemous and immoral behavior.

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Articles
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Slavic Review , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , Winter 1993 , pp. 769 - 811
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1993

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References

1. For instance, during the sack of Novgorod, Ivan was said to have hosted the Archbishop Pimen's “marriage” to a mare and to have forced him to ride her backwards to Moscow with his legs tied together, strumming on the bagpipes and playing on the zither (the instruments of the skomorokhi), where he was to enter his name in the register of skomorokhi. See Graham, Hugh F., ed., “'A Brief Account of the Character and Brutal Rule of Vasil'evich, Tyrant of Muscovy’ (Albert Schlichting on Ivan Groznyi),” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 9, no. 2 (1975): 204–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 235-36. See also Likhachev, D. S. and Panchenko, A.M., ( “Smekhovoi mir” drevnei Rusi [Leningrad: Nauka, 1976], 39–42 Google Scholar) who, in analyzing Ivan's verbal abuse, provide a parallel example of denigration of an enemy through associating him with the musical instruments of the skomorokhi. They also point out (ibid., 33-35) that Ivan denigrated himself through carnival behavior to inflict punishment, to instruct, etc. His behavior can be summarized under the term “glumlenie” which, according to Slovar’ russkogo iazyka XI-XVII w. (Moskva: Nauka, 1977, 4: 36-37) referred to carnival-type games, including blasphemous forms of masking and dancing characteristic of the skomorokhi, and also to ironic joking, the explicit purpose of which was denigration.

2. See The Russian Review 49 (1990): 125-55, especially 145 and 149. On the question of the limits on the tsar's powers, see also St. Filipp Metropolitan of Moscow— Encounter with Ivan the Terrible, trans. R. Haugh and N. Lupinin (Belmont: Nordland, 1978), 147-56.

3. See Kliuchevskii, V. O., Sochineniia (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1957), II: 196 Google Scholar.

4. Smilyanich, M. A., “Tentative d'explication de la personnalité d’ Ivan le Terrible,” Revue des études slaves 48 (1969): 117–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Cherniavsky, Michael, (Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myths [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961], 50 Google Scholar) writes that “ … in Ivan's eyes his own humanity is fully absorbed by his godlike office. ”

6. Panchenko, A.M. and Uspenskii, B. A., “Ivan Groznyi i Petr Velikii: kontseptsii pervogo monarkha” in Trudy otdela drevnei russkoi literatury (TODRL Leningrad: Nauka, 1983) 37: 54–78 Google Scholar.

7. See “Smekhovoi mir” drevnei Rusi, 32-44, 62. On the connection between Ivan's writings and his actions, see 40. On the “kromeshnyi mir” as an “antiworld” to the Christian one with an element of unreality, nonsense or masquerade, see ibid., 57-75. On the monastic regime of the Oprichnina as parody, see ibid., 61.

8. R. Crummey pointed out that Kliuchevskii in his Sochineniia, 2: 157-99 was the first to suggest the possibility that Ivan's personality rather than political or social causes was the key to the Oprichnina. Even though Ivan believed he was using the Oprichnina to establish his absolute power, “its structure, policies and methods reflected Ivan's unbalanced mind rather than the social realities with which he was trying to deal.” See Crummey, R., “Ivan the Terrible,” in Windows on the Russian Past, eds. Baron, Samuel H. and Heer, Nancy W. (Columbus: American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, 1977), 57–74 Google Scholar, esp. 57. On Ivan's paranoia as an explanation for the Oprichnina, see Crummey, R. O., “New Wine in Old Bottles? Ivan IV and Novgorod,” Russian History 14, nos. 1-4 (1987): 61 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Richard Hellie, “What Happened? How Did He Get Away with It?: Ivan Groznyi's Paranoia and the Problem of Institutional Restraints,” ibid., 199-225.

9. Stressing that the paranoid has the ability to function completely rationally and normally in spheres not affected by his delusional system, Richard Hellie posited Ivan's use of the ideology of sacred kingship elaborated under the Metropolitan Macarius to justify his actions to himself (ibid., 217).

10. On Ivan's assertion of absolute power over the Church and absolute authority over its dogma (his role as an “apostle of dogmas ” ) in relation to tradition, see St. Filipp Metropolitan of Moscow, 143-47.

11. Hellie (ibid., 217) has proposed that Ivan's sacral sense of self allowed for moral escapism.

12. See Eliade, Mircea, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Trask, Willard R. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1959), 95–99, esp. 98Google Scholar. Ivan IV frequently manifested his ritual efficacy in public ceremonies throughout the calendar year, such as the Palm Sunday ritual, the Blessing of the Waters at Epiphany, the autumn pilgrimage on foot to the Holy Trinity Monastery, etc. See I. Zabelin, Domashnii byt russkikh tsarei v XVIiXVIIst. (Moscow: Tovarishchestvo tipograSi A. I. Mamontova, 1895), 367-444; and Hubbs, Joanna, Mother Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 182–90Google Scholar. For an analysis of the way a court ritual articulates a mythology of kingship, see Flier, Michael, “Emperor as Mythmaker: Ivan the Terrible and the Palm Sunday Ritual,” forthcoming in Rossica, eds. Ingerfiom, C.,Kondrat'eva, T., Wortman, R. and Uspenskii, B., (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, and Moscow: Progress, 1992)Google Scholar.

13. See Victor Turner, W., Forest of Symbols (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 27–32 Google Scholar. “Dominant symbols” distill to a symbolic essence the “total system of interrelations between groups and persons that makes up … society…. Some of the meanings of important symbols may themselves be symbols, each with its own system of meanings.” In other words, they not only condense the “system of interrelations,” they also subsume the “hierarchy” of lesser symbols which serve as intermediate links in the creation of symbolic interrelationships between different-aspects of the society. Turner includes the following in the dominant symbol's function of “condensation ”: “unification of disparate significata. The disparate significata are interconnected by virtue of their common possession of analogous qualities or by association in fact or thought.… The very generality of [such qualities or links of association] enables them to bracket together the most diverse ideas and phenomena….” Turner is speaking of ritual. The same hierarchical structure can be found in myths which represent the “narratives associated with rites” according to Somerset, Fitzroy Richard, Raglan, Baron, The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth, and Drama (New York: Vintage Books, 1956), 141 Google Scholar.

14. As Ernst Cassirer has written, in “mythic ideation … the mental view is not widened, but compressed; it is, so to speak, distilled into a single point… Every part of a whole is the whole itself; every specimen is equivalent to the entire species. The part does not merely represent the whole, or the specimen its class; they are identical with the totality to which they belong … Here one is reminded forcefully of the principle which might be called the basic principle of verbal as well as mythic ‘metaphor'— the principle of pars pro toto.” See Language and Myth, trans. S. K. Langer (New York: Dover, 1946), 89-92. On the dialectic of opposites, see Forest of Symbols, 28 and Claude Levi-Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth,” Journal of American Folklore 68 (1955): 439-92.

15. The theological motivation for this system of analogies could be found in the treatise “On the Celestial Hierarchies” of the Pseudo-Dionysios the Areopagite, which was included by the Metropolitan Macarius in his Great Book of Hours for Reading. See Velikie minei chet'i sobrannye vserossiiskim mitropolitom Makariem (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi akademii nauk, 1870), October, day 3 (VMCh), 263-375. In chap. 3, 297, the Areopagite likens those who have perfected their true natures and become like God to a “mirror” illuminated by divine light. This light was the expression of the “energies” through which God related to the world “outside” of his transcendent essence. They expressed the common “will” of the three Persons in Trinity and the means of the “in-dwelling of the Holy Trinity” in the Creation. They were also called “wisdom” as well as “grace,” “rays of divinity,” “divine light,” “power,” “glory.” See Losskii, Vladimir, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, (London: James Clarke, 1957), 67–90, 138–39Google Scholar. On the doctrine of energies in the writings of Dionysios the Areopagite and his commentator Maximus the Confessor, see idem, The Vision of God (London: Faith Press, 1963), 99-110. See also idem, The Mystical Theology, 97. Losskii (in The Mystical Theology, 86) notes that the image of the mirror was used to explain the mystery by which the hidden and unknowable God becomes manifest in creation by way of divine energies. “God, who is inaccessible in His essence, is present in His energies ‘as in a mirror, ’ remaining invisible in that which He is; ‘in the same way we are able to see our faces, themselves invisible to us in a glass, ’ according to a saying of St. Gregory Palamas.” The necessity of revealing the unknowable and transcendent in concrete earthly images gave rise to the deliberately paradoxical and esoteric symbolism of Wisdom iconography. In the Areopagite's episde “Titu-ierarkhu, voprosivshemu poslaniem, chto takoe dom Premudrosti, chto—chasha i chto—eda ee i pit'e. Deviatoe,” he writes “ … obo … sviashchennykh uslovnykh znakakh bogovyrazheniia … stavshikh delimymi iz edinykh i nedelimykh, obraznymi i mnogovidnymi iz besformennykh i neobraznykh, koikh skrytuiu krasotu esli by kto-nibud’ smog uvidet', nashel by vse tainstvennym i bogovidnym i napolnennym mnogogo bogoslovskogo sveta… . chtoby ne stalo dostupnym dlia neposviashchennykh vsesviatoe i chtoby otkryvalos’ ono tol'ko istinnym priverzhentsam blagochestiia … vidim takzhe i vsesviateishikh angelov cherez zagadki, tainstvenno bozhestvennoe otkryvaiushchim… . ” I have cited Gelian Prokhorov's modern Russian translation which he presents side by side with the Slavonic translation in “Poslanie Titu-ierarkhu Dionisiia Areopagita v slavianskom perevode i ikonografiia ‘Premudrost’ sozda sebe dom,” TODRL 38 (1985): 23-27.

16. See “Pervoe poslanie Ivana Groznogo Kurbskomu: 1-ia prostrannaia redaktsiia,” in la. Lur'e and Iu.D. Rykov, Perepiska Ivana Groznogo s Andreem Kurbskim, 12-52; his “Poslanie v Kirillo-Beloozerskii monastyr'” in Likhachev, D. S. and Lur'e, Ia.S., Poslaniia Ivana Groznogo (Moscow: Izd. Akademii nauk SSSR, 1951 Google Scholar), Slavica-Reprint, no. 41 (Düsseldorf: Brücken-Verlag, 1970), 162-92; Likhachev, D. S., ed., “Kanon i molitva Angelu Groznomu voevode Parfeniia iurodivogo (Ivana Groznogo),” Rukopisnoe nasledie Drevnei Rusi: Po materialam Pushkinskogo Doma, ed. Panchenko, A.M. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1972), 10–27 Google Scholar; “Dukhovnaia gramota tsaria Ivana Vasil'evicha IV,” in R. C. Howes, trans, and ed., The Testaments of the Grand Princes of Moscow (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), 155-73. See Keenan, Edward L., The Kurbskii-Groznyi Apocrypha: The Seventeenth-Century Genesis of the ‘Correspondence’ Attributed to Prince A.M. Kurbskii and Tsar Ivan IV (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971 CrossRefGoogle Scholar). On the literature concerning the authenticity of the correspondence between Ivan IV and A.M. Kurbskii, see Charles Halperin, “A Heretical View of Sixteenth-Century Muscovy: Edward L. Keenan: The Kurbskii-Groznyi Apocrypha,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, Neue Folge, Band 22, 1974, Heft 2, 160-86; La. Lur'e and Rykov, Iu.D., Perepisha Ivana Groznogo s Andreem Kurbskim, (Leningrad: Nauka, 1979) 251–54Google Scholar. Likhachev (Rusopisnoe nasledie, 17) attributes the “Canon and Prayer” to Groznyi on the basis of its author's pseudonym, Parfenii iurodivyi. Another text with the same pseudonym, “Poslanie neizvestnomu protiv Liutorov” was a reworking of Ivan's “Otvet Ianu Rokite,” produced around 1572, according to Likhachev. Likhachev dates the “Canon and Prayer” to the same year. The canon's expression of Ivan's fear of sudden and unexpected death suggests that it was written during the time of his withdrawal to Novgorod when he was expecting a second Tatar invasion. Likhachev notes that the “Canon and Prayer” express the same state of mind as the “Testament” which S. V. Veselovskii ( “Dukhovnoe zaveshchanie Ivana Groznogo kak istoricheskii istochnik,” Izvestiia AN SSSR, Seriia istorii i filosofii iv, no. 6 [1947]: 505-20) has dated between June and August 1672 on the basis of internal evidence. The testament is a highly unique example of its genre surviving in only one nineteenth century copy of an eighteenth century copy of an alleged original that circulated in private circles, as a kind of draft. Veselovskii points out that the confessional preamble is uncharacteristic of the genre of grandprincely will. This preamble is the subject of my analysis here and expresses, as I claim, the work of Ivan's personal myth-making to which he devotes himself during this period. For Likhachev's dating of the “Epistle to the Kirillo-Beloozerskii monastery” (which contains historically verifiable facts but exists only in copies dating from the late seventeenth century), see “Poslanie Groznogo v Kirillo-Beloozerskii monastyr’ 1573 g.,” TODRL 8 (1951): 247-87.

17. Cherniavsky (Tsar and People, 52) noted that the absorption of the myth of the saintly prince into the new myth of the tsar “destroyed the tension between the twin but inequal natures of the Agapetan ruler.” The Wisdom theology of Macarius and his circle emphasized the unity of the two natures in the Word.

18. On the ideology of the Russian prince as martyr, see Tsar and People, 5-49. On the identification of the tsar with God, see Viktor M. Zhivov and Boris A. Uspenskii, “Tsar’ i Bog: Semioticheskie aspekty sakralizatsii monarkha v Rossii,” in Uspenskii, B. A., Russkaia kul'tura i iazyki perevodimosti, (Moscow, Nauka, 1987), 47-153, esp. 47–61 Google Scholar. On Wisdom theology in Byzantium and Russia, see Pavel Florovskii, “O pochitanii Sofii, Premudrosti Bozhiei v Vizantii i na Rusi,” Trudy piatogo s “'ezda russhikh akademicheskikh organizatsii za granitsei, Part I (Sofia, 1932), 485-500. Podobedova, O. I. (Moskovskaia shkola zhivopisi pri Ivane IV: Raboty v Moskovskom kremle 40-kh-70-kh godov XVI v. [Moscow: Nauka, 1972]Google Scholar) describes in detail the new iconography produced under the Metropolitan Macarius located predominantly in the Kremlin cathedrals of the Dormition, the Annunciation and the Archangel Michael, the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Mother of God in Red Square (St. Basil's) and the Golden Throne Room of the Tsar's palace. Its abstruse subject matter called forth new iconographic themes based on untraditional sources. These innovations and the unprecedented sacralization of the historical process made them highly controversial. See Miller, David,” The Viskovatyi Affair of 1553-4,” Russian History 8 (1981): 317 Google Scholar. On the theological grounds for the controversy, see “O pochitanii Sofii, Premudrosti Bozhiei v Vizantii i na Rusi,” 490-95.

19. On the interrelations of the Persons of the Trinity, Their nature as Parts equal to the Whole, see Losskii, Vladimir, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 71, 80-83 and 242Google Scholar. The Logos is “the force or power of the Father, or his operation … the divine ‘idea and energy’ manifesting itself in creation … ‘Power and Wisdom, '” (71). On the Christological orientation of Wisdom theology, see also Fiene, “What Is the Appearance of the Divine Sophia?” 449-76. The essential importance of the unity of Christ's two natures as a paradigm of divine Wisdom was expressed in a text attributed to Zinovii Otenskii, “Skazanie izvestno, chto est’ Sofei Premudrost’ Bozhiia,” written to illuminate the name of the Novgorod Cathedral of St. Sophia and come down to us in seventeenth century manuscripts. See A. I. Nikol'skii, “Sofiia Premudrost’ Bozhiia: Novgorodskaia redaktsiia ikony i sluzhba Sv. Sofii,” Vestnik arkheologii i istorii 17 (St. Petersburg), prilozhenie III, 92-98. It draws on the sources of Wisdom theology from the Psalms, Proverbs, the “Epistle of Dionysios the Areopagite to the Hierarch Titus,” and the writings of John the Damascene and John the Divine to characterize Wisdom and identify it with the Word. Its main focus is a refutation of the heresy which refuses to recognize the unity of Christ's human and divine natures in his Personhood as Word.

20. The “Poslanie Munekhinu na zvezdochetstev” stated its central idea: “ … iako vsia khristianskaia tsarstva priidosha v konets i snidoshasia vo edino tsarstvo nashego gosudaria.” See Malinin, V. N., Starets Eleazarova monastyria Filofei i ego poslaniia: Istorikoliteraturrwe issledovanie (Kiev: Tip. Kievo-Pecherskoi Uspenskoi Lavry, 1901; rpt., Westmead, Farnborough, Hants: Gregg, 1971), 45Google Scholar. The “Third Rome” theory was articulated at the end of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century in several works commonly attributed to the monk Filofei of the Eleazarova monastery of Pskov, the above mentioned epistle, which was included in Macarius’ Great Book of Hours for Reading, and two other works, “Poslanie o krestnom znamenii” addressed to the Muscovite Grand Prince and “Ob obidakh tserkvi.” It represented a key element in the full-fledged ideology of the state developed during the reign of Ivan IV through the efforts of Metropolitan Macarius and his circle. For the texts, see ibid., 37-47, 49-66. See also Cherniavsky, , Tsar and People, 71 Google Scholar; Stremooukhoff, D., “Moscow the Third Rome, Sources of the Doctrine” in The Structure of Russian History, ed. Cherniavsky, Michael, (New York: Random House, 1970), 108-25 esp. 115Google Scholar; and A. L. Gol'dberg, “Ideia ‘Moskvatretii Rim’ v tsikle sochinenii pervoi poloviny XVI v.,” TODRL 37 (1983): 139; and idem, “Tri ‘poslaniia Filofeia'” TODRL 29 (1974): 68-97.

21. On Wisdom as the unity of opposites, see subject heading number 94 in the table of contents of the Pseudo-Areopagite's “On the Divine Names,” in VMCh, 380; see also chap. VII, Part I of “On the Divine Names,” as well as the commentary of Maximus the Confessor in VMCh, 542-43; and the “Poslanie Titu-Ierarkhu.” For a discussion of the Pseudo-Areopagite's ideas of transcendence and divine Plenitude, see Losskii, , The Vision of God, 99–104 Google Scholar. On the importance of the Pseudo-Areopagitic corpus for Wisdom iconography and theology in the Muscovite period, see Prokhorov, “Poslanie Titu-ierarkhu Dionisiia Areopagita,” 7-41; on the medieval Slavonic translation of the Pseudo-Areopagitic corpus, see idem, Pamiatniki perevodnoi literatury XIVXV vekov (Leningrad: Nauka, 1987).

22. See Losskii, , The Mystical Theology, 105 Google Scholar.

23. See ibid., 71, 82, 98.

24. See Isaiah 7: 14, and 9: 6 in the Septuagint: “For a child is born to us, and a son is given to us, whose government is upon his shoulder: and his name is called the Messenger of great counsel … His government shall be great, and of his peace there is no end. It shall be upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom to establish it and to support it with judgment and with righteousness, from henceforth and forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts shall perform this.” On the Trinity as a “council” see ibid., 94; and “Slovo Ioanna Zlatousta ‘O vochelovechenii gospodi, '” in Margarit (Moscow: 1641), 476-76 ob.

25. See Losskii, , The Mystical Theology, 139–49Google Scholar.

26. On the “divine economy,” see ibid., 82, 139; on the four-part icon, see Podobedova, , Moskovskaia shkola zhivopisi, 40–58 Google Scholar. Podobedova sees this icon as the culmination of a whole cycle of dogmatic and Christological icons commissioned by Macarius after the fire of 1547. It was the object of violent controversy during the Viskovatyi affair. See also Kachalova, I. La., Mayasova, N. A. and Shchennikova, L. A., Blagoveshchenkii sobor Moskovskogo kremlia (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1990), 61-64 and 178–86Google Scholar (plates).

27. The Ancient of Days, according to the vision of Daniel, 7: 9 was a favored iconic expression of the Word in His dual nature as Sabaoth-Emmanuel. In his vision Daniel referred to the Second Coming as a process of enthronement of the Ancient. Daniel's image of enthronement linked the Ancient to the Emmanuel-Sabaoth according to Isaiah's prophecy that a child “shall be upon the throne of David” who is messenger of the Great Council (the Trinity containing all the days of the world from before the beginning of time).

28. Podobedova's interpretation of the wings on the Christ to the right of Ancient of Days as a symbol of His dual nature applies also to the wings on the Christ to his left (see op.cit., 44). On the angelic Christ, see Meyendorff, “L'iconographie de la sagesse divine,” 266-69; and Fiene, “What is the Appearance of the Divine Sophia,” 457-60.

29. See Moskovskaia shkola zhivopisi, 45. The images of the Word in this panel recapitulate and extend the meaning of the images of the Word in the upper left hand panel depicting the Creation, beginning with His manifestation in Trinity. The angels on the right and left of the Emmanuel are in reverse order to the angels to the right and left of the angelic Christ in the “Creation” panel. The moon and the sun on the left and right of the “Trinity” respectively are present also in the panel of the Creation between the upper and lower registers, dividing the act of creation from created being. The firmament beneath the feet of the Archangel Michael to the right of the Trinity recapitulates the firmament in the upper register of the “Creation” panel. The entrance of death and sin into the world in the lower register of the upper left hand panel is countered in the lower register of the upper right hand panel by the defeat of death by Death through the crucifixion of Christ. On this panel's realization of the liturgical verses, “Raspnyisia zhe Khriste Bozhe, smertiiu smert’ popravyi, edin vsesviatyia Troitsy, spokloniaemyi ottsu i sviatomu dukhu” and “pochi ot vsekh del svoikh Edinorodnyi Syn Bozhii, smotreniem ezhe na smert', plotiiu subbotstvoval, i vo ezhe be paki vozvrashchsia voskreseniem,” see Podobedova, 48.

30. I am following the interpretation of Podobedova (ibid., 51), who notes that the building behind the Archangel Michael is portrayed according to the iconography associated with Proverbs 9: 1, “Wisdom Built Herself a House,” and who interprets the disc held by the archangel as a “mirror.” L. A. Shchennikova (Blagoveshchenskii sobor Moskovskogo Kremlia, 62) calls the disc simply a “heavenly sphere” and considers the building behind the archangel to be a synagogue and a symbol of the Old Testament. She supports this reading by an interpretation of the building to the right of the Word as the New Testament and the Christian Church (both earthly and eschatological), and by an interpretation of the moon near the “synagogue” and the sun near the “church” as reflections of the old and new laws. I believe that her interpretation of the buildings and the sun and moon complements Podobedova's which focuses on the role of the imagery on the right as a symbol of the Providence realized on the left. Together the two buildings represent the “in-dwelling” of the Wisdom of the Logos in the Church (a traditional interpretation of the icon of “Wisdom's House ” ). The sun and moon together refer to the act of creation as an expression of the Providence of the Word and symbolize a progression from the reign of death to eternal life. The icon indicates that this progression occurs through the incarnation, alluded to by the Archangel Gabriel, and the crucifixion symbolized by the eucharistic cup he holds. This same complex of meaning is found in the icon of Wisdom's House conveyed by images such as Wisdom's house, the eucharistic cup, the Emmanuel in glory and the Child Emmanuel with His mother Mary. On the meaning of the iconography of “Wisdom Built Herself a House,” see Fiene, “What Is the Appearance,” 454-55; Prokhorov, “Poslanie Titu-Ierarkhu Dionisiia Areopagita,” 8; Meyendorff, “L'iconographie de la Sagesse Divine. ”

31. On the icon of the Lamb Enthroned, see Miller, “The Viskovatyi Affair,” 322.

32. See the words of John the Baptist in John I: 26-36. The Baptist is acknowledging the historical Christ as the Redeemer, Who paradoxically came “after” but was “before him” (as the Word).

33. On the importance of I Corinthians 1: 23-31 for Wisdom theology, see Fiene, “What Is the Appearance,” 449; and Jean Meyendorff, “Wisdom-Sophia: Contrasting Approaches to a Complex Theme,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987): 391-400.

34. Flier ( “Emperor as Mythmaker ” ) describes the central importance of Revelation 19: 11-16 in the extensive cycle of frescoes portraying the Last Judgment in the Annunciation Cathedral of the Kremlin.

35. See Daniel Rowland, “Biblical Military Imagery in the Political Culture of Early Modern Russia: The Heavenly Host of the Blessed Tsar,” forthcoming in Medieval Russian Culture, eds. Michael Flier and Daniel Rowland, II; and I. A. Kochetkov, “K istolkovaniiu ikony ‘Tserkov’ voinstvuiushchaia,” TODRL 38 (1985): 204.C

36. During the reign of Ivan III, this image became the coat of arms of the Grand Prince, and ultimately of the Moscow state. See Moscow: Treasures and Tradition (Washington and Moscow: Ministry of Culture of the USSR and Smithsonian Institution, 1990), 67 and 70; and Cherniavsky, , Tsar and People, 43 Google Scholar, and his footnote 97. On the snake as a symbol of cosmic evil and Adam's sin in Muscovite theocratic ideology, see M. Pliukhanova's forthcoming article on the “Tale of Peter and Fevronia” in Annali slavistica (Annali del’ Instituto Universitario Orientale, Naples) no. 1 (1992). The Lord of Hosts sits upon His white horse as He had sat on a throne in His manifestation as Lord our God eight verses earlier.

37. Cherniavsky reproduced this miniature in Tsar and People, plate 3. The significance of the icon, “Blessed Is the Host,” as a symbolic representation of the power of the enthroned tsar is implied by its place in the Cathedral of the Assumption in front of the “Tsar's Place,” the so-called “Throne of Monomakh.” Its association with Martyrdom and Combat will be discussed below. Another “text” which associates the victory over Kazan’ with Martyrdom and Enthronement was the Palm Sunday ritual (see Flier, Emperor as Mythmaker). The function of the “enthroned tsar” as a dominant symbol condensing the meanings contained in the Word was clearly expressed in the frescoes in the Golden Throne Room which Podobedova sees as the culmination of the meaning of the new iconography created by Macarius and his circle after 1547. The tsar's throne on the floor was in a symmetrical relationship with the Word-Emmanuel-Judge in the center of the dome. Between tsar and Word were images of Created Wisdom and the hierarchy of being which tsar and Word respectively condensed in their roles as dominant symbols. In the dome Created Wisdom was manifest in images of plenitudes (Wisdom's House, the Church, the round of seasons, etc.); on the walls Created Wisdom was portrayed as the progression of sacred history, climaxing in the reigning tsar. See Podobedova, , Moskovskaia shkola, 59–69 Google Scholar as well as her inset chart of the Throne Room's iconography. Michael Flier ( “Putting the Tsar in His Place: The Apocalyptic Dimension of the Golden Throne Room,” forthcoming in Russian Review) analyzes the significance of the iconography. On how a contemporary cycle of iconography—the reliefs on the throne of Monomach in the Cathedral of the Assumption, the frescoes of the portals of the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael, the frescoes on the walls of the Golden Throne Room and the illustrations which appeared in the description of the coronation of Ivan IV in the “Tsarstvennaia kniga ” —all elaborate the sacred meaning of the tsar's enthronement, see Podobedova, 23.

38. The phrase “smirennaia groza” occurred in the Valaamskaia Beseda of the midsixteenth century. See Marc Szeftel, “The Epithet Groznyj in Historical Perspective” in The Religious World of Russian Culture, Russia and Orthodoxy: Essays in Honor of Georges Florovsky, ed. Andrew Blane (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), 111. See also Moiseeva, G. N., Valaamskaia beseda—pamiatnik russkoi publitsistiki serediny XVI veka (Moscow-Leningrad: Izd. Akademii nauk SSSR, 1958)Google Scholar. For the priest Sylvestr's articulation of this concept to Ivan IV, see Zimin, A. A., Peresvetov i ego sovremenniki (Moscow: Izd. Akademii Nauk, 1958), 60Google Scholar.

39. Szeftel, , “The Epithet Groznyj,” 101–17Google Scholar.

40. See Panchenko and Uspenskii, “Ivan Groznyi i Petr Velikii,” 54-78.

41. Szeftel ( “The Epithet Groznyj” 107-11) speculated that Ivan's association with “groza” began with his victory over Kazan'.

42. Scholars have offered two interpretations of the place of Ivan IV behind the Archangel Michael. See Podobedova, , Moskovskaia shkola, 24 Google Scholar; and I. A. Kochetov, “K istolkovaniiu,” 192-95.

43. The title of this icon, “Blessed Is the Host of the Heavenly Tsar,” was taken from the liturgical stikhera celebrating martyrs as participants in the eschatological army of warriors of Christ. See Rowland, “Biblical Military Imagery ” ; and Kochetkov, “ K istolkovaniiu ikony,” 204.

44. See Podobedova, , Moskovskaia shkola, 22 Google Scholar. She assumes that this icon was created in the 1550s after the battle against Kazan'. Rowland (op. cit.) notes that Ivan IV's actual battle standard bore words from Revelation 19: 11-14. Of this battle standard, Ivan wrote to Kurbskii in Perepiska, 32: “Ta zhe, po bozhiiu izvoleniiu so krestnonosnoiu khorugviiu vsego pravoslavnago khristianskogo voinstva, pravoslavnago radi khristiianstva zastupleniia, nam bo dvigshimsia na bezbozhnyi iazyk Kazanskii….” On the importance of the Archangel Michael as a sacred paradigm for Ivan IV, see Panchenko and Uspenskii, “Ivan Groznyi i Petr Velikii ,” 68-69.

45. The Areopagite's treatise, “On the Divine Names” (chap. IV, sects. 19-35) illuminates how evil serves the higher good (Wisdom): “Yea, is not the destruction of one thing often the birth of another? And thus it will be found that evil maketh contribution unto the fullness of the world, and through its presence, saveth the universe from imperfection” (see VMCh, 480). Of angels of destruction he writes: “Hence evil inhereth not in the angels; they are evil only in so far as they must punish sinners. But in this respect even those who chastise wrong-doers are evil, and so are the priests who exclude the profane man from the Divine Mysteries.” See The Divine Names, 113, 119-20, 127 and VMCh, 490-91. All passages from “On the Divine Names” will be cited from the translation of C. E. Rolt, The Divine Names and the Mystical Theology (London: S.P.C.K., 1940). See also Prokhorov, , Pamiatniki perevodnoi literatury, 19 Google Scholar.

46. Likhachev ( “Canon and Prayer ” ) notes the folkloric association of Michael with the “wise snake,” an image which reflects Michael's dual association with wisdom and evil that serves the good. Ivan IV refers to Michael as both “khitryi” and “mudryi” in his “Canon. ”

47. See Panchenko and Uspenskii, “Ivan Groznyi i Petr Velikii,” 69. They base their analysis on Izmaragd (Moscow: Moskovskaia staroobriadcheskaia knigopechatnia, 1911), 1. 95ob.-96. On punishment as a sign of special election, see Domostroi (Letchworth: Bradda Books, 1971), Rarity Reprints, nos. 18, 20-28. Panchenko and Uspenskii (op.cit., 71) also note the folk interpretation of Michael's “groza” as a sign from God.

48. Podobedova believes that this painting refers to Ivan's earlier persecutions of the boyars in the 1550s. However, as she admits in a footnote, it is equally possible that this painting was done after the Oprichnina and after Ivan's death. Therefore it could have been influenced by Ivan's own interpretation of his actions during the period of the Oprichnina. See Moskovskaia shkola, 33.

49. “Po istine ubo tsar’ narichashesia, izhe tsarstvuia nad strast'mi i slastem odolevati mogii, izhe tselomudriia ven'tsem ven'channyi i porfiroiu pravdy obolchenyi.” See Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei (PSRL), (St. Petersburg: Tip. M.A. Aleksandrova, 1913; rpt. Dusseldorf: Brücken-Verlag, 1970) 21: 2, 605-15, esp. 610.1 have used Cherniavsky's translation in Tsar and People, 46. See also Ihor Ševčenko, “A Byzantine Source of Muscovite Ideology,” Harvard Slavic Studies 2 (1954): 163. Ševčenko (ibid., 159) points out that the inclusion of almost the whole of this work into the Stepennaia kniga testifies to its importance. He presumes it was written shortly after Vasilii Ill's death during the period of the regency. He notes (161) that the passage cited above derived from the “Hortatory Chapters” of the sixth century Byzantine writer Agapetus addressed to the Emperor Justinian (see 147). At the heart of the concept of “chastity” was the Agapetan concept of the two natures of the ruler (by analogy to the two natures of Christ). It was first used to define the attributes of a Russian ruler in relation to Grand Prince Andrei Bogoliubskii in the Laurentian Chronicle under the year 1175: “est'estvom bo zemnym podoben est’ vsiakumu cheloveku tsesar, vlastiiu zhe sana iako Bog.” See Sevcenko, 142.

50. “po podobiiu zertsala vsegda ischishchaetsia i bozhestvenymi luchami vynu oblistaema i veshch'mi razsuzheniia ottuda nauchaetsia.” See PSRL 21, no. 2: 610.

51. This is my translation. See “On the Celestial Hierarchies,” VMCh, 297-98: “podobiia bozhestvenaia sovershaia, zertsala chista i neskvern'na … ezhe ovem ubo prosveshchatisia, ovem zhe prosveshchati; ovem ubo ochishchatisia, ovem ochishchati; i ovem ubo s” versatisia, ovem zhe s” vershenodeistvovati. “

52. The etymology of the Russian word for “chastity,” tselomudrie, reveals its associations with both “wisdom” and “wholeness.” Of course this wholeness, in its mystical sense, referred to the body of Christ, the Church, the place of the “in-dwelling” of Wisdom. In Muscovite ideology this “place” also included the pious, chaste tsar. On the Novgorod Sophia icon, see Florovskii, “O pochitanii Sofii,” 498-500; Meyendorff, op.cit., 394-400 and plate 5; Antonova, V. I. and Mneva, M. E., Katalog drevnerusskoi zhivopisi (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1963), II: 100 Google Scholar; Nikol'skii, “Sofiia Premudrost’ Bozhiia. ”

53. See Fiene, “What Is the Appearance of the Divine Sophia?” 457-59.

54. This “skazanie o obraze Sofii” appears in icon painting manuals and also in compilations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially in Tolkovye Apokalipsisy, according to Florovskii ( “O pochitanii Sofii,” 495-98). Florovskii, who does not provide references, appears to be basing his facts on an article cited by A. I. iNikol'skii ( “Sofiia Premudrost’ Bozhiia, 72) without page references by G. D. Filimonov,” Ocherki russkoi khristianskoi ikonografii Sofiia Premudrost’ Bozhiia,” in Vestnik obshchestva drevne-russkago iskusstva za 1874-1876 gody. Nikol'skii (ibid., 73-74) found and analyzed a fifteenth century copy entitled “Slovo o premudrosti.” I cite the “skazanie” from Nikol'skii's citation from a seventeenth century manuscript published by Tikhonravov (Nikol'skii gives no bibliographical information).

55. Nikol'skii, “Sofiia Premudrost’ Bozhiia,” 72-73.

56. See The Divine Names, chap. VII, part 1, 147; VMCh, 543.

57. Wisdom tradition, deriving from I Corinthians 1 and other Pauline epistles, associated the “power” of Christ's human nature with Folly in Christ. Dionysios the Areopagite ( “On the Divine Names ” ) defines “Folly” as the highest revelation of divine “Wisdom” on the basis of I Corinthians 1. See The Divine Names, chap.VII, Part I; VMCh, 542-44: “Bue Bozhie premudreishe chelovek glagolet (1 Korin.l: 25). ”

58. On the Fool and dogs, see Panchenko, Likhachev and, Smekhovoi mir, 153 Google Scholar.

59. See Fedotov, , Russian Religious Mind (Belmont: Nordland, 1975), II: 316 Google Scholar.

60. See “Smekhovoi mir,” 93.

61. On the Fool's language of paradox and his techniques of provoking vilification, see also Likhachev, D. S. and Panchenko, A. M., “ Smekhovoi mir ,” 127–39Google Scholar. They give examples from the life of Ivan's contemporary, St. Basil the Blessed. See also Natalie Challis and Horace Dewey, “Basil the Blessed, Holy Fool of Moscow,” in Ivan the Terrible: A Quarcentenary Celebration of his Death, 47-59. The Life of the holy fool Andrei provides an example of a fool being beaten because his “madness” is interpreted as glum (see VMCh, 1-3 Oktiabr', 89).

62. On Christ's kenosis as an expression of the language of negation characteristic of Holy Folly, see Losskii, , The Mystical Theology, 138, 142Google Scholar. On the relationship between kenoticism and foolishness, see Fedotov, , Russian Religious Mind, II: 321 Google Scholar; and Likhachev and Panchenko, “Smekhovoi mir,” 95. On kenosis as the humiliation of Christ, see Phillipians 2: 6-8, which describes Christ sacrificing His high position as a “king of heaven” and taking on the aspect of a “slave ”: “Smiril sebe, poslushliv byv dazhe do smerti, smerti zhe krestnoi.” See Bibliia sirech knigi sviashchennago pisaniia vethhago i novago zaveta (St. Petersburg: Sinodal'naia tipografiia, 1981). See also Losskii, op.cit., 147-48. In chap. 7, Part 1 of “On the Divine Names,” the Areopagite's commentator, Maximus the Confessor, places Christ's kenosis or emptying out (istoshchenie) in the context of Wisdom. Appearing to the Greeks as weak (nemoshchno) even “unto death ”: “sitse ubo ist'shchanie narichiut’ Bozhiia Slova v” chelovechenie, … preispolnenno premudrosti i sily i spaseniia.” See VMCh, 543-45.

63. Fedotov, (The Russian Religious Mind, 1: 127 Google Scholar) points out that the acceptance of what was formerly considered unclean, according to the vision of Peter (Acts 10), was characteristic of kenoticism.

64. See Fedotov, , Russian Religious Mind, II: 316–44Google Scholar; “Smekhovoi mir,” 101-4, 111-15.

65. The tsar's chastity lacked the militancy of the Fool's pollution and was not confrontational with the self or the world. Nor did it participate to the same extent in the providential dynamism of God's Wisdom. It was manifest as it appeared to the eyes of the world rather than in paradoxical form. The difference between the tsar's chastity and the Fool's pollution reflected the difference between angelic and archangelic nature: the latter was a heightened manifestation of the former. The tsar's chastity made him like a monk who was believed to have an angelic nature. In the Stepennaia kniga, the eulogy of Vasilii III, (attributing to him justice and chastity) was part of a larger passage entitled: “Vkratse pokhvala samoderzh'tsu Vasiliiu, i o postrizhenii ego i o chiudesnom otshestviii ego k bogu” which presented his taking on the monastic habit at death as the logical outcome of his life. See PSRL, 21, pt. 2, 610. The “Povest’ o Varlaame i Ioasafe,” which was included in the Velikie minei chet'i, was an important ideological statement of the monastic virtues which should inform sacred kingship, conveyed by Varlaam, “mnikh premudr … mudrstvuia bozhestvenaa.” See I. N. Lebedeva, “Afanaseivskii izvod i litsevye spiski Povesti o Varlaame i Ioasafe,” TODRL 39 (1985): 47. The Golden Throne Room contained a scene from this tale. It is published in VMCh under November. On the role of kenoticism and its association with monastic virtue in the ideology of both prince and tsar, see Cherniavsky, , Tsar and People, 5–43 Google Scholar; and Fedotov, , The Russian Religious Mind, 1: 94–Google Scholar.

66. See “Poslanie v Kirillo-Beloozerskii monastyr',” 164 “ … i az greshnyi vam izvestikh zhelanie svoe o postrizhenii, … I svoe obeshchanie polozhikh vam s radostiiu, iako nigde inde, ashche blagovolit, v blagopoluchno vremia zdravu postrishchisia, tochiiu vo prechestnei sei obiteli prechistyia bogoroditsy … I mne mnitsia okaiannomu, iako ispolu esm’ chernets …. ”

67. On the special relationship of king and Fool, see Panchenko, Likhachev and, “ Smekhovoi mir ,” 159–79Google Scholar. See also Hubbs, Joanna, “Mother Russia's Champions: Immolated Tsarevich and Holy Fool,” in Mother Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 190–95Google Scholar. Official ideology corroborated Ivan's own personal identification with Holy Folly indirectly in the Stepennaia kniga (composed in the 1560s during the time of the Oprichnina). See PSRL, 21, pt. 2, 629. To indicate Ivan's miraculous birth (which demonstrated his likeness to Christ and placed him in the context of other scriptural figures enjoying miraculous births such as John the Baptist and the Mother of God), it describes Elena Glinskaia consulting with the fool Domentii about “what” she will give birth to. The fool is said to have prophesied “Titus, a large mind.” See Isolde Thryet, “ ‘Blessed is the Tsaritsa's Womb': The Myth of Miraculous Birth and Royal Womanhood in Muscovite Russia,” forthcoming in the Russian Review. Thryet notes that the name Titus referred to the fact that Ivan was born on the fast day of the apostles Bartholomew and Titus. The reference to the “broad mind” may reflect Ivan's ideologists’ appreciation of his theological scope (as demonstrated through the actions and words of the 1560s evincing his personal mythology of kingship).

68. On the fool Nikola of Pskov's confrontation with Ivan IV as he prepared to sack the city, see the accounts of Sir Jerome Horsey and Giles Fletcher, in Rude and Barbarous Kingdom, eds. L. E. Berry and R. O. Crummey (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), 268, 218-20; and Pskovskie letopisi, ed. A. Nasonov (Moscow-Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1941), II: 115-16. Tradition later attributed some of Nikola's paradoxical gestures towards Ivan IV to the holy fool Basil who became associated with the messianic potential of the state as a whole when Tsar Fedor dedicated a chapel to him in the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Mother of God built in honor of Ivan's victory over Kazan', and buried his relics there. See Challis and Dewey, “Basil the Blessed,” 55-56.

69. In the “Poslanie v Kirilo-Beloozerskii monastyr',” 162-65, Ivan testified to his desire to become a monk even while he presented himself as a fool: after reveling in profound self-degradation as was characteristic of the Fool ( “A mne, psu smerdiashchemu, komu uchiti i chemu nakazati, i chem prosvetiti? Sam bo vsegda v pian'stve, v blude, v preliubodeistve, v skverne, vo ubiistve ” ), he exposed his “madness” and identification with the “slavery” of Christ: “ponezhe vy mia ponudiste, mala nekaia ot svoego bezumiia izreku vam, ne iako uchitel'ski i so vlastiiu, no iako rabski” (my emphasis).

70. The tsar's responsibility for the messianic Church was explicit in Filofei's epistles about the “Third Rome.” See also Rowland, “Did Muscovite Literary Ideology Place Limits on the Power of the Tsar (1540s-1660s)?” The Russian Review 49 (1990): 146-48.

71. Domostroi, 9-10 (my translation).

72. Ibid., 27; 68-9. Rowland, ( “Did Muscovite Literary Ideology ” ), discusses how the idea of the tsar as tyrant could exist in an ideology which perceives of the tsar as the image of God. See also Fedotov, G., St. Filipp, 155–56Google Scholar. According to his “Life,” the Metropolitan Filipp, while insisting on his obligation to speak the truth to the tsar if the latter was acting as a tyrant, also affirmed his obligation to suffer at his hands and become a martyr. See ibid., 131. In other words, Iosif Volotskii's famous advice not to obey tyrants does not necessarily urge active disobedience, but rather the higher obedience to God of innocent suffering for the sake of the truth: “If there is a Tsar who rules over men, and who is ruled by evil passions and sins, by greed and wrath, cunning and falsehood, pride and anger, and worst of all by lack of faith, and one who abuses, such a Tsar is not a servant of God but of the devil and is not a Tsar but a torturer … You should not listen to any Tsar or Prince who leads you to impiety and cunning, even though torture or death threatens you. Witness the prophets, apostles and all the martyrs for they were killed by impious rulers because they did not submit to the commands of such rulers. ” See chapt. 7 of Volotskii, Iosif, Prosvetitel', ed. Volkov, A. (Kazan: Tip. Imperatorskago universiteta, 1896 Google Scholar). I have used Haugh's and Lupinin's translation in Fedotov, op.cit., 155.

73. Crummey ( “New Wine in Old Bottles?,” 72) writes that the loneliness and responsibility of the autocrat make him particularly vulnerable to paranoia and rage. In his first epistle to Kurbskii Ivan presents his sense of loneliness and abandonment as the catalyst for his rage and for the mythology making it sacred.

74. Ivan, wrote in Perepiska, 39 Google Scholar: “Az zhe ubo veruiu, o vsekh svoikh sogresheniikh vol'nykh i nevol'nykh sud priati mi, iako rabu i ne tokmo o svoikh, no i o podovlastnykh dati mi otvet, ashche chto moim nesmotreniem pogreshitsia.” In his first epistle to Kurbskii, Ivan explained his persecutions of the clergy as well as the boyars. He discussed at length how the Priest Sil'vestr took advantage of his filial obedience to steal power from him (see Perepiska, 30-33). His ability to murder the Metropolitan Filipp and purge the Church hierarchy arose from his conviction of his own spiritual superiority and independence of his Church elite. On the Priest Sil'vestr's teaching to Ivan that the tsar is responsible for the sins of his people, see Zimin, , S. Peresvetov, 60 Google Scholar. Ivan referred to the “beauty” of his power when he described Sil'vestr's and Adashev's betrayal in the redaction of the first epistle published in Poslaniia Ivana Groznogo, 37. His apparently aesthetic characterization of his power was in fact theological. Its “beauty” derived from divine beauty, which the Areopagite described in “On The Divine Names,” Chap. 4, part VII, emphasizing its function of revealing divine goodness and unity: “This one Good and Beautiful is in Its oneness the Cause of all the many beautiful and good things … the intercommunion of all things according to the power of each.” See The Divine Names, 95-96; VMCh, 451-53. According to his “Life,” the Metropolitan Filipp used the same idea when confronting the tsar with his violations of “piety.” “Devout one, of whom have you become so jealous that it forces you to change the beauty of your face?” See Fedotov, , St. Filipp, 121 Google Scholar.

75. All translations from the first epistle are mine. See Perepiska, 13-14: “i na cheloveka voz” iarivsia, na boga vozstal esi … Se bo est’ volia gospodnia—ezhe, blagoe tvoriashche, postradati. I ashche praveden esi i blagochestiv, pro chto ne izvolil esi ot mene, stroptivago vladyki, stradati i venets zhizni naslediti?” Ivan earlier appealed to the doctrine of his two natures explicitly: “Voz” iarivsia na cheloveka i bogu prirazitisia; ino bo chelovechesko est', ashche perfiru nosit, ino zhe bozhestveno est'” (13-14). Ivan's first epistle is responding to Kurbskii's which can be found in Perepiska, 7-11.

76. Perepiska, 16-17: “bogu protivni iavliaiushchesia kako i sviatykh vsekh prepodobnykh, izhe v poste i v podvize prosiiavshikh, milovanie, ezhe ko greshnym, otvergoste; mnogo bo v nikh obriashcheshi padshikh i vozstavshikh (vosstanie ne bedno!) i strazhdushchim ruku pomoshchi podavshe, i ot rva sogresheniia milovatel'ne vozvedshikh, po apostolu, ‘iako bratiiu, a ne iako vragov imushche'—ezhe ty otvergl esi!” Implicit are the words of Romans 14: 1, 10. “Nemoshchnogo v vere prinimaite bez sporov o mneniakh … A ty chto osuzhdaesh’ brata tvoego? Hiity chto unizhaesh’ brata tvoego? Vsi bo predstanem sudishchu Khristovu. ”

77. Perepiska, 19, 41, 99: “Kto ubo tia postavi sudiiu ili vladatelia nado mnoiu? Hi ty dasi otvet za dushu moiu v den’ Strashnago suda? … Solntse ne zaidet vo gneve vashem', ty zhe i na sud khoshcheshi itti bez proshcheniia i molitisia za tvoriashchikh napasti otritsaeshisia. ”

78. Perepiska, 52: “Nyne zhe boiusia, da ne tochiiu gnoi mi vneseshi neiztselnoiu. Ni Davida priemlia, kaiushchesia, emu zhe prorocheski dar pokoianie sobliude, ni Petra velikogo, postradavsha nechto chelovechesko pri spaseni strasti? No Isus priemlet…. ”

79. See Perepiska, 13. Uspenskii and Panchenko ( “Ivan Groznyi i Petr Velikii,” 72) give a similar interpretation of Ivan's accusation. Ivan, writes to Kurbskii, Perepiska, 14 Google Scholar: “Smotri zhe sego i razumei, iako protivliaiasia vlasti bogu protivitsia; ashche ubo kto bogu protivitsia, —sei otstupnik imenuetsia … Razumei zhe rechennoe, iako ne voskhishcheniem priiakhom tsarstvo; tern zhe naipache, protivliaiasia vlasti, bogu protivitsia. ”

80. See Perepiska, 18: “blagodat’ bozhiia v nemoshchi sovershatisia, a vasha zlobesnaia na tserkov’ vostaniia razsyplet sam Khristos. ”

81. See Perepiska, 42: “Kol'mi zhe pache nasha krov’ na vas vopiet k bogu, ot vas samekh prolitaia: ne ranami, nizhe krovnymi potoki, no mnogimi poty, i trudov mnozhestva ot vas priiakh i otiagcheniia bezlepa, iako po premnogu ot vas otiagotikhomsia pache sily! Ot mnogago vashego ozlobleniia i oskorbleniia i utesneniia, vmesto krovi, mnogo izliiashasia nashikh slez i vozdykhaniia i stenaniia serdechnaia. ”

82. Perepiska, 28: “iako ubozheishuiu chad'. My zhe postradali vo odeianii i v alchbe! ”

83. Perepiska, 38-9: “Bezsmerten zhe byti ne mniusia, ponezhe smert’ Adamskii grekh, obshchedatel'nyi dolg vsem chelovekom; ashche bo i perfiru noshu, no obache vem se, iako po vsemu nemoshchiiu podobno vsem chelovekom, oblozhen esm’ po estestvu a ne iako zhe vy mudr” stvuete, vyshe estestva velite byti mi, —ot eresi zhe vsiakoi” (my emphasis). Sevcenko ( “A Byzantine Source,” 168) points out that this passage against Kurbskii uses a phrase from Agapetus which Metropolitan Filipp used against him according to his Life: “Esli i vysok ty sanom, no estestvom telesnym podoben vsiakomu cheloveku. ”

84. Perepiska, 52: “Ne stydishi li sia, ezhe Isus chelovekoliubets’ nemoshchi nasha priimshu i nedugi ponesshu, ne pravedniki prishedshu prizvati, no greshnyia na pokoianie” (my emphasis).

85. Perepiska, 16: “Ashche li zhe o sem pomyshliaeshi, iako tserkovnoe predstoianie ne tako i igram bytie, se ubo vashego zhe radi lukavago umyshleniia byst', ponezhe mia istorgoste ot dukhovnago i pokoinago zhitiia, i bremia, fariseiskim obychaem, bedne nosima, na mia nalozhiste, sami zhe ni edinym perstom ne prikosnustesia; … Igram zhe-skhodia nemoshchi chelovechestei; ponezhe mnog narod v sled svoego pagubnago umyshleniia ottorgoste … togo radi i az sei sotvorikh … daby nas, svoikh gosudarei, poznali, a ne vas, izmennikov” (my emphasis).

86. Perepiska, 39: “Az zhe ispovedaiu i vem, iako ne tokmo tamo mucheniia, izhe zle zhivushchim i prestupaiushchim zapovedi bozhiia, no i zdes’ pravednago bozhiia gneva, po svoim zlym delom, chashu iarosti gospodnia ispivaiut i mnogoobraznymi nakazanii muchatsia, po otshestvii zhe sveta sego, gorchaishee osuzhdenie priemliushche, ozhidaiushche pravednago sudishcha spasova. ”

87. Albert Schlichting ( “A Brief Account,” 218) wrote that when Ivan abdicated the throne he expressed his desire to become a monk. When he emerged with new powers by founding the Oprichnina, he did so as a fool. The term “oprich1” most frequently occurred in law codes to mean “apart from,” referring to a widow's portion. However, Panchenko and Uspenskii ( “Ivan Groznyi i Petr Velikii,” 73, quoting S. V. Veselovskii) point out a sacral connotation of the term “oprich ” ’ as “beyond,” a connotation which surfaces in the distinction between “oprich'” and “krome” to characterize otherworldly life: “'Po togdashnim predstavleniiam o potustoronnem mire, tsarstvo bozhie bylo tsarstvom vechnogo sveta, za predelami, oprich', krome kotorogo nakhodilos’ tsarstvo vechnogo mraka.'” Ivan in Perepisha, 26 seems to be using the word “oprich'” in both senses when he prefers it to the word krome to distinguish his “Godgiven” loyal commanders from the traitors: “bozhieiu pomoshchiiu imeem u sebe voevod mnozhestvo i oprich1 vas, izmennikov” (my emphasis).

88. See Panchenko and Uspenskii, “Ivan Groznyi i Petr Velikii,” 74-75.

89. See Revelation, 18: 6 in which John describes the retribution against the Harlot.

90. See Perepisha, 41: “i siia ubo veste, za koe delo ezhe vostaste na mia i chto vasha nenavist’ ko mne, … s milostiiu mest’ vam vozdakh. ”

91. See I Corinthians 4. The Oprichniki are fulfilling in relationship to other “traitors” Ivan's threat against Kurbskii in Perepiska, 41, 52: “On ubo, gospod” bog nash Isus Khristos suditel’ pravednyi, ispytaia serdtsa i utroby, i ashche pomyslit kto chto, i v megnovenii oka, vsia bo sut’ naga i otversta pred nim, i nest’ izhe ukryetsia ot ochiiu ego, vsia vedushchemu ubo tainaia i sokrovennaia; … oblichiu tia i predstavliu pred litsem tvoim grekhi tvoia (my emphasis).

92. Tradition denoted the Fool's function of cleansing by his conventional gesture of “sweeping out” with a broom (vymetanie). See Uspenskii and Panchenko, “Ivan Groznyi i Petr Velikii,” 73. According to Uspenskii and Panchenko, tradition also applied this language to “pretenders” to sacred kingship who were ridding their kingdom of a corrupt ruling tsar. Ivan saw himself as a legitimate king who was simultaneously a fool, cleansing and exposing subjects who were illegitimate usurpers of “the beauty of his power. ”

93. Panchenko and Uspenskii ( “Ivan Groznyi i Petr Velikii,” 73) note that Kurbskii attributed to the Metropolitan Filip the appellation “kromeshniki” for “oprichniki.” On the association of fools and devils, see “Smekhovoi mir,” 116-19. Dionysios the Areopagite contributed to the logic of interpreting the Oprichniki's demonic garb as an “inversion” of the kenosis of Christ by stating that devils manifest a “weakness” [nemozhenie] which was a negative version of Christ's “weakness” (nemoshch’) and resulted from a deficit in their nature rather than its compassionate outpouring. “The evil in them is … a declension from their right condition; a failure, an imperfection, an impotence, a weakness (nemozhenie), loss and lapse of that power which would preserve perfection in them.” See The Divine Names, 122; VMCh, 494: “zli zhe glagoliutsia nemoshchi radi v ezhe po est'stve deistva. Prevrashcheni ubo … i prikladnykh im iz'shestvie, i bezchinie, i nes” vershenie, i nemozhenie, i spasaiushchaia ezhe v nikh s “vershenya sily nemoshch1 i obezhanie i otpadenie” (my emphasis).

94. As inherently good devils who appear evil, the Oprichniki revealed the Wisdom according to which devils are not “naturally evil … for they cannot destroy things which by their nature are indestructible …. And destruction itself is not evil in every case and under all circumstances.” See Dionysios the Areopagite, The Divine Names, 120 (Chapt.IV, part 23); and VMCh, 491.

95. Panchenko, Likhachev and, “ Smekhovoi mir ,” 61 Google Scholar.

96. Albert Schlichting describes the monastic regime of the Oprichniki in “A Brief Account,” 232.

97. Ivan, defends this practice in Perepiska, 17 Google Scholar.

98. Although he wrote in Elizabethan English, Jerome Horsey nevertheless seems to faithfully reflect the sense of the tsar's actual words, since his reported speech manifests the mode of thinking evident in Ivan's earlier actions and writings. See his “TraveJs” in Rude and Barbarous Kingdom, 274.

99. See Perepiska, 36. “My zhe ubo, khristiiane, znaem predstateli trichislennoe bozhestvo, v ne zhe poznanie privedeni bykhom Isus Khristom bogom nashim, tako zhe zastupnitsu khristianskuiu, spodobl'shusia byti mati Khrista boga, prechistuiu bogoroditsu; i potom predstateli imeem vsia nebesnyia sily, arkhaggeli, i aggeli, iako zhe Moiseiiu predstatel’ byst’ Mikhail arkhaggel, Iisusu Navginu i vsemu Izrailiu; ta zhe vo blagochestie novei blagodati pervomu khristianskomu tsariu, Konstantinu, nevidimo predstatel’ Mikhail arkhaggel pred polkom khozhdashe i vsia vragi ego pobezhdashe, i ottole dazhe i donyne vsem blagochestivym tsarem posobstvuet” (my emphasis).

100. For lack of space, I have not discussed the central importance of the Mother of God in the theology of Wisdom, her presence in the icons about Divine Wisdom which I have discussed, or her significance for Ivan's understanding of his own sacredness.

101. Testaments, 307-9; the Russian can be found on 155-57: “No pache nezheli vozmnitisia vidiashchim, no ashche i zhiv, no bogu skarednymi svoimi dely pache mertvetsa smradneishii i gnusneishii, ego zhe ierei videv, ne vniat, Levit i toi vozgnushavsia, preminu mne. Ponezhe ot Adama i do sego dni vsek preminukh v bezzakoniiakh sogreshivshikh, sego radi vsemi neriavidim esm’ … ubiistva, i bluda, i vsiakago zlago delaniia … i inkh nepodobnykh glumlenii… no chto ubo sotvoriu, ponezhe Avraam ne uvede nas, Isaak ne razume nas, i Izrail’ ne pozna nas” (my emphasis).

102. Ivan was implicitly taking on himself Kurbskii's accusation that he “was destroying the strong in Israel.” He first presented and then refuted Kurbskii's accusation in Perepiska, 26: “ne vem , kto est’ sil'neishii vo Izraili, ponezhe bo Russkaia zemlia pravitsia bozhiim miloserdiem, i prechistye bogoroditsy milostiiu, i vsekh sviatykh molitvami, i roditelei nashikh blagosloveniem, i posledi nami, svoimi gosudari. ”

103. He cited passages associating Wisdom with himself as teacher and king: Proverbs 1: 20-21, 8: 1-4, and 3: 14-15. The importance of Proverbs for Wisdom theology and iconography in the Byzantine and Muscovite contexts is generally recognized. See Florovskii, “O pochitanii Sofii,” 485. Meyendorff ( “L'Iconographie de la Sagesse Divine,” 259-66) describes the tradition identifying Wisdom, as revealed in Proverbs 9: 1-5, with the Word.

104. This is my translation which differs from Howes. See Testaments, 157: “Sego radi i az predlagaiu ucheniia, eliko moi est’ razum, ot ubozhestva moego, chadtsa moia, blagodat’ i bozhii dar vam. ”

105. “Ashche bo i nevezhda slovom, no ne razumom: no vezde iavl'shesia ot vsem v vas. Hi grekh sotvorikh sebe smiriaia, da vy voznesetesia … Evree li sut1; i az… . Semia avraamle li sut'; i az. Sluzhitelie li khristovy sut'; ne v mudrosti glagoliu, pache az. V trudekh mnozhae, v ranakh prebole” (my emphasis). See Bibliia.

106. Skrynnikov, (Ivan the Terrible, 162–71Google Scholar) discusses the “reign” of Bekbulatovich as a period when the “tsar destroyed the group of boyars that dominated the oprichnina in its last phase. ”

107. Symbolically, the victory over Kazan’ marked Muscovy as a “world” empire, the last in the succession of kingdoms moving sacred history to its end (see M. B. Pliukhanova, “Kazan’ i tsar'grad. O montazhe istochnikov v ‘Kazanskoi istorii, '” in Montazh: Literatura, iskusstvo, teatr, kino [Moscow: Nauka, 1988], 190-213). The actions of the Oprichnina made Muscovy worthy of her “external” status by cleansing her internally so that she remained a vehicle of grace. Thus the Oprichnina symbolically contributed to the process of the assumption of messianic status associated with the victory over Kazan'. This justified Ivan's applying the same set of symbols to both and also to the dismantling of the Oprichnina by the tsar and Bekbulatovich, after he transferred the function of insuring Muscovy's sacred inviolability from the Oprichniki to the armies of the Land.

108. See Davis, Natalie Z., “The Rites of Violence,” Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), 152–89Google Scholar. Ivan's Muscovy can be considered “early modern” in its transition from a “feudal” appanage system to a centralized state. According to Davis (156) the French “rites of violence” were attempts at “purification” in response to the population's sense of ritual pollution reflected in the split between the Protestants and the Catholics. The desire for purification and to assert proper trinitarian dogma against heresy was a central motivating force of the ideological establishment which provided Ivan with the religious paradigms sacralizing his violence. Ivan's own desire to assert his legitimacy and to cleanse the kingdom of “heretics” such as Andrei Kurbskii motivated him to interpret his acts during the Oprichnina by analogy to the purificatory power of the Word. The Church's concern with establishing ritual purity and right dogma was evidenced by the Stoglav Council, the trial of the “heretic” Bashkin in 1553, the Viskovatyi affair, the writings of Ermolai Erazm, especially his “Kniga o troitse,” and the explicitly dogmatic icons and frescoes such as the four-part icon mentioned above. See Miller, “The Viskovatyi Affair,” 300-1 and especially his extensive bibliography; on Ermolai Erazm, see Pliukhanova's forthcoming article on “The Tale of Peter and Fevroniia,” in Annali Slavistica. Podobedova (Moskovskaia shkola zhivopisi, 32, on the basis of an analysis of the iconography of the Kremlin Cathedral of the Archangel Michael) suggests how the desire to establish ritual purity through dogmatic icons and frescoes was intimately connected with the cult of the tsar and with the articulation of national identity. In opposition to the French people, whose violence was often structured as a response to the failure of the government to exercise justice and purify the society (according to Davis, ibid., 165-69), Ivan conceived of his violence as an act of justice in response to what he believed was the failure of his people to purify themselves and him through expiatory humility and thus to serve the government.

109. Davis, “Rites of Violence,” 186.

110. Davis (ibid., 178-80) notes that rites of violence were frequently borrowed from the repertory of folk justice and had comic or carnival overtones which served the purpose of humiliation. She describes a case in which a “priest was ridden backward on an ass” and required to crush his host and burn his own vestments at the end of his ride, calling to mind the punishment of Archbishop Pimen of Novgorod mentioned in footnote 1. Davis (172-73) also notes that the aggressors could themselves use a carnival situation as the occasion for purificatory violence, wearing various types of masks. She writes (185) that the “zeal for violent purification led to new organizations.” Similarly, Ivan's desire to purify his kingdom led to its bifurcation into the Oprichnina and the Zemshchina.

111. See Florovskii, George, “The Problem of Old Russian Culture,” Slavic Review 21, no. 1 (March 1962): 1–15 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

112. See Tumins, V. A., Tsar Ivan IV's Reply to Jan Rokyta (The Hague: Mouton, 1971 Google Scholar. If one accepts the authenticity of Ivan's first epistle to Kurbskii, it gives evidence that Ivan knew the works of the Pseudo-Areopagite in the Velikie minei chet'i. See Poslaniia Ivana Groznogo, 531-32