A few more words need to be said about landed property. The conditional service landholdings (pomest'ia) have been mentioned. Hereditary estates (votchiny) were of various kinds: princely, boyaral, monastery, clan, granted and purchased. Each had its own rules for sale and the possibility of redemption. Monastery estates in practice were inalienable, but most votchiny could be given away, willed by testament, sold, exchanged and mortgaged. In reality, landed property was rarely mobilised in the economy because service landholdings were state property reserved for military service and private hereditary estates could be redeemed for up to forty years after sale at the price the seller had received for it.98 Thus it made no sense for any private person to buy land, and as a result it is impossible to find agricultural land prices in Muscovy.99
By the end of the fifteenth century the land in Muscovy was beginning to fill up, and contests over landownership became more frequent. In the interests
95 1550 Sudebnik, art. 91; 1589 Sudebnik, arts. 184,188, 189. This had no 1497 precedent.
96 Richard Hellie (ed. and trans.), Muscovite Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Syllabus Division, 1967 and 1970), pp. 33-47.
97 Richard Hellie, 'The Expanding Role of the State in Russia', in Jarmo T. Kotilaine and Marshall T. Poe (eds.), Modernizing Muscovy: Reform and Social Change in Seventeenth- Century Russia (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 29-56.
98 1550 Sudebnik, art. 85. This had no 1497 antecedent. See also 1589 Sudebnik, arts. 164,165.
99 Richard Hellie, The Economy and Material Culture of Russia 1600-1725 (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1999), pp. 391-3, 411.
ofefficiency seen throughout this chapter, the i497 Sudebnik imposed statutes of limitations on the filing of suits over landownership between monasteries, members of the service class, and peasants (three years) and between the sovereign, monasteries and servicemen (six years).[276] Here one can see the ancestor of the five-year statute of limitations on the filing of suits for the recovery of fugitive serfs of i592. There were no statutes of limitations on the filing of suits for moveable property, including slaves.
The rules of inheritance were spelled out in the Sudebniki. An oral or written will had precedence. In its absence, a son inherited. Next was a daughter, then other members of the clan. Failing that, property escheated to the prince.[277]
As observed by D. P. Makovskii some decades ago, prior to Ivan's oprich- nina (1565-72) Muscovy was developing into a commercial society.[278] This is evident in the law, where numerous articles deal with loans.[279] Of particular interest is the provision permitting borrowing with the payment of interest.[280]New legislation on branding horses may or may not reflect an increasing commoditisation of horses.[281]
By 1613 Russian law had changed considerably from the law of the late Middle Ages, but elements of continuity must also be stressed. First and foremost was the fact that law remained a major revenue-raising device for officialdom. Law remained a device for cleaning up social messes, be they felonies or civil disputes. The major distinction between the earlier era and the pre-Romanov decades was that the distinction between felonies - in which the state took an increasing interest - and civil disputes, about which the state ordinarily could not care less, was heightened by changes in the essence of society that required a change in the legal process from a dyadic one to a triadic one as well as changes in the nature of the state power, from a relatively benign and weak organism with few pretensions, to an increasingly assertive autocracy that recognised few limitations on its authority. This was facilitated by increasing literacy both in the capital and in the provinces among the handfuls of people who mattered and who were essential for keeping the records required for keeping track of slave ownership, land allocation and possession, military service and compensation, foreign relations and accusations of domestic treason, post roads, and what happened at trial. Law still had the function of determining inheritance and preserving male superiority and regime dominance, but almost to an astonishing extent it became the government's mouthpiece for directing social change towards a rigidly stratified, almost-caste society. Law became a major instrument in preserving what the legislators wanted to keep from the past while simultaneously serving as a major instrument in assisting change in desired directions.
Political ideas and rituals
MICHAEL S. FLIER
Shortly afterthe dedication of Moscow's cathedral church in 1479, Grand Prince Ivan III accused Metropolitan Gerontii of contravening ritual tradition by leading the cross procession around the church counterclockwise (protiv solntsa) instead of clockwise (po solon') during the dedication service. Perhaps Ivan was motivated by superstition, given the collapse of the previous reconstruction. Or perhaps he was influenced by the Catholic-orientated entourage around his second wife, Sophia Palaeologa, a former ward of the Pope. Whatever the cause, he forbade the consecration of any church in Moscow for three years while he investigated previous practice. Finding no conclusive protocols, he was obliged to recant in 1482 to prevent the metropolitan's resignation.[282] This rare personal episode involving ritual and political control reveals a connection that merits further enquiry.
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278
D. P. Makovskii,
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282