The coronation, the most important ofthe contingent rituals for conveying the sacred foundation of the office of tsar, occurred only once for each reign.
40 PSRL, vol. xiii, pp. 150-1, 451-3.
41 E. V Barsov Drevne-russkiepamiatnikisviashchennogovenchaniiatsareinatsarstvo (Moscow: Universitetskaia tipografiia, 1883), pp. 66, 90; PSRL, vol. xiii, p. 150.
42 Barsov Drevne-russkiepamiatniki, pp. 61-4; Uspenskii, Tsar' i Patriarkh, pp. 14-29,111-12.
43 Uspenskii, Tsar' i Patriarkh, p. 20.
44 George P. Majeska, 'The Moscow Coronation of 1498 Reconsidered', JGO 26 (1978): 356-7, and his Russian Travelers to Constantinople in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, Dumbarton Oaks Studies, no. 19 (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1984), pp. 112-13, 435-6; Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols, p. 186 (n. 104).
It was the royal rituals performed at regular intervals that helped promulgate for the secular and spiritual elite the myth of the Muscovite ruler, especially through reference to artefacts and sites associated with his transformation.
Cyclical rituals
The Church calendar dominated life throughout Muscovy. Apart from the numerous Church services that the tsar and the nobility regularly attended, there were five rituals of especial importance. These demarcated major junctures in the annual cycle and expressed the fundamental values of the Muscovite myth in highly marked settings. Two were non-narrative - the New Year's ritual and the Last Judgement ritual; three contained dramatised narrative - the Fiery Furnace ritual, the Epiphany ritual and the Palm Sunday ritual. All five entailed the presence of the heads of Church and state in Moscow and underscored various perspectives on the relationship between the God- ordained ruler, the Church and the ruler's spiritual and secular advisers. Each of the five rituals highlighted particular portions of the semiotically sacred space demarcated by the Kremlin and its immediate environs, and each was marked by a special tolling of bells that resonated across the Kremlin.[313]
New Year's ritual
The celebration of the Valediction of the Year (Letoprovozhdenie) took place on the morning of 1 September.[314] The metropolitan preceded two deacons, each carrying a Gospel lectionary, and the remaining clergy in a cross procession from the Dormition to the space between the Annunciation and the Archangel Michael cathedrals, where two chairs had been placed for the metropolitan and the tsar. In an apparent sign of humility, the tsar without the royal regalia proceeded from the porch of the Annunciation to the centre space. The ceremony represented a farewell to the old year and a greeting to the new, a transition symbolised by antiphonal choirs and two Gospel lectionaries. The books were placed on separate lecterns, flanking an icon of St Simeon the Stylite, whose feast is celebrated on 1 September.
The prescribed psalms concerned the redemption and destiny of the Chosen People (Ps. 73 [74] and 2) and the covenant between the Chosen People and God (Ps. 64 [65]), the last including the proclamation 'Thou crownest the year with thy goodness'. The reading from Isaiah 61: 1-9 includes his declaration 'The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted ... to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.' Prayers and thanksgiving for kings (1 Tim. 2: 1-7) were followed by a Gospel reading, in which Christ refers to Isaiah's declaration (Luke 4: 16-22). The passages were read twice, line for line, first by the metropolitan from one lectionary, then by the archdeacon from the other. The ritual doubling appears to emphasise the union of beginning and ending, the year to come, as the year of the Lord's favour. Immersing the cross in holy water, the metropolitan initiated the new year by signing to the four corners of the earth, and, after wishing the tsar many long years, he sprinkled him with holy water, and then the nobility by rank, and finally all others gathered. The tsar returned to the Annunciation to celebrate the Eucharist.
The transition to a new age, the blessings conferred on the ruler and the Chosen People, the anointing of Christ as emblematic of the year of the Lord's favour were all positive signs that expressed the relationship between ruler and ruled under the benevolent protection of God. It is noteworthy that two of the three major inscriptions surrounding the enormous image of Christ Emmanuel as Final Judge on the ceiling of the Golden Hall throne room were taken from the New Year service.[315] This connection between ritual and throne room reinforced the perception of the reign of Ivan IV as a new age in Muscovite Rus'.
The Last Judgement ritual Meatfare Sunday, the day before Shrovetide (Maslenitsa), is devoted to the most fateful event awaiting all Christians, the Last Judgement.[316] In a ceremony reminiscent of the New Year ritual, the heads of Church and state walked in cross processions from their respective churches, the Annunciation and Dormition, to the north-eastern part of Cathedral Square behind the Dor- mition apses, where chairs for each were set up alongside lecterns that held two Gospel lectionaries flanking an icon of the Last Judgement. Following hymns devoted to the Last Judgement, the archdeacon read Old Testament excerpts, warning of the impending days of destruction and despair but holding out salvation for God's Chosen People (Joel 2: 1-27 and 3: 1-5, Isa. 13: 6) and describing the terrifying vision of the Ancient of Days and the Last Judgement (Dan. 7: i-i4). For the Gospel readings, the metropolitan faced east, the direction of the resurrection, and read about the fates of the righteous and the sinful at the Last Judgement (Matt. 25: 31-46). The archdeacon standing opposite him read the same passage facing west, the direction associated with the Last Judgement.[317] The doubled reading, analogous to that performed in the New Year ritual, underscored the transformative juncture of the Apocalypse.
The tsar was singled out as the primary representative whose good health and blessings would redound to the Chosen People as a whole, and especially to the nobility, who followed him in receiving a sprinkling of holy water before dismissal. The ritual was performed beneath the east-facing outside murals of the Dormition with the central image of the New Testament Trinity, iconography closely associated with the Last Judgement.[318] Through annual ritual, the destiny of Moscow and its ruler were confirmed before the beginning of the Great Fast leading up to Easter.
Fiery Furnace ritual December 17 is a feast day that celebrates the three Hebrew youths Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah (Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego). Refusing to bow to the golden idol of King Nebuchadnezzar, they were cast into a fiery furnace on orders of the ruler, spurred on by his evil advisers, the Chaldeans. Visited by an angel, the youths remained unharmed, but the Chaldean jailers who had cast them in were themselves destroyed by the flames. Astonished at the youths' deliverance, Nebuchadnezzar ordered their release and praised God, recognising his superiority (Daniel 3).
313
The discussion of these rituals in Moscow is based on information from foreigners, Russian chronicles, published archival documents, and seventeenth-century ceremonial books from Moscow's Dormition cathedral, which reflect directly or indirectly practices from the preceding century (Aleksandr Golubtsov, 'Chinovniki Moskovskogo Uspen- skogo sobora',
314
Golubtsov, 'Chinovniki', 1-4,147-50, 214, 279; Konstantin Nikol'skii,
315
Frank Kampfer, '"RuBland an der Schwelle zur Neuzeit": Kunst, Ideologie und his- torisches BewuBtsein unter Ivan Groznyj',
317
In Eastern Orthodox church decoration, the Last Judgement depicted on the western wall is typically the final image encountered by the faithful as they leave the nave.
318
V G. Briusova, 'Kompozitsiia "Novozavetnoi Troitsy" v stenopisi Uspenskogo sobora', in E. S. Smirnova (ed.),