The Fiery Furnace ritual was performed in the presence of the tsar on the first or second Sunday before Christmas during matins and included the seventh and eighth canticles, which refer to the three youths. A raised dais (peshch' 'furnace') was placed in front of the Royal Gates of the Dormition iconostasis. In the sanctuary, a deacon used a long cloth to bind the necks of the three boys performing the roles of the three youths and led them through the north doors and into the custody of the waiting Chaldeans. After they were taken into the centre of the furnace, 'The Song of the Three Holy Children' (Dan. 3) was sung. When the archdeacon uttered the words 'the angel of the Lord came down into the oven', the image of an angel painted on parchment was lowered from above into the furnace to the accompaniment of loud noise simulating thunder. After bowing to the angel, the three youths traced the inner circumference of the furnace three times, singing the 'Prayer of Azariah'. The Chaldeans bowed to the spared youths and led them out of the furnace. The youths approached the metropolitan and wished him and the royal family many long years of life. Then, in order, the officiating clergy and then the boyars sang 'many long years' to the tsar.
The narrative itself served as an allegory of the relationship between the ruler, his advisers, and God's chosen. The transformation of the ruler from evil to good is carried out in the face of the destruction of the Chaldean advisers by fire and the salvation of the youths. In its allusion to the evil potential of bad advisers on the ruler, the Fiery Furnace ritual can be grouped with other Muscovite cultural artefacts that underscore the ruler's duty before God and his people, for example, the Golden Hall vestibule murals and the Monomakh Throne.
Epiphany ritual
The Christmas season ended with a major ritual celebrating the baptism of Christ in the River Jordan. The Blessing of the Waters was the climax of a solemn ceremony on the morning of 6 January that began with a cross procession as much as a mile in length, involving the heads of Church and state, moving from the Moscow Dormition, through the then passable Tainik tower out of the Kremlin, and onto the ice of the Moscow River.[319] A hole some 18 feet square had been made in the ice to reveal the river beneath, ceremonially renamed the 'Jordan' (lordan'). The clergy arranged themselves around the hole with a platform set up on one side to hold the metropolitan's throne. The tsar stood bare-headed on the ice. After the 'Jordan' was hallowed, the metropolitan took up some water in his hands and cast it first on the tsar, then in similar fashion on the other nobles in order. Once the tsar and his entourage had departed, the crowds of onlookers rushed to partake of the newly sanctified water. The English merchant Anthony Jenkinson describes their joyful plunge in 1558: 'but y preasse that there was about the water when the Emperour was gone, was wonderful to behold, for there came about 5000. pots to be filled of that water: for that Muscovite which hath no part of that water, thinks himselfe unhappy.'[320]
The Epiphany ritual impressed all foreigners who witnessed it.[321] Like the New Year ritual, it marked a major transformation, a purification and regeneration. But with the procession extending beyond the walls of the Kremlin, the ritual invited all Muscovites, regardless of station, to participate. The regenerative blessing of the holy water cast first upon the tsar and then his elites accrued symbolically to the people of Muscovy as well, inviting their clamour to immerse themselves, their loved ones, and even their valued animals in the newly sanctified water.[322]
Jenkinson misread the symbolism of the ritual when he concluded that the tsar's baring of his head and standing while the metropolitan and the clergy sat must signal a lesser dignity on the part of the ruler.[323] He was unaware that liturgically, the clergy were required to sit during the Old Testament readings and stand for the New Testament lections. Furthermore he failed to realise that the ritual gave overt expression to one of the chief characteristics contained in the image of the tsar as representative of Christ on earth, namely, his humility, a virtue lauded by contemporary writers.[324] The iconography of the baptism itself shows Christ standing in the River Jordan with John's right hand blessing his bare head. Just as Christ humbled himself in that ritual, so too did the tsar humble himself in the course of universal spiritual renewal.
Palm Sunday ritual
The Palm Sunday ritual was the most impressive of all the royal rituals in Moscow (see Plate 18).[325] We have no Muscovite account of it prior to the seventeenth century, but members of the Russia Company described it in their ethnographic reports. In 1558, one of Anthony Jenkinson's entourage wrote:
- First, they have a tree of a good bignesse which is made fast upon two sleds, as though it were growing there, and it is hanged with apples, raisins, figs and dates and with many fruits abundantly. In the midst of ye same tree stand 5 boyes in white vestures, which sing in the tree before the procession.
The float was followed in turn by a long cross procession of acolytes, numerous richly attired prelates, and half of the Muscovite nobility The central focus of the procession was a re-enactment ofChrist's triumphant entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
- First, there is a horse covered with white linnen cloth down to ye ground, his eares being made long with the same cloth like to an asses ears. Upon this horse the Metropolitane sitteth sidelong like a woman: in his lappe lieth a faire booke [the Gospels], with a crucifix of Goldsmiths worke upon the cover, which he holdest fast with his left hand, and in his right hand he hath a crosse of gold, with which crosse he ceaseth not to blesse the people as he rideth.
Some thirty sons of priests spread large pieces of cloth in the path of the approaching Christ, picking them up as soon as the horse passed over them and running ahead to spread them out again.
- One of the Emperores noble men leadeth the horse by the head, but the Emperour himselfe going on foote leadeth the horse by the ende of the reine of his bridle with one of his hands, and in the other of his hands he had a branch of a Palme tree: after this followed the rest of the Emperours Noble men and Gentlemen, with a great number of other people.[326]
Beginning at the Dormition, the procession apparently moved to a chapel dedicated to the Entry into Jerusalem within the Kremlin (Annunciation cathedral?),[327] before returning to the Dormition for dismissal, whereupon the ceremonial tree was broken apart and distributed to the assembled throng. The tsar was given 200 roubles by the metropolitan, which some foreigners interpreted as payment for service rendered.[328] The lower position of the tsar vis-a-vis the metropolitan was taken by many foreign observers as yet another sign of the ruler's lesser status, without considering the tsar's identification with Christ through humility, as seen in the Epiphany ritual.[329]
Sometime after completion ofthe church ofthe Intercession on the Moat in 1561, the procession extended out of the Kremlin onto Beautiful (Red) Square and in view of the people. The tsar and metropolitan participated in a short ceremony in the Intercession's Chapel of the Entry into Jerusalem before returning to the Dormition. This re-enactment of Christ's adventus near the microcosm ofJerusalem outside the walls of the Kremlin encouraged those in attendance, participants and observers, to see the city re-entered as Moscow transformed, the New Jerusalem. The emotional and spiritual power of the ceremony was amply demonstrated in 1611, when the Polish forces occupying Moscow cancelled the Palm Sunday rituaclass="underline" they were obliged to reinstate it to avoid a riot.[330]
319
Golubtsov 'Chinovniki', 35-7,176,218,294-5; Nikol'skii,
320
Richard Hakluyt,
321
Poe
323
Hakluyt,
325
Golubtsov, 'Chinovniki', 103-8, 250-3; Nikol'skii,
329
Hakluyt,
330
Konrad Bussov,