Muscovy was a vital trade centre for the forested area north of the western steppe region. As a result, the Muscovite ruling class, military, administration and culture were subject to outside influences. Until the fifteenth century, the major influence flow across the Eurasian land mass was from east to west. Inventions and administrative practices and innovations came from China and spread westward. In the fifteenth century, the direction of influence flow began to reverse, and we see the first signs of a west-to-east flow. Muscovy, located on the cusp between East and West started to experience Western influences at this time.
Finally, the ideal of the relationship between grand prince and metropolitan was inherited from Byzantium as a reflection of the relationship between the basileus and patriarch, which was to be one of harmony between state and Church. According to Byzantine political theory the head of the state and the head of the Church were two arms of the same body politic. Their spheres of influence, although differing, also overlapped to an extent. While the ruler of the state took as his sphere of influence civil administration and direction of military forces, the head of the Church could and did act as an adviser in that sphere. Likewise, the sphere of the head of the Church was internal Church matters, such as dogma and ritual. Yet, the head of the state could advise on those matters. In the overlapping sphere, which concerned the external Church administration, the two were to act together. As in Byzantium, this ideal of symphony ofpowers was striven after but not always attained.
Ivan III and Vasilii III
We have little historical evidence concerning the personal characteristics of Ivan III. Perhaps the only contemporary evidence is Ambrogio Contarini's description of Ivan when he was thirty-seven years old: 'he is tall, thin, and handsome.'7 If we extrapolate from the evidence of Ivan's policies and actions, we get an image of Ivan III as an individual intent on expanding his power yet at times faltering, at other times unsure how to attain his goal, trying one policy for a while only to abandon it for another. He endures the Novgorod- Moscow heretics much to the chagrin ofthe Church leaders, then turns against the heretics and aids the Church in bringing them to trial and punishment in 1504. He had his grandson Dmitrii crowned co-ruler in 1498 and executed six conspirators while arresting a number of others who were allegedly plotting to set up a centre of rebellion under his son Vasilii in the northern provinces of Beloozero and Vologda.8 Ivan changed his mind four years later when he placed Vasilii on the throne as his co-ruler, and he put Dmitrii and Dmitrii's mother Elena under house arrest. According to the ambassador from the Holy Roman Empire Sigismund von Herberstein, who visited Muscovy in 1517 and 1526, Ivan III again changed his mind on his deathbed and wanted Dmitrii to succeed him.9 In his actions toward the Qipchaq khan in 1480, he received the opprobrium of Archbishop Vassian Rylo for his indecisiveness and lack of courage.10 And Stephen, the Palatine of Moldavia, is reported by Herberstein
7 Ambrogio Contarini, 'Viaggio in Persia', in Barbaro i Kontarini o Rossii. Kistorii italo- russkikh sviazeiv XV v., ed. E. Ch. Skrzhinskaia (Leningrad: Nauka, 1971), p. 205.
8 The information about the execution of the conspirators can be found in PSRL, vol. vi. 2, col. 352; PSRL, vol. viii (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul'tury, 2001), p. 234; PSRL, vol. xii (Moscow: Nauka, 1965), p. 246; Ioasafovskaialetopis', ed. A. A. Zimin (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1957), p. 134. In addition, according to one copy of the Nikon Chronicle, certain 'women [babi] were coming to her [Sofiia] with herbs' (presumably poisonous) and they were 'drowned by night in the Moskva River': PSRL, vol.xii, p. 263.
9 Sigismund von Herberstein, Notes upon Russia, 2 vols., trans. R. H. Major (New York: Burt Franklin, 1851-2), vol. i, p. 21.
10 Pamiatniki literatury drevnei Rusi. Konets XV - pervaia polovina XVI veka (Moscow: Khu- dozhestvennaia literatura, 1984), pp. 522-37.
The growth of Muscovy (1462-1533) Table 9.2. Ivan III and his immediate descendants
Mariia Borisovna m. Ivan III m. Sophia Palaeologa
Ivan (1458-90) m. Elena of Moldavia
Dmitrii Elena Feodosiia Vasilii III Iurii Dmitrii Evdokhiia Simeon Andrei
(1483-1509) (1472-1512) (1475-1501) (1479-1533) (1480-1536) (1481-1521) (1485-1513) (1487-1518) (1490-1537) m. Elena Glinskaia
Ivan IV Iurii
(1530-84) (1532-63)
to have often said about Ivan: 'That he increased his dominion while sitting at home and sleeping, while he himself could scarcely defend his own boundaries by fighting every day'.11 Nonetheless, the reign of Ivan III and the actions he did take had a decisive impact on the creation of the Muscovite state.
At the age of six years, Ivan was betrothed to Mariia, the daughter of Boris Aleksandrovich, the grand prince of Tver', as part of a treaty Vasilii II arranged in 1446 in order to regain the grand-princely throne from his cousin Dmitrii Shemiaka. The marriage took place six years later in 1452 and Mariia Borisovna gave birth to a male heir, Ivan, in 1458. She died in 1467. Mariia does not seem to have played any direct role in the politics of the time in contrast to her mother- in-law Mariia Iaroslavna and her successor as wife, Sofiia Palaeologa, whom Ivan III married in 1472. Sofiia gave birth to eight children (see Table 9.2: Ivan III and his immediate descendents): Elena (who married Alexander, the grand duke of Lithuania); Feodosiia (who married Prince V D. Kholmskii); Vasilii III; Iurii of Dmitrov; Dmitrii of Uglich; Evdokhiia (who married the Tsarevich Peter Ibraimov); Simeon of Kaluga; and Andrei of Staritsa. Meanwhile, Ivan, the son of Ivan III and Maria Borisovna, married Elena of Moldavia, who gave birth to a son Dmitrii. The question whether his grandson Dmitrii by the son of his first wife or his son Vasilii by his second wife should succeed him vexed Ivan during his last years. In addition, in 1503, Ivan III suffered a debilitating stroke and appears to have been severely incapacitated until his death two years later on 27 October 1505.
11 Herberstein, Notes, vol. 1, p. 24.
Vasilii III, like his father, strove to expand his own personal power along with that of the state, and, also like his father, depended on advisers within the ruling elite rather than on his own brothers. Within two months of succeeding to the throne in October 1505, he had Kudai Kul, a Kazanian tsarevich who had been in protective custody under Ivan III since 1487, convert to Christianity as Peter Ibraimov. Within another month Kudai Kul/Peter married Vasilii's sister Evdokhiia. From then until his death in 1523, Kudai Kul/Peter was Vasilii's closest associate,[32] and possibly was to be his successor.[33] Only after Kudai Kul/Peter's death did Vasilii III begin proceedings to divorce his wife Solomoniia because she had not produced an heir. On 28 November 1525, she went to the Pokrov monastery in Suzdal' and was veiled as a nun. Within two months, Vasilii married Elena Glinskaia, who produced two sons - Ivan in 1530 and Iurii in 1532. Vasilii III died on 21 September 1533, from a boil on his left thigh that had become infected.
32
See my 'The Extraordinary Career of Tsarevich Kudai Kul/Peter in the Context of Relations between Muscovy and Kazan'', in Janusz Duzinkiewicz, Myroslav Popovych, Vladyslav Verstiuk and Natalia Yakovenko (eds.),
33
On this point, see A. A. Zimin, 'Ivan Groznyi i Simeon Bekbulatovich v 1575 g.',