29 Contarini, 'Viaggio in Persia', p. 205.
is no contemporary or reliable evidence that discusses such an occurrence at the council. And there is no clear or reliable evidence that Ivan III planned in any way to extend his extensive confiscation of Church and monastic lands in Novgorod to the rest of Muscovy.[37]
During this time, Nil Sorskii (d. 1508) and Iosif Volotskii (d. 1515) were the most prominent representatives of two of the three forms of monasticism in the Eastern Church. They represented the skete life and communal monastic life, respectively (the third form was the solitary monk). Rather than being in conflict, their two forms of monasticism complemented each other, and Nil and Iosif seem to have held each other in mutual respect. It was only subsequent antagonism among monastic factions as well as between Nil's disciple Vassian Patrikeev and Iosif's disciple Metropolitan Daniil that led to the notion some kind of opposition existed between Iosif and Nil.
Iosif Volotskii is often credited with instigating the council decision of 1504 against the heretics. His lengthy polemical work the Prosvetitel' ('Enlightener') presented his understanding oftheir faults. He also may have been instrumental in bringing about the removal from office of Metropolitan Zosima in 1494.[38]Besides his attacks on heretics, Iosif is important for his articulation of parts of a political theory that concerned the role of wise advisers: (1) non-critical and silent obedience when the ruler is acting according to God's laws; (2) vocal criticism but obedience if the legitimate ruler was transgressing God's laws; (3) vocal criticism and passive disobedience if the legitimate ruler was commanding the adviser to transgress God's laws; and (4) vocal and active opposition when the ruler was not legitimate. In Discourse 16 of his Prosvetitel', Iosif recommends non-critical and silent obedience whereas in Discourse 7 he recommends disobedience to the 'tormentor' (muchitel') who is a tyrant transgressing God's laws.[39] One should not focus on one or the other Discourse as Iosif s 'true' view exclusive of the other, but understand them as part of a consistent political theory that had its origins in Byzantine political thought.[40]
Both Ivan III and Vasilii III were actively involved with the Church as befitted their positions as head of state. They presided with their respective metropolitans over Church councils. They also recognised the Church's spiritual role. Accordingto the Typography Chronicle, Metropolitan Simon imposed a penance on Ivan III, which he seems to have accepted, for bringing about the death of his brother Andrei the Elder in 1493. In 1502, if we can accept Iosif Volotskii's account, Ivan confessed that he had not been hard enough on the heretics and those who sympathised with them, including his daughter-in-law Elena and his grandson Dmitrii. But he could also act in his role as keeper of the external Church. In a jurisdictional dispute concerning the Kirillo-Belozerskii monastery in 1478, he decided in favour of his own confessor, Archbishop Vassian of Rostov, against the hegumen of the monastery as well as the apanage Prince Michael of Vereia and Metropolitan Gerontii. In 1479, he undertook a three-year investigation of the proper direction for processing around a church, when he thought Gerontii was leading a procession the wrong way (Ivan later apologised). And in 1490, he showed up at the end of a Church council proceedings to have Metropolitan Zosima investigate what the canon laws were concerning heretics.[41]
Vasilii III also abided by the Church's prerogatives and actively punished heretics. As befitted his role, Vasilii sent a letter to the patriarch of Constantinople in 1516 requesting him to send someone to assist in the translation of Greekbooks into Russian, which resulted in the coming of Maksim Grekto Muscovy. But Vasilii III refused, according to his own prerogative, to appoint an archbishop to Novgorod after Serapion was asked to step down in 1509. Finally, seventeen years later he appointed Makarii, the archimandrite of the Luzhetsk monastery near Mozhaisk, to that post. Vasilii divorced his wife in 1525, but this had provoked opposition both within and outside the Church. Makarii's support for Vasilii during the divorce could have contributed to his being promoted to the position of archbishop.
The Law Code of 1497 has the distinction ofbeing the first Muscovy-wide law code. Apparently intended as a guide forjudges in deciding cases and assessing fees, it made uniform the laws throughout all newly acquired territories and the old holdings of the grand prince. Through its provisions we glimpse a well-developed system of judicial administration. Most cases were decided at the local level in an ecclesiastical court or in a common court (obshchii sud), but three kinds of higher courts are mentioned: (1) court of the vicegerent (i.e. namestniki and volosteli and their deputies); (2) courts in which a boyar or okol'nichii presided (it was then the responsibility of the clerk [d'iak] to report the results to the grand-princely court for its approval); and (3) the court of the grand prince and his sons. Among the sixty-eight articles in the Law Code are: stipulations of punishment for various crimes such as murder, robbery and arson; and rules for litigation concerning lands and loans, for relations between employers and employees and for relations between landholders and peasants. Fifteen ofthe articles deal with damages and payments to individuals, and thirty-six of them stipulate payments and fees to the court. Article 30 is particularly relevant for our discussion for it provides the 'riding-distance fees' to be paid to bailiffs (nedel'shchiki) to fifty-three places within the Muscovite domain, virtually all the towns the grand princes of Moscow had acquired in the previous 180 years.
Article 57 of the Law Code of 1497 regulated the peasants' movements in accord with the needs of an agricultural community. They could move once a year, in November after the harvest. If peasants lived in a house built by the owner of the estate, they had to pay up to half a rouble for a house in the forest and up to one rouble for a house in the steppe. This article was meant to protect the landholder from precipitous comings and goings of the peasants on his lands and thus ensure him sufficient labour at least for the year. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, these restrictive regulations were expanded to tie the peasants to the soil as serfs.
The Law Code of 1497 may appear somewhat primitive and unsystematic to us today, but it was an extremely important initiative in transforming Muscovy from a loose confederation of separate territories into a relatively well-organised state.
At the beginning of the reign of Ivan III, landholding in Muscovy generally fell into one of four categories: (1) court lands, administered by a high government official and subordinate officials, usually slaves; (2) black lands, which were administered by second-level officials, the namestniki and the volosteli; (3) votchiny, which could be bought, sold, mortgaged, or given away; and (4) ecclesiastical lands, which the Church had the right to administer.35 To these categories of landholding was added pomest'e in 1482 when the first known grant for pomest'e landholding was issued. Pomest'e (or military fief) was usually given as a reward for some courageous deed or compensation for faithful service. In the pomest'e grants, there is no suggestion of any kind of free contractual arrangement in which the servitor offered his services in return for
37
See my 'A "Fontological" Investigation of the Muscovite Church Council of 1503', unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Pennsylvania State University 1977 (Ann Arbor: UMI, I977,AAT 7723262); and my '500 let spustia. Tserkovnyi Sobor 1503 g.',
38
He accused Zosima of being sympathetic to the heretics and of engaging in sodomy. The only contemporary evidence for Zosima's dismissal comes from the second
39
Iosif Volotskii,
40
See my
41
N. A. Kazakova and Ia. S. Lur'e,