The Golden Horde from Cambridge history of Russia, volume 1

Ecclesiastical supporters of Iona thus made the case that divine protection and saintly intercession were reserved for Muscovy, the centre of the true

Orthodox Church. In this context the Muscovite princes were also depicted as divinely selected and endowed with the capacity to defend the Church and the Orthodox community from the infidel. In the vita of Dmitrii Donskoi, which may have been composed in the mid-fifteenth century, the prince's ancestry was traced back not just to Ivan I Kalita or even Daniil Aleksan- drovich, the founder of the Muscovite line of princes, but to St Vladimir of Kiev.[167]

By the late i450s and early i460s, even before chroniclers included Dmitrii's vita in their compilations, Vasilii II was also being depicted in chronicle entries and other tracts about the Council of Florence in elevated terms. Vasilii II was compared to St Vladimir. Whereas St Vladimir had introduced Orthodoxy to the Russian lands, Vasilii II had become its defender. He had the insight and the courage to reject the apostate Isidor and preserve Orthodoxy in Russia. He, therefore, also had the spiritual authority to name the metropolitan. The role assigned to the grand prince carried both glory and responsibility. The fall of Byzantium left Muscovy the largest Orthodox realm in the world. Its grand prince assumed the task of protecting the faith previously undertaken by the Byzantine emperor. The grand princes of Moscow, descended from St Vladimir, blessed with divine favour and charged with the responsibility to defend the true Orthodox faith, had acquired the basis for a claim to legitimacy and sovereignty.[168]

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During the period 1359-1462 the princes of Moscow struggled to overcome dynastic opposition and hold the position of grand prince of Vladimir. Surrounded by the Tatar khanates, into which the Golden Horde subdivided, and Lithuania, they faced formidable powers. But by the time Grand Prince Vasilii died in 1462, they had accumulated sufficient territorial, economic and military resources to become the dominant political figures in northern Russia. Their achievements were solidified by the Orthodox Church that, having lost its battle to preserve a unified metropolitanate of Kiev and all Rus', nevertheless supplied the Muscovite princes with the legitimacy that had so long eluded them. Vasilii II, who fought a civil war to break the dynastic traditions of lateral succession and who also ended his ancestors' dependency on the khan for the throne, left his position and possessions to his son, Ivan III, who would transform his inheritance into the state of Muscovy.

Serpukhov and Kolomna that protected the southern frontier of Muscovy also had defensive functions.⁴⁴

The Muscovite princes' consolidation of power benefited from the small size and cohesiveness of their dynastic branch. Due to the effects of the Black Plague and other demographic factors the Daniilovich family remained small. Although each prince had his own principality, either inherited from his father or dispensed by the grand prince, the family's possessions did not, like those of the Rostov princes, become subdivided into numerous, weak patrimonial principalities. Grand Prince Dmitrii Donskoi shared his realm with only one cousin, Vladimir Andreevich, prince of Serpukhov (see Table 7.1). Relations among the Daniilovich princes also were relatively cordial. Unlike the ruling house of Tver', which divided into two, hostile branches in the mid-fourteenth century, the Daniilovich line not only peacefully shared the family's territorial possessions, but also the revenues derived from them. The courtiers of the

44 Miller, 'Monumental Building', 372; Borisov, Russkaia tserkov', p. 112; Nancy Shields Kollmann, Kinship and Politics: The Making of the Muscovite Political System, 1345-1547 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. 32-3; Crummey, Formation of Muscovy, p. 121.

167

Gail Lenhoff,'Unofficial Veneration of the Daniilovichi in Muscovite Rus", in A.M. Kleimola and G. D. Lenhoff (eds.), Culture and Identity in Muscovy, 1359-1584 (Moscow: ITZ-Garant, 1997), pp. 405-8; Wladimir Vodoff,'Quand a pu etre le Panegyrique du grand-prince Dmitrii Ivanovich, tsar russe?' CASS 13 (1979), 100; Pelenski, 'Origins of the Official Muscovite Claims', 37, 40-2, 44; Jaroslaw Pelenski, 'The Emergence of the Muscovite Claims to the Byzantine-Kievan "Imperial Inheritance" ', HUS 7 (1983): 521; Halperin, 'Russian Land and Russian Tsar', 76.

168

Cherniavsky 'Reception of the Council of Florence', 349-50,352; Joel Raba, 'The Authority of the Muscovite Ruler at the Dawn of the Modern Era', JGO 24 (1976): 323; Obolensky, 'Byzantium and Russia', 267-8; Alef, 'Crisis', 24.