A Land Without a Russia
In 1300 there was no Russia. Most of the north was held by three self-governing city-states, Novgorod, Vyatka and Pskov. The western and southern provinces were dependents of Lithuania. In the east the principalities of Moscow, Ryazan, Suzdal, Nizhny Novgorod and Tver all claimed autonomy, agreeing only in obeying the Golden Horde of the Tatars.
The Golden Horde got its name because Batu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, held his army's headquarters under dome-shaped tents with golden tops. After these Asian invaders and plunderers conquered southern Russia and western Asia, they made their capital at Sarai, on a branch of the lower Volga, and made the Russian princes their tributaries. The Horde got its food half from herding and nomad life and half from farming. The ruling families were all Mongol, and the rest of the people mostly Turks. The name Tatar comes from the Tata tribes of the Gobi plateau, which from the ninth century had sent floods of Mongols westward. The main results of this long Mongol rule in Russia were mostly social: the despotic government of the grand dukes of Moscow, the slavish loyalty of the masses to their princes, the low position of women in Russian society, and the building of Russia's military, financial and judicial organs on Tatar methods. The Tatar domination in fact delayed Russia's effort to reach the level of the countries of western Europe by two centuries.
The Russian People
The Russians bore the hardest conditions of life with patience and silence, except when, in the midst of suffering and want, they happily broke into song. Their enemies took them for a coarse, hard, dishonest, cunning and quarrelsome people. Surely the pain of life and the harsh climate made them rough and blunt, but their natural patience, cheerfulness, friendliness and hospitality made up for all that, so that they rightly thought themselves the "salt of the earth." The early Russians made their way toward civilization by following brutal laws and suffering fearsome punishments; the report goes that a woman who killed her husband was buried in earth up to her neck, that witches were burned alive in iron cages, and that counterfeiters were punished by pouring molten metal down their throats (I give these only briefly). Like all peoples who wrestle with cold climates, the Russians drank a great deal of alcohol, sometimes drinking themselves senseless; they also ate spicy food to warm themselves and loved the hot bath, so much that they bathed more than most Europeans of their time.
Although religious belief held woman to be the Devil's best instrument of enchantment, and so she had to hide her figure and her tempting hair from view, she was equal to a man before the law and could even take part freely in public amusements or dancing, which were forbidden. The Russian Church strictly demanded observance of severe moral rules and forbade marital relations during the Great Fast. Perhaps this strictness was meant to keep people from overindulging in the one pleasure left to them. Marriage was arranged by the parents' decision and took place at a very early age. A girl was counted mature at twelve and a boy at fourteen. The wedding rites were elaborate, mixed with ancient symbolic displays and feasting. The bride had to keep a modest silence through the ceremony. Women usually lived in the upper-floor quarters of the house, apart from the men. The father held absolute authority in his family, like the tsar of Russia. (I leave out a custom the book describes of the wedding night.)
Faith, Church and Monasteries
Religious faith saw deprivation in material life as the prelude to heavenly blessings. In every house, however small, a room was set aside for daily prayer and decorated with icons of the saints. Every polite newcomer first bowed to these icons before greeting his hosts. Pious women carried a rosary wherever they went. They recited prayers from memory, like magic formulas; and, as the famous sixteenth-century Domostroi ("Household Order") says, if a person said a particular prayer six hundred times a day for three years, the spirit of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit would enter him. At the same time this religion, full of superstition, was not without refinement and beauty. On the morning of Easter people greeted one another with the joyful words "Christ is risen." In this hope death seemed somewhat easier, and when it came, every decent person paid his debts, set his creditors at ease, freed one or two of his serfs and gave alms to the poor and to the Church, so as to breathe his last breath with firm hope of eternal life.
The Russian Church strove to inflame and strengthen this faith through architecture, wall paintings, icons, moving sermons, enchanting liturgy and powerful chanting that seemed to come from the deepest places of the soul, or perhaps of the stomach. The Church was also a highly useful and vital organization for the state, and its services in teaching literacy, spreading moral rules, checking deviation and preserving the social order were always generously rewarded by the state. Monasteries were many and large. The Trinity monastery, founded by St. Sergius in 1335, grew so important and wide in time that by 1600 the peasants working its endowed lands numbered a hundred thousand.
In return, the monasteries, in the usual Russian way, looked after the poor and needy; some of them, for example, fed four hundred people a day. In a famine year the Volokolamsk monastery fed up to seven thousand people a day. Monks took vows of celibacy, but parish priests were required to marry. These "popes" were often illiterate, but nobody held that against them. The metropolitans of Moscow were in many respects the ablest and best-educated people of their generation. They risked their silver and gold to preserve the state and urged the princes to establish national unity. When St. Alexis became metropolitan of Moscow he was in practice the ruler of all Russia (1354–1370). The Russian Church, with all its mistakes, which were perhaps unavoidable, went on serving in this period of change, among a hard-pressed people in revolt against life's hardships, as the one civilizing agent.
In 1448 the Russian Church refused to accept the Council of Florence's decision on union between Greek and Roman Christianity and declared its independence from imitation of the patriarch of the Eastern Roman Empire; and five years later, when Constantinople fell to the Turks, Moscow became the center of the Orthodox metropolitan see. In 1505 (the book's date) a zealous monk wrote to the grand prince of Moscow: "Know that the rule of all Christendom now lies in your hands alone, for two Romes have fallen, and the third barely stands. There will never be a fourth Rome, and your Christian empire will last forever."
Songs, Icons and Churches
The Church was almost the only patron and encourager of learning and art, and as a result held absolute rule over them. The best kind of literature went unwritten. Folk songs, handed down by word of mouth from one generation to the next, spoke of love, weddings, grief, the seasons, religious feasts or the death of loved ones. In their ballads and hymns they also remembered beloved saints, ancient heroes and great legendary adventures, such as those of Sadko, the merchant of Novgorod. The blind and the lame went from village to village singing these songs, hymns and religious chants. Written works generally belonged to monks and monasteries, and their subject was the spread of religion.
In those circumstances it was monks who brought icon painting to full artistic form. The method was to coat a square board, sometimes covered with cloth, with a gelatin-like ground, draw on its surface, fill the drawing in with colors mixed with egg white, then lay a thin coat of varnish over the surface and set the panel in a metal frame. The subjects were chosen by the Church. The faces and figures were made in imitation of Byzantine mosaic models, and at times the source of the imitation went back to the Hellenistic painting of Alexandria. Among the best religious paintings of the period are Christ Crowned (the artist unknown) in the Cathedral of the Dormition in Moscow, The Entry into Jerusalem of the Novgorod school, and the Holy Trinity of the monk Andrei Rublev in the Trinity monastery. Rublev and his teacher Theophanes the Greek left frescoes in Vladimir, Moscow and Novgorod, mostly in the manner of Byzantine icons and in some ways like El Greco's works; but time has now done its work on them.
Every Russian ruler, to show the splendor of his court and at the same time ease his conscience, built a monastery or church or gave an endowment to one. Forms and designs from Armenia, Iran, India, Tibet, Mongolia, Italy and Scandinavia came together and, under the sway of the Byzantine heritage, created Russian church architecture. These churches generally have a mixed, striking look, with a golden dome in the middle and onion-shaped domelets around it, cleverly designed to shed rain and snow. After the fall of Constantinople and the expulsion of the Tatars, Russia emerged from the domination of Byzantine and Eastern art, and gradually, with the influence of western European methods, Slavic art underwent change.
Ivan III and the Italian Kremlin
In 1472 Ivan III, who had his eye on the heritage and titles of the Eastern Roman emperors, married the niece (the book says the brother's daughter) of the last ruler of that empire. This woman, Zoë Palaiologina, had been brought up in Rome and was used to the art of the early Renaissance. She took several Greek scholars with her to Russia and introduced Ivan to Italian art. Perhaps at her suggestion, Ivan III sent the first Russian mission to the west in 1474 to invite a group of Italian artists to Moscow. Ridolfo Fioravanti of Bologna, who for his skill and talent in several fields of art had won the title "the Aristotle of his time," accepted. On later missions the Russians persuaded artists such as Pietro Solari, Aloisio Novi and several others and took them to Moscow. These Italians, with help and labor, rebuilt the Kremlin.
In 1156 Yuri Dolgoruky had founded the city of Moscow by building a wall around his country house, which stood at the meeting of two rivers and had strategic value. This kremlin (fort) was the first form of the Kremlin. In time the enclosure grew, and within its thick oak walls churches and palaces rose into the sky. Ivan III decided to rebuild the Kremlin. Apparently Fioravanti rebuilt the old Cathedral of the Dormition in the Kremlin (1475–1479), and in this sacred place the tsars of Russia afterward held their coronations. The basic plan was Byzantine, with Italian ornament and decoration. Then architects from Pskov built the small Cathedral of the Annunciation on the same site (1484–1489). The Italian Aloisio Novi later built the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael inside the Kremlin (1505–1509). Solari and others drew a new wall of red brick around it, in the style of the Sforza Castle in Milan (1485–1508). From this seat, the center of union and concentration of state and religious power, famous princes and metropolitans extended their rule over the nobles, merchants and peasants of the whole country and, with blood, bones and religious faith, built one of the strongest empires in history.