Moscow - The third Rome or the new Israel?

Russian Review

Volumn 55, Issue 4, 1996, Pages 591-614

  Rowland, Daniel B ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 34547329139     PISSN: 00360341     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/131866     Document Type: Article

References (124)

1. Edward Keenan, "Muscovite Political Folkways," Russian Review 45 (April 1986): 138-48
2. and idem, "Biblical Military Imagery in the Political Culture of Early Modern Russia: The Blessed Host of the Heavenly Tsar," and Nancy Shields Kollmann, "Pilgrimage, Procession, and Symbolic Space in Sixteenth-Century Russian Politics," in Medieval Russian Culture, ed. Michael Flier and Daniel Rowland (Berkeley, 1994), 2:182-212, and 163-81, respectively
3. For the influence of religious and cultural ideas on the conquest of Kazan see Jaroslaw Pelensky, Russia and Kazan: Conquest and Imperial Ideology (The Hague, 1974), esp. chap. 9
4. The Third Rome idea has been so popular in every genre of works on Russia that a full list of references has never been compiled. For an excellent brief survey of this literature see George Majeska, "The Moscow Coronation of 1498 Reconsidered," Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 26, no. 3 (1978): 353-56
5. A more detailed evaluation is A. L. Gold'berg, "Historishce Wirklichkeit und Falschung der Idee 'Moskau - das dritte Rom,'" Jahrbuch für Geschichte der sozialistichen Lander Europas 15, no. 2 (1975): 123-41
6. See also Roma, Costantinopoli, Mosca: Seminario 21 Aprile 1981 (Naples, c. 1983)
7. One of the most revealing features of the historiography on this issue is that the importance of the idea seems to grow in proportion to the generality and scope of the work concerned. For the importance of the Third Rome idea to one of the founders of modern art see Marit Werenskiold, "Kandinsky's Moscow," Art in America 77 (March 1989): 97-111. Her discussion centers as much on the idea of Moscow as the New Jerusalem as on the Third Rome idea, but she repeats much of the old historiography on the latter theme, including the contention that Filofei's ideas led Ivan IV to assume the title of Tsar (p. 98). She also briefly discusses interest in that theme among contemporary Russian artists and in the organization "Pamiat'" (p. 107)
8. Melvin Wren, A Course of Russian History, 4th ed. (New York, 1979), 98
9. Batalov and Viatchinina, "Ob ideinnom znachenii," 36-42
10. Even the noted Russian specialist in the Muscovite period, R. G. Skrynnikov, chose the title The Third Rome for a popular version of his earlier scholarly text on church-state relations (Tretii Rim [St. Petersburg, 1994]), although neither text really discusses the subject
11. Il'in, Kamennaia letopis', 176-204, particularly for discussions of the Mount of Olives Chapel and the theme of the heavenly Jerusalem in seventeenth-century Russian culture
12. See also Valerie Kivelson, "The Devil Stole His Mind: The Tsar and the 1648 Moscow Uprising," American Historical Review 98 (June 1993): 733-64
13. James Cracraft, The Petrine Revolution in Architecture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 70-73
14. See, in addition to the works cited in note 1, G. Olsr, "Gli ultimi Rurikidi e le basi ideologiche della sovranita dello Stato russo," Orientalia Christiana Periodica 12 (1946): 322-73
15. Daniel Rowland, "Did Russian Literary Ideology Place Any Limits on the Power of the Tsar (1540s-1660s)?" Russian Review 49 (April 1990): 125-55
16. Nikolay Andreyev, "Filofey and His Epistle to Ivan Vasilyevich," Slavonic and East European Review 38 (1959): 1-31
17. G. V. Alferova, "K voprosu o stroitel'noi deiatel'nosti Patriarkha Nikona," Arkhitekturnoe nasledstvo 18 (1969): 30-44
18. The history of the New Jerusalem Monastery should make us cautious when describing what was done (or intended) in Nikon's time. Construction remained unfinished at Nikon's death, but resumed in the 1680s and later; the masonry conical dome over the great rotunda of the Resurrection Cathedral collapsed in 1723 and a fire in 1726 caused further damage; the building was rebuilt in 1752-59 from designs by Rastrelli; the Nazis inflicted tremendous damage on the whole monastery complex in 1941; and the complex has undergone extensive restoration since the war. Nikon's revealing defense of the name and Jerusalem-inspired designs for his monastery has been twice published from different manuscripts: in English by William Palmer, The Patriarch and the Tsar, 6 vols. (London, 1871-76), 1:67-78
19. A. L. Gol'dberg, "Istoriko-politicheskie idei russkoi knizhnosti XV-XVII vekov," Istoriia SSSR, 1975, no. 4:59-77
20. and Paul Bushkovitch, "The Formation of National Consciousness in Early Modern Russia," Harvard Ukrainian Studies 10, nos. 3/4 (1986): 356-63
21. and in Russian by Valerie Tumins and George Vernadsky, eds., Patriarch Nikon on Church and State (Berlin, 1982), 149-58. The quoted words in square brackets are in Palmer's version, but not in Tumin and Vernadsky's
22. Mathiesen, "Handlist," 3-5
23. The most thorough evaluation of the evidence on the Third Rome theme is Donald Ostrowski, "Third Rome - Delimiting the Ruler's Power and Authority," in his unpublished manuscript "Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier, 1304-1589."
24. "The commentaries found in Muscovite chronicles concerning the crucial events and developments in the relations between Muscovy and the Kazan Khanate were based on a simple moral formula. Muscovite defeats and misfortunes were explained by the sins of Christian Russians, and Russian victories and successes by God's grace and his positive intervention in a just cause" (Pelenski, Russia and Kazan, 179)
25. See the letters to Misiur' Munekhin (about astrology) and to Grand Prince Vasilii Ivanovich and Tsar Ivan Vasil'evich in V. I. Malinin, Starets Eleazarova monastyria Filofei i ego poslanie (Kiev, 1901), "Prilozhenie, " 37-47, 49-56 and 57-66, respectively
26. Georges Florovsky, "The Problem of Old Russian Culture," Slavic Review 21 (March 1962): 1-15
27. "Tri 'poslaniia Filofeia' (Opyt tekstologicheskogo analiza)," Trudy Otdela drevnerusskoi literatury (TODRL) 29 (1974): 93-97. He lists ten more manuscripts that contain other works ascribed to Filofei, but none of the three above letters
28. Sobranie gosudarstvennykh gramot i dogovorov (St. Petersburg, 1819), 2:97
29. (reprinted in Cherniavsky, Structure, 126-39)
30. For a survey of the entire cycle see Charles Halperin, "The Russian Land and the Russian Tsar: The Emergence of Muscovite Ideology, 1380-1408," Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte 23 (1976): 7-103
31. For the dating of these texts see Ia. S. Lur'e, Dve istorii Rusi XV veka (St. Petersburg, 1994), 23-31
32. PSRL 6:228-29
33. David Miller has written a careful survey of the contents of the Menology based on manuscripts of both the Novgorod and Moscow redactions. See his "The Velikie Minei Chetii and the Stepennaia Kniga of Metropolitan Makarii and the origins of Russian National Consciousness," Forschungen zur osteuropäische Geschichte 26 (1979): 263-313. The quoted expressions are from p. 276
34. O. V. Tvorogov, Drevnerusskie khronografy (Leningrad, 1975), 120 n.34
35. PSRL (St. Petersburg, 1897), 11:17
36. There was a separate tale about David and Goliath (A. I. Sobolevskii, Perevodnaia literatura Moskovskoi Rusi XIV-XVII vekov [St. Petersburg, 1903], 278)
37. PSRL (St. Petersburg, 1913), 21, pt. 2:590
38. (cited in Miller, "The Velikie Minei Chetii and the Stepennaia Kniga," 359)
39. Simon Schama finds evidence that the writers and painters of the early modern Netherlands used Old Testament terminology to signify gradations of badness among its enemies, calling those enemies Amelikites who were "so evil that extermination was called for." See his The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York: Knopf, 1987), 95. I have not noticed this device in Muscovite usage of these terms, but the question of its use remains an open one
40. O. A. Derzhavina, ed., Vremennik Ivana Timofeeva (Moscow-Leningrad, 1950), 29-30. For a further discussion of this passage and a lengthy but still partial list of Old Testament comparisons in the Vremennik
41. see my "Towards an Understanding," 380-82
42. Timofeev added Sviatopolk to his list of slayers of innocents (Vremennik, 29-30)
43. On the use of the Cain comparison in the Boris and Gleb texts see Picchio, "The Function of Biblical Thematic Clues." Timofeev's discussion of Boris's building projects is in Vremennik, 64-65
44. Vremennik, 10, 136, 150
45. PSRL (1910; reprint ed. Moscow, 1965), 14:11-13
46. Russkaia istoricheskaia biblioteka, 2d ed., vol. 13 (St. Petersburg, 1909), cols. 224, 230, 234, 179, 181, 183, 1317, and 540
47. N. F. Droblenkova, Novaia povest' o preslavnom rossiiskom tsarstve (Moscow-Leningrad), 198
48. Konrad Bussov, Moskovskaia khronika, 1584-1613, ed. I. I. Smirnov (Moscow-Leningrad, 1961), 159. I am grateful to Chester Dunning for the reference to Bussow
49. The paintings were painted over in the 1670s and the building itself was demolished in the eighteenth century, but a careful description made in 1672 by the icon painter Simon Ushakov and the scribe Nikita Klement'ev survives and has been twice published. See I. E. Zabelin, Materialy dlia istorii, arkheologii i statistiki goroda Moskvy, pt. 1 (Moscow, 1884), 1238-55
50. and S. P. Bartenev, Moskovskii kreml' v starinu i teper', pt. 2 (Moscow, 1916), 183-93
51. The fullest analysis, together with an artist's reconstruction of the wall paintings, can be found in O. I. Podobedova, Moskovskaia shkola zhivopisi pri Ivane IV: Raboty v Moskovskom Kremle 40-kh - 70-kh godov XVI v. (Moscow, 1972), 59-68 and illustrations at the end of the book. Note that the dating of these paintings is disputed by K. K. Lopialo, the artist of the reconstructions (ibid., 194-96), among others. For paleographic evidence tending to confirm the mid-sixteenth-century dating of at least some details of the murals see Rowland, "Biblical Military Imagery," 194 n.29. It is impossible finally to resolve the question of the dating of all the images described by Ushakov, many of which may well have been painted (or painted over) in the seventeenth century
52. On the history of the depiction of Moses' raised hands at this moment see Meyer Schapiro, Words and Pictures: On the Literal and Symbolic in the Illustration of a Text (The Hague, 1973)
53. For a Byzantine example of imagery showing Joshua as the prototype of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus see Kurt Wietzmann, The Joshua Roll: A Work of the Macedonian Renaissance (Princeton, 1948)
54. V. I. Antonova and N. E. Mneva, Katalog drevnerusskoi zhivopisi: Opyt istoriko-khudozhestvennoi klassifikatsii (Moscow, 1963), 2:130-31, identify the figures in the army as Saints Vladimir, Boris, Gleb, and Alexander Nevsky, together with Dmitrii Donskoi and other rulers of Rus', but I. A. Kochetkov brings convincing reasons to disagree
55. See his "K istolkovaniiu ikony 'Tserkov' voinstvuiushchaia' ('Blagoslovenno voinstvo nebesnogo tsaria')," TODRL 38 (1985): 186-209
56. For recent surveys of the extensive literature on this subject see Batalov, "K interpretatsii"; N. I. Brunov, Pokrovskii sobor (Moscow, 1988), esp. 216-36
57. and Frank Kämpfer, "Über die theologische und architektonische Konzeption der Vasilij-Blazennyj-Kathedrale in Moskau," Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 24/4 (1976): 481-98
58. The most convincing interpretation of the complex meaning of the architectural ensemble is Michael Flier, "Filling in the Blanks: The Church of the Intercession and the Architectonics of Medieval Muscovite Ritual," Harvard Ukrainian Studies 19 (forthcoming, 1995). The quotation on the Jerusalem Chapel is drawn from Flier's essay
59. Kämpfer, "Über die theologische," 493-94
60. For the importance of the Wisdom theme in mid-sixteenth-century Muscovy, particularly in the Golden Palace, see Podobedova, Moskovskaia shkola, 59-68
61. A. M. Lidov, "Ierusalimskii kuvuklii: O proiskhozhdenii Iukovichnykh glav," ikonografiia arkhitektury, 57-68
62. The most detailed discussion of Godunov's proposed radical changes in the Kremlin is M. A. Il'in, "Proekt perestroiki tsentra Moskovskogo Kremlia pri Borise Godunove," Soobshcheniia instituta istorii iskusstv (Moscow-Leningrad, 1951), 1:79-83
63. See also idem, Kamennaia letopis' moskovskoi Rusi (Moscow, 1966), 56-58
64. and N. L. Batalov and T. N. Viatchinina, "Ob ideinom znachenii i interpretatsii Ierusalimskogo obraza v russkoi arkhitekture XVI-XVII vv.," Arkhitekturnoe nasledstvo, 36 (1988): 22-28
65. On Boris's larger urban designs see N. E. Gulianitskii, ed., Drevnerusskoe gradostroitel'stvo X-XV vekov (Moscow, 1993), 329-39
66. The Petrovskii chertezh is reproduced in ibid., 246-47, but the history of this map requires further research. (Note that the legend of the Petrovskii chertezh points out that the Church of the Intercession on the Moat was called "Jerusalem" [etiam Hierusalem dicitur].) The best discussion of early maps of Moscow is M. V. Posokhin, ed., Pamiatniki arkhitektury Moskvy: Kreml', Kitai-gorod, Tsentral'nye ploshchadi (Moscow, 1982), 35-81
67. The precious gems with which Boris encrusted his model of the "Holy of Holies" may also have been meant as a reference to the heavenly Jerusalem (Rev. 21:18-21
68. Isa. 54:11-14
69. After this article was completed I was able to examine quickly M. P. Kudriavstev's Moskva - Tretii Rim: Istoriko-gradostroitel'noe issledovanie (Moscow, 1994). In spite of the title, the book contains extensive comparisons of Jerusalem, either heavenly or real, to Moscow and to other Rus' towns. The chapter entitled "Tretii Rim" deals more with parallels with Jerusalem than with comparisons to Rome
70. Harold Fisch, Jerusalem and Albion: The Hebraic Theme in Seventeenth-Century Literature (New York, 1964)
71. Gol'dberg, "Istoriko-politicheskie idei," 71-73
72. For a superb essay on the Old Testament roots of American culture see Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad (Madison, 1978)
73. Bushkovitch, "National Consciousness," 358-59
74. Russkaia istoricheskaia biblioteka 13:cols. 177-84
75. Ostrowski, "Third Rome." Ostrowski gives a careful summary of the evidence for the Third Rome idea both in Filofei's letters and in other texts. The dating of the particular redactions of these other texts containing the Third Rome idea is often difficult to establish with precision. One frequently cited early locus for the Third Rome idea is the 1492 paschal canon by Metropolitan Zosima. In 1986, I. A. Tikhoniuk pointed out that three of the four earliest copies of the canon (the copies closest to the archetype) have the reading "New Jerusalem" instead of "New Rome" in a crucial passage ("'Izlozhenie paskhalii' Moskovskogo mitropolita Zosimy," Issledovaniia po istochnikovedeniiu SSSR XIII-XVII vv.: Sbornik statei [Moscow, 1986], 53-54
76. William Hammer, "The Concept of the New or Second Rome in the Middle Ages," Speculum 19 (January 1944): 50-62
77. quoted in Ostrowski, "Third Rome")
78. N. S. Chaev, "'Moskva - tretii Rim' v politicheskoi praktike moskovskogo pravitel'stva XVI v.," Istoricheskie zapiski 17 (1945): 1-23
79. Thomas More, The Complete Poetical Works (London, 1869), 100. I thank my colleague Mark Summers for this reference
80. The only monograph dealing directly with the subject, as far as I know, is the rare N. I. Efimov, Rus' - novyi Israel: Teokraticheskaia ideologiia svoezemnago Pravoslaviia v do-Petrovskoi pis'mennosti (Kazan, 1912)
81. See also G. P. Fedotov's still classic work, The Russian Religious Mind (1946; reprint ed. New York, 1960), 1:63-93, 380-85
82. Most welcome recent additions to this literature are Joel Raba, "The Biblical Tradition in Old Russian Chronicles," Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte 46 (1992): 9-20
83. and Andrei Batalov and Aleksei Lidov, eds., Jerusalim v russkoi kul'ture (Moscow, 1994)
84. (An expanded English version of this collection is available: Jerusalem in Russian Culture [New York: A. D. Carattzas, 1994]
85. Unfortunately, I have not yet seen either version.) For some recent general arguments that Biblical references are crucial to understanding East Slavic texts see Riccardo Picchio, "The Function of Biblical Thematic Clues in the Literary Code of 'Slavia Orthodoxa,'" Slavica Hierosolymitana 1 (Jerusalem, 1977): 1-32
86. Walter K. Hanak, "The Nature and Image of Grand Princely Power in Kievan Russia: 980-1054" (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1973)
87. G. Stökl, "Die zweite Solomon," Canadian-American Slavic Studies 13, nos. 1-2 (1979): 23-31
88. Daniel Rowland, "Towards an Understanding of the Political Ideas in Ivan Timofeyev's Vremennik," Slavonic and East European Review 62 (July 1984): 379-84
89. Marilyn Nelson, "The Structure and Exegesis in 'Jaroslav Founded the Great City Kiev . . .' from the Primary Chronicle," Dan Armstrong: Memorial Volume (forthcoming)
90. and Hugh Olmstead, "A Learned Greek Monk in Muscovite Exile: Maksim Grek and Old Testament Prophets," Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 3 (1987): 1-73
91. Almost every editor of a Muscovite text has pointed out at least some scriptural references (I. N. Lebedeva, ed., Povest' o Varlaame i Ioasafe [Moscow, 1985], is particularly impressive in this regard) and discussions of Biblical themes as developed in particular contexts are relatively common
92. The literature on this theme is vast. See, for example, the bibliography in Sacvan Bercovitch, ed., Typology and Early American Literature (Amherst, 1972), 245-337
93. The text history of this service remains a little unclear. This quotation agrees with copy P of the Nikon Chronicle (Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei [PSRL] [1904; reprint ed. Moscow, 1965], 13:150)
94. which B. M. Kloss considers was written in the late 1550s (Nikonovskii svod i russkie letopisi XVI-XVII vekov [Moscow, 1980], 202-3)
95. The coronation text in a much fuller version is found in a tipikion which E. V. Barsov claimed was contemporary with the service itself, but the text of this prayer is substantially the same in both the chronicle and liturgical versions (Drevnerusskie pamiatniki venchaniia tsarei na tsarstvo [Moscow, 1883], 42, 51, also 76)
96. The inclusion of this prayer in the chronicle tradition testifies to its importance. See also the L'vov Chronicle, PSRL, vol 20, pt. 2 (1914; reprint ed. Dusseldorf, 1971), 468
97. For an excellent survey of the relevant literature see David B. Miller, "The Coronation of Ivan IV of Moscow," Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, N.F. 15, pt. 4 (December 1967): 559-74
98. Michael Cherniavsky, "Khan or Basileus: An Aspect of Russian Mediaeval Political Theory," Journal of the History of Ideas 20 (1959): 459-76
99. reprinted in Cherniavsky, ed., The Structure of Russian History (New York, 1970), 65-79
100. For the "King of Kings" prayer see, among other references, Barsov, Drevnerusskie pamiatniki, 27
101. and N. H. Baynes, "The Thought World of East Rome," Byzantine Studies and Other Essays (London, 1955), 33-34
102. So prominent is the model of David in imperial iconography that Christopher Walter has called him "the paragon of Byzantine Emperors." See Walter, "Raising on a Shield in Byzantine Iconography," Revue des Études Byzantines 33 (1975): 168
103. Old Testament themes in Byzantine Imperial iconography are reviewed in Andre Grabar, L'Empereur dans l'Art Byzantin (Paris, 1936), 95-97
104. and in Paul Magdalino and Robert Nelson, "The Emperor in Byzantine Art of the Twelfth Century," Byzantische Forschungen 8 (1982): 136, 139, 144-45, and fig. 6
105. C. A. Bouman, Sacring and Crowning: The Development of the Latin Ritual for the Anointing of Kings and the Coronation of an Emperor before the Eleventh Century (Groningen, 1957), 107-26
106. Janet Nelson, "Symbols in Context: Rulers' Inauguration Rituals in Byzantium and in the West in the Early Middle Ages," Studies in Church History 11 (1975): 97-119
107. Common sense would dictate that the tough and capable men of the Muscovite court, who apparently thought of the tsardom as the personal property of the ruler, would have looked askance at the idea of the state as a divine gift that brought with it certain obligations, however ill-defined. See Richard Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime (New York, 1974), 64
108. and Nancy Shields Kollmann, Kinship and Politics: The Making of the Muscovite Political System (Stanford, 1987), 3
109. I am not referring here to any explicit, written rules found in contemporary sources; rather, my comments are based on my analysis of the way East Slavic historians wrote history. For authors who share this general view see note 11. For a parallel interpretation in which God's intention or will is revealed in events commemorated in both side altars of churches and in border scenes in icons, with citations to Orthodox writers who support this interpretation, see A. L. Batalov, "K interpretatsii arkhitektury sobora Pokrova na Rvu," in Ikonografiia arkhitektury, ed. A. L. Batalov (Moscow, 1992), 28-29, passim
110. G. W. Trompf, The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought from Antiquity to the Reformation (Berkeley, 1979)
111. For an excellent brief overview of this tradition of exegesis within the East Slavic context see Marilyn Nelson, "Biblical Typology," in Modern Encyclopedia of Religions in Russia and the Soviet Union, ed. Paul Steeves (Gulf Breeze, FL, 1991), 4:90-97
112. D. S. Likhachev and V. P. Adrianova-Peretts, eds., Povest' vremennykh let (Moscow-Leningrad, 1950), 16-17
113. S. H. Cross and O. P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor, trans. and eds., The Russian Primary Chronicle (Cambridge, MA, 1953), 58
114. Povest' vremennykh let, 61-74
115. Russian Primary Chronicle, 98-109
116. For a most useful discussion of the sources of the "philosopher's speech," with references to earlier discussions of this important passage, see Simon Franklin, "Some Apocryphal Sources of Kievan Russian Historiography," Oxford Slavonic Papers 15 (N.S.) (1982): 1-27
117. Franklin shows the importance of the pseudoepigraphical "Book of Jubilees" (which retells the story of mankind from the Creation to the Exodus in a kind of partial paraphrase of the canonical books of Genesis and Exodus) to the Primary Chronicle, to the various historical compendiums (khronografy) that circulated in Kievan Rus' and to Kievan historical consciousness in general. Joel Raba, "The Biblical Tradition," traces Old Testament references in the Primary Chronicle in general, as does A. Shakhmatov, "Povest' vremennykh let i ee istochniki," TODRL 4 (1940): 38-41
118. On the surprising lack of attention paid to Byzantine political affairs in Kievan historical works, both chronicles and historical compendiums, see Simon Franklin, "The Empire of the Rhomaioi as Viewed from Kievan Russia: Aspects of Byzantino-Russian Cultural Relations," Byzantion 53, fasc. 2 (1983): 507-37
119. Povest' vremennykh let, 89, 68-69
120. Russian Primary Chronicle, 124, 104-5 (emphasis added)
121. Ludolf Müller, ed., Des Metropoliten Ilarion Lobrede auf Vladimir den Heiligen und Glaubensbekenntnis (Wiesbaden, 1962), 121-22, 69, 85-87, passim
122. Pamiatniki literatury drevnei Rusi: XII vek (Moscow, 1981), 426
123. PSRL (St. Petersburg, 1853), 6:110, 105, 106
124. M. A. Salmina gives a thorough discussion of the dating and text history of this tale in "Slovo o zhitii i o prestavlenii velikogo kniazia Dmitriia Ivanovicha, tsaria Rus'skago," TODRL 25 (1970): 81-104