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inferior position; a society is rededicated to the possibility of resurrection after
death. Such are the psychological and spiritual transformations rituals bring
about.
The political life of Muscovite society was replete with rituals. Perhaps
the most daunting was kissing the cross (krestnoe tselovanie) in a church to
solemnify an oath or declaration as true. Princes forged alliances, confirmed
treaties and attested wills by kissing the cross. Litigants in court disputes
without clear evidence faced the terrifying prospect of standing before the
cross, kissingit the fateful third time, and swearing the truth of their testimony.
Frequently they opted for other forms of resolution.
2
The ritual of petition produced different relationships. In describing ritual
practice at the Muscovite court in the early sixteenth century, Sigismund von
Herberstein, the ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor, wrote:
whenever anyone makes a petition, or offers thanks, it is the custom to bow
the head; if he wishes to do so in a very marked manner, he bends himself so
low as to touch the ground with his hand; but if he desires to offer his thanks
to the grand-duke for any great favour, or to beg anything of him, he then
bows himself so low as to touch the ground with his forehead.
3
This ritual, combined with references to petitioners as slaves (kholopy) and the
ruler as master (gosudar’), convinced many foreigners, including Herberstein,
that Muscovy was a despotic state. Bit’ chelom ‘to beat one’s forehead’ was,
after all, the Muscovite term for paying obeisance and the source for chelobitie
(chelobit’e) ‘petition’, literally beating of the forehead.
Cross kissing was a Kievan and Muscovite ritual that confirmed a relation-
ship of obeisance before God, rendering all persons, high and low, equal before
their creator. The beating of the head, by contrast, was a ritual that confirmed
an asymmetrical relationship, rendering petitioner and petitioned unequal in
status and affirming the political and social hierarchy of Muscovite life.
Muscovy and the ideology of rulership
The correlation of ritual and political ideas begins with the historical trans-
formation of Muscovy and the development of a myth to account for it. By
2 Giles Fletcher, ‘Of the RusseCommonwealth’, in Lloyd E. Berry and Robert O. Crummey
(eds.), Rude and Barbarous Kingdom: Russia in the Accounts of Sixteenth-Century English Voy-
agers (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), pp. 174–5; Nancy Shields Kollmann,
By Honor Bound: State and Society in Early Modern Russia (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University
Press, 1999), pp. 119–20.
3 Sigismund von Herberstein, Notes upon Russia, 2 vols., trans. R. H. Major (New York:
Burt Franklin, 1851–2), vol. ii,pp.124–5.
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the mid-fifteenth century, Moscow was adjusting to an altered position in the
world of Eastern Orthodoxy. Rejecting the Union of Florence and Ferrara, the
Muscovites refused to consult the Greeks when selecting their new metropoli-
tan in 1448 and in effect formed an autocephalous Orthodox Church. There-
after, the Muscovite Church promulgated an anti-Tatar, anti-Muslim campaign
in the chronicles in counterpoint to the pure Christian tradition represented
by Moscow.
4
Moscow was increasingly portrayed as inheriting the legacy of
Kievan Rus’ and with it, the myth of the Rus’ian Land, which was ultimately
incorporated into the myth of the Muscovite ruler.
5
Constantinople’s capture
by the Turks in 1453 and the seemingly providential expansion of the Muscovite
principality thereafter opened new vistas for Ivan III when he ascended to
thethronein 1462.By1480, ArchbishopVassianRylo wasurging himto become
the great Christian tsar and liberator of the Rus’ian Land, the ‘New Israel’, in
its struggle against the Golden Horde, the ‘godless sons of Hagar’.
6
Theideology that crystallised in Muscovyduring the reigns of Ivan III (1462–
1505), his son, Vasilii III (1505–33) and grandson, Ivan IV (1533–84) presented the
Byzantine notion of the emperor-dominated realm as the Kingdom of Christ
on Earth. If allusion to Agapetus gave the ruler absolute political authority
over the state (‘though an emperor in body be like all other men, yet in power
he is like God’), the Epanag
¯
og
¯
e of Patriarch Photius and other Byzantine polit-
ical literature known in Muscovy at the time broadly demarcated spheres of
authority apportioned among temporal and spiritual leaders.
7
Church polemi-
cists such as Iosif Volotskiiin The Enlightener praised the power and authority of
the grand prince, but insisted on the mobilisation of wise advisers – temporal
and spiritual – against authority that transgressed the laws of God.
8
Muscovite rulership and the Kievan legacy were expressed most clearly
in the invented tradition of The Tale of the Princes of Vladimir (c.1510). The
4 Donald Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier,
1304–1589 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 164–70.
5 Charles J. Halperin, ‘The Russian Land and the Russian Tsar: The Emergence of Mus-
covite Ideology, 1380–1408’, FOG 23 (1976): 79–82; Jaroslaw Pelenski, ‘The Origins of the
Official Muscovite Claims to the “Kievan Inheritance” ’, HUS 1 (1977): 40–2, 51–2 and ‘The
Emergence of the Muscovite Claims to the Byzantine-Kievan “Imperial Inheritance” ’,
HUS 7 (1983): 20–1.
6 PSRL, vol. viii (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, 2001), pp. 212–13.
7 Deno John Geanakoplos, Byzantine East & Latin West: Two Worlds of Christendom in
Middle Ages and Renaissance, Studies in Ecclesiastical and Cultural History (New York: Harper
Torchbooks, 1966), pp. 63–5; Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols,pp.207–8.
8 David M. Goldfrank, The Monastic Rule of Iosif Volotsky, rev. edn, Cistercian Studies Series,
no. 36 (Kalamazoo, Mich., and Cambridge, Mass.: Cistercian Publications, 2000), p. 42;
Daniel Rowland, ‘Did Muscovite Literary Ideology Place Limits on the Power of the Tsar
(1540s–1660s)?’, RR 49 (1990): 126–31; Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols,pp.199–218.
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Roman genealogy that traced the Riurikid dynasty back to Prus, a kinsman of
Augustus Caesar, may have been included to assure Europeans that the use of
the term ‘tsar’ for the Muscovite ruler was legitimate. The Monomakh legend
provided a Byzantine pedigree for Muscovite Orthodox rulership in the form
of concrete royal symbols of authority sent by Byzantine emperor Constantine
Monomachos to Vladimir Monomakh to be used at the latter’s installation as
Kievan grand prince.
9
In theory the Muscovite ruler had unlimited power and authority in ren-
dering God’s will, but in practice he governed with the support and close
involvement of a secular and ecclesiastical elite.
10
It was this ruling elite that
faced the imminent Apocalypse at the approach of 1492, the portentous year
7000 in the Byzantine reckoning. In this context, the city of Moscow itself
was reconceptualised in Orthodox Christian terms as the New Jerusalem and
Muscovy came to be understood as the embodiment of the Chosen People,
whose ruler chosen by God was prepared to lead them to salvation.
11
Ritual and setting
In three centuries Moscow had evolved from a mere outpost to a city with
a walled fortress and pretensions to greatness. By the 1470s, the earlier struc-
tures built to mark the rise of a city – limestone walls, stone churches, royal
palace and halls – were dilapidated.
12
Ivan III, better than any of his immediate
predecessors, understood how setting and ritual might serve to integrate the
notions of the emerging Muscovite state and a ruling elite. In an impressive
environment, solemn rituals could elevate the person of the ruler and help
confirm his position at the apex of society. There was no place more suitable
for rituals of high purpose than the Kremlin, the fortress of Moscow.
Cathedral Square was one of the semiotically most charged spaces within
the Kremlin (see Figure 17.1). It was bounded on the north by the cathedral
9 Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols,pp.171–6.
10 Edward L. Keenan, ‘Muscovite Political Folkways’, RR 45 (1986): 128–36; Nancy Shields
Kollmann, Kinship and Politics: The Making of the Muscovite Political System, 1345–1547
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. 146–87; Kollmann, By Honor Bound,
pp. 169–202; Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols,pp.85–107, 135–43, 199–218.
11 Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols,p.218; Michael S. Flier, ‘Till the End of Time: The
Apocalypse in Russian Historical Experience before 1500’, in Valerie A. Kivelson and
Robert H. Greene (eds.), Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice under the Tsars (University
Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), pp. 152–8.
12 I. E. Grabar’ (ed.), Istoriia russkogo iskusstva, 13 vols. (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1953–64), vol.
iii (1955), pp. 282–333; T. F. Savarenskaia (ed.), Arkhitekturnye ansambli Moskvy XV–nachala
XX vekov: Printsipy khudozhestvennogo edinstva (Moscow: Stroiizdat, 1997), pp. 17–53.
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Figure 17.1. Cathedral Square, Moscow Kremlin
KEY: 1. Cathedral of the Dormition
2. Cathedral of Archangel Michael
3. Cathedral of Annunciation
4. Faceted Hall
5. Golden Hall
6. Beautiful (Red) Porch
7. Palace
8. Bell Tower ‘Ivan the Great’
9. Tainik Tower
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of the Dormition (primary cathedral church), on the east by the bell tower
‘Ivan the Great’, on the south by the cathedral of the Archangel Michael (royal
necropolis), and on the west by the cathedral of the Annunciation (palace
church), the Golden Hall (throne room), the adjacent Beautiful (Red) Porch
and Staircase, and the Faceted Hall (reception hall).
The cathedral of the Dormition (1475–9) was designed by Bolognese archi-
tect Aristotele Fioravanti after the Muscovite effort to rebuild resulted in a
disastrous collapse in 1474.
13
Fioravanti reshaped the older Vladimir Dormi-
tion plan in a Renaissance compositional key, maintaining modified medieval
Vladimir-Suzdal’ features on the exterior. He created a dramatic southern por-
tal facing Cathedral Square, harmonised the dimensions of the bays, flattened
the apses, and produced a characteristically north-eastern limestone fac¸ade
that prompted contemporaries to describe the buildingas though carved ‘from
a single stone’.
14
He opened up the internal space to the highest vaults, elim-
inating the gallery that would traditionally have ensconced the royal family.
The place of the grand prince was relocated to the ground floor near the
southern portal, which became an effective alternative point of egress for the
ruler during processions.
The Metropolitan’s Pew, mentioned in many of the Dormition’s rituals,
was apparently installed between 1479 and the mid-1480s in a space adjacent
to the south-east pillar of the nave facing the iconostasis.
15
More than seven
decades passed before the self-standing Tsar’s Pew was installed on 1 Septem-
ber 1551, four years after Ivan IV was officially crowned as the first tsar. Better
known as the Monomakh Throne, the Pew boasted twelve carved wooden
panels based on excerpts from the Monomakh legend taken from The Tale of
the Princes of Vladimir. Apart from military forays against the Byzantines, the
panels depicted Monomakh in consultation with a boyar council, the arrival of
the royal Byzantine regalia in Kiev, and their use in the crowning of Vladimir
Monomakh as grand prince, all messages immediately relevant to Muscovite
ideology. The theme of Jerusalem was represented in the inscription around
the cornice, which reproduced God’s injunction about dynastic continuity and
wise rulership to King David and King Solomon. Furthermore, the compo-
sition of the Pew bore a clear affinity to the Dormition’s Small Zion, a silver
13 See historical survey with source references in V. P. Vygolov, Arkhitektura Moskovskoi Rusi
serediny XV veka (Moscow: Nauka, 1988), pp. 177–210.
14 PSRL, vol. xxv (Moscow and Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1949), p. 324.
15 T. V. Tolstaia, Uspenskii sobor Moskovskogo Kremlia (Moscow: Nauka, 1979), p. 30;
G. N. Bocharov, ‘Tsarskoe Mesto Ivana Groznogo v Moskovskom Uspenskom sobore’,
in Pamiatniki russkoi arkhitektury i monumental’nogo iskusstva: Goroda, ansambli, zodchie,
ed. V. P. Vygolov (Moscow: Nauka, 1985), p. 46.
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Political ideas and rituals
liturgical vessel representingJerusalem’s Holy Sepulchre and carried in solemn
processions.
16
Thecathedral of ArchangelMichael (1505–8) wasdesignedbyanother Italian
architect, Alevisio the Younger. He retained the asymmetrical bays from the
earlier medieval plan, but added striking Renaissance ornament, including
limestone articulation against a red-brick fac¸ade and distinctive, large scallop-
shell gables signifying rebirth. This was fitting symbolism for a site devoted
to the memory of the royal dynasty, whose sarcophagi occupied the southern
and later northern part of the nave and a side chapel near the sanctuary.
The cathedral of the Annunciation (1484–9) had been rebuilt by native Psko-
vian architects, who skilfully combined the basic Suzdalian articulated cube
with its blind arcade frieze and ogival gables together with brickwork and
design redolent of Pskov and Novgorod, a stylistic marriage signalling Mus-
covite success in ‘the gathering of the Rus’ian lands’.
The Faceted Hall (1487–91) was designed by Italians Marco Ruffo and Pietro
Antonio Solario in the style of a northern Italian Renaissance palazzo, but
with an obvious allusion to its namesake in Novgorod. Named after the carved
facets on the eastern fac¸ade facing the Square, it was notable for its internal
design with a huge central pier supporting groined vaults. The pier served as
a staging area for official receptions and banquets hosted by the grand prince.
TheFacetedHallisoftenmentionedinforeignaccountsasthesite of numerous
rituals of status and conciliation as regards foreign audiences, seating protocol,
the tasting and distribution of food and the proposing of toasts.
17
The Golden Hall was planned by Ivan III but completed by his son, Vasilii
III, in 1508. Reached off a great landing, the Beautiful (Red) Porch overlooking
Cathedral Square, the Golden Hall consisted of a vestibule, where dignitaries
gathered, and the throne room. The name was apparently inspired by the
Chrysotriklinos, the Golden Hall throne room of the Byzantine emperor in
Constantinople. Severely damaged in the Moscow fire of 1547, the Golden
Hall was completely rebuilt by order of the newly crowned tsar, Ivan IV, and
decorated with elaborate and controversial murals that referred to allegories
and historical events important to Muscovite ideology.
18
16 I. A. Sterligova, ‘Ierusalimy kak liturgicheskie sosudy v Drevnei Rusi’, in Ierusalim v
russkoi kul’ture, ed. Andrei Batalov and Aleksei Lidov (Moscow: Nauka, 1994), p. 50;
Michael S. Flier, ‘The Throne of Monomakh: Ivan the Terrible and the Architectonics
of Destiny’, in James Cracraft and Daniel Rowland (eds.), Architectures of Russian Identity
1500 to the Present (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003), pp. 30–2.
17 Herberstein, Notes, vol. ii,pp.127–32; Richard Chancellor, ‘The First Voyage to Russia’,
in Berry and Crummey (eds.), Rude and Barbarous Kingdom,pp.25–7.
18 O. I. Podobedova, Moskovskaia shkola zhivopisi pri Ivane IV: Raboty v Moskovskom Kremle
40-kh–70-kh godov XVI v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1972), pp. 59–68; David B. Miller, ‘The
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ThemajorarchitecturalinnovationbeyondtheKremlinitselfwasthechurch
of the Intercession on the Moat, later known as St Basil’s cathedral. Built in
Beautiful (Red) Square in celebration of Ivan IV’s victory over the Kazan’
khanate in 1552, the church underwent a slow progression in 1555 from indi-
vidual shrines to a composite set of correlated chapels, which, taken together,
resemble Jerusalem in microcosm.
19
Completed in 1561 on a site adjacent to
the central marketplace and the world of the non-elite, the Intercession stood
as an antipode to the core structures of Cathedral Square behind the Kremlin
walls.
In 1598/9, just to the north of the Intercession, a raised round dais was built
in stone, possibly replacing an earlier wooden structure.
20
Called Golgotha
(Lobnoe mesto ‘place of the skull’), it was a site for major royal proclamations,
including declarations of war, announcements of royal births and deaths and
the naming of heirs apparent,perhaps replacing the original city tribune. It was
also used as a station for major cross processions led by the chief prelate and
the tsar, rituals featuring the palladium of Moscow, the icon of the Vladimir
Mother of God, in honour of her benevolent protection. Golgotha, by its
very name and placement near the Intercession ‘Jerusalem’, made manifest
Moscow’s self-perception as the New Jerusalem.
The political rituals that realised most directly the myth of the Muscovite
ruler and his realm were either contingent, prompted by circumstance, or cycli-
cal, governed by the ecclesiastical calendar. They were direct, requiring the
presence of the ruler, or indirect, referring to his office. In addition to the
actual protocols of ceremony, the locus of performance, whether inside or
outside Moscow and its golden centre, provided significant points of refer-
ence that guided and enriched the message intended. Nowhere is this better
demonstrated than in the etiquette involving foreign diplomats, from whom
we have quite extensive responses.
21
Viskovatyi Affair of 1553–54: Official Art, the Emergence of Autocracy, and the Disin-
tegration of Medieval Russian Culture’, RH 8 (1981): 298, 308, 314–20; Michael S. Flier,
‘K semioticheskomu analizu Zolotoi palaty Moskovskogo Kremlia’, in Drevnerusskoe
iskusstvo.Russkoeiskusstvopozdnegosrednevekov’ia:XVI vek(StPetersburg:Dmitrii Bulanin,
2003), pp. 180–6; Daniel Rowland, ‘Two Cultures, One Throneroom: Secular Courtiers
and Orthodox Culture in the Golden Hall of the Moscow Kremlin’, in Kivelson and
Greene (eds.), Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice under the Tsars,pp.40–53.
19 Michael S. Flier, ‘Filling in the Blanks: The Church of the Intercession and the Architec-
tonics of Medieval Muscovite Ritual’, HUS 19 (1995): 120–37; Savarenskaia (ed.), Arkhitek-
turnye ansambli Moskvy, pp. 54–99.
20 PSRL, vol. xxxiv (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1978), p. 202; B. A. Uspenskii, Tsar’ i patriarkh:
Kharizma vlasti v Rossii (Vizantiiskaia model’ i ee russkoe pereosmyslenie) (Moscow: Iazyki
russkoi kul’tury, 1998), p. 455 (n. 52).
21 Marshall Poe, ‘A People Born to Slavery’: Russia in Early Modern Ethnography, 1476–1748
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 39–81.
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Contingent rituals
Foreign diplomatic rituals
In a report that resonates with others from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
writers, Herberstein commented on the indirect but nonetheless elaborate
ritual etiquette that faced foreign embassies upon approaching Muscovite
territory.
22
Each part of the protocol – initial contact, local interview, delay
for instructions from Moscow, escort, entrance into Moscow, sequestering
and audience with the Muscovite ruler – confirmed relative status. Ritual
gestures such as dismounting from horses or sledges, or the baring of heads in
anticipation of verbal exchange, were carried out in a specific order, designed
to place the prestige of the Muscovite representative, and indirectly that of the
grand prince, above that of the foreign visitor and his master.
Royal escorts rode ahead of and behind the embassy along the entire route,
allowing no one to fall behind or join the entourage. Symbolically the royal
reachextendedtotheverybordersoftherealm,envelopingtheforeignelement
and drawing it towards the centre. At each station new representatives were
dispatched from the centre to receive the members of the embassy and greet
them in the name of the ruler until at last, after several days or even weeks of
waitingoutside the city, theywereescorted into Moscow past crowds of people
intentionally brought there. Entering the Kremlin on foot, they encountered
huge numbers of soldiers and separate ranks of courtiers – enough people, so
Herberstein reasoned,to impressforeignerswith the sheer quantity of subjects
and the consequent power of the grand prince. The closer the envoys came to
the site of the grand prince, the more frequent were the successions of ever
more highly placed ranks of nobility, each rank moving into position directly
behind the embassy as the next higher one waited to greet them.
Once ushered into the throne room itself, the envoys descended several
steps to the floor. From this position they were obliged to look up at the
sumptuously attired ruler on a raised throne. Additionally they confronted
his numerous courtiers, clad in golden cloth down to their ankles, the boyars
resplendent in their high fur hats, and all seated on benches above the steps
against the other three walls in an orderly array.
23
The English merchant
Richard Chancellor reported that ‘this so honorable an assembly, so great a
majesty of the emperor and of the place, might very well have amazed our
men and have dashed them out of countenance. . .’
24
The papal legate to
22 Herberstein, Notes, vol. ii,pp.112–42.
23 Chancellor, ‘First Voyage’, p. 24.
24 Ibid., p. 25.
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Ivan IV, Antonio Possevino, judged that in the splendour of his court and
those who populate it, the tsar ‘rivals the Pope and surpasses other kings’.
25
TheEnglishcommercialagent JeromeHorseynoted with admirationIvanIV’s
four royal guards (ryndy) flanking the throne, dressed in shiny silver cloth and
bearing ceremonial pole-axes.
26
The carefully arranged hierarchy of courtiers
dominated by the tsar was all-encompassing and meant to impress visitors
with the size, authority and immeasurable wealth of the Muscovite court. All
petitioners were required to repeat the ruler’s lengthy series of titles, a list
based on rank and geographic spread. Omission of any title on the list was not
tolerated.
27
The most important ceremonial act during the audience was the
diplomat’s kissing of the tsar’s right hand, if it was offered.
28
Ritual enquiries
about health were then followed by the formal presentation of gifts by the
diplomat.
Royal progresses
As a complement to the ritualised travel of diplomats towards the centre,
the royal progress from centre to periphery allowed the ruler himself to pro-
mulgate Muscovite ideology by travelling to cities, towns and monasteries
in elaborate processions, with icons and other ecclesiastical accoutrements.
29
Such a ritual stamping out of territory and creation of royal space tied the
land to the ruler through contiguity. Participating in impressive ceremonies of
entrance (adventus) and departure (profectio), the ruler was able to take posses-
sion of the site physically and spiritually by means of an awe-inspiring display
of the sort demonstrated by Ivan IV when he captured and entered Kazan’ in
1552 and then returned to Moscow in a triumphant procession.
30
Bride shows
The authority of the ruler was represented directly or indirectly in rituals
intended to preserve harmony and balance among the court elite. Marriage
25 Antonio Possevino, The Moscovia of Antonio Possevino, S.J.,ed.andtrans.HughF.Graham,
UCIS Series in Russian and East European Studies, no. 1 (Pittsburgh: University Center
for International Studies, University of Pittsburgh, 1977), p. 47.
26 Sir Jerome Horsey, ‘Travels’, in Berry and Crummey (eds.), Rude and Barbarous Kingdom,
p. 303.
27 Fletcher, ‘Russe Commonwealth’, pp. 131–2; cf. Herberstein, Notes, vol. ii,pp.34–8.
28 L.A. Iuzefovich, ‘Kak v posol’skikh obychaiakh vedetsia’ (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye
otnosheniia, 1988), pp. 115–16.
29 Nancy Shields Kollmann, ‘Pilgrimage, Procession, and Symbolic Space in Sixteenth-
Century Russian Politics’, in Michael S. Flier and Daniel Rowland (eds.), Medieval
Russian Culture, 2 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), vol. ii,pp.163–6.
30 PSRL, vol. xiii (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, 2000), pp. 220–8.
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arrangements, for instance, helped maintain a tenuous power network among
specific clans at court. The intricate organisation of bride shows, performed
ritually before the ruler, guaranteed him and his family firm control over
the selection process and the relationships to be strengthened, weakened or
ended.
31
Surrender-by-the-head ritual
The indirect ritual of surrender by the head (vydacha golovoiu) was intended
to confirm the hierarchy among elites established by the rules of precedence
(mestnichestvo) and is described in Kotoshikhin’s seventeenth-century account
of the Muscovite court.
32
Violators of precedence were sent in disgrace on foot
instead of on horseback from the Kremlin, a metonym of the tsar’s power, to
the house of the offended party, wherethe tsar’s representatives announced the
ruler’s decision to the winner as he stood on an upstairs porch. The semiotic
oppositions of low and high were complemented by the loser’s permission to
insult the winner for emotional release without retaliation. The ritual rein-
forcedtheimageoftheruleras charismatic and autocratic, and that ofthenoble
elite as accommodating and supportive advisers committed to preserving the
order and stability that made government by consensus possible.
33
Coronation ritual
Althoughwehave no recordof the investitureceremonyof the grand princes of
Kievan Rus’ or of their counterparts in Muscovite Rus’ before the late fifteenth
century, some form of installation ceremonysurelyexisted. The direct formula
that appears in chronicle accounts simply notes that such-and-such a prince
assumed authority (siede lit. ‘sat’) in a given capital or that a more highly placed
ruler installed him on the throne (posadi lit. ‘seated’).
The earliest evidence of an actual coronation ceremony in Muscovy dates
from 4 February 1498, when a ritual based on the Byzantine ceremony for co-
emperors was used to lend legitimacy to Ivan III’s naming a controversial heir
apparent – grandson Dmitrii rather than second son Vasilii – to the Muscovite
throne. By 1502, Vasilii had regained favour and was named grand prince
and thus entitled to succeed his father. Interestingly, the performance of the
coronation ceremony had not guaranteed the succession to Dmitrii, thus
31 Russell E. Martin, ‘Dynastic Marriage in Muscovy, 1500–1729’, unpublished Ph.D. disser-
tation, Harvard University, 1996,pp.30–110.
32 Grigorij Koto
ˇ
sixin, O Rossii v carstvovanie Alekseja Mixajlovi
ˇ
ca: Text and Commentary,
ed. A. E. Pennington (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), fos. 63–64v, 67, 149, 150.
33 Nancy Shields Kollmann, ‘Ritual and Social Drama at the Muscovite Court’,SR 45 (1986):
497–500.
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