anachronisms. The third is altogether poetical. The Poviest o Drakule (“Story of Drakula”) is a collection of anecdotes relating to a cruel prince of Walachia who lived in the 15th century. (See Rumania, History.) Several of the barbarities described in it have also been assigned to Ivan the Terrible.
The early Russian laws present many features of interest, such as the Russkaya Pravda of Yaroslav, which is preserved in the Codes of laws. chronicle of Novgorod; the date is between 1018 and 1054. The laws show Russia at that time to have been in civilization quite on a level with the rest of Europe. But the evil influence of the Mongols was soon to make itself felt. The next important code is the Sudebnik of Ivan III., the date of which is 1497; this was followed by that of Ivan IV. of the year 1550, in which we have a republication by the tsar of his grandfather's laws, with additions. In the time of this emperor also was issued the Stoglav (1551), a body of ecclesiastical regulations. Mention must also be made of the Ulozhenie or “Ordinance” of the tsar Alexis. This abounds with enactments of sanguinary punishment: women are buried alive for murdering their husbands; torture is recognized as a means of procuring evidence; and the knout and mutilation are mentioned on almost every page. Some of the penalties are whimsical: for instance, the man who uses tobacco is to have his nose cut off; this was altered by Peter the Great, who himself practised the habit and encouraged it in others.
In 1553 a printing press was established at Moscow, and in 1564 the first book was printed, an “Apostol, ” as it Introduction of printing. is called, i.e. a book containing the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles. The printers were Ivan Feodorov and Peter Tirnofieiev; a monument has been erected to the memory of the former. As early as 1548 Ivan had invited printers to Russia, but they were detained on their journey. Feodorov and his companions were soon, however, compelled to leave Russia, and found a protector in Sigismund III. The cause appears to have been the enmity of the copyists of books, who succeeded in drawing over to their side the more fanatical priests. The first Slavonic Bible was printed at Ostrog in Volhynia in 1581. Another press, however, was soon established at Moscow; up to 1600 sixteen books had been issued there.
A curious work of the time of Ivan the Terrible is the Domostroy, or “Book of Household Management,” which is Time of Ivan the Terrible. said to have been written by the monk Sylvester. This priest was at one time very influential with Ivan, but ultimately was banished to the Solovetskoy monastery on the White Sea. The work was originally intended by Sylvester for his son Anthemius and his daughter-in-law Pelagia, but it soon became very popular. We have a faithful picture of the Russia of the time, with all its barbarisms and ignorance. We see the unbounded authority of the husband in his own household: he may inflict personal chastisement upon his wife; and her chief duty lies in ministering to his wants. To the reign of Ivan the Terrible must also be assigned the Chetii-Minei or “Book of Monthly Readings,” containing extracts from the Greek fathers, arranged for every day of the week. The work was compiled by the metropolitan Macarius, and was the labour of twelve years. An important writer of the same period was Prince Andrew Kurbskiy, descended from the sovereigns of Yaroslavl, who was born about 1528. In his early days Kurbskiy saw a great deal of service, having fought at Kazan and in Livonia. But he quarrelled with Ivan, who had begun to persecute the followers of Sylvester and Adashev, and fled to Lithuania in 1563, where he was well received by Sigismund Augustus. From his retreat he commenced a correspondence with Ivan, in which he reproached him for his many cruelties. Ivan in his answer declared that he was quite justified in taking the lives of his slaves if he thought it right to do so. Kurbskiy died in exile in 1585. He also wrote a life of Ivan, but Bestuzhev Riumin thinks that his hatred of Ivan led him to exaggerate, and he regrets that Karamzin should have followed him so closely. Besides the answers of Ivan to Kurbskiy, there is his letter to Cosmas and the brotherhood of the Cyrillian monastery on the White Lake (Bielo Ozero), in which he reproaches them for the self-indulgent lives they are leading. Other works of the 16th century are the Stepennaya Kniga, or “Book of Degrees” (or “Pedigrees”), in which historical events are grouped under the reigns of the grand-dukes, whose pedigrees are also given; and the Life of the Tsar Feodor Ivanovich (1584-98), written by the patriarch Job.
To the beginning of the 17th century belongs the Chronograph of Sergius Kubasov of Tobolsk. His work extends from the 17th century. creation of the world to the accession of Michael Romanov, and contains interesting accounts of such of the members of the Russian royal family as Kubasov had himself seen. Something of the same kind must have been the journal of Prince Mstislavskiy, which he showed the English ambassador Jerome Horsey, but which is now lost.[1]
To the time of the first Romanovs belongs the story of the siege of Azov, a prose poem, which tells us, in an inflated style, how in 1637 a body of Cossacks triumphantly repelled the attacks of the Turks. There is also an account of the siege of the Troitza monastery by the Poles during the “Smutnoe Vremya,” or Period of Troubles, as it is called—that which deals with the adventures of the false Demetrius and the Polish invasion which followed. But all these are surpassed by the Kotoshikhin. work on Russia of Gregory Karpov Kotoshikhin. He served in the ambassadors office (posolskiy prikaz), and when called upon to give information against his colleagues fled to Poland about 1664. Thence he passed into Sweden and wrote his account of Russia under Alexis Mikhailovich at the request of Count Delagardie, the chancellor. He was executed in 1667 for slaying in a quarrel the master of the house in which he lived. The manuscript was found by Professor Soloviev of Helsingfors at Upsala and printed in 1840. The picture which Kotoshikhin draws of his native country is a sad one, and from his description, and the facts we gather from the Domostroy, we can reconstruct the Old Russia of the time before Peter the Great. Perhaps, as an exile, Kotoshikhin allowed himself to write too bitterly. A curious work is the Uriadnik Sokolnichia Puti (“Directions for Falconry”), which was written for the use of the emperor Alexis, who, like many Russians of old time, was much addicted to this pastime. The Krzhanich. Serb, Yuri Krzhanich, who wrote in Russian, was the first pan-Slavist, anticipating Kollar by one hundred and fifty years or more. He wrote a critical Servian grammar (with comparison of the Russian, Polish, Croatian and White Russian), which was edited from the manuscripts by Bodianski in 1848. For his time he had a very good insight into Slavonic philology. His pan-Slavism, however, sometimes took a form by no means practical. He went so far as to maintain that a common Slavonic language might be made for all the peoples of that race—an impossible project which has been the dream of many enthusiasts. He was banished to Siberia, and finished his grammar at Tobolsk. He also wrote a work on the Russian empire in the middle of the 17th century, completed in 1676, which was edited by Beszonov in 1860. The picture drawn, as in the corresponding production of Kotoshikhin, is a very gloomy one. To this period belongs the life of the patriarch Nikon by Shusherin. The struggles of Nikon with the tsar, and his emendations of the sacred books, which led to a great schism in Russia, are well known. They have been made familiar to Englishmen by the eloquent pages of the late Dean Stanley.[2] From this revision may be dated the Polotzki. rise of the Raskolniks (Dissenters) or Staro-obriadtsi (those who adhere to the old ritual). With Simeon Polotzki (Polotskiy) (1628-1680) the old period of Russian
- ↑ Horsey says: “I read in their cronickells written and kept in secreat by a great priem prince of that country named Knez Ivan Fedorowich Mistisloskoie, who, owt of his love and favour, imparted unto me many secreats observed in the memory and procis of his tyme, which was fowerscore years, of the state, natur, and government of that comonweelth.”—Bond, Russia at the Close of the Sixteenth Century (Hakluyt Society, 1856).
- ↑ Lectures on the Eastern Church.
