The New Muscovite Cultural History: A Collection in Honor of Daniel B. Rowland

Religious Ideology and Chronicle Depictions of Muslims in 16th-Century Muscovy

The New Muscovite Cultural History: A Collection in Honor of Daniel B. Rowland. Valerie Kivelson, Karen Petrone, Nancy Shields Kollmann, and Michael S. Flier, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2009, 285–99. Religious Ideology and Chronicle Depictions of Muslims in 16th-Century Muscovy Janet Martin By the second half of the 16th century the ideological bases for the Muscovite realm and the authority of its ruler were well articulated. The ideology, formulated by Church hierarchs and bookmen, was rooted in religious tenets and expressed in religious terms.1 It proclaimed that the Muscovite realm was Christian Orthodox. It was protected by the Mother of God and an array of saints, some of whom, like Sergii of Radonezh and metropolitans Peter and Aleksei, had lived their earthly lives in Muscovy. Its dynasty had been selected by God and charged with establishing and preserving order in the realm and fulfilling its role in “sacred history.”2 The judicial and punishing authority of Muscovy’s sovereign was warranted as the means necessary to suppress disturbances to good order within the Orthodox realm just as his military might was required to defend the realm against those “ungodly” hostile forces that menaced his realm’s frontiers. The ideological precepts were expressed in a variety of media, literary and visual.3 But ideology, as Donald Ostrowski has discussed, was not only a belief system that interpreted social experience, presented a formulation of a virtual past, and justified political power structures. It was also a guide to ongoing or future policies and political action.4 The chronicles of the 16th century that contained expressions of Muscovite ideology may thus be examined not only for insight into how Muscovites understood their past and present; their messages may also be understood as attempts to guide future responses to changing political and social conditions. 1 Daniel Rowland, “Two Cultures, One Throne Room: Secular Courtiers and Orthodox Culture in the Golden Hall of the Moscow Kremlin,” in Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice under the Tsars, ed. Valerie A. Kivelson and Robert H. Greene (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 33–34; Donald Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier, 1304–1589 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 141, 245; David B. Miller, “Official History in the Reign of Ivan Groznyi and Its Seventeenth-Century Imitators,” Russian History/Histoire russe 14: 1–4 (1987): 343–45. 2 Rowland, “Two Cultures,” 42, 49. 3 Ibid., 33–34. 4 Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols, 137–38. 286 JANET MARTIN By emphasizing Christian Orthodoxy and expressing its concepts in religious terms, this ideology was, it has been asserted, necessarily hostile toward other faiths. It was accordingly both anti-Tatar and anti-Muslim. Scholars have pointed out that an anti-Tatar, anti-Muslim attitude began to appear in chronicle literature from the mid-15th century, just when the Golden Horde was disintegrating and Muscovy was developing relationships with the Tatar khanates that formed in its wake. This attitude persisted into the 16th century, when it was articulated by Metropolitan Makarii, who, among others, regarded Tatars as godless agents of the devil, wicked perjurers, and unclean barbarians.5 But, as will be demonstrated in this essay, the attitudes toward Tatars expressed in the chronicles produced in the 16th century were not consistently hostile, and they derive as much from reactions to the influx of Muslims and Tatars into Muscovy as from relations with Tatar khanates beyond Muscovy’s borders. The study rests on an examination of two groups of chronicles. The first is a set of related chronicles produced in the early 16th century: Voskresenskaia letopis’,6 Moskovskii letopisnyi svod kontsa XV veka,7 Sofiia pervaia letopis’ po spisku Tsarskogo,8 Sofiiskaia vtoraia letopis’,9 and Nikonovskaia letopis’.10 The second consists of several chronicles produced later in the 16th century: extensions to the Nikon chronicle,11 Letopisets nachala tsarstva,12 and the Tsarstvennaia kniga.13 5 Janet Martin, “Multiethnicity in Muscovy: A Consideration of Christian and Muslim Tatars in the 1550s–1580s,” Journal of Early Modern History 5: 1 (2001): 2–4; David B. Miller, “The Velikie Minei Chetii and the Stepennaia Kniga of Metropolitan Makarii and the Origins of Russian National Consciousness,” Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte 26 (1979): 294–301; Jaroslaw Pelenski, Russia and Kazan: Conquest and Imperial Ideology (1438–1560s) (The Hague: Mouton, 1974), 194–204. 6 Russkie letopisi (hereafter RL), 13 vols. to date, ed. A. I. Tsepkov (Riazan’: Uzorech’e, Slog-Press-Sport, Nashe vremia, Aleksandriia...