The Tsar's Happy Occasion: Ritual and Dynasty in the Weddings of Russia's Rulers, 1495–1745 9781501754869

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q THE TSAR’S

HAPPY OCCASION

THE TSAR’S HAPPY OCCASION

n

R I TUA L A N D DYN A STY IN THE WEDDINGS OF R U SS I A ’ S R UL E R S , 1495–1745

Russell E. Martin

NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY PRESS AN IMPRINT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS Ithaca and London

A volume in the NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Edited by Christine D. Worobec For a list of books in the series, visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu. Frontispiece: The Russian Bride’s Attire, by Konstantin Makovsky (1889). Bequest of M. H. de Young. de Young/ Legion of Honor Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (used with permission). Copyright © 2021 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu. First published 2021 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Martin, Russell, 1963- author. Title: The Tsar's happy occasion : ritual and dynasty in the weddings of Russia's rulers, 1495–1745 / Russell E. Martin. Description: Ithaca [New York] : Northern Illinois University Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, 2021. | Series: NIU series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020034809 (print) | LCCN 2020034810 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501754845 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501754852 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501754869 (pdf ) Subjects: LCSH: Marriage customs and rites—Political aspects—Russia. | Marriage customs and rites—Russia— History—16th century. | Marriage customs and rites—Russia—History—17th century. | Royal houses— Russia—History—16th century. | Royal houses— Russia—History—17th century. Classification: LCC GT2756. M37 2021 (print) | LCC GT2756 (ebook) | DDC 392.5086/210947—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034809 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc. gov/2020034810 Cover illustration: Konstantin Makovsky, The Russian Bride’s Attire, 1889. Bequest of M.H. de Young. de Young/Legion of Honor Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Used with permission.

Александре да Петру да Ульяне Романовымъ дѣтямъ Мартина

q Contents

List of Figures and Tables  ix Acknowledgments xi Abbreviations xiv Note on Dates and Names  xvi

Introduction1 1.  “Time to Attend to the Wedding”: Origins and Traditions

14

2.  “A Canonical Marriage for the Uninterrupted Succession to Your Royal Dynasty”: Royal Weddings and Dynastic Legitimacy

42

3.  “And Unlike Previous Royal Weddings, There Was Not the Usual Royal Ritual”: Continuity and Change

76

4.  “To Live Together in Holy Matrimony”: Orthodox and Heterodox

101

5.  “To Serve without Regard for Place”: In-Laws and Courtiers

134

6.  “To See Your Royal Children on the Thrones”: Brides and Gifts

163

7.  “Delight in Exposing the Old Methods of the Country”: Transfigurations and Parodies189 8.  “There Will Not Be Any Direful Reversions”: Heirs and Successors

215

vii

viii    Co n t e n ts

Conclusion233 Appendices  241 Notes 255 Bibliography 315 Index 345

q F i g u res and Ta bl es

Figures 1.1. The wedding of Vasilii III and Elena Glinskaia 2.1. Tsar Mikhail Romanov visiting monasteries and churches before his wedding 3.1. Peter I and his first wife, Evdokiia Lopukhina 4.1. Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich with church hierarchs 4.2. The proposed husbands of Elena Ivanovna, 1489–1495 5.1. The banquet at the wedding of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich 6.1. Tsaritsa Evdokiia Streshneva and the women of the court during her wedding 7.1. Engraving by Aleksei Zubov of the wedding of Peter I and Catherine Alekseevna (Catherine I) 8.1. Engraving by G. A. Kachalov of the fireworks display at the wedding of Peter Fedorovich (Peter III) and Catherine Alekseevna (Catherine II) A.1. Schematic of the relationship between the sixteenthcentury originals, 1624 copies, and Mikhail Romanov’s wedding ceremonial C.1. Select genealogy of the Daniilovich dynasty from Ivan III, showing marriages and lines of descent C.2. Select genealogy of the House of Romanov, showing the Miloslavskii and Naryshkin lines

15 43 77 102 107 135 164 190

216

243 252 253

Tables 2.1. Comparison of wedding rituals in manuscript descriptions and Kotoshikhin 3.1. Comparative lists of biblical and extra-biblical couples (and offspring) in wedding prayers and speeches

68 87

ix

x    F i g u r e s

a n d Ta b l es

5.1. Vsevolozhskii, Miloslavskii, and Morozov service appointments at royal weddings, 1647 and 1648 6.1. Gift exchanges at Muscovite royal weddings, 1533–1671 6.2. Classes of gifts disbursed at the first wedding of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, 1624 6.3. Classes of gifts disbursed at the first wedding of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, 1648 A.1. Copies of wedding documents made in 1624

149 173 174 174 242

q Ack now l edgme nts

The origins of this book lie in two reviews of my previous book, A Bride for the Tsar (2012). In one, Daniel Rowland wrote that he “would love to have read more of the highly complex wedding rituals . . . and how these rituals functioned within the court culture.” In the other, Valerie Kivelson lamented the book’s avoidance of “any consideration of gender.” I decided they were right. Wedding rituals and the essential role of royal women in them were regrettable (albeit necessary) omissions from my book on bride-shows, but ones that I had the means to address. Although other projects intervened, the observations of Rowland and Kivelson weighed on my mind until I could get back to this book, where ritual and women (and other themes) are the center of attention. So my first word of thanks goes to these two esteemed colleagues and friends, who bear no responsibility for the arguments to follow beyond their genesis. Others must be thanked as well. First, of course, there are the institutions that helped fund and facilitate my research. I received financial support over several years from Westminster College (including endowed funds from the Henderson, Hoon, McCandless, and Watto families), which supported my work in archives and libraries in the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom. These funds brought me into regular contact with the administrators and staffs of several Russian archives, who willingly and knowledgeably helped me collect the extensive archival material on which this study is based, particularly at the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA), which remains a second home for me in Moscow. The new director, Vladimir Anatol’evich Arakcheev, and the associate director, Iurii Moiseevich Eskin (among others), continue the long tradition of expertise and helpfulness that has made RGADA an exemplar of professionalism for archives and archivists around the world. The staffs at the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences (BAN), Russian Public Historical Library (the storied Istorichka), the Russian State Library (the old Leninka), the Russian National Library (the former Saltykov-Shchedrin), the British Library and New York Public Library (which need no other monikers), and the congenial library at the School xi

xii    Ac k n o w l e d g m e n ts

of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London were all enormously helpful to me at various stages of my research and writing. Harvard University’s Widener Library occupies a special place in the project and in my affections. I continue to make my annual summer pilgrimage to Widener to work in the stacks, which brings back wonderful memories of graduate school days and still causes me to marvel at the completeness of the collection. I finally wish to thank the staff of McGill Library at Westminster College, particularly Connie Davis, our (now former) interlibrary loan (ILL) officer, who tracked down even the rarest of publications for me with stunning speed and alacrity. ILL officers are the heroes of researchers in the humanities—but they are not unsung heroes! Then there are colleagues and friends to thank. Nancy Shields Kollmann, Donald Ostrowski, Carolyn Pouncy, Christine Worobec, and Ernest Zitser read all or significant parts of the manuscript and offered helpful criticism and encouragement. Boris Nikolaevich Morozov was a constant and generous source of answers to obscure questions. Ol’ga Evgen’evna Kosheleva helped me obtain archival documents from afar and buoyed me with her encouragement and sense of humor. Michael Flier supported the project from the start and had advice and answers all along the way. The poet Philip Nikolayev spruced up my translations of Lomonosov. And there were many others who helped in various ways: Aleksei Ivanovich Alekseev, Sergei Bogatyrev, Sally Hadden, Nadieszda Kizenko, Viacheslav Nikolaevich Kozliakov, Eve Levin, Dominic Lieven, Andrei Pavlovich Pavlov, Rachela Permenter, Bryan Rennie, David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Aleksandr Nikolaevich Zakatov, and my three undergraduate research assistants—Peter McMaster, Erica McNatt, and Margaret Portmann. I also thank Amy Farranto of Northern Illinois University Press/Cornell University Press for her friendship and support through several different projects over the years, not just this one. Finally, I thank my family. My parents are gone now, but my in-laws are as close to me as any could ever be. Nancy and Willis (Bill) Kellogg supported this project in many ways: from giving me a ride from their home to the train station in West Concord when I stayed with them during my summer stints at Widener to reading every line of my books, the way only a parent does. Bill sadly passed away during the writing of this book, but Nancy remains “me mum.” My wife, Sarah Kellogg, puts up with my obsession with, as she puts it, “four-hundred-year-old dead guys.” I suspect she secretly thinks that it’s cool that I do this stuff, but she’ll never admit it, and I don’t try to get her to concede the point. I merely thank her from the bottom of my heart for putting up with the dead guys and for letting me write when she really wanted me to be doing something else. Finally—and this time around, most

Ac k n o w l e d g m e n t s     xiii

importantly—I thank my children, Alexandra, Peter, and Juliana, to whom I dedicate this book. They tolerate the four-hundred-year-old dead guys too, and they have taught me more—about life, love, and myself—than I’ll ever teach the students in my classes about Russian history. This book is for them. Portions of chapter 2 have been developed from an earlier article, “Choreographing the ‘Tsar’s Happy Occasion’: Tradition, Change, and Dynastic Legitimacy in the Weddings of Tsar Mikhail Romanov,” Slavic Review 63, no. 4 (2004): 794–817; and from the book chapter “Choreographers of Power: Grigorii Kotoshikhin, State Secretaries, and the Muscovite Royal Wedding Ritual,” in Secretaries, Ministers and Statecraft in the Early Modern World, ed. Paul M. Dover (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 235–54. Portions of chapter 4 expand on ideas originally published in two articles: “Gifts for the Bride: Dowries, Diplomacy, and Marriage Politics in Muscovy,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 38, no. 1 (2008): 119–45; and “Ritual and Religion in the Foreign Marriages of Three Muscovite Princesses,” Russian History 35, nos. 3–4 (2008): 357–81.

q A bbrevi ati ons

AN SSSR

Akademiia nauk Soiuza sovetskikh sotsialisticheskikh respublik Biblioteka Akademii nauk (Library of the Academy of SciBAN ences), St. Petersburg book (in a multivolume work or collection) bk. ChIOIDR Chteniia v Imperatorskom obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh pri Moskovskom universitete Dukhovnye i dogovornye gramoty velikikh i udel’nykh DDG kniazei XIV–XVII vv. DR Dvortsovye razriady, po vysochaishemu poveleniiu, izdannye II-m otdeleniem sobstvennoi Ego Imperatorskogo Velikchestva kantserliarii DRV N. I. Novikov, Drevniaia rossiiskaia vivliofika fol., fols. folio, folios (Russ.: list, listy) IaOB Iaroslavskaia oblastnaia biblioteka (Iaroslavl’ Regional Library), Iaroslavl’ Institut rossiiskoi istorii, Rossiiskaia akademiia nauk (InstiIRI RAN tute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences) Izvestiia RGO Izvestiia Russkogo genealogicheskogo obshchestva Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas JGO KJV King James Version of the Bible LXX Septuagint Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History MERSH New International Version of the Bible NIV NJB New Jerusalem Bible NKJV New King James Version of the Bible Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium ODB op. opis’ (a subdivision of an archival collection) Pamiatniki diplomaticheskikh snoshenii drevnei Rossii s PDS derzhavami inostrannymi

xiv

A b b r e v i at i o n s     xv

PiB PSRL PSS PSZ pt., pts. PVL

Pis’ma i bumagi imperatora Petra Velikogo Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei M. V. Lomonosov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii part, parts (in a multivolume work or collection) The Povest’ vremennykh let: An Interlinear Collation and Paradosis PZh Pokhodnye i putevye zhurnaly imperatora Petra I-go, 1695– 1726 RGADA Russkii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnikh aktov (Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts), Moscow RGIA Russkii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (Russian State Historical Archive), St. Petersburg RBS Russkii biograficheskii slovar’ RIB Russkaia istoricheskaia biblioteka RK 1475–1598 Razriadnaia kniga 1475–1598 gg. RK 1475–1605 Razriadnaia kniga 1475–1605 gg. RSV Revised Standard Version of the Bible rub. rubric (Russ.: rubrik, a subdivision of RGADA’s fond 135) SbIRIO Sbornik Imperatorskogo russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva sec. section (Russ.: otdel’, a division of RGADA’s fond 135) SGGD Sobranie gosudarstvennykh gramot i dogovorov, khrania­ shchikhsia v Gosudarstvennoi kollegii inostrannykh del SM SSSR Sovet ministrov Soiuza sovetskikh sotsialisticheskikh respublik TODRL Trudy Otdela drevnerusskoi literatury Instituta russkoi literatury Vremennik Imperatorskogo moskovskogo obshchestva VIMOIDR istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh

q Note on Dates a nd Names

Dates in this book are drawn from the sources on which this study is based, which reflect the use of the Julian calendar in Russia during the early modern period. The Julian calendar numbered years from the traditional date of the creation of the world (5508 BCE), starting on September 1. Dates in this book are frequently presented in two forms: anno mundi and anno domini. Thus Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, the first tsar of the Romanov dynasty, was married for the first time in the year 7133/1624. Furthermore, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Julian calendar was either nine or ten days behind the Gregorian calendar (nine days before March 1500, and ten days after). Thus the full date of Mikhail Fedorovich’s wedding, for example, might be rendered September 18/28, 7133/1624, though typically this is simplified in the pages below to September 18, 1624 (the day in Julian, and year in anno domini). Names are also rendered as they appear in contemporary sources. Variant spellings of names are preserved, though names during and after Peter the Great’s reign (1682–1725) appear in the usual English equivalents (Peter for Pёtr or Pyotr; Catherine for Ekaterina, and so on), as is the convention. Patronymics reflected social rank in Muscovy and these are preserved whenever possible in the pages below. Grand princes, tsars, and the highest-ranking courtiers had patronymics ending in “-ovich,” “-evich,” or “-ich” (for males), as all Russian men do today. Grand princesses, tsaritsas, and the highestranking women of the court had patronymics ending in “-ovna” or “-evna,” as, again, all Russian women do today. Lesser-ranking servitors had patronymics in “syn” (son of ) and their wives and daughters in “doch’ ” (daughter of ). Thus, we find Prince Ivan Vasil’evich Golitsyn, but Denis Timofeev syn Ul’ianov. The first two wives of Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich likely had different patronymics, at least before their weddings: his first wife, a princess, was Mariia Vladimirovna Dolgorukova; his second, the daughter of a middle-level gentryman, was likely born Evdokiia Luk’ianova doch’ Streshneva (before dropping the “doch’ ” and picking up the “-ovna” on becoming

xvi

N ot e o n D at e s a n d N a m e s     xvii

tsaritsa). All names, titles, and terms, whatever their form, are presented in the standard modified Library of Congress transliteration system (omitting the unsightly ligatures over certain letter combinations). Finally, terms that do not translate naturally into English (such as okol’nichii) are left in the original, with a definition at the first instance.

Introduction

On August 20, 1745—the day before the wedding of Peter Fedorovich and Catherine Alekseevna, the future Peter III and the future Catherine II the Great—the famed Russian polymath and “father of Russian science” Mikhail Vasil’evich Lomonosov presented at the Russian Academy of Sciences an ode he had written for the happy occasion. Comprising two hundred lines grouped in twenty stanzas, the work was titled “An Ode to Her Imperial Majesty, the Most Glorious and Most Powerful Great Sovereign Elizabeth Petrovna, Empress and Autocrat of All Russia, and to Their Imperial Highnesses, the glorious Sovereign Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich and the glorious Grand Duchess Catherine Alekseevna, on the festive day of the wedding of Their Highnesses, presented as a mark of sincere commitment, respect, and joy from their most loyal servant Mikhail Lomonosov, Professor of Chemistry.”1 Despite the clumsy title, which was typical of the time, the ode is a masterful early example of eighteenth-century Russian epithalamic verse. Lomonosov extols the goddess-like majesty and wisdom of Empress Elizabeth, who had selected her nephew Karl Peter Ulrich of Holstein-Gottorp (Peter Fedorovich) as her heir. He also praised the pairing of the young Karl Peter with Sophie Auguste Friederike of Anhalt-Zerbst (Catherine Alekseevna), a marriage that portended to be unlike any other before it: realm and dynasty would flourish, and the very order of the cosmos would be put aright by the joining of this man and woman in holy matrimony. 1

2    I n t r o d u c t i o n

The hyperbole had a purpose. Lomonosov wanted to sing the praises of Empress Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter I, whom Lomonosov regarded as the founder of a golden age of Russian history and her father’s rightful and worthy heir. He also wanted to thank the empress for his recent appointment as professor of chemistry in the Russian Academy of Sciences, which Lomonosov received on August 7, two weeks before the wedding—a rank not referenced in the titles of his other odes.2 Perhaps more than anything else, Lomonosov wanted his ode to express in artful and urgent language the expectations of many that this marriage would bring peace, stability, and bounty to Russia and the Romanov dynasty. Art and politics (and perhaps a healthy dose of careerism) intersected in Lomonosov’s encomiastic description of the young couple and their marriage. Lomonosov begins the ode by comparing eighteenth-century Russia with the biblical Garden of Eden and the marriage of Peter and Catherine with the joining of Adam and Eve: Is it not the Holy Garden that I see, Planted in Eden by the Most High, Where the first legal marriage took place? Into the great palace the Goddess in glory enters, She leads the loving couple, who captivate our hearts and eyes.3 Empress Elizabeth—the Goddess (Boginia); Peter and Catherine—the loving couple (liubezneishie suprugi); Eden—the garden planted by God; Adam and Eve—the first married couple: all these elements are stitched together by Lomonosov in these first lines to set the stage for a laudatory hymn to realm and ruler. In the next 133 lines (the first fourteen stanzas), Lomonosov describes Russia as a kingdom of love—this “other country,” where the sublime and pure love of Peter and Catherine permeates and fills all nature and humanity.4 Lomonosov asks, “Does not love reign here?”5 His answer comes in the form of a long and learnèd, though somewhat chimerical, list of Russia’s Edenic qualities, drawing on classical tales of both nature and love. Narcissus, son of the river god Cephissus, peers “above the clear water” and is “captivated by his own beauty, and remaining there, falls in love with himself,” yet his love pales in comparison to that Peter and Catherine have for each other. Zephyr, the gentle westerly wind that represents spring and fecundity, “kisses a hundred times the leaves” and sprinkles them with dew. Orpheus, the greatest musician and poet of ancient Greece, strums the harp, and the stones come alive and the trees form a chorus of praise. The naiad nymphs

I n t r o d u c t i o n     3

of Delphi (Kastal’ski Nimfi) “together celebrate and dance by the gurgling waters of Parnassus” and sing the “wedding song.”6 The powers of nature also celebrate Peter’s and Catherine’s wedding. The sun arching overhead, swirling streams, singing and nesting birds, boys and girls frolicking happily and gratefully—all exude the contentment and joy that are the byproduct of the love that unites Peter and Catherine and permeates the realm.7 To press the point, Lomonosov alludes to one of the most emblematic elements of any wedding ritual, especially a Russian royal wedding: the wedding procession, here called the “regiment” (polk). Bystanders marvel as the couple passes by, their “path paved with flowers.”8 The boundary line between rites and reality has become utterly blurred. But Lomonosov had yet another purpose for this ode. The final sixty lines (the last six stanzas) extol the marriage of Peter and Catherine as the fulfillment of a divine plan to preserve and exalt Russia’s ruling dynasty, specifically the line of Peter the Great, the groom’s grandfather. O branch from the root of Peter! Flourish safely for the protection Of all the northerly kingdoms. O generous Catherine, Blossom lovelier than the lily, And grant us thy sweet fruits. Russia awaits from you Happy and quiet years, Gazing upon you always As upon the rising light of day. Continuing in the next stanza: Now in all the cities of Russia, And in the villages and on the Asiatic steppes In one voice they proclaim: As God will extend for time eternal The most precious progeny of Peter, So too the lives of our own offspring will be happy.9 Peter III was the refounder of the Romanov dynasty. And, to be sure, the dynasty needed refounding by Lomonosov’s time. The male line had gone extinct in 1730, with the death of Peter the Great’s grandson, Peter II. Elizabeth, Peter’s daughter, was unmarried (officially, at least) and childless. There were, to be sure, the descendants of Peter I’s co-ruler, Ivan V, but Elizabeth’s plan, extolled by Lomonosov, was to keep the throne in the line of

4    I n t r o d u c t i o n

Peter I and to exclude the descendants of Ivan V. That meant making Karl Peter Ulrich of Holstein-Gottorp, the son of Elizabeth’s sister Anna, the heir to the throne. That also meant marrying him well and making his wedding into more than just the joining of a man and a woman: it also had to symbolize the relaunching of the Romanov dynasty. It is thus no accident that the ode addresses Elizabeth as much as the bride and groom. God acts through her to bring about His will for Russia, which can only happen through the rule of Peter I’s descendants. Elizabeth is the legitimate ruler of Russia; and from her and to her, dynasty and legitimacy both flow. Lomonosov likens her to the all-knowing and life-giving sun rising, transiting in the sky above, and setting over the ocean horizon: In the Russian Empire you rise, And follow the daily path above it, And in the waves you hide your flame. You are the witness of our joy, You see the mark of our zeal That the Creator has sent us By means of this blessed marriage.10 No royal line ever enjoyed the imprimatur of God (and gods and goddesses) more than the heirs of Peter the Great. Lomonosov’s was not the only ode written for this happy occasion, nor was it the first or only ode written for a Russian royal wedding. Perhaps the first had been written by Johann Werner Paus in 1711 for the betrothal of the ill-fated Tsarevich Aleksei Petrovich, son of Peter I, and Charlotte Christine Sophie of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel.11 At least three others, beside Lomonosov’s, were written for Peter Fedorovich and Catherine Alekseevna in 1745.12 But Lomonosov’s was the one that in many ways furnished the literary formula for subsequent odes by combining the paean with politics. Russia’s royals went to their weddings celebrated as emperors and empresses ordained by God to rule and heralded as the continuators of a blessed and legitimate dynasty.

Ritual and Dynasty This book is about wedding rituals and dynasties. It describes and analyzes the themes explored by Lomonosov—ritual, dynasty, religion, royal women, and power (and several more)—as they were expressed in royal weddings from the end of the fifteenth through the first half of the eighteenth centuries. Court politics in Muscovy was, as I and others have argued elsewhere,

I n t r o d u c t i o n     5

marriage politics, and the marriage of the ruler was the critical moment in every generation of the dynasty. Each time the ruler married, the political elite around him reshuffled, with new royal in-laws joining the ranks of the innermost circle of courtiers in the Kremlin. The tsar’s marriage triggered a cascade of other marriages between and among courtiers and their kin, newcomers and oldtimers alike. Membership in the elite, especially its highest ranks, hinged on kinship ties, however indirect, to the ruler. As Edward Keenan established, “it was in this area—in marriage politics, the politics of kinship—that the play of political forces took place, until the time of Peter . . . and beyond.”13 As a result, wedding rituals were at the apex of the ritual world of the ruler’s court, more significant to the political culture than even coronations. These rituals were rich with symbolic meaning, and Muscovites invested enormous resources—human and fiscal—in performing them, and performing them right. By “right,” I mean performing them in ways that reckoned with memory and tradition but also sent timely political and religious messages to the court and to the country. As Nancy Shields Kollmann put it, royal weddings “were among the most politically choreographed spectacles in Muscovy.”14 Describing and deciphering these spectacles—“until the time of Peter . . . and beyond”—are among the principal goals of this book. This book is also about dynasty. Dynasties came and went in this period, and royal weddings, like other court rituals, were manipulated by wedding choreographers and sometimes by rulers themselves to project a dynastic message. Dynasty is a theme that appears in the earliest sources for royal weddings in Muscovy—from the end of the fifteenth century—but dynastic imagery and symbolism became even more important when the old Daniilovich dynasty died out in 1598 and had to be replaced by another, and then another. Wedding rites and other court rituals were exploited by the upstart tsars as a way to establish their legitimacy. It did not always work, but they always tried. Romanov royal weddings in the seventeenth century projected an unmistakable message of dynastic continuity and legitimacy, two fictions that needed to be accepted if the new ruling house was to survive longer than the ones that had come (and gone) before it. The second major goal of this study, then, is to reconstruct the dynastic messages that were broadcast at royal weddings, and to understand how those messages changed over time. Adding weddings to the study of rituals expands and deepens our understanding of the role of ritual in politics. Scholars in other fields have already begun this work; this study does the same for early modern Russia.15 Viewing dynasty and politics from the perspective of wedding rituals leads us to other themes. Women occupy a central place in Muscovite royal

6    I n t r o d u c t i o n

wedding rituals—both the brides and the elite women performing various ceremonial duties in them—and they therefore occupy a central place in this study. Their roles in the political system as matchmakers, royal mothers, and prayerful intercessors (among others) were foreshadowed in the rites they performed at weddings. Religious identity also comes into sharp relief at Muscovite royal weddings, particularly at the weddings of royal women, who sometimes married into heterodox foreign ruling houses, and in the evolving attitudes Muscovites displayed toward the customary, pre-Christian elements of the wedding rites. Notions of monarchical power in Muscovy were also expressed at royal weddings. While the rites outwardly projected an image of majestic and unrestrained royal power, the rulers’ wedding rites depended on the participation of courtiers in prescribed ceremonial roles. Even the most capricious or revolutionary rulers in these centuries felt constrained to include their courtiers in these rites and to follow past precedent to some degree. Wedding rituals, when read with care, can therefore expose what some have called the “façade of autocracy”: the collaborative, sacral, and limited nature of the Muscovite monarchy that was concealed by rhetoric and rituals.16 Finally, and most fundamentally, this study rests on a close reading of texts. As Dominick LaCapra put it, “texts are events,” and nowhere is that insight clearer than in the rich corpus of Muscovite royal wedding documents.17 The creation of these texts were genuine events in the political and cultural life of the court, reflecting changes in ruling dynasties, religious attitudes, and political agendas. The wedding rites studied below are reconstructed in detail from these texts. This book, then, sheds light not only on the rites reported in them but on the texts themselves.

Studies and Sources It was nearly thirty-five years ago that Robert O. Crummey laid claim to the topic of “court spectacles” for the field of Russian history.18 It was something of a bold move for the time. To study “the customs of royalty” had long been to “confess intellectual mediocrity, lack of scholarly integrity, or both,” as Paula Sutter Fichtner put it in her equally bold attempt to claim the topic for Habsburg historians nearly a decade before Crummey.19 But this is hardly the case today. Thanks to the pioneering work of Crummey (for Russia) and Fichtner (for the Habsburg monarchy)—and many others—the study of political ritual today flourishes across fields and periods.20 Crummey saw from the start that “court rituals, plays, masques, and ballets spoke to contemporaries in a complex symbolic language. Put more crudely, they served as a form of advertising.” He continued, “court spectacles expressed the

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political ideals and aspirations of the continent’s rulers. Through ceremonies and entertainments, a king could present a public personality, an image of an ideal ruler that might well have little to do with his private tastes and emotions.”21 This was not to say that court spectacles were mere empty displays or entertaining pantomime, but that their messages were themselves a discrete and serious subject for study, especially as historians became increasingly interested in the informal mechanisms of rulership, the role of family and marriage, and the place of women in the political system. Crummey was the modern pathbreaker, to be sure, but he was not the first to ask these kinds of questions. No study of ritual in early modern Russia can ignore the original, if unsystematic, work of Ivan Egorovich Zabelin, whose study of the private lives of tsars and tsaritsas led him to explore the ceremonial side of life inside the Kremlin.22 Zabelin exposed to view the daily routines of the Muscovite tsar, routines that Crummey realized “bore a general resemblance to many of its western and central European counterparts, especially Versailles, which was a model for so many rulers of the continent.”23 Zabelin posed prescient questions, and it is hard to imagine how the field would look today without Zabelin’s books. But it took time for these questions to be asked again and to become respectable in the serially blinkered world of the modern historian. But that time has come. Since Crummey, the study of rituals in Russia has expanded enormously, and the work of specialists on ritual has been some of the most impressive research done in the early modern period. Michael Flier and Daniel Rowland have analyzed the political motifs in court ceremonies, religious art, and architecture.24 Sergei Bogatyrev explained the “ritualized consultations” in Ivan IV’s court, and Irina Borisovna Mikhailova surveyed an array of court ceremonies in the early modern period, both linking rituals to larger questions of the ruler’s power.25 Boris Andreevich Uspenskii and others applied the rich tools of semiotics to understanding key court rituals.26 Iurii Moiseevich Eskin and Nancy Shields Kollmann explored the role of honor in the ritual world of the Kremlin.27 Isolde Thyrêt and Gary Marker applied the methods of new cultural history to the lives and roles of Russia’s royal women, and Cynthia Hyla Whittaker fleshed out the complex relationship between dynasty and literature.28 Ernest Zitser revealed the serious side of Peter I’s parodic weddings and other buffoonery, offering an original and essential reinterpretation of the man and the reign.29 Jan Hennings and Ol’ga Genievna Ageeva examined status and “ceremonial discourse” in the rituals of diplomacy.30 Finally, Richard Wortman has, in his many magisterial works, drawn a graceful and synthetic depiction of the rituals and images of monarchy in Russia that will frame the Problematik for a generation to come.31 This

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list is necessarily shortened for reasons of space—with profuse apologies— but is long enough to show that Crummey was heeded by his colleagues when he called for more studies of specific rituals so that, piece by piece, we could construct a more accurate picture of both the rituals themselves and the political culture underlying them. The Muscovite wedding ritual was discovered in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was “discovered” in that, beginning then, an increasing number of ethnographers, philologists, and amateur and professional historians began to pay serious attention to these rituals and even to identify weddings as a discrete subject for research and publication. This new interest in weddings, like any discovery, inspired all sorts—the serious researcher, the alert publisher, the writer of popular histories, and the artist—and many of the early publications of textual descriptions of royal weddings were faulty.32 These publications were highly successful, however, from a commercial point of view, and so interest in them and in Russian and Slavic wedding customs only grew. The seemingly exotic nature of Muscovite nuptial rituals attracted a broad reading audience, and the texts found their way into a wide range of publications in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As if in reaction to these popular publications, serious scholars also began to take note of wedding rituals, apparently with the unstated goal of correcting the false impressions projected by the popular literature that had begun to appear. Some scholars—including the early pioneers in this field, Nikolai Fedorovich Sumtsov and Aleksandr Vital’evich Smirnov—conducted onsite observations and compiled descriptions of wedding rituals in various regions of prerevolutionary Russia, both among Christian and non-Christian populations, and formulated taxonomies of wedding rituals.33 Others attempted to understand the origins of contemporary wedding customs. Surveying the range of nuptial practices among the population of the Russian Empire, scholars like Aleksandr Vlas’evich Tereshchenko, Grigorii Petrovich Georgievskii, Orest Ivanovich Levits’kii, and others attempted to reconstruct the genealogy of these rites back to premodern times, often with results that were more patriotic than academic.34 It was in these early studies that two fundamental and enduring conclusions were drawn about weddings in the East Slavic spaces, both of which come under considerable scrutiny in the pages below. The first was that Muscovite royal weddings included two incompatible elements that had been forcibly and inelegantly combined: pre-Christian (that is, pagan) fertility rites and Christian sacramental theology and liturgy. The wedding rituals of tsars, as described in official texts, and those of the common people of

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the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century, as attested in observations of field researchers, both showed the same incongruities: the Christian rites were layered on top of the older customary rites, and the two were poorly integrated ritually because they were in basic conflict with each other. After all: “What can light and darkness have in common?” as St. Paul asked (2 Cor. 6:14). The second major conclusion was that wedding rites were both ancient and natively Slavic. The similarities observed in the weddings of tsars and commoners and in weddings from Moscow to Mozhaisk led to the inexorable conclusion that these were stable rites that perhaps experienced some class-based and regional variation, but not much. Wedding rituals were ancient things. For their part, Soviet-era specialists could only confirm many of these earlier findings. They continued the comparative work of compiling and analyzing the nuptial customs in various regions of Soviet Russia, though always through the limiting class-based interpretive lens required of them.35 But despite the strictures imposed by the obligatory Marxist point of view, Soviet researchers contributed a great deal to the comparative study of East Slavic wedding ritual, opening the door to broader and more systematic comparisons with other Slavic communities and with non-Slavic wedding rites.36 Today there is an encouraging amount of new research being conducted by Russian historians, and their results are beginning to shape the study of ritual and power in the Muscovite and imperial periods. Vladislav Dmitrievich Nazarov’s publication of several key sixteenth-century texts in the 1970s called new attention to royal weddings and supplied some of the most important source material for further studies.37 The first important step in the modern reconstruction of royal weddings came a decade later, with Daniel Kaiser’s analysis of the weddings of Ivan IV the Terrible.38 Since then, several innovative books and dissertations have appeared, focusing on the textual sources that describe weddings in the sixteenth through twentieth centuries.39 This book is a part of the broader effort to understand Muscovite royal wedding rites and to reconsider generally what rituals mean in the political life of a premodern society. The sources for this study are rich in detail and sufficiently plentiful. Royal wedding documentation for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—including descriptions of rituals, rosters of courtiers in attendance, and ancillary memoranda and other chancellery paperwork—are mostly housed in the Treasure Room (Drevlekhranilishche) and other collections of the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA) in Moscow. Sources for eighteenth-century weddings are there as well, but many reside

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in other archives and libraries in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Most of the material is unpublished and much of it is in draft form. There are also vitally important foreigners’ accounts, nearly all published, which describe royal weddings and fill in gaps when no indigenous sources survive. Foreigners interpreted what they saw through their own lenses and experiences, and so their descriptions of weddings can be faulty or naïve. Chronicles and literary sources also provide texture to the narrative, although they too require caution and corroboration at every turn. The Domostroi, the guidebook for managing households in sixteenth-century Muscovy, holds a special place among literary sources, its descriptions of Muscovite elite weddings adding color to the official sources of royal weddings. Grigorii Kotoshikhin’s mid-seventeenth-century exposé of the Muscovite court and politics, On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich, also provides an essential description of how tsars married. All told, weddings are perhaps the best documented type of court happening in Muscovy. Consequently, it is possible, with some care, to reconstruct the history of royal weddings in remarkable detail over a long period of time.

Chapters and Themes The structure of this study is partly chronological and partly thematic. In chapters 1 through 3, I take a chronological approach to the Problematik. Chapter 1 tackles the questions of the origins of the Muscovite royal wedding ritual and considers Muscovite rituals in comparison with ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine antecedents. The chapter then traces Muscovite wedding customs from 1495 (when we have the first dedicated documents describing a royal wedding) to the end of the sixteenth century, focusing particularly on the 1526 wedding of Grand Prince Vasilii III and Elena Glinskaia. Finally the chapter plots Muscovite weddings according to Arnold van Gennep’s model of les rites de passage—separation, liminality, and incorporation—which turns out to be a very useful lens for interpreting Muscovite weddings. Chapters 2 and 3 divvy up the seventeenth century. Chapter 2 explores in detail the changes made to the sixteenth-century model by the choreographers of the wedding of the first Romanov tsar, and how these changes were aimed at solidifying Romanov rule after the chaos and violence of the Time of Troubles (1598–1613). Chapter 3 picks up the narrative with the second marriage of the second Romanov tsar, Aleksei Mikhailovich, in 1671, and considers how changing political structures at court, a rising wall of Orthodox confessionalism, and the pious personality of the “most serene” tsar combined to produce further changes to the

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wedding ritual. The chapter ends by exploring the vastly reduced weddings of Aleksei’s sons in the 1680s, concluding with Peter I’s first wedding in 1689. Chapters 4 through Chapter 6 tackle the Problematik thematically. Chapter 4 takes up the question of religious symbolism in royal weddings, comparing in detail three interfaith dynastic marriages: Elena Ivanovna, daughter of Grand Prince Ivan III, and Alexander of Lithuania (1495); Mariia Staritskaia, a cousin of Tsar Ivan IV, and Magnus of Denmark (1573); and the First False Dmitrii and Marina Mniszech (1605 and 1606). This comparative analysis reveals that Muscovites were more suspicious of heterodox (Catholic and Protestant) rites than they were of their own pre-Christian ones, which they regarded as utterly harmless. The three case studies also reveal how religious attitudes were evolving, and how those attitudes produced liturgical and ritual adjustments to wedding rites over time. Chapter 5 examines wedding choreography. Royal weddings assembled members of the dynasty and the bulk of the court to participate in the key political occasion of every reign. The focus of the chapter falls on the three categories of guests: royal relatives, courtiers and servitors of various ranks, and the bride’s kin—the new royal in-laws. The roles played by the groom’s royal relatives at the wedding had enormous symbolic significance for the stability and familial structure of the dynasty. The presence of the ruler’s brothers or male cousins symbolized their approval of the match and their acquiescence to being bumped down in the line of succession, should the couple produce heirs. Courtiers of various ranks (sometimes hundreds of them) served at royal weddings, and their service in positions of honor and responsibility at weddings likewise showed their endorsement of the match. The placement of courtiers could also symbolize the healing of rifts among the great clans at court or signal the rise or fall of factions. Royal in-laws were a key group of participants at most weddings. Brides typically came from middle-level Russian servitor families rather than the great boyar clans, and so were almost always outsiders. Integrating them and their male and female kin into the Kremlin was a delicate negotiation. The process began with the placement at the wedding of in-laws in high and honorable positions— positions that they would not have held but for their kinship ties to the bride. The wedding thus served as a ritualized introduction of the bride’s family into the inner circle of the Kremlin in a way that was acceptable to everyone else already living there. The chapter concludes with a study of the precedence system (mestnichestvo) at weddings, the system of assigning honors and tasks to courtiers by rank. Mingling so many guests with such different social ranks eventually prompted the creation of a wedding exemption to the system of precedence, to avoid disputes over appointments. How that

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exemption evolved tells us a lot about the relationship between tsars and courtiers, and about monarchical power in Muscovy generally. Chapter 6 focuses on brides and gifts. Brides appear throughout the book, but here the focus is on the way they participated actively in the rites of passage. Perhaps the most symbolically important marker of the bride’s transformation from maiden to wife and commoner to royal consort were those moments when she distributed ceremonial gifts to the members of the court. These gifts went to the high-ranking and the low, to courtiers in Moscow and to those in locations far from the capital, and to churchmen across Muscovy. Even so, their purpose was the same: to integrate the entire realm—prince, priest, and peasant—around the new regime that the marriage represented. The chapter focuses particularly on gifts given to church hierarchs, who in turn offered prayers for the newly wedded couple. Themes of dynasty and continuity weaved through the words of these prayers and highlight the essentially political nature of royal weddings. The book resumes the chronological narrative in the final two chapters, which analyze the efforts of Peter I and his immediate successors to choreograph a new royal wedding ritual. Chapter 7 shows how Russia’s first emperor drew on a range of antecedents—Muscovite weddings, parodic weddings of jesters and fools, and foreign models—to retool royal wedding rites for his own purposes. Whereas dynasty, legitimacy, and continuity were repeated themes in weddings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Peter made himself the focus of the royal weddings during his reign. Weddings under Peter served his larger purpose of declaring and advancing his charismatic authority, even at the expense of his own dynasty. Petrine royal weddings, then, were fundamentally linked to Peter’s new law of succession of 1722, the first ever formal law regulating the succession in Russia and the only one to ignore succession by hereditary right. Chapter 8 extends this analysis to the mid-eighteenth century. Symbols of dynasty and continuity returned to wedding rituals when Peter’s daughter, Anna Petrovna, married in 1725. With Peter now gone and the dynasty in something of a shambles, there was again a need for a useful notion of dynasty to help regulate power and the succession. Charismatic authority proved in the end not to be heritable. The chapter traces the intertwining narrative of dynasty and weddings down to the wedding of Peter Fedorovich and Catherine Alekseevna in 1745, about which Lomonosov wrote his effusive ode. Royal weddings were part of the back and forth in the succession between the two branches of the Romanov dynasty—the Miloslavskii line (descended from Ivan V) and the Naryshkin line (descended from

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Peter I). Each swing of the pendulum between these two lines was marked by a wedding designed to keep the succession in one or the other, once and for all. Only when Lomonosov’s exalted Peter and Catherine—the refounders of the Romanov dynasty—married in 1745 did the story of the tsar’s happy occasion, a story that stretches back to the end of the fifteenth century, arrive at its denouement. It is therefore then, in 1745, that this study closes as well.

q Ch ap ter 1 “Time to Attend to the Wedding” Origins and Traditions

On January 21, 1526—a Sunday—Grand Prince Vasilii III sat in the Kremlin’s Wooden Dining Pavilion (Brusianaia izba stolovaia), dressed in royal regalia and surrounded by high-ranking courtiers, all of whom were also dressed in their finest court costumes. It was the grand prince’s wedding day, and the sequence of movements and rituals that made up a wedding in sixteenth-century Muscovy began, for him, there in the Dining Pavilion. Meanwhile, his bride-to-be, Princess Elena Vasil’evna Glinskaia, was in her apartment (v svoikh khoromekh) in the Terem Palace, where she had been residing since shortly after her selection in a bride-show. She, too, was dressed in her finest court costume and surrounded by the women of the court (boiaryni), many of whom were the wives of the men with the groom. At the appointed time, the grand prince sent instructions for the bride to go to the Middle Golden Palace (Sredniaia palata) and await his arrival. The Middle Golden Palace had been richly decorated for the occasion: tables were covered in rich linens and benches were positioned on both sides of the table with richly embroidered cushions topped by two forties of sable skins. When the bride and her retinue arrived, they all took their assigned seats, with the groom’s seat temporarily occupied by the bride’s younger sister, Anastasiia. Then Grand Prince Vasilii III’s brother, Prince Iurii Ivanovich, instructed a senior boyar (boiarin bol’shoi) to summon the groom. This boyar then went to the Dining Pavilion and uttered the prescribed words that set events in 14

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motion, words that hardly changed over the next century and a half: “Grand Prince! Sovereign! Prince Iurii Ivanovich orders me to say to you, beseeching God’s help: It is time to attend to the wedding.”1 Vasilii III was surely not the first to hear these words summoning him to his wedding. Royal grooms in previous generations had probably heard

Figure 1.1.  The wedding of Vasilii III and Elena Glinskaia, in the Litsevoi letopisnyi svod. Wikimedia Commons.

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them too. But Vasilii III’s wedding was the first time they were ever recorded in a wedding ceremonial (svadebnyi chin)—the official document describing a royal wedding.2 Vasilii III’s and Elena Glinskaia’s ceremonial would serve as a model for later weddings up to 1624, when the first Romanov tsar married.3 Secretaries (d’iaki) in the grand-princely chancery—“ritual experts,” in Catherine Bell’s apt phrase—turned to it again and again as a reference source for how to arrange the wedding of a ruler: the “Tsar’s Happy Occasion” (Gosudareva radost’).4 The original ceremonial is today only a tattered fragment. It provides a description of events only on the first day of the wedding and part of the second, though we know the wedding was actually three days in length.5 Even so, few sources mark the beginning of a ritual tradition as well as this one. Like the secretaries in the royal scriptorium, this chapter takes Vasilii III’s and Elena Glinskaia’s wedding as a starting point. It explores the origins, structural elements, and symbolism of the wedding ritual over the course of the sixteenth century. It compares Muscovite weddings with ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine weddings and explores the question of the origins of these rituals in the East Slavic space. The chapter also applies Arnold van Gennep’s model of rites of passage to Muscovite weddings and finds that these rituals—whether borrowed, homegrown, or some balance of the two—came to be firmly, organically tied to the underlying political culture. In fact, few court rituals were more responsive to, and expressive of, that political culture than weddings. When Muscovite secretaries and scribes developed a discrete set of documents to describe royal weddings at the turn of the sixteenth century, they created, perhaps unintentionally, a ritual template that lasted without much modification for more than a hundred years. This chapter describes and dissects that template.

Origins and Texts That our first formal description of a Muscovite royal wedding ritual appears only in 1526 naturally prompts a number of basic questions: How were princely weddings performed before 1526—in Kyivan Rus’, in appanage Rus’, in early Muscovy? What were the essential rituals of a royal wedding? What were the various kinds of documents that secretaries, undersecretaries, and scribes created in the grand-princely chancery to help them choreograph royal weddings, and when did those documents first appear? The question of when the royal wedding ritual took shape has stumped historians, ethnographers, and anthropologists for generations, as many

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have freely admitted. One can readily sense the frustration in perhaps the first important study of the wedding ritual, by D. I. Iazykov in 1834: The domestic life of our ancestors is utterly inaccessible to us, and so we can hardly draw a very satisfying picture of it. Take, for example, wedding rituals, one of the most important features of the culture of all peoples, because in them is reflected an understanding of the public roles assigned to women: the typical representation of their position in society. Our chronicles and other documents are scant when it comes to descriptions of domestic life: one must search out and hunt for insights into that life in scattered documents, which contain only the flimsiest evidence from the recesses of antiquity and even down to the fifteenth century.6 A. I. Kozachenko, a Soviet scholar who in 1957 produced the first modern study of the Muscovite royal wedding ritual (and still one of the best), similarly lamented: “the history of the Great Russian wedding ritual has not yet been sorted out,” and “we do not know very much about the ancient Russian wedding ritual.”7 Daniel Kaiser agreed, admitting in his seminal article on Tsar Ivan IV’s weddings that “we do not know how most men and women of Muscovy celebrated their marriages.”8 In such discouraging circumstances, the best we can do is to go back to the sources we do have—chronicles, narrative tales, foreigners’ accounts, and, most importantly, the extant weddingrelated documentation—to find the limits of what we can and cannot say about the origins and early history of the Muscovite royal wedding ritual. The early sources are, indeed, spotty. Before 1526, we have only scattered glimpses of what the weddings of Rus’ian elites may have looked like and virtually no image at all of the weddings of nonelites. Rus’ian chronicles mention some of the elements of the wedding ritual, although they omit any narrative description of how a wedding was performed. For example, the dramatic account of the marriage proposal of Prince Mal of the Drevlianians to St. Ol’ga of Kyiv (d. 969) in the Rus’ Primary Chronicle (Povest’ vremennykh let) includes a number of allusions to wedding rituals. St. Ol’ga, the effective ruler of Rus’ from around 945 to around 963 and the first Christian convert in the Kyivan ruling dynasty, three times deceived the Drevlianians into handing themselves over to their own deaths.9 In the first story, twenty of the Drevlianians’ “best men” arrived by boat to ask for Ol’ga’s hand in marriage, having just murdered her husband, Prince Igor. Ol’ga had them wait in their boat while she secretly had a large hole dug in the ground outside the city. She then insisted the Drevlianians return to the city not by foot

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or by horse but carried aloft in their boat by the Rus’ in a procession. They were then cast into the giant hole and buried alive. In the second story, more Drevlianians arrived and were told to bathe before negotiating the marriage between Ol’ga and Mal but were burned alive in the baths. And in the third, Ol’ga traveled to the homeland of the Drevlianians herself and organized a sumptuous funeral feast for her slain husband, but after her Drevlianian hosts had all become drunk, she set her guards on them, killing everyone. Dmitrii Sergeevich Likhachev deconstructed the stories, pointing out how the emissaries from Prince Mal were like marriage go-betweens (svaty), and how the procession of the Drevlianian emissaries in their boat, carried aloft by the Rus’, mixed together ritual forms from both funeral and wedding processions.10 One might paddle farther down Likhachev’s stream of thought and find even more allusions to weddings—for example, in how Ol’ga’s request to have the second set of Drevlianian emissaries bathe before being burned to death and how the banquet in the third story doubled as a nuptial and a funerary event, baths and banquets being essential features of a wedding. The Povest’ also mentions the unshoeing ritual (razuvan’e)—where the bride removes the shoes of the groom and prostrates herself before him as a sign of her submission—in the so-called “Legend of Rogned,” where the reluctant Rogned is asked if she is willing to marry Vladimir instead of his half-brother, Iaropolk, to whom she had been promised in marriage. Her famous reply may indeed be the earliest reference to the unshoeing ritual. When asked, “Do you want to marry Vladimir?” she replied “I do not want to unshoe a slave’s son, but I would unshoe Iaropolk” (ne khochiu rozuti robichicha, no Iaropolka khochiu).11 This line, plus references to the ritual in oral epic poetry (bylini) and other songs, has been taken by scholars as evidence that the unshoeing ritual was long a part of East Slavic wedding rites.12 This may be true, but this ritual is not recorded in royal wedding ceremonials, the Domostroi, or Kotoshikhin’s On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich, although a colorful version of it can be found in Samuel Collins’s The present State of Russia.13 Another early case is the wedding in 1239 of St. Alexander Nevskii and the daughter of Prince Briachislav Vasil’kovich of Polotsk.14 The account reads: “Prince Alexander, the son of Iaroslav, married [ozhenilsia] in Novgorod, taking the daughter of Briachislav of Polotsk, and he married her [venchalsia] in Toropets, having there his porridge [tu kashu chini], and having it again [druguiu] in Novgorod.”15 Reference to the porridge no doubt signals it as the customary meal for newlyweds—grain being a recurring symbol of fertility and plenty—and “porridge” may also have served as a euphemism for the wedding banquet (pir) generally.16 Newlywed couples were similarly

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described as eating porridge in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in wedding ceremonials and in the Domostroi—on the second day of the wedding, right after taking (separately) their morning baths, although other wedding ceremonials report the meal was vegetables and wine.17 Finally, early wedding rituals appear in narrative sources and wedding songs. Terms that denote or derive from weddings appear in chronicles and tales, such as happy occasion (radost’ or veselie), wedding banquet, bride (nevesta), groom (zhenikh), and others.18 Scattered references in the late-twelfth-century (or late-eighteenth-century) epic Igor Tale, or Slovo o polku Igoreve, arguably evoke imagery and terminology derived from weddings: in the description of the loot taken from the Polovtsians on the first day of battle (lines 123–29), in the description of the climactic battle as a wedding banquet (lines 245– 49), in the depiction of the bride at that banquet as a swan (lines 254–66), in Sviatoslav’s dream (lines 315–32), in Sviatoslav’s lament (lines 364–97), and elsewhere.19 Similarly, the evidence of wedding terminology and rituals in wedding songs (svadebnye pesni) is rich in insights and details about the emotional and performative aspects of weddings across the East Slavic spaces. The bride sings obligatorily (though probably very sincerely) a set of songs bemoaning her marriage, and the singing of songs (though not the lyrics) are recorded in the Domostroi.20 But there are serious lingering questions about the dating and provenance of both the Slovo and wedding songs. The twelfthcentury origins of the Slovo remains for some very much an open question, although scholars on both sides of the debate concede the numerous allusions to weddings in the text.21 As for wedding songs, many cannot be reliably dated to before the eighteenth century, when they began to be collected, published, and, beginning in the 1920s, audio recorded.22 Western travelers who visited Muscovy—diplomats, merchants, and those whom Marshall Poe called “ethnographers”—frequently returned home to write accounts of what they saw and experienced.23 Their accounts are rich with details that often go unreported in Russian sources, mostly because the things that struck foreigners as noteworthy were often so unextraordinary to the Muscovites as to not merit special mention in their own accounts. While Poe found a “predilection for exaggeration” in their accounts, he nonetheless believes foreigners had useful and, on the whole, accurate things to say about Muscovy.24 Read correctly, the pitfalls of using these sources can, Poe says, be avoided: “because the Muscovites were not in the habit of describing themselves in a self-conscious, stylized fashion, we find few native overviews of the mores, customs, military forces, civil institutions and religion of Old Russia. The foreign accounts provide just this—detailed descriptions of Muscovite life.”25

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One of the parts of “Muscovite life” that foreigners on occasion attempted to describe was weddings. The imperial diplomat Sigismund Herberstein, who visited Muscovy in 1517 and 1526, included a passage on marriage and weddings in his Notes upon Muscovy (Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii), titled “Their Mode of Contracting Marriages,” but provided no description of the wedding rituals themselves. Herberstein instead limited himself to discussing the negotiations over the marriage contract and, more generally, the power of parents to select their children’s spouses, the contents and transfer of dowries, the rules of consanguinity, and the confining role Muscovite women endured in marriage (and in society at large).26 Herberstein was not especially interested in describing the wedding ritual itself, probably because he never witnessed one. Thus, while Notes upon Muscovy is surely the “seminal text in European Moscovitica,” as Poe says, it is of very limited use for understanding Muscovite wedding rituals.27 The first true foreign description of the Muscovite wedding ritual was composed by Giles Fletcher, an English diplomat who spent some eleven months in Muscovy between October 1588 and August 1589.28 Lloyd Berry and Robert Crummey described Fletcher’s On the Russe Commonwealth, published in 1591, as “unquestionably the most important English work on Russia before the reign of Peter the Great,” which “presents a more thorough and systematic analysis of Muscovite institutions than any other foreign work of the period.”29 Chapter 24 of On the Russe Commonwealth, titled “On the manner of solemnizing their marriages,” focuses mostly, again, on the dowry and other contractual elements of marriage, and the wedding that Fletcher does describe is not the tsar’s but a generic description of a wedding of the wellto-do. He does, however, report the unshoeing ceremony, the procession of the bride to the groom’s home “in a kolymaga or coach or in a sled (if it be winter),” and wedding banquets. He also shows that Muscovite weddings across the social spectrum were a three-day celebration.30 Perhaps the best description of a Muscovite wedding comes from the pen of Adam Olearius, a Holstein diplomat who spent a total of nearly two and a half years in Muscovy over the course of four different diplomatic missions between June 1634 and October 1643.31 His remarkably detailed account is, like Fletcher’s, not specifically of a royal wedding (it again probably describes the wedding of a member of the elite), but many of the elements we find in the royal wedding ceremonial are described here, often with details that are omitted in official Muscovite accounts.32 For example, the use of grains at various moments and venues in the wedding, which are mentioned in wedding ceremonials without explanation, are, according to Olearius, “supposed to symbolize bountifulness and assist in assuring that the pair will have

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abundant food and provisions during their wedded life.”33 Olearius also mentions the charivari during the wedding—various forms of ribaldry during certain moments in the wedding that Edward Muir has called “a form of prophylactic magic.”34 In Olearius’s words, during the processions to and from the church, there are “course indecencies . . . bandied about,” and “course jokes are told.”35 Despite these details, Olearius’s account—like Fletcher’s— is skeletal and focused on boyar weddings, not royal weddings; and while it provides a colorful complement to official sources on how some parts of the wedding ritual were performed in the mid-seventeenth century, it offers few insights into how it came together historically in previous times. The first step in the evolution of an official document to describe royal weddings was the dowry inventory (spisok pridannykh), a basic accounting document not principally designed to be a narrative description of the wedding ritual but which did nonetheless provide some details about the way weddings were celebrated. Three early dowry inventories survive: for the weddings of Elena Ivanovna (daughter of Ivan III) and Grand Duke Alexander of Lithuania (in 1495); Evdokiia Ivanovna (another daughter of Ivan III) and Tsarevich Peter (Kudai Kul), a converted Chingisid (in 1506); and Mariia Saburova and Prince Vasilii Semenovich Starodubskii, an agnatic relative of Grand Prince Vasilii III (also in 1506).36 These inventories describe the contents of the dowries, to be sure, but they also include a detailed listing of the gifts exchanged during the three days of the wedding (and on three additional days in the case of the Starodubskii wedding). The dowry inventories for the Starodubskii and Tsarevich Peter weddings also include the tallied total value of the dowries and gifts. The inventories are structured chronologically, describing the gift exchanges for each day and indicating the setting (usually one of the banquets) where the exchanges took place. From a textual perspective, the dowry inventory was a kind of first stab by the secretaries and scribes in the grand-princely chancery at creating an official wedding description, but one too focused on one aspect of the event to serve as a general description.37 Wedding musters (svadebnyi razriad) appeared next, the first extant example of which is the muster for the wedding of Prince Vasilii Daniilovich Kholmskii and Princess Feodosiia Ivanovna (yet another daughter of Grand Prince Ivan III) on February 13, 1500.38 The muster as a documentary form had been in use in Muscovy at least since 1475, mostly to document leadership positions in military campaigns but also sometimes for other court happenings.39 Like the dowry inventory, the wedding muster was a document invented to fulfill a specific function: it provided a hierarchical and unelaborated list of honorific posts at the wedding and the names of the courtiers

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and relatives who filled them—the thousandman (tysiatskii), the best men (druzhki), matchmakers (svakhi), the bearer of the rug (kover derzhal), the master of the horse (koniushii), members of the wedding cortège (v poezdu byli), and so on, down to the courtiers who lugged the bench and rug (skam’ia i kover) from the palace to the church and back. The muster was a record of who was where and who did what. It did not include a description of the rituals, although it is possible to deduce which rituals were performed at the wedding on the basis of the list of honorific posts. Scribes and secretaries compiled wedding musters through the sixteenth century and into the last quarter of the seventeenth, originally in the grand-princely chancery and later in a collaboration between the Ambassadorial Chancery (Posol’skii prikaz) and the Military Service Chancery (Razriadnyi prikaz). The wedding ceremonial (svadebnyi chin) appeared next.40 Vasilii III’s in 1526 was probably produced in the grand-princely chancery; by midcentury, wedding ceremonials were being compiled in the new Ambassadorial Chancery, where the court’s diplomatic and dynastic functions came to be concentrated, including responsibility for housing the ruler’s most important private papers in the royal archive (tsarskii arkhiv).41 The ceremonial provided the first true narrative description of a royal wedding. It traced the sequence of events over the three (or more) days of the wedding, provided instructions on how to decorate the various venues where the nuptial rituals would take place, and included the texts of speeches that would be given at vital moments. Woven into the narrative are the names of those who performed various duties (proxy father and mother, thousandman, best men, and so on). Sixteenth-century ceremonials are remarkably stable texts, but they were reworked and expanded in the seventeenth century, as were the rituals they described. Despite their attention to the narrative details, ceremonials are strikingly silent about the wedding services performed inside the church: the betrothal (obruchenie) and the crowning (venchanie). Ceremonials describe nearly every hour of the three days of the wedding celebrations in rich detail, especially as we move into the seventeenth century. They are essentially silent about the hour or so that the couple spent in the church getting married, except to identify where the bride and groom stood inside the church and that they stood on rugs and sat on sable-covered benches. Sometimes, they also provide the names of the few servitors who were permitted to enter the church for the service and the name of the officiating clergy. The silence here is perhaps explained by the fact that the church service was already described by the Book of Needs (Trebnik)—a liturgical manual for altar servers, which included a number of special services performed by the Russian Orthodox

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Church (weddings, baptisms, the great and small blessings of the waters, funeral offices, and so on). The ceremonial and the Book of Needs together provide a good description of a wedding day, but each alone would be quite incomplete. But was the 1526 ceremonial for Vasilii III’s wedding to Elena Glinskaia the first one ever composed?42 A number of scattered clues suggest that it may well have been. It certainly is the oldest ceremonial mentioned in any of the inventories of the archives of the Ambassadorial Chancery.43 In addition, it was Vasilii III’s ceremonial that became the model for other texts of this type, not some lost antecedent. Some copies of the final version of the muster for Ivan IV’s wedding to Anastasiia Iur’eva in 1547 report that Vasilii’s ceremonial had been “reused.”44 The ceremonial compiled for Ivan IV’s son, Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich, also proves on inspection to be merely an adaptation of Vasilii III’s.45 When Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov (1613–1645) married for the first time in 1624, the scribes simply copied Vasilii III’s ceremonial and edited it later to make it appropriate to the new circumstances in the dynasty—the title “grand prince” crossed out and replaced by “tsar,” the title “metropolitan” crossed out and replaced by “patriarch,” and other adjustments.46 The repeated use of Vasilii III’s ceremonial as a model for later weddings suggests not only that it was the most ancient text available to organizers of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century weddings, but also that it was regarded as authoritative.47 What does this set of wedding documentation tell us about the origins and early history of the Muscovite wedding ritual? One version of the Kholmskii muster published in 1820 by Ivan Petrovich Sakharov includes a line that suggests that Muscovite royal weddings had been performed in the same way since well before 1500. The Kholmskii muster reports that the wedding had been performed “as of old [izstari], just like at the wedding of Simeon Ivanovich, and the wedding of Grand Prince Vasilii Vasil’evich, the grand prince’s father [i.e., Ivan III]; and it was ordered that absolutely nothing be omitted [ne porusha ni v chem].”48 Here the text traces the genealogy of the Muscovite ruling house back from the current ruler, Ivan III (1462–1505), to his father, Vasilii II (1425–1462), and back to his father’s great-great-uncle, Grand Prince Simeon Ivanovich (1341–1353). Similar claims of antiquity appear in Sakharov’s version of the ceremonial for Vasilii III and Elena Glinskaia,49 as well as that for Andrei Staritskii and Efrosiniia Khovanskaia.50 On the basis of these unique notices, Kozachenko argued that, although extant sources for Muscovite royal wedding rituals begin only at the very end of the fifteenth century, with the 1495 dowry inventory for Elena Ivanovna and the 1500 wedding muster for Feodosiia Ivanovna and Vasilii Daniilovich

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Kholmskii, the ritual must be much older than documented, going back to the mid-fourteenth century.51 Combining these notations with the traces of evidence in the chronicles, the Slovo, and later wedding songs, Kozachenko ventured the conclusion that there “is good reason to believe”—evidently aware he was going out on a limb—that the wedding ritual coalesced even earlier. Indeed, for Kozachenko and many other Russian and Soviet ethnographers and historians who have looked at this material, the wedding ritual was quite ancient, going back into the dark recesses of time: quoting Kozachenko again, the “common features of the wedding ritual of the three fraternal Slavic peoples coalesced at the time when the East Slavs lived as one.”52 But that seems to be something of a stretch. The notation in the Kholmskii muster about the wedding rituals of Grand Prince Simeon Ivanovich and Vasilii II, as well other claims to antiquity, exist in no other known versions of these texts, only in Sakharov’s, and so should not necessarily be accepted as authentic. We do not have the source text that Sakharov used to produce this publication and so we cannot authenticate this or other unique textual elements in it.53 Indeed, the Kholmskii muster and other texts in this compilation show clear signs of later editing, perhaps by Sakharov himself. To be sure, Sakharov’s flirtation with forgeries is well known.54 The fact that one version of the Kholmskii muster claims that the weddings in 1500 were performed “as of old” with “absolutely nothing omitted” should not give us confidence that wedding rituals as described in 1500 actually matched those in 1433 (when Grand Prince Vasilii II married)55 or in 1347, 1345, or 1333 (when Grand Prince Simeon Ivanovich married).56 Other sources do allow us to see into the veil of darkness before 1500 and 1526. Kozachenko analyzed accounts of the wedding in 1495 of Elena Ivanovna and Alexander of Lithuania, including the dowry inventory, and identified what he considered to be the essential features of the wedding as it was performed at the end of the fifteenth century. Elena had been sent abroad to marry Alexander as part of a peace treaty negotiated at length between Lithuania and Muscovy to end the border war that had been waging on and off since 1487.57 Kozachenko’s careful reading of the diplomatic sources allowed him to describe in detail the wedding rites and to isolate those parts of the ceremony that the Muscovites insisted be performed: the wearing of the kika, the headgear that is placed on the bride just before the wedding service; combing and rebraiding of the bride’s hair; the fertility ritual of sprinkling hops; the veil; the drinking of wine out of a common cup; and the ritual bath on the second day.58 The wagons in the caravan that brought Elena from Moscow to Vilnius contained all the necessary accoutrements to perform these rituals, even including Russian-style costumes for

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the groom to wear and a stallion for him to ride in the processions that the Russians thought surely would be performed (though they were not, to the consternation of the Muscovites).59 Kozachenko reasonably concluded that these elements must have been the bare minimum required to accomplish a wedding from the Muscovite point of view. Kozachenko reinforced this conclusion by showing that these elements were also performed at the weddings of Feodosiia Ivanovna and Vasilii Kholmskii in 1500, and Vasilii III and Elena Glinskaia in 1526.60 If the Kholmskii wedding does show that some individual wedding rituals are older than the documents that first described them, it also hints that the wedding ritual itself was far from set before the turn of the sixteenth century. For evidence of this fluidity in the ritual, one need look no farther than the role assigned in the Kholmskii muster to Sofiia Palaiologina, the second wife of Grand Prince Ivan III; the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XII (1449–1453); and the mother of the bride. The muster reports the names of those who served in various honorific posts, including the members of the wedding cortèges (poezdy). But unlike subsequent weddings, the Kholmskii muster reports that this wedding had two cortèges—one for the groom (which included the bride), and a separate one for Sofiia, the mother of the bride.61 Sofiia was, furthermore, accompanied by “her boyars,” including her Greek servitors—Iurii Trakhaniotov, his father Dmitrii, and his uncle Iurii.62 Another unique and important variation in this muster is the note near the end of the ceremonial where it is reported that “Grand Princess Sofiia is to ride in the same sled with Grand Princess Elena”—the widow of Grand Prince Ivan Molodoi (d. 1490), Ivan III’s son by his first wife.63 This is an important notation because the Kholmskii wedding occurred during the crisis of succession in 1497–1502, which pitted Ivan III’s grandson (Dmitrii Vnuk) and younger son (the future Vasilii III) as rivals to succeed Ivan III.64 The wedding choreography placed the mothers of the rival claimants to the throne—Vasilii Ivanovich (Sofiia Palaiologina) and Dmitrii Vnuk (the son of Elena Stepanovna of Moldavia and Ivan Molodoi)—next to each other in the same sled, displaying ritually and very publicly, if not probably very sincerely, their rapprochement during a brief hiatus in their feud over the succession. The Kholmskii muster therefore provides another reason to doubt the argument that Muscovite wedding rituals coalesced in the fourteenth century, during Simeon Ivanovich’s reign or even earlier. The muster of the 1500 Kholmskii wedding captures an early iteration of the Muscovite royal wedding ritual and displays features that were not repeated in later weddings, like the attention given to the bride’s mother (and her step-sister-in-law, as was the case in 1500). Efrosiniia Andreevna (née Khovanskaia), the wife of

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Prince Andrei Ivanovich Staritskii (Vasilii III’s youngest brother), played no such prominent role in the weddings of her son, Prince Vladimir Staritskii, in 1549 and 1555; and Ivan IV’s third wife, Marfa Sobakina, was assigned no prominent role at all in the wedding of his son Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich in 1571. Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich’s mother did play a visible ceremonial role in his weddings (in 1624 and 1626), but a very different one from Sofiia Palaiologina’s—a unique role linked to her status as the mother of a new dynasty and as a pious nun (staritsa). Wedding documents thus capture for us the moment when the evolving rites of the early sixteenth century were formulated into a fairly set rubric: in 1526, when the ritual was finally put down on paper. It remains to ask why these documents—the dowry inventory, muster, and ceremonial—appeared when they did, at the very end of the fifteenth and first quarter of the sixteenth centuries. The question calls for speculation, and the answer may vary by source. The inventories appear to be very early fiscal records and were perhaps inspired by court and monastic account books. The wedding muster clearly was modeled on the earliest Muster Books (Razriadnye knigi), which began to be compiled in the 1470s. And the wedding ceremonial may well have been inspired by the scribal work that went into the description of the first coronation in Russia in 1498. In much the same way, it seems probable that these three sets of texts in turn influenced the way fiscal, military, and ceremonial documents would be prepared later, beginning in the mid-sixteenth century, when the grand-princely chancery evolved into separate chanceries (prikazy) with specialized scribal staffs. Wedding documentation, then, constitutes a vital, early step in the development of the Muscovite apparatus of power.65

Muscovite Wedding Rituals in Broader Historical Context Many of the ritual elements in Muscovite royal weddings are found in other nuptial rites, but there has yet to be a modern synthetic study of marriage that provides a clear picture of how these elements might have evolved or traveled across cultures over time. We seem still to be in the process of building a literature of isolated studies of nuptial rites and not yet at that stage where we can synthesize what we know into a comparative, taxonomical model of weddings.66 There has been more progress on the theoretical front. Arnold van Gennep has examined a range of ritual moments in a range of cultures (weddings, but also baptisms, circumcisions, funerals, and so on) and has culled from them a model of rites of passage that comprises three fundamental stages: rites of separation, transition, and incorporation.67 But

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when it comes to weddings—the “most important of the transitions from one social category to another,” according to Van Gennep—the theory is way ahead of the descriptive studies.68 Even so, these isolated studies reveal clusters of common customs, even if, as Van Gennep pointed out, these customs “are not developed to the same extent by all people or in every ceremonial pattern.”69 In particular, there are compelling similarities between the elements of Muscovite nuptial rites and, for instance, those in ancient Greece, Rome, and Byzantium, which may signal either borrowing or shared descent from common cultural antecedents. The wedding ceremony in ancient Athens “exemplifies clearly,” according to John Oakley and Rebecca Sinos, “the pattern identified by Van Gennep.”70 The celebrations lasted three days and began with the pledge (engye), or betrothal, which involved an agreement between the groom and the bride’s father and could “precede the wedding by a considerable length of time.”71 On the day before the wedding, the couple made prenuptial sacrifices (proteleia) to the gods to alleviate their “envy,” as the couple, but especially the bride, transitioned from the protective veil of Artemis (the virgin goddess) to Aphrodite (the goddess of sexuality), although other gods were venerated too—Hera, Athena, the Furies, and so on.72 The bride received new clothes and head coverings appropriate to a married woman and the groom received new clothes and a garland. Preparations for the wedding included a bath for both the bride and groom, by which the groom tapped into the perceived “fertile power of water” and the bride was “cleansed of maidenhood.”73 Afterward, the couple was adorned in new clothes, and the bride was presented with a crown (made of asparagus or other plants and sometimes metal), sandals, and a veil. Her hair was braided as well, and she was anointed with oil, which likely served as a form of anointing and as a perfume—all symbolic and essential to the bride’s “entry into sexuality.”74 Meanwhile, the bride’s and groom’s houses were decorated with fertility symbols and idols of the gods, particularly Eros and Nike, the god of love and goddess of victory, respectively—both allusions to the principal purpose of marriage: childbirth.75 Feasts and processions highlighted the events on the day of the wedding. The location of the wedding banquet could vary, either at the bride’s father’s house or the groom’s father’s house, but all weddings seemed to feature music, singing, and sumptuous feasting. It was also the lone occasion when men and women dined and celebrated together at the same table, “men on one side and women on the other.”76 At the conclusion of the banquet, after night fell, the father of the bride formally and ceremoniously gave over his daughter to the groom. Accounts vary, but it may be at this time that the

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bride was unveiled and perhaps also received a small gift from the groom— all this in plain view of all the family and guests.77 These rites of separation were then followed immediately by the procession, the “central act of the wedding” and “the most conspicuous public part of the ceremony.”78 Torches illuminated the way to the groom’s house, carried in some sources by the bride’s mother. A child carried ceremonial bread, and some depictions of ancient Greek weddings show the couple riding in chariots or carts. During the procession, onlookers showered the bride and groom with flowers, a sign of hope for the couple’s fertility.79 These rites of transition were then followed by the rites of incorporation. On arriving at the groom’s house, the bride venerated the idols and proceeded to the hearth, which was adorned with branches, garlands, and wool hangings. There the bride and groom were showered (katachysmata) with “dates, coins, dried fruits, figs, and nuts.”80 The bride ate the fruit (in some sources, a quince) that her husband presented to her, symbolizing “her acceptance of the love her husband offered her.”81 The couple then moved to the bridal chamber (thalamus), decorated with luxurious curtains and a canopy, pillows, and, in one source, a scabbard on the wall. The door to the bridal chamber was “guarded” outside by a friend of the groom (thyroros) while the couple consummated the marriage; and some sources show a small child sleeping in the bridal chamber with the couple, presumably invited in later. A second bed (parabustos) was set up in the bridal chamber for the bride or groom to occupy, according to Oakley and Sinos, “so that they did not need to spend the entire night in the same narrow bed together.”82 The next day saw additional feasts hosted by the groom and gift exchanges. The bride was the focus of the day. She was presented with “implements of beauty” to “sustain the allure,” as well as “tools for woolworking” and other items appropriate to the life of a married woman, which were either symbolic or practical, depending on the social status of the bride and her new family. Priestesses visited the couple on this day offering their ministrations, “closing the circle of ritual,” as Oakley and Sinos aptly put it, “that began with the sacrifices to Athena and the other gods concerned with marriage.”83 The ancient Roman wedding displayed the same underlying ritual structure that Van Gennep described and shared many of the same rites found in Greek wedding rituals.84 The betrothal (sponsalia, or “promise”) featured the groom giving his prospective bride a ring (annulus pronubus), sometimes at a formal feast, a practice picked up by the Christians at their betrothal ceremony.85 The wedding itself (nuptiae) could, like Greek weddings, follow some considerable time after the betrothal. The wedding began at the bride’s father’s house. The bride bewailed with song and verse departing her family

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to be sent off to marry an effective stranger.86 She discarded the toys, clothes, and other possessions of childhood, exchanging them for more appropriate accoutrements of married life.87 Her hair was braided into the sex crines, or six braided locks, alluding to the Vestal Virgins—the strands ceremoniously separated, according to some sources, by a spear (a clear phallic symbol of fertility and male potency).88 She then donned a veil (flammeum) and crown (corona, corolla), as well as a chastity belt (singulum),89 and offered prenuptial sacrifices to the gods.90 The bride led by torches (taeda, fax) then processed to the groom’s father’s house, the procession serving, as in the Greek wedding, as the “core ritual of the wedding.”91 The couple was showered (nuces) with nuts, a symbol of bounty and fertility and likely a “survival of the Greek custom of the katakusmata.”92 Once there, rites of incorporation took place: met at the threshold, she offered a gift of coins and anointed the doorposts with fat and decorated them with wool; she received symbols of fire and water; and crossed the threshold into her husband’s father’s house, an action that, according to one Roman author at least (Quintus Cervidius Scaevola, in the Digesta), was the moment when the marriage was accomplished.93 Then followed a feast and the couple retiring to their bridal chamber to consummate the marriage.94 Scrolling forward some centuries down the cultural lines of descent from Greece and Rome to the Byzantine Empire, we look into the mirror of Christian and pre-Christian wedding rituals, though darkly. Byzantine wedding rituals are, perhaps not surprisingly, far less studied than ancient antecedents, possibly because our source base is far less abundant. One noteworthy source is the De ceremoniis aulae byzantinae, a tenth-century compilation by Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (905–959), though some chapters may have been composed as early as the fifth century. De ceremoniis provides ritual templates for everything from religious feast days to acclamations for the emperor and his servitors, coronations of emperors and enthronements of church hierarchs, imperial funerals, and many other court happenings.95 This compilation text was, in effect, the manual for rituals at the Byzantine court in the tenth century. It is, however, a vexing source. Descriptions of rituals in it are skeletal and rely on the reader’s background knowledge of Byzantine custom and society, much of which is lost to us today. As Gilbert Dagron put it, “It is all rather disappointing. Where one had hoped for a fine historical evocation, there is only a museum piece,” an “imprecise and characterless text which says almost nothing of importance and is valuable chiefly for the critique it inspires.”96 Two entries in the De ceremoniis, chapters 39 and 41, nevertheless provide the template for imperial Byzantine weddings.97 Chapter 39, according to

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J. B. Bury, probably reflects a form of the wedding ritual at the time of Basil I (867–886) or Leo VI (886–912).98 Chapter 41 may be based on the wedding of Empress Theophano (d. 991) and Romanos II (959–963) in 956.99 Both chapters describe the wedding of a junior emperor. As Bury pointed out, the template in chapter 39 portrays the bride as already an “augusta,” or empress, while the template in chapter 41 assumes that the bride is not of royal parentage and so provides for her coronation and wedding on the same day.100 In both cases, therefore, the bride comes to her marriage already royal—either because she was from royal stock or because she had been elevated to the purple at a coronation immediately before the wedding. These two chapters, like the rest of De ceremoniis, truly are “museum pieces”—lovely to behold but ill-suited for practical use. Chapter 39 omits any mention of the prenuptial rituals (Van Gennep’s rites of separation) and begins instead after the couple departs from the Church of St. Stephen in the Palace of Daphne, “when the customary ecclesiastical ceremonial is completed” (meaning, presumably, the crowning service).101 The bulk of the account describes the couple’s procession through the interior spaces of the palace complex in Constantinople, where they were acclaimed by “the magistroi and patricians,” senators, the Greens and Blues factions, and where, along their route, “the customary ritual takes place”—although the text does not say what that ritual was.102 The newlyweds then made their way to the conch of the bridal chamber, where the wedding bed was placed. They removed their crowns and moved on to the Hall of the Nineteen Couches, where they “recline at table.”103 The chapter ends with a list of the acclamations they were to receive during their procession and notes variations to the rituals. It omits any further details about subsequent days of the wedding.104 Dagron’s annoyance seems wholly warranted. Chapter 41 provides a somewhat fuller description of the nuptial rites and a better glimpse of how Byzantine royal weddings fit Van Gennep’s schema of rites of passage.105 The chapter begins with the bride’s coronation, which was officiated by the patriarch. Again processions, acclamations, and the feast feature prominently in the account, and we learn the titles of several important honorific servitors who performed duties at the wedding: the chamberlain (praepositus), who attended the couple in the bedchamber; a master of ceremonies (ceremoniarius), who appears in the text to have charge of the several processions; sword bearers (spatharii) who escort the bride; a best man (paranymphios), who attends to matters at the wedding service (stephanoma); and a chief presiding woman (parakathistria), who holds one of the three gem-studded purple pomegranates that surround the bride during the processions. The chapter also contains several assorted notes concerning

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the costumes worn during this pageant, the placement of senators and their wives at various moments, the role and locations of the two factions (Greens and Blues), and the parts played by the chanters and organs that provided accompanying music for the acclamations. Chapter 41 ends by jumping to a description of the processions and rituals surrounding the bride’s ritual bath on the third day, which included an elaborate procession with chanters and the music of three specifically placed organs, obeisances of the members of the court, and the acclamations of the factions who line themselves up, Blues on one side and Greens on the other (lined up densely, like a “block of masonry”) as the bride goes to and from her bath.106 Chapter 41, then, emphasizes the processions and the feast, just as chapter 39 does, with additional details about the role of women in the wedding rituals, the roles played by courtiers of various ranks, and the ceremonies and processions surrounding the nuptial bath on the third day. Both chapters emphasize the bride’s transition from maiden to wife and, in chapter 41, from commoner to augusta. Yet one would be hard pressed to choreograph a Byzantine emperor’s wedding solely on the basis of the descriptions in De ceremoniis. The sources being what they are, we cannot say that Muscovy borrowed directly from Byzantium or its classical antecedents, despite the common structure and many shared symbols and rituals, some of which, like those in ancient Athens, are stunningly similar to ones we find in Moscow centuries on centuries later. It is true that many Byzantine customs and practices, especially those around the ruler’s court, were imported by the Muscovites at the urging of itinerant Greeks who arrived after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, including Sofiia (Zoë) Palaiologina, who came to Muscovy to marry Ivan III in 1472. The bride-show ritual was one of them, and we know it was urged on the Muscovites in 1505 by the Greek Iurii Trakhaniotov, one of Ivan III’s most senior advisers.107 One might reasonably wonder if other nuptial rites were borrowed as well.108 It is a neat and appealing argument and one I am inclined to favor. But without more direct evidence, all we can say with certainty, and it is no small insight, is that Muscovy shared many nuptial customs with other places and times well beyond the East Slavic space and the early modern centuries. Muscovy’s nuptial rites were not so exotic as to suggest that they originated uniquely in the East Slavic space or in the darkest recesses of time. Muscovy belonged to a larger world of nuptial rites and rituals, which renders the entire question of the indigenous origins of its customs moot. Despite what the foreigners who were visiting Muscovy in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries reported (or what a couple of generations of field anthropologists have argued), Muscovy was not so very odd and exotic. Giles Fletcher was clearly only reflecting the conceits of

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his own experience and background in reporting that “the manner of making and solemnizing their marriages is different from the manner of other countries.”109

The Sixteenth-Century Model: Vasilii III and Elena Glinskaia We can pick up the narrative of the 1526 wedding of Vasilii III and Elena Glinskaia just after the groom heard the words: “It is time to attend to the wedding.” Once everyone was in his or her starting blocks, the wedding could begin. The ceremonial reports that, on hearing these words, the grand prince immediately went from the Dining Pavilion to the Middle Palace, accompanied by the “thousandman, the entire wedding cortège, and all the boyars.” On arriving, he venerated the icons (poklon’sia sviatym) and then went to his assigned seat, replacing Anastasiia Glinskaia, the bride’s younger sister, who was temporarily occupying the seat. He then indicated to a priest that a prayer should be recited.110 Next began a crucial sequence of rituals that took place in the Middle Palace in the presence of the entire wedding company, which positioned the bride at the center of attention. First, the thousandman’s wife combed the bride’s and groom’s hair, and then the couple was betrothed (obruchi na nikh polozhat’), presumably by the priest who earlier had said the prayer. The bride then had her headgear, the kika, placed on her head, along with a veil. The thousandman’s wife sprinkled the couple with hops, then fanned the couple with sable skins. Next, the groom’s best man (druzhka) sliced the sweetbread (perechen, not the korovai) and cheese, and distributed them to all those present. The bride’s best man then distributed ceremonial kerchiefs (shirinki) in the bride’s name to all those present.111 With the bride’s hair combed and rebraided, her headgear affixed, the couple sprinkled with hops, the guests in possession of their gifts, and the rings exchanged—the bride and groom were now pledged to each other in ways that both traditional culture and Orthodox canons would recognize as binding.112 The bride, groom, and a large assembly of boyars and courtiers then moved in a procession across Palace Square in the Kremlin to the Dormition Cathedral for the crowning service. While they were away at the church, the groom’s seat cushions (zgolov’ia) back in the Middle Palace were covered with sable skins, and the bride’s sister, Anastasiia, and other women of the court “went to the bride’s apartment” to await the bride and groom’s return from church. The bride and groom took their appointed positions inside the church. The groom stood on the right side, facing the iconostasis, just to the left of the southeast pillar in the nave. The bride stood on the left, just to

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the right of the northeast pillar. The bearers of the candles and loaves stood behind them, near the northwest pillar, on the bride’s side. Near the west pillars a bench was set up with two red cushions and a rug underneath, and the best men laid a length of damask (kamka) and forty sables on the floor where the couple could stand (and, when allowed, sit) in comfort.113 Then the metropolitan performed the crowning ceremony—the central liturgical element of an Orthodox wedding—and afterward the couple drank Italian red wine (vino friaskoe) from a common cup. After the bride and groom each took a sip, the grand prince finished the remaining wine, cast the cup to the floor, and smashed it with his foot. After the crowning, the couple sat on the bench behind them and received the congratulations of the metropolitan, the groom’s brother Prince Iurii Ivanovich, the boyars, lesser gentrymen, and the secretaries, while a choir chanted the hymn “Many Years” (mnogoletie) from the north and south kliroi (klirosy) of the church.114 The couple left the church the same way as they had arrived: exiting out the side door facing the square with the same attendants arrayed around them. The couple moved in procession back to the palace complex, but then they separated. The groom went to his own apartment (k sebe) for his breakfast, while the bride went to her apartment (v svoi khoromy) for hers. The bride was greeted at the entrance to the Terem by the equerry (iasel’nichii), who, after the bride stepped off the sleigh, sat down where the bride had been (na velikie kniagini mesto) and took the sleigh back to the stables (koniushnia). The candles and ceremonial loaves were taken to the bridal chamber (k posteli)—the Sennik, a special room where the wedding would be consummated and which was decorated specially for the bride and groom’s wedding night with a range of fertility symbols: silk hangings adorned the walls of the Sennik, and in each of the four corners hung an arrow with either one or forty sable skins (“whichever the grand prince commands”), with a loaf of ceremonial bread (kolach) and honey in jars (po oloveniku medu) on a stool in each corner. The arrow was an obvious phallic symbol; the sables, a probable reference to fertility and prosperity; and the honey, a representation of spiritual blessings and salvation, as many biblical references to honey in the Tanakh suggest.115 Twenty-seven sheaves of rye were also placed underneath the bed, perhaps the same sheaves that were used to carry the bed into the Sennik before the wedding, and grain was also placed “at the head” of the bed (v golovakh), probably under the pillows. The candles burned for three days and then were removed from the Sennik and taken to the church, presumably to burn down in a candle stand before an icon.116 After the grand prince had his breakfast, he made a mini-pilgrimage to the monasteries and churches of the Kremlin (po monastyriam i po tserkvam),

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accompanied by his brother, the thousandman, the wedding cortège, and some selected boyars (komu velit s soboiu ekhat’).117 This was a very visible ritual, involving a large number of senior members of the court in what may have been a very formal procession to several destination points within the Kremlin. The procession was visible to the host of guards manning the Kremlin gates and towers, to the servants scurrying about the palace square, and to monks and nuns living inside the citadel. Besides the processions to and from the church, this mini-pilgrimage was the only other “public” ceremony of the wedding: all other rites took place indoors. After visiting the monasteries, the grand prince sent word to the bride to attend the wedding banquet (k stolu). She made her way from her apartments (iz svoikh khorom) to the banquet at the Middle Golden Palace, accompanied by the thousandman’s wife, the matchmakers, and the women of the court; and on arriving, they all sat down in their preassigned places, at both the main table (v Bol’shom stole) and the side table (v Krivom stole).118 Then the groom made his entrance, accompanied by his brother and other attendants. The equerry was ordered to mount a horse and ride around the Middle Golden Palace the entire night “with a drawn saber or sword” (s sableiu goloiu ili s mechem), a carryover, perhaps, from former times when a banquet might be a vulnerable moment for the attendees and the couple.119 When the groom and his party arrived, they likewise sat in their assigned seats at both tables (po svoim mestam), sitting opposite the women. The hot food was served (kuria pechenoe), and portions were set aside to be taken by the first best man to the bridal chamber.120 The bride and groom then got up without having eaten anything and made their way to the door of the Middle Golden Palace, accompanied by the thousandman, the first best man, the matchmakers, and anyone else that had been designated by the groom. There, at the doors, a speech was given, commending the couple to each other (Vasilii III’s ceremonial omits the text of the speech), then the couple went in procession along the interior passages of the Kremlin palace complex to the bridal chamber, where the bride and groom were sprinkled again (probably with hops, but the ceremonial does not specify what was used). What intimacies took place behind the closed door of the bridal chamber are not mentioned, let alone described, but the text concludes its account of the events of the first day of the wedding by reporting that the couple was later served dinner—the portions that had been set aside earlier for them—by the first matchmaker and the first best man.121 The next day, the second day of the wedding, the couple took separate baths, then had their breakfast consisting of porridge (kasha) together in the bridal chamber.122 And with that, the ceremonial for Vasilii III’s wedding to

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Elena Glinskaia abruptly ends. The rest of the second day and the entire third day are missing from the extant text. There were still more banquets to attend, gifts to exchange, and congratulations to receive from courtiers and churchmen, but we know about them only from the descriptions of later royal weddings.

Muscovite Rites of Passage With the creation of this first wedding ceremonial in 1526, royal weddings underwent what Catherine Bell calls a “textualization of ritual.” The ceremonial, rather than memory, became the “authoritative textual guidelines” for how a member of the Muscovite ruling house should marry.123 To be sure, the 1526 ceremonial was imperfect even before the final folios of it were lost: it gave rather precise instructions for some rituals, while providing almost none for others. Over the course of the sixteenth century and especially in the seventeenth, the text of the wedding ceremonial improved, including more detailed descriptions of key ritual moments, although the underlying ritual remained largely unchanged. Generations of scribes, undersecretaries, and secretaries would be grateful for the textual tweaks of their predecessors and would in turn themselves make things easier on the next lot that had the job of choreographing a royal wedding. The nuptial rites described in these texts correspond well with Van Gennep’s schèma de rites de passage. Rites of separation, transition, and incorporation fill the three days of the wedding but not in a perfect, discrete sequence. Rites of separation overlap with rites of incorporation, and the boundaries between what Van Gennep called the “liminal rites” were not hard and fast.124 Moreover, the customary rites of passage intermingled with Christian rites, particularly the betrothal service, blending and reinforcing the secular and religious messages of separation, transition, and incorporation that were being broadcast by the movements and actions of the bride and groom. Rites of Separation

The rites of separation involving the bride began shortly after her selection in a bride-show. First, the bride took a new name, a custom that is documented four times in Muscovy between 1572 and 1616, though it is likely to have been more common than that.125 In a second ritual, the future bride and her female relatives were formally installed in the Terem, the palace spaces in the Kremlin reserved for women. We have no formal record of how this ritual was performed, although it is mentioned in six wedding ceremonials

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between 1616 and 1680 and took place usually just days before the wedding.126 A third rite of separation was the bestowal on the bride-to-be of a new, fictive title—tsarevna (literally, daughter of a tsar or royal princess). The ceremonial for Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich’s wedding in 1571 calls his bride, Evdokiia Saburova, “tsarevna” or “tsarevna kniazhna” (“tsarevna princess”— she was born neither a tsarevna nor a princess), and six seventeenth-century ceremonials record how the brides were given the title “tsarevna” (narekli tsarevnoiu) even before the betrothal and crowning services.127 These three rituals together established a new identity for the bride, separating her from her previous name, social status, and home. Changing’s the bride’s “name or . . . personality” were classic examples of rites of separation, according to Van Gennep.128 The bride came to her wedding day a transfigured personality—fictively equal to her royal husband-to-be, not unlike the way a low- or middling-born augusta came to her royal husband as an equal at the wedding of a Byzantine emperor. The rites of separation continued on the wedding day. We can take again the example of the 1526 ceremonial for Vasilii III and Elena Glinskaia, which set the pattern for the rest of the century. Once the bride and groom were together in the Middle Golden Palace, the thousandman’s wife (in 1526, Prince Andrei Staritskii’s wife, Efrosiniia Andreevna, née Khovanskaia) combed the bride’s and groom’s hair, but this is where the focus on the groom largely ended. The rest of the ritual centered on the bride, whose new identity was at the core of these rites. Symbolizing the transformation from adolescent to adult, the bride’s hair was rebraided from the single plait of an unmarried girl to the two plaits of a married woman—a way of broadcasting her new status to all who saw her. Her head was veiled and she put on the kika, the headgear that likewise signaled her married status. Then she and her groom were showered with hops (osypali khmelem)—a clear symbol of bounty, prosperity, and fertility and a rite shared with the Greeks and Romans.129 Then the bride instructed her best men to cut slices of bread and cheese and distribute them to all present—an hors d’oeuvre that both staved off hunger and presented the bride as the gracious hostess. She also then gave the customary wedding gift—ceremonial kerchiefs—to the entire wedding party, a ritual that symbolized the social integration of the bride into her new surroundings.130 In 1526, side-by-side with these customary rites of separation, there was performed a formal Orthodox betrothal, a liturgical service during which the couple exchanged rings and established a bond that was nearly as indissolvable and binding as a marriage. An Orthodox marriage required both the betrothal and the crowning services. The betrothal had long been sepa-

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rate from the crowning in the Byzantine Empire (just as the non-Christian betrothal had been separate from wedding rites in ancient Rome and Greece, as we have seen). In 1526, they were still separate services, and the Christian rites of betrothal were performed alongside the customary ones. But the rituals were in flux.131 The betrothal and crowning were gradually becoming liturgically linked in Muscovy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But it took time for them to merge, and customs continued to vary. The wedding rituals recorded in the Domostroi, for instance, report that the betrothal took place in the banquet hall immediately before the crowning in the church, just as it had at Vasilii III’s wedding in 1526.132 Kotoshikhin agreed that the services were separate but reported that the betrothal took place in a banquet hall on the eve of the wedding, not the wedding day.133 Royal weddings after 1526 had both services performed together in the church (which is how it is done today),134 The only times after 1526 when the betrothal and crowning were again performed separately at a royal wedding was when one of the spouses was not Orthodox. The first such instance was in 1573, at the wedding of Princess Mariia Vladimirovna Staritskaia to Duke Magnus, Ivan IV’s puppet “King of Livonia.”135 The other time was at the wedding in 1606 of the First False Dmitrii (1605–1606), who married Marina Mniszech, a Catholic.136 Otherwise, the betrothal was performed in the church in a joint ritual that first pledged the couple to each other with rings and then joined them together in matrimony with the wearing of nuptial crowns. If 1526 was the last time (beside these two exceptions) that the betrothal was performed alongside the customary rites of passage—rife as they were with pre-Christian symbols and rituals—that did not eliminate the role of the Church in the rites of separation. A priest still was present, uttering the requisite prayers over the couple and offering his blessing on the entire endeavor. Moving the betrothal was perhaps the most significant change to royal wedding rites in the sixteenth century, but the comingling of Christian and pre-Christian rites continued. Most likely, the new place and timing of the betrothal reflected changes that were being introduced by churchmen into the Book of Needs, rather than by chancery secretaries in the wedding ceremonial. Rites of Transition

Next followed the rites of transition, which took the form of a set of processions and a portal ritual. A wedding involved a lot of movement: the bride and groom moved from their own apartments to the banquet hall, from the banquet hall to the church and back, and from the banquet hall to the bridal chamber—and that was only on the first day. Each time the bride or

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groom moved, she or he did so in the company of relatives and courtiers or each other, never alone. The procession that more than any other signaled the bride’s transition from maiden to married woman was the one that took her and the groom to the church and back. The procession was lengthy and made of up distinct segments. Leading the procession was a priest and other members of the clergy, sometimes holding holy water or a censer. The cortège followed, consisting of some of the court’s highest-ranking servitors. The groom came next, riding a stallion—the only one on horseback—and guided by the thousandman, who walked immediately next to the groom. Next came the candlebearers and the servitors carrying the ceremonial loaves (korovai) and then the bride. She rode in a sleigh (v saniakh) with the thousandman’s wife and the first matchmaker. The bride’s other matchmaker rode in a second sleigh. Behind the sleighs walked “boyars, lesser gentrymen [deti boiarskie], and secretaries, whomever the grand prince assigned.”137 This was a large and glittering procession, with many of the most important figures at court participating, dressed, no doubt, in their best court attire. But for all the finery, it was a very short trip. The distance between the Middle Palace and the Dormition Cathedral—specifically, the “side entrance facing the square,” where the bride and groom entered—was, depending on the exact route taken, probably well under two hundred meters.138 According to fuller descriptions from later in the century, the route was lined with finely dressed guards who made a path between the palace and the church. The structure of the procession encouraged all eyes to fall on the bride. She was at the center of the cortège, surrounded by the greatest names at court. Even the groom, mounted high on his stallion, served more as a guardian or escort of the bride than as a focal point of the procession. Though veiled and barely visible in her sleigh, she was the reason for all the finery and fuss. A second, two-part rite of transition occurred at the doors of the Golden Middle Palace just as the bride and groom were about to leave for their wedding night, and then at the door to the bridal chamber, where the wedding would be consummated. The guests had been feasting and, probably, toasting the health of the newlywed couple, and after the main course was served, the bride and groom were led to the doorway that connected to the passageway that they would take to the bridal chamber. All the most senior servitors surrounded the couple at the doorway, where a close relative or high-ranking servitor gave the speech commending the bride and groom to each other. Then the couple were led in a short procession to the bridal chamber, where the assembly again halted at the door to sprinkle the couple with hops. As Van Gennep stressed, “rites carried out on the threshold itself are transition rites.” He continued: “The door is the boundary between the

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foreign and domestic world in the case of an ordinary dwelling, between the profane and sacred worlds in the case of a temple. Therefore to cross the threshold is to unite oneself with a new world. It is thus an important act in marriage, adoption, ordination, and funeral ceremonies.”139 The door of the Middle Golden Palace was a portal into a new life for the bride and groom. Whatever rites had happened before—the braiding of the bride’s hair, the veiling, the sprinkling, and even the betrothal and crowning—crossing this threshold symbolized the joining of the couple into one flesh. That this first portal ritual was so important is further demonstrated by the words of the speeches delivered at that time, which emphasize that God had joined the couple in Christian matrimony. The second portal ritual was a bit earthier in tone. The hops called to mind the ancestral purpose of marriage—to beget children. Clearly, the Muscovites shared the portal ritual with many other societies studied by Van Gennep. But as with all common rituals, the Muscovite version of the rite infused it with words, actions, and meanings that fit the Muscovites’ own needs and goals. Rites of Incorporation

For Van Gennep, the rites of incorporation at a wedding included common meals and an exchange of gifts. In Muscovy, the wedding banquet on the wedding day was the principal occasion when the bride was ritually received into her new family—in this case, the royal family. The bride and groom did not eat with the others; they had portions set aside to eat after they had consummated the marriage—probably so that the somnolent effect of food did not interfere with the business at hand. But their presence at the banquet, sitting together under a canopy and slightly elevated above the others, was probably intended to symbolize the bride’s incorporation into the dynasty. Partaking later of the same food served at the banquet also seems like a symbol of incorporation. Meals continued on the second and third days (and in the seventeenth century, the fourth day), when the bride and groom ate full meals together with the members of the court. The goal of incorporation appeared after the banquets, as well. The bride and groom spent their first night together, but after the banquet on the second day the couple separated and spent the night apart. The bride went to the Terem with the women of the court—spending her second night as royal consort in her new permanent lodgings. The groom went to his court for the night—a far more familiar setting to him, but then, he was not the one whose transformation was at the heart of these rituals of separation, transition, and incorporation. It was important that the bride establish herself in her new

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status and new dwellings right away and assume her place in the Terem, as the nominal apex of the women’s court. If the first night of the marriage was about succession, heirs, and dynasty, the second was about the social world of the Kremlin, and it was vital that both halves of that social world—male and female—receive and accept their new member and mistress as quickly as possible. Gift exchanges were also a vital rite of incorporation. In fact, they are the first in Van Gennep’s list of the various forms that rites of incorporation can take.140 The bride was the first to give gifts at the wedding—during the rites of separation before the wedding (braiding, veiling, sprinkling)—but she gave and received gifts on other days as well. Gifts are a topic we take up in detail later, but for now there are two important observations to make. First, the bride is the focal point of the gift exchanges, although she is not the only one to give or receive gifts and the gifts she gives are almost certainly provided to her by the ruler’s workshops. Gifts were distributed by her or in her name to key members of the elite. Accepting the gifts meant accepting her. Second, the rites of separation and incorporation overlapped in Muscovite royal weddings. Braiding, veiling, and sprinkling (rites of separation) happened in the same place and time—just before the procession to the church—as the distribution of gifts by the bride (rites of incorporation). But Van Gennep may not have been too befuddled by this lack of perfect sequencing, and nor should we be. His model was flexible and general, and its enduring value lies not in its details but in the lens it provides for comparison and interpretation. That lens reveals Muscovy to have weddings that shared symbols and rituals with weddings elsewhere, and with other rites of passage, just as Van Gennep would argue it should. Once Muscovite royal wedding ritual was put to paper, it remained a remarkably stable feature of court life across the span of the sixteenth century. And it was an eventful century. There were weddings of rulers, heirs, and collateral members of the dynasty, each with its own intrigues. There were weddings of royal daughters and other female members of the House of Moscow, each with its own calculus. There were marriages of prominent courtiers who had connections to the dynasty or enjoyed their own dynastic clout. And there were the unsettling and scandalous remarriages of Ivan IV and his eldest son (Ivan Ivanovich). Through all these events, the wedding ritual remained essentially stable. One reason why royal weddings may have changed so little over the course of the sixteenth century is that they were not an alien rite. Whatever the antiquity of these ceremonies or the balance between borrowed and indigenous customs, the way weddings were performed in the Kremlin suggests that these rituals were deeply rooted in the

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underlying culture. And rituals with such deep roots change begrudgingly, and usually only over sustained objections.141 But change did finally come to the Muscovite royal wedding ritual. It came when the calamity of calamities befell the land—the extinction of the ruling house with the death of Ivan IV’s son, Fedor I, in 1598. This jolt to the political world of the Kremlin provoked an analogous jolt to the ritual world of the court. After fifteen years of civil wars, pretenders, peasant and Cossack uprisings, and foreign invasions, the families at the top of Muscovite power would stop at nothing to restore order, which, in this context and time, meant the installation of a new ruling house. When that finally happened in 1613, the power of rituals would be utilized to help keep the peace and solidify the new dynasty in power. It is to that story that we now turn.

q Ch ap ter 2 “A Canonical Marriage for the Uninterrupted Succession to Your Royal Dynasty” Royal Weddings and Dynastic Legitimacy

The extinction of the Daniilovich dynasty in 1598 on the death of Tsar Fedor Ivanovich was as much a crisis of ritual as it was a crisis of succession. It created a need to adjust the court’s array of rituals—always a vital tool in the arsenal of the sovereign’s court, even in stable times—to rapidly changing political circumstances in the years that immediately followed. A boyar who had been an equal the day before became a tsar before whom one fell prostrate in obeisance. A tsar who had been the anointed of God the day before was now vilified, run out of town, or put to death in the most gruesome way. The court’s rituals had evolved to create and project political stability and social integration. They assumed continuity and longevity. To have tsars, retinues, patriarchs, boyars, courtiers, and secretaries—all the traditional figures of stable rule in Muscovy—come into and fall out of power so capriciously, and nearly always violently, put unique strains on the ritual mechanisms of the court. The failures of the short-lived tsars during the years between the Daniilovich and Romanov dynasties— called the Time of Troubles (1598–1613)—was also a failure of ritual. But it is in ritual’s capacity to project continuity and legitimacy that its restorative power lies in such desperate times. During interregna, as Edward Muir put it, “pageants represented the continuity of the dynasty.” Even if one house fell and another one took its place (and then another, and another), “rituals embodied timeless truths and continued ancient traditions.”1 Even 42

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Figure 2.1.  Tsar Mikhail Romanov visiting monasteries and churches before his wedding, in RGADA, fond 135, sec. V, rub. III, no. 16. RGADA (used with permission).

so, the circumstances of a restoration require what Kevin Sharpe calls “rituals of restored majesty”—ritual occasions that are either created anew or adapted from older forms in order to broadcast a specific dynastic message of continuity, restoration, and legitimacy.2 The rulers during the Time of Troubles understood very well ritual’s ability to help them secure their hold on the throne. Boris Godunov (1598–1605), the First False Dmitrii (1605–1606), and Vasilii Shuiskii (1606–1610) all had their coronations. All three ceremoniously received the oaths of loyalty (kissing the cross) from their new “loyal” subjects. The First False Dmitrii and Vasilii Shuiskii both had royal weddings. But none of it took. The pressures of internal factional divisions among the boyars, serial uprisings among peasants and Cossacks, and the invasion of the Poles and Swedes made the environment too unsettled for these rituals to do their work. The environment would change thanks to the expulsion in 1612 of the Poles and, probably just as important, the general sense of exhaustion that enveloped Moscow’s warring elites. The Romanovs were lucky that their turn on the throne occurred when things had settled down long enough for the court to invoke its several mechanisms for assuring stability and consensus, chief among which were its royal rituals.3 This chapter examines the relationship between the wedding ritual and dynastic legitimacy in the first half of the seventeenth century. For lots of

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reasons, the Romanovs succeeded where their predecessors during the Troubles had failed. They had an extensive kinship network based on marriage links to other boyar families that went back a half-century, if not longer. Their network of in-laws had largely survived the upheavals of the Troubles and was now in a position to help the Romanovs, and themselves, politically. The potential Romanov candidate was, moreover, young and sheltered, leaving open the real possibility that a Romanov on the throne would mean a restoration of the fortunes of boyar families—strong incentive for them to advocate and defend Romanov interests. But the trick was not so much putting a Romanov on the throne—they had been viable candidates since 1598—but to engineer a way to keep them on it. The Romanovs were helped in this regard after their election in 1613 by their adept exploitation of ritual. And they had the advantage of having one of the greatest choreographers of the time on their side.

The Weddings of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich as a Textual Event The Romanovs were a new dynasty, but they were not parvenus. They descended from an old nontitled servitor family that had attained boyar rank at the end of the fourteenth century and had been catapulted to the innermost circles of power in the Kremlin with the marriage in 1547 of Ivan IV to Anastasiia Iur’eva, the daughter of Roman Zakhar’in-Iur’ev, an okol’nichii (the second highest rank at court), from whom the later generations of the family took their surname.4 That marriage led to others, linking the Romanovs with many of the great boyar clans at court.5 When the Daniilovich branch of the Riurikovich dynasty ended with the death in 1598 of Tsar Fedor Ivanovich, there was no clear mechanism for choosing a successor: should the next tsar be a scion of the Riurikovich dynasty (as was Vasilii Shuiskii, of the Suzdal’ branch of the dynasty); a member of a boyar clan with marriage ties to the Daniilovichi (as was Boris Godunov); or a foreign prince (as were Władysław of Poland-Lithuania or Karl-Filip of Sweden)? All three options had been tried during the Troubles—as had a fourth: the audacious fabrication of an heir who miraculously survived assassination attempts and returned to claim his rightful place on the throne (an option tried by three false Dmitrys, a false Ivan, and a false Peter).6 The Romanovs were really a rejiggering of the Godunov option—royal in-laws—except that, unlike the Godunovs, they had numerous key alliances through marriage with other boyar clans and the good sense to make the most of their kinship network for support rather than going it alone. These alliances paid dividends in 1613, when the choice of the Assembly of the Land fell on the sixteen-year-old

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Mikhail Fedorovich, the grandson of Anastasiia Iur’eva’s brother, the powerful boyar Nikita Romanovich Iur’ev. The Romanovs took their turn on the throne, but no one could have known whether their election would be any more successful than prior attempts at establishing a new dynasty. Every advantage would have to be exploited to make the Romanovs last longer than either the Godunovs or the Shuiskiis. The election of the young Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov in 1613 was a “restoration,” to borrow the word used by Robert O. Crummey. For Crummey, “the government’s central concern was to bring back the good old ways and to encourage the good old families.”7 The means used to bring back the “good old ways” and “good old families” varied greatly, but what he called “court spectacles” were clearly one of the most important.8 David Miller agreed, arguing that the Romanovs and their allies attempted after 1613 “to claim roots in the old dynasty across the anarchy of the Time of Troubles,” by, as he put it, “creating legitimacy” through the manipulation of “coronation, marriage, and liturgical ceremonies.”9 And as David Kertzer has summarized, “new political systems borrow legitimacy from the old by nurturing the old ritual forms, redirected to new purposes.”10 In other words, court rituals became a space where it was possible to exploit symbol and ritual in the effort to “restore” the “old ways”—a space where new rulers (and their supporters) could improvise and project an image of dynastic continuity and legitimacy where there was, in fact, neither. Concern for dynastic legitimacy is plain in the changes introduced to the wedding rituals of the first Romanov ruler. Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov married twice, in 1624 and 1626, but his first attempt at matrimony came earlier, in 1616—three years after becoming tsar. The nineteen- or twenty-yearold tsar had selected Mariia Khlopova in a bride-show and, by all accounts, had been smitten by her beauty and personality. Preparations began for the wedding, but there appeared to be no rush. She had been selected at the end of 1615, before Christmas, but the wedding was still being planned in June or July 1616, when Mariia was abruptly removed from the Terem after falling ill, poisoned as part of a conspiracy involving the tsar’s mother and her Saltykov relatives.11 The tsar sulked for years, rejecting other suggested brides, but finally married his mother’s pick, Mariia Vladimirovna Dolgorukova, a Saltykov relative, on September 19, 1624.12 She died, however, on January 6, 1625, herself probably the victim of a plot by those against the match.13 The tsar, probably not very emotionally attached to this bride, pulled himself together, selected Evdokiia Luk’ianovna Streshneva, and dutifully married her on February 5, 1626.14 Streshneva was a good choice in these hotly political times: the family was both large and obscure, with no notable political

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alliances but with many family members that could marry into the boyar elite—strengthening the cohesion of the boyar elite while not risking the delicate balance of factions at court.15 The couple had ten children together, three boys and seven girls; but by the time the tsar died in 1645 he was survived by only one of his sons (the future Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich) and only three of his daughters (Irina, Anna, and Tat’iana), none of whom ever took a husband, though one, Irina, had her planned marriage to Valdemar of Denmark foiled by disputes over his Lutheranism.16 Documentation for the two weddings of the first Romanov tsar is uneven and incomplete. For the first wedding, we have a few draft rosters for courtiers who served at the wedding, some correspondence, and a register of gifts. There is no complete ceremonial.17 But in a way we have something even better: a fragment of a very early draft ceremonial that doubled as a kind of scratch paper for notes on various wedding rituals that were apparently not fully understood by the scribes and secretaries working on the wedding.18 For the second wedding, we do have a complete ceremonial and other ancillary documents, including numerous early manuscript copies.19 Separated from the first wedding by less than seventeen months and choreographed by the same chancery staff of secretaries and clerks, the second wedding is likely to have been identical to the first. We can therefore combine the surviving archival materials for both weddings and assemble a fairly detailed record of how Mikhail Fedorovich married and, just as important, how the rituals in 1624 and 1626 compare to sixteenth-century antecedents. According to the 1626 ceremonial, “the wedding took place according to the royal rubrics, as they had been at the weddings of previous sovereigns.”20 It was not an entirely truthful boast. The wedding now extended to a fourth day, which was devoted largely to audiences, gift exchanges, and a new banquet with the patriarch and other high-ranking churchmen, courtiers, and leading members of the urban middle classes—all probably designed to include more representatives of society in the happy occasion. The venue for the banquets changed, as well. Whereas previously the Middle Golden Palace was the main venue for the signature events of the wedding, now the Palace of Facets (Granovitaia palata) was used. The size of the affair grew, too. The number of courtiers increased—which was probably why a larger venue was needed—and we have a record of the extensive entertainments that were on offer during the second and third days of the celebration: 101 musicians of various kinds performed, and there were bear trainers and keepers of the bear cages, and so, presumably, bears.21 The importance of music and entertainment at this wedding is even mentioned by Kotoshikhin, who points out that the festivities lasted even longer than the four days described

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in the ceremonial.22 Another difference from sixteenth-century weddings was the appearance in 1624 of proxy parents (v materino mesto and v ottsovo mesto) for the bride, not just the groom. Proxy parents—one of the most visible honorary positions at a Muscovite royal wedding—typically served only for the groom, but in 1624 a proxy mother and proxy father served also for the bride. Proxy parents for the bride had only previously served at the wedding in February 1623 of Tsarevich Mikhail Kaibulin (Kutlu-Girei ibn AslanAli) and Mariia Grigor’evna Liapunova, the year before Mikhail Fedorovich’s wedding.23 But it was an innovation that did not take. The second wedding of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich in 1626 again had proxy parents only for the groom. Why this experiment was tried and then abandoned is never explained in the texts, but it would be revived at Peter I’s second wedding in 1712. There were even more substantive changes. The tsar’s first wedding prompted a flurry of scribal activity that is remarkably well documented and of a scale unmatched by any previous court happening, wedding or otherwise. Scribes were put to work digging through the archive of the Ambassadorial Chancery, looking for documents describing the weddings of previous Muscovite rulers. Once they found what they were looking for—ceremonials, musters, and other wedding-related documentation—they began making copies, either because the originals were in tatters or because they wanted copies that could be redacted without defacing the originals. The goal was to use this information to introduce changes to the rituals that would serve to strengthen the Romanov dynasty (see appendices A.1 and A.2). Traces of this intensive work in the royal archives were left in the 1626 inventory (opis’) of the archive of the Ambassadorial Chancery. It reports the following: In a canvas bag: copies of wedding ceremonials [chiny] of previous great sovereigns, tsars, and grand princes of Russia: of Grand Prince Vasilii Ivanovich, and of Tsar and Grand Prince Ivan Vasil’evich of all Rus’, and of his brother Prince Iurii Vasil’evich, and of Prince Vladimir Andreevich, and of Tsar Vasilii Ivanovich of all Rus’. And these documents indicate in which year the tsar married, how the wedding rituals were performed, and who was in what position. They were copied on the occasion of the wedding of the Sovereign, Tsar, and Grand Prince Mikhail Fedorovich of all Rus’.24 We can match this list with the manuscripts preserved today in the Russian State Archives of Ancient Acts (RGADA) in Moscow. Of the five copies listed here, four can be identified in the archive’s Treasure Room Collection: Vasilii III and Elena Glinskaia (1526), Iurii Vasil’evich and Ul’iana Paletskaia

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(1547), Ivan IV and Anna Vasil’chikova (1574), and Vasilii Shuiskii and Ekaterina Buinosova-Rostovskaia (1608).25 The fifth copy on the inventory’s list—which was probably for the second wedding of Vladimir Staritskii (to Evdokiia Odoevskaia in 1555)—has apparently been lost since the time the inventory was compiled.26 A separate entry in the 1626 inventory describes yet another document made up entirely of excerpts of wedding documents copied in 1624 and compiled as a model for Mikhail Fedorovich’s wedding: “An excerpt pertaining to the wedding of the sovereign, excerpted as a model in the year 7124[/1624] from the wedding descriptions of previous sovereigns, and which reveal who had served in ranks at previous royal weddings.”27 This document, which also survives in the Treasure Room Collection, contains excerpts of four sixteenth-century weddings (Vasilii III and Elena Glinskaia, Ivan IV and Anastasiia Iur’eva, Iurii Vasil’evich and Ul’iana Paletskaia, and Ivan IV and Anna Vasil’chikova).28 These excerpts were drawn from the fulllength copies made in 1624, which is clear from small crosses in the margins of the copies that match the excerpted passages. Small marginal crosses appear in other 1624 copies as well. In three of them—texts describing the weddings of Prince Iurii Vasil’evich (1547), Ivan IV and Anna Vasil’chikova (1577), and Vasilii Shuiskii (1608)—small crosses were inserted next to passages on similar themes. In the case of the wedding ceremonial for Iurii Vasil’evich, a cross singles out the line of text describing the duties of the master of the horse: that he attend to the prince’s horse (byl u konia) and patrol around the palace during the wedding banquet.29 In the case of the Vasil’chikova text, there are seven crosses next to passages describing seating arrangements for boyars and boyar wives (boiaryni) and processions to the Kremlin’s monasteries and to the church where the wedding was performed.30 And in the case of the Shuiskii text, fifteen passages are marked with crosses in the margins, passages again dealing with seating arrangements, processions, and seating in the bride’s sled.31 These fifteen passages were then recopied into a separate document of their own.32 Thus at least one identifiable purpose of all this work was to produce resources for specific points in the wedding ceremony: the seating of boyars and their wives, the composition of the processions, seating in the bride’s sleds in these processions, the role of the master of the horse, and the ritual duties around the wedding bed. And we know who directed all this work. Many of these copies contain substantial edits and corrections in Ivan Taras’evich Gramotin’s own hand—the conciliar secretary who organized the first and second weddings of Tsar Mikhail Romanov.33 Gramotin was the great choreographer that the Romanovs had on hand to help them engineer their legitimacy.34 He had

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a long and distinguished diplomatic career and became close to Patriarch Filaret on their diplomatic mission to Poland in 1610 to explore the candidacy of Władysław for the Muscovite throne. He would have a falling out with the patriarch not long after Mikhail Fedorovich’s second wedding and would be restored to his position in the Ambassadorial Chancery only after the patriarch’s death. But his abilities as a negotiator, editor, and diplomat were considerable even in his own time.35 Gramotin did not work alone, however. While he, as head of the Ambassadorial Chancery, was the chief choreographer in charge of the text of the ceremonial, Conciliar Secretary Fedor Fedorovich Likhachev, head of the Military Service Chancery, was in charge of the wedding muster and supplied the names of available courtiers.36 Other secretaries and undersecretaries are also listed in the documentation in a variety of functions and from a variety of other chanceries and Kremlin workshops.37 But it was Gramotin—the perfect Muscovite example of one of Catherine Bell’s “ritual experts”—who ran the show and is likely to have ordered the making of these copies as models to understand how the royal wedding had been arranged in the past, just as the archival inventory quoted above says they were.38 We can reconstruct why Gramotin and his scribes went to such lengths to make these copies and collections of excerpts by turning to the 1624 “worksheet” (see appendix B). It contains a handful of questions scribbled in the margins and between the lines, seeking clarification about the very same rituals that are marked with small crosses in the margins of the 1624 copies. One of these questions, for example, asked about the betrothal ritual, the first part of the traditional Orthodox wedding service where the bride and groom become promised to each other and exchange rings. In two places in this worksheet, a question is raised about where the betrothal should take place, in the tsar’s palace or in the church. Gramotin inscribed the answer: “Concerning the question of where to perform the betrothal, in the palace or in the church, look in the Book of Needs, as the patriarch has ordered.”39 The question is crossed out, and a nearby scribbling in Gramotin’s hand reports that the ritual must be performed in the church, just before the wedding ceremony, and adds the name of the priest to perform the wedding, Archpriest Maksim, the tsar’s father-confessor and the rector of the Annunciation Cathedral in the Kremlin: “And the sovereign’s betrothal ceremony is to be in the church just before the crowning ceremony, and the sovereign’s fatherconfessor, Archpriest Maksim, is to perform the crowning.”40 Other questions found in the 1624 worksheet were resolved by relying on the personal knowledge and memory of those who had participated in previous royal weddings. One question pertains to the number of ceremonial

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“matchmakers” that could fit in a single sled along with the bride during the processions to and from the church. Bogdan Glebov—who, in his capacity as royal equerry, was responsible for the stables, carriages, and sleds used by the court—was consulted: “And the sled in which the bride will ride is to be prepared by Bogdan Glebov. Ask him how many large sleds will be needed, and if it is possible to have four matchmakers sit opposite the bride [in one sled].” Glebov evidently reported that the larger sleds could accommodate all four “matchmakers,” and an inscription in Gramotin’s hand reports that “all the matchmakers are to sit opposite the bride.”41 Similarly, confusion over the place where the master of the horse and thousandman should walk during the procession to the church was resolved by jogging the memory of the boyar Prince Ivan Mikhailovich Vorotynskii, who had served as master of the horse in 1608 at the wedding of Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii: “Ask Prince Ivan Mikhailovich Vorotynskii about where the thousandsman and master of the horse rode during the wedding of Tsar Vasilii.” Vorotynskii, the senior boyar at court in 1624, was evidently able to answer the query.42 We know because the text includes an answer scribbled between the lines, again in Gramotin’s hand: “And in front of the sovereign, off to the side, the thousandsman is to ride, and the master of the horse is to walk next to the sovereign.”43 The 1624 worksheet contains a query about the portal ritual at the door of the Palace of Facets, a key rite of separation: “Discuss and inquire how the proxy father is to give away the bride and whether they bless her [with icons] at that time.”44 This line is crossed out and no commentary or answer is inserted between the lines, but descriptions of sixteenth-century weddings are generally consistent about the way the handoff was managed. During the banquet, the couple was escorted to the doors of the hall, where a designated courtier (komu vydavati velikaia kniaginia) gave a speech commending the couple to each other, and the couple was sprinkled with hops. For some reason, however, scribes in 1624 were unclear whether or not this ritual also involved a blessing of the royal couple with an icon. Given the fact that the destination of the royal couple after leaving the banquet was their wedding bed, perhaps someone in the scriptorium suggested that it was reasonable to expect one last blessing of the pair, if only for good measure. Whatever the case, the review of previous wedding documentation had evidently revealed that there had been no blessing with icons.45 No mention is made in any of the earliest wedding texts consulted in 1624 that a blessing with icons took place, and so one was not added for Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich. But the question is memorialized in the wedding ceremonial, which adds the following superfluous lines to the description of the ritual: “and having finished his speech, he bowed; and he [Ivan Nikitich Romanov, the proxy father at

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both of Tsar Mikhail’s weddings] did not bless the groom and the bride with icons.”46 Why Gramotin thought a blessing with icons should happen then is a mystery, but he made sure that, if the question ever was raised again, his ceremonial would provide the answer. Finally, the worksheet includes a question that was evidently resolved by direct borrowing from the 1608 muster for the wedding of Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii. Here the problem pertained to the bride’s procession on the morning of the second day of the wedding and who was supposed to accompany her: “Inquire how the bride is to go to her place [na mesto] and which boyar wives walk beside her, in addition to her mother.” Then raw information drawn from the Shuiskii ceremonial was inscribed next to the question: “At the wedding of Tsar Vasilii [Shuiskii], the bride’s proxy mother [Ekaterina Grigor’evna], the wife of Prince Dmitrii [Ivanovich Shuiskii], and [Mariia Ivanovna], wife of Prince Peter [Ivanovich Buinosov-Rostovskii], walked on either side of her.”47 The source of the information was clearly the 1624 copy of the Shuiskii wedding ceremonial, which reads: “And the banquet [stol] was with the Sovereign on Monday in the Golden Palace. And when the bride walked [to the banquet] the archpriest sprinkled holy water along the pathway in front of her, and on the right side walked Katerina, the wife of Prince Dmitrii Ivanovich [Shuiskii], and on the left side the bride’s mother.”48 From this research, Gramotin was able to answer the question about how the bride’s procession was supposed to work: “When the bride goes to her place, surrounding her on both sides is the person to be in the proxy mother’s position and someone designated from the bride’s mother’s family [ot materi].”49 This clarification then makes its way into the ceremonial for Mikhail Fedorovich’s second wedding: “And alongside the bride, clearing the path [dlia berezheniia] they walked, on the right side, the boiarynia Ul’iana Fedorovna, the wife of Ivan Nikitich Romanov, and on the left side, Princess Fedora Semenovna, the wife of Prince Andrei Danilovich Sitskii.”50 Here we have one of the better examples of how a question led to research, then to editing, and then to a final, improved version of the description of a wedding ritual. This remarkable editorial work made the 1624 Romanov wedding a textual event, to borrow LaCapra’s term again, unlike any other—probably the single largest effort ever made to choreograph a royal wedding, and perhaps any royal ritual in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Choreographers employed a range of sources in their research: copies of archival documents, extracts of text culled from those documents, liturgical manuals, and the living memory of courtiers who had served at previous weddings. Of these previous weddings, the most important seems to have been the 1526 wedding of Vasilii III and Elena Glinskaia, and the 1608 wedding of Tsar Vasilii

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Shuiskii and Ekaterina/Mariia Buinosova-Rostovskaia—the first recorded and the most recent of royal weddings, respectively, which makes perfect sense. The goal of this research was two-fold: the first was to make the wedding of the first tsar of the new Romanov dynasty as traditional as possible, conforming to all the rituals as best as they could be reconstructed from the documentary record and living memory. Tradition implied continuity, and continuity bred a belief in legitimacy. But adaptation and modification were also a goal. Gramotin and his scribes seized on a number of rituals that they evidently believed could be productively and acceptably changed in order to project a tailored image of the Romanovs as a wholly legitimate dynasty. To be sure, not all of the modifications made to the 1624 and 1626 ceremonials were about dynastic continuity. Some of the changes were practical, not political. But it was not enough to have the wedding of the first Romanov be traditional. It also needed to contend with the new circumstances surrounding the installation of a new dynasty, and to deliver a message of continuity and legitimacy that was crystal clear.

Dynastic Legitimacy in the Weddings of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich The efforts of Muscovy’s “ritual experts” to project an image of Romanov legitimacy appear vividly at three ritual moments of the weddings: the blessing-to-wed ritual, the texts of several speeches delivered at the wedding, and the processions to the Kremlin’s monasteries and churches. These three ritual moments reveal not only the determination of Romanov handlers to portray the new dynasty as legitimate. They show how the scribblings on paper came alive in the choreography of the wedding. The Blessing to Wed

The weddings of Muscovy’s grand princes and tsars began with a blessing from the first hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. The first documented instance of this ritual was at the wedding in 1533 of Prince Andrei Staritskii, younger brother of Vasilii III, and Princess Efrosiniia Khovanskaia, but the ceremonials for four other sixteenth-century weddings also record the ritual.51 Grigorii Kotoshikhin, who provided a description of the royal wedding ritual in the mid-seventeenth century, treated it as a standard part of a ruler’s wedding: “On the morning of the wedding day,” he writes, “the tsar goes to his first-ranking cathedral for the Te Deum; and after the Te Deum the patriarch blesses the tsar with a cross and sprinkles him with

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holy water, and the tsar kisses the icons and the relics of the saints; and then he asks the patriarch’s blessing on his marriage and the patriarch says his words of blessing.”52 It was a moment of stylized harmony between Church and State. In the case of Mikhail Fedorovich’s weddings, the first hierarch of the Church—Patriarch Filaret Nikitich—was also the groom’s father. Forcibly tonsured a monk by Tsar Boris Godunov in 1601, the boyar Fedor Nikitich Romanov—now the monk Filaret—had been exiled to the Antonievo-Siiskii Monastery in Russia’s Far North and was freed only after Godunov’s death. Filaret then began an extraordinary rise through the ecclesiastic ranks, becoming metropolitan of Rostov thanks to the support of the First False Dmitrii, and then patriarch thanks to that of the Second False Dmitrii (d. 1610)—an appointment largely unrecognized outside the small patch of territory controlled by the so-called Thief of Tushino. By the time his son was elected tsar in 1613, Filaret had been a prisoner in Poland for nearly two years, having been arrested in 1611 when negotiations probing the candidacy of Władysław (the future King Władysław IV Vasa of Poland-Lithuania, r. 1632–1648) for the Muscovite throne turned sour. On his release and return to Moscow in 1619, Filaret became the real power behind the throne.53 Patriarch Filaret thus did double duty at his son’s weddings: playing the roles of first hierarch of the Church and father of the groom. The wedding ceremonial for Tsar Mikhail’s wedding in 1626 to Evdokiia Streshneva reports that, long before any public ceremonies took place, the tsar “consulted with his father, the Great Sovereign [velikii gosudar’], Most Holy Patriarch Filaret Nikitich of Moscow and all Russia, and with his mother, the Sovereign Lady [velikaia gosudarynia] [and] nun Marfa Ivanovna, concerning the decision to marry.” The tsar’s parents “blessed him to marry, and the tsar gave his assent [proizvolil gosudar’] to take as his wife Evdokiia Streshneva, the daughter of Luk’ian Stepanovich.”54 This passage seems to capture the moment shortly after the bride-show, during which the tsar selected Evdokiia, although the bride-show itself is not mentioned in the ceremonial.55 On the morning of the wedding, immediately after the Divine Liturgy, Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich approached the first hierarch, as his predecessors had before him, and asked publicly for a blessing to wed: “Great Sovereign, our father, Most Holy Patriarch Filaret Nikitich of Moscow and all Russia, by the will of our All-Good and All-Powerful God glorified in the Trinity, and by your counsel and blessing, Great Sovereign, our father, and [by the counsel and blessing] of our mother, the Sovereign Lady [and] nun Marfa Ivanovna, we have desired to contract a canonical marriage, and the day of the wedding

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is today.”56 The response of the father is provided for the first time in the text of the 1626 ceremonial: Our pious and Christ-loving son, Great Sovereign and Grand Prince Mikhail Fedorovich of all Russia! Our God, Who is glorified in the Trinity, Who is almighty and ineffable in mercy, Who has watched over you, Great Sovereign, from your mother’s womb, and Who has brought glory to you and honored you for the sake of your pious realm [tsarstvo], now blesses you, great sovereign, to contract a canonical marriage according to the apostolic teachings and the canons of the Holy Fathers; and may He who is without change grant to you, O Sovereign, and to your bride, Tsaritsa Evdokiia, many years of life and bless you, and may He grant you noble [blagorodnye] children, as to Abraham and Sarah He gave Isaac, and to Isaac He gave Jacob, and to Elkanah and Anna He gave the miraculous Samuel, and as He gave similarly to the other ancient Fathers who pleased God. And may you see sons of your sons and daughters of your daughters. And may he keep your pious realm safe from all your enemies, and expand and increase it from sea to sea and from the rivers to the ends of the world.57 It is worth pausing on the text of the speech. The speech appears to be an adaptation of the third prayer uttered over a couple at the crowning service, which reads: Thou didst bless Thy servant Abraham, and opening the womb of Sarah didst make him to be the father of many nations. Thou didst give Isaac to Rebecca, and didst bless her in childbirth. Thou didst join Jacob unto Rachel, and from them didst bring forth the twelve patriarchs. Thou didst unite Joseph and Asenath, giving to them Ephraim and Manasseh as the fruit of their procreation. Thou didst accept Zachariah and Elizabeth, and didst make their offspring to be the Forerunner. From the root of Jesse according to the flesh, Thou didst bud forth the ever-virgin one, and were incarnate of her for the redemption of the human race.58 Filaret’s speech, however, omits a number of prophets and patriarchs included in the prayer: Isaac’s wife Rebecca, Jacob’s favorite wife Rachel, their son Joseph and his wife Asenath, Zachariah and Elizabeth, and, finally, the “root of Jesse,” the line of descent that culminated in the birth of the Theotokos, the Ever-Virgin Mary. Most of these biblical patriarchs and prophets were progenitors of large lineages and some (Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Zachariah and Elizabeth) had produced children only

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through divine intervention. Fertility, divine blessing on marriage, and the continuity of lineages are the clear messages imbedded in the prayer—a point made all the more urgent by the additional petition for “noble children.” In Patriarch Filaret’s speech, however, dynastic legitimacy may have been just as important to the new Romanov rulers and their boyar allies as the birth of heirs. The patriarch’s speech substitutes Elkanah and Anna and their son, the prophet Samuel, for the long list of biblical prophets, a change that signals more than just a heightened concern for the couple’s fertility and dynastic continuity. It was a clear reference to legitimacy: the prophet Samuel, after all, anointed Saul, Israel’s first king, and it was Samuel again who pronounced the transference of Yahweh’s blessing from him to a new king, David.59 This substitution may have been devised deliberately to conjure up an association between Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich and King David.60 Samuel was the kingmaker in ancient Israel; and in Israel, as in Muscovy, there had been a change in dynasty (from Saulic to Davidic). In substituting Elkanah, Anna, and Samuel for the longer list of prophets, the patriarch in this speech may have been doing more than editing down the prayer for convenience’s sake. He may well have been inviting a comparison between Yahweh’s blessing of the young David as the founder of a new dynasty with his own blessing of his sixteen-year-old son, who had become the founder of a new royal line. Later in the morning, after the liturgy, after the patriarch’s blessing, and after a short pilgrimage to the Kremlin’s monasteries and churches to pray before the saints and the bones of the tsars and grand princes who reigned before him (vide infra), Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich approached his mother, the nun Marfa (née Kseniia Ivanovna Shestova), who blessed her son with icons of the Savior and of the Mother and Child.61 Marfa had been tonsured a nun in 1601 when most of the rest of her husband’s family had been exiled by Godunov, and was sent in remote exile to Tolvuia (Tolvuiskii pogost) in the Zaonezh’e region (on Lake Onega). She was one of the most remarkable women of her age and played a decisive role in her son’s survival during the Troubles, his rise to the throne in 1613, and his matrimonial decisions (and woes).62 While it may have been a common practice in the sixteenth century to receive the first hierarch’s blessing, it was unprecedented to have the groom go to his father or mother for a formal, ritualized blessing. That may be for the simple reason that so few royal fathers were alive when their children married. Among the descendants of Ivan III for whom we know the dates of marriages and deaths, only Ivan III and Ivan IV were alive at the time their sons married. Ivan III (d. 1505) saw his two eldest sons, Ivan Molodoi and

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Vasilii III, marry (in 1482 and 1505, respectively), as well as two of his three daughters—Elena and Feodosiia (in 1495 and 1500, respectively).63 Ivan IV saw his two surviving sons marry, Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich (in 1571, 1575, and 1580) and Tsar Fedor Ivanovich (in 1575).64 None of the seventeenthcentury Romanov tsars were alive to witness their sons’ weddings. The scene is nearly the same for royal mothers. Between 1505 (the first wedding of Vasilii III) and 1689 (the first wedding of Peter I the Great), only three mothers were alive at the time of their sons’ weddings: Efrosiniia Andreevna Staritskaia (d. 1569, the mother of Prince Vladimir Staritskii, who married in 1551 and 1555), Mariia Fedorovna Nagaia (d. 1611, the mother of Dmitrii Ivanovich and, by virtue of his deception, of the First False Dmitrii, who married in 1606), and Natal’ia Naryshkina (d. 1694, the mother of Peter I the Great, who married for the first time in 1689).65 Only one mother was alive at the time of her daughters’ weddings: Sofiia Palaiologina (d. 1503, the mother of Elena Ivanovna and Feodosiia Ivanovna). The honorary position at the wedding of proxy mother and proxy father may have thus been not only a prestigious stand-in post assigned to close family members and trusted boyars as a way of recognizing their clout at court and proximity to the groom. It filled a practical need to supply someone to play the role of the groom’s parents.

Commending the Bride to the Groom

The speech delivered during the portal ritual was also edited in 1624 and 1626 in ways that emphasized legitimacy and dynastic continuity. We have already seen that this moment in the ritual was of interest to Gramotin and his scribal staff: one of the questions in the 1624 worksheet, it will be remembered, asked if a blessing with an icon took place at this time or not. Sources show that there were two versions of the speech: one for rulers, with accompanying dynastic language, and one for collateral members of the dynasty, without it. The ceremonial for Vasilii III reports that a speech was delivered during the portal ritual but does not provide the text or the name of the person who delivered it.66 The ceremonial for the wedding of Prince Andrei Staritskii and Efrosiniia Khovanskaia in 1533 does provide the rather businesslike text of the speech, delivered by the groom’s older brother, Vasilii III: “Andrei, my brother! By the will of God and by our grace [zhalovan’e], God has blessed you to marry and to take as your bride Princess Efrosiniia; and you, my younger brother, keep your wife, Princess Efrosiniia, as God has ordained.”67 The version of the speech given by Prince Daniil Dmitreevich Pronskii at the wedding of Tsar Ivan IV and Anastasiia Iur’eva in 1547 includes additional

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dynastic references and more heavenly intercessors: “O Sovereign [Aspodar’], Tsar and Grand Prince Ivan Vasil’evich of all Russia! By the will of God and by the prayers of the Most Pure Mother of God and of the great miracle workers and your royal parents, God has willed that you contract a canonical marriage and take Grand Princess Anastasiia, our gosudarynia, and to keep her, as God in the canons of the Orthodox Faith has ordained.”68 Pronskii’s speech seems more appropriate to a ruler than to a collateral member of the dynasty and may actually have been patterned after the lost speech delivered at Vasilii III’s wedding in 1526, because the title of the groom in the extant draft is changed from “grand prince” (Vasilii III’s title) to “tsar and grand prince” (Ivan IV’s title).69 A few months later, at the wedding of Prince Iurii Vasil’evich, Ivan IV’s younger brother, the tsar read a text that was modeled on the one read at Andrei Staritskii’s wedding, not his own: “Iurii, my brother! By God’s will and our grace, God has blessed you to marry and to take as your bride Princess Ul’iana; and you, my brother, keep your wife Princess Ul’iana as God has ordained.”70 This was the same text the tsar later read at the weddings of his cousin, Vladimir Staritskii, in 1549 and 1555.71 The tsar read a slightly reworked text at the wedding of Simeon Kasaevich in 1554, which added a new phrase about “the laws of Christianity”—a possible reminder to the formerly Muslim Chingisid of the rules and expectations of Christian marriage: “Tsar Simeon! By God’s will and our grace, God has commanded you to marry and to take as your wife Mariia. And you, Tsar Simeon, keep your wife as God has ordained, according to the laws of Christianity [po khristianskomu zakonu].”72 The message here seems clear: the rulers (Ivan IV and probably Vasilii III before him) were to depart to the bridal chamber to consummate the marriage in hopes of producing heirs, while collaterals (Iurii Vasil’evich and Vladimir Staritskii) were being dispatched to their wedding night with the purpose of producing spares. In fact, the absence of dynastic language probably sent a cautionary message about not being too hopeful that they or their progeny would ever wear a crown. The version of the speech that the boyar Ivan Nikitich Romanov, the “proxy father” (v ottsovo mesto) and the groom’s uncle, delivered at the portal ritual in 1626 constitutes a substantial rewrite of previous versions. It emphasized the legality of the marriage, its conformity to the canonical laws of the Church, and the overarching goal of the union: the founding of a dynasty. Ivan Nikitich says: O Great Sovereign, Tsar and Grand Prince Mikhail Fedorovich of all Russia, by the will of our Almighty and All-Merciful God, Who is praised in the Trinity, and by the blessing of your father, the Great Sovereign, the Most Holy Patriarch Filaret Nikitich of Moscow and

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all Russia, and of your mother the Sovereign Lady [and] nun Marfa Ivanovna, you have entered into a canonical marriage in accordance with the teachings of the Apostles and the canons of the Holy Fathers, for the uninterrupted succession to your royal dynasty [v nasledie vechno vashemu tsarskomu rodu], and you have taken as your bride Tsaritsa and Grand Princess Evdokiia Luk’ianovna [Streshneva]. And you, Great Sovereign, accept and keep your tsaritsa, our gosudarynia, as the God Who loves mankind has given you in accordance with our law of the true Christian faith, and as the Apostles and Fathers have ordained.73 The addition of words referencing the “royal dynasty” (tsarskii rod) and “inheritance” (nasledie)—a line not included in the text of this speech during the sixteenth century—was no rhetorical flourish. Like the speech of the patriarch, this speech, delivered as the couple was to depart to consummate the marriage, was infused with hopeful injunctions for the success of the marriage on a dynastic, not just canonical, level. And the fact that the Daniilovich dynasty had ended not long ago, plunging the realm into unprecedented violence and foreign invasion, put a fine point on the need to beseech Heaven for an “uninterrupted succession.” Procession to Monasteries and Churches

One of the most symbolically significant changes that occurred at the weddings of Tsar Mikhail Romanov was the mini-pilgrimage to the monasteries and churches of the Kremlin. These mini-pilgrimages were a regular part of royal weddings in the sixteenth century for members of the dynasty, although the texts describing them do not provide much detail. We do know, however, that these mini-pilgrimages occurred after the crowning service in the church but before the wedding banquet in the evening. It appears that these mini-pilgrimages involved a number of courtiers in a procession across the open spaces of the Kremlin and were the first open-air event of the wedding. Even so, they were sandwiched, and therefore ritually “muted,” between the two main events on the first day of the wedding: the crowning service and the banquet.74 Things changed significantly at the weddings of Mikhail Romanov. First, the destinations of this mini-pilgrimage changed. The 1626 ceremonial reports that after he received his father’s blessing to wed, Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich went to “pray at the Chudov Monastery, at the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael, at [the relics of] the Wonderworker St. Aleksei, and at the Ascension Convent. And with him were boyars and okol’nichie and other high-ranking [dumnye] persons and courtiers.”75 We know the pilgrimage destinations of

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only one royal wedding in the sixteenth century: Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich’s in 1571: “having eaten, he will go to the churches, to the Church of the Epiphany, to the Annunciation Cathedral, and to the Church of the Trinity on the Court [k Bogoiavlen’iu, k Blagoveshchen’iu, kh Troitse chto na dvore]”: the Church of the Epiphany in the mission (podvor’e) of the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery; the Annunciation Cathedral, the private chapel of the rulers; and, it appears, the Church of St. Sergius of Radonezh, again in the Trinity-Sergius mission, directly adjacent to the Church of the Epiphany.76 It is impossible to know if Ivan Ivanovich’s ceremonial reveals the standard pilgrimage route in the sixteenth century, but it was surely not for nothing that Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich prayed at two churches linked to St. Sergius of Radonezh. St. Sergius was the heavenly protector of the dynasty, and praying at altars consecrated to his memory suggests that this pilgrimage by the heir to the throne had dynastic objectives.77 That the pilgrimage was about dynasty is also suggested by the fact that Tsar Simeon Kasaevich, a converted Chingisid, evidently did not go on a mini-pilgrimage during his wedding. Perhaps that was because his wedding was performed in one of them—the Annunciation Cathedral, not the larger Dormition Cathedral that was used for the dynasty. Another, perhaps better reason was because Simeon Kasaevich was not a Daniilovich. As we will see in the next chapter, the purpose of these mini-pilgrimages was to pray before holy objects (sviatyni)—holy icons and saints’ relics. Seventeenth-century ceremonials reveal that royal grooms visited the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael and the Ascension Convent—the resting places of past Muscovite rulers and their spouses, respectively. That may have been their destination in the sixteenth century as well. Clearly, among the “holy relics” being venerated were the bones of the grooms’ ancestors. Since Simeon Kasaevich was a Chingisid, there was no reason to send him on this circuit to the Kremlin’s dynastic holy places. The key innovation in this mini-pilgrimage in 1626 was when it took place. Rather than being tucked between the two more attention-grabbing moments of the wedding day—the services in the church and the banquet later that afternoon—Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich’s mini-pilgrimage now took place during the opening sequence of public events at the wedding: immediately after he received a blessing to marry from his father, Patriarch Filaret Nikitich, and just before he received a similar blessing from his mother, the nun Marfa Ivanovna—well before the wedding ceremony, breakfast, and banquet. Since the blessings of the groom’s father and mother both took place indoors and largely in private or with only a limited circle of courtiers in attendance (or so the sources suggest), the mini-pilgrimage was the first event in the open air.

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These mini-pilgrimages were a dynastic moment. The groom prayed before the relics of the saint that came to be regarded as the heavenly intercessor and protector of Muscovy’s ruling house—St. Sergius of Radonezh—and at the churches that housed the remains of Muscovy’s rulers (the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael) and their wives (the Ascension Convent).78 Kotoshikhin tells us as much: “And the tsar goes from that church [the Dormition Cathedral] to another cathedral, where the former tsars are buried [the Archangel Mikhail Cathedral], and at that time a memorial service [otpravit po mertvykh penie] is held for the dead, and after making reverence before the tombs, he goes to his palace.”79 To move this dynastic moment to the opening sequence of events on the first day of the wedding—when most of the servitors were on site to witness it—was a clear attempt to broadcast dynastic continuity. Of course, for sixteenth-century rulers, the message of continuity reflected reality: the grand princes and tsars who made this mini-pilgrimage actually were descended from the men and women buried in these places. But to have the Romanov tsar make this pilgrimage, and to move it to so visible and prominent a place in the sequence of rituals, can only be interpreted as an attempt to connect the Romanov dynasty to the old dynasty, to project an image—however fictive it may have been—of dynastic continuity when, in fact, the Romanovs were an entirely new ruling house. The Romanovs would rule for 304 years, in no small part due to their successes in bootstrapping their legitimacy through the cunning use of ritual. Royal weddings as much as any other ritual were essential to that success. Royal weddings were not just about producing legitimate children who could inherit the throne in the future. They were as much about the man already sitting on it.

Aleksei Mikhailovich and the Personality of Ritual The next Romanov to sit on the throne was Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich’s only surviving son, Aleksei Mikhailovich (1645–1676), who was, as his father had been, sixteen years old when he became tsar. And again like his father, his first pick for a bride was done in by a conspiracy. Efimiia Vsevolozhskaia was chosen in a bride-show in February 4, 1647, and the wedding was scheduled to take place ten days later. In the few short days after her selection, Efimiia fell horribly ill, probably due to poisoning, and the wedding was called off and she and her family were exiled from Moscow, suspected of concealing some dreaded disease. The tsar brooded for a time, but soon found himself facing another array of women in a bride-show, this time picking Maria Il’ichna Miloslavskaia, whose father was a close friend and client of the young

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tsar’s tutor and father figure, the boyar Boris Ivanovich Morozov, the man who may have been behind the plot to ruin Efimiia.80 Aleksei Mikhailovich married Mariia Miloslavskaia on January 16, 1648—less than a year after he had so resolutely set his affections on Efimiia. Morozov, for his part, married Mariia’s sister Anna on January 27, becoming the tsar’s brother-in-law.81 With only ten days between the bride-show and the wedding, organizers of Aleksei Mikhailovich’s wedding with Efimiia Vsevolozhskaia had their work cut out for them.82 The secretaries charged with compiling the texts—led by Conciliar Secretary Nazarii Chistyi, the head of the Ambassadorial Chancery, along with Mikhail Volosheninov of the Military Service Chancery83—produced draft musters and ceremonials in short order.84 Like Gramotin before him, Chistyi commissioned copies of older wedding documents: one from the sixteenth century that Gramotin had missed,85 as well as two musters and other odd texts (including the “worksheet” with Gramotin’s questions) from Mikhail Fedorovich’s weddings.86 The first draft of the wedding ceremonial has Efimiia’s name inscribed throughout and was likely drawn up immediately after the bride-show. The second draft seems to have been written shortly afterward and was later reused as a first draft of the Miloslavskaia ceremonial: Efimiia’s name was originally inscribed in this version of the ceremonial, too, but was later erased.87 It may have been the rush to produce these documents that explains the fact that the 1647 wedding ceremonial so closely followed the model of Mikhail Fedorovich’s weddings. Evidently, either there was too little time for a thorough reworking of the ritual, or perhaps the young tsar had little interest in imposing that task on his chanceries. (He was still five months away from his eighteenth birthday.) Whatever the case, the actual first wedding of the second Romanov tsar to Mariia Miloslavskaia in 1648 displayed more of the young tsar’s personality than the one originally planned for the year before. And these changes seem in many cases to have been made on the tsar’s own initiative. The changes are pointed out explicitly in the ceremonials: “at previous royal weddings . . . , but now the Great Sovereign, Tsar and Grand Prince Aleksei Mikhailovich of All Rus’, the Autocrat, . . . desires to arrange things as he prefers”—almost as if the scribes were protecting themselves from later charges of unauthorized innovations in the rituals.88 The changes range in significance. The 1648 ceremonial reports, for example, that the tsar ordered changes to the materials and cut of the collar of the fur coat (shuba) he received on leaving the bath on the second day of the wedding, exchanging the tied panels on the back for a sable collar (ozherel’e), which perhaps gave the coat a more regal appearance.89 Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s concern for costumes is also reflected in a second change

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he made: during banquets on all three days of the main wedding celebrations, the tsar required the boyars and other high-ranking courtiers (dumnye liudi) to wear fur-lined sheepskin coats (nagol’nye shuby) and cylindrical fur caps (gorlatnye shapki); the tablemen (stol’niki) and other courtiers (dvoriane i vsiakikh chinov liudi) to wear open-front, fur-lined coats (okhabni); and the candlebearers (svechniki), torch bearers (fonarniki), and loaf bearers (korovainiki) to wear kaftans (terliki).90 And on the fourth day of the wedding the tsar ordered that, unlike when his father married, the tsar would meet with the churchmen and others together with his wife, not alone.91 Three other changes introduced by the tsar and noted in the 1648 wedding ceremonial are likely to have been rooted in what Michael Cherniavsky contemptuously called the tsar’s “virtually nightmarish religiosity.”92 The tsar ordered that the nuptial candles be handled differently at his wedding. In previous royal weddings, the candles, both his and his new bride’s, were placed together in the bridal chamber in a stand filled with grain at the head of the bed on the wedding night—a clear pre-Christian fertility symbol— then moved to the church to burn for three days. The tsar eliminated this practice, probably because of the obvious (and, perhaps to his mind, blasphemous) mingling of Christian and non-Christian symbols (icons, candles, and grains).93 The same aversion to non-Christian symbolism also probably prompted him to do away with the sprinkling of hops. At previous royal weddings, the sprinkling ritual took place twice: at the door of the banquet room, when the bride was commended to her husband and blessed “without icons,” and at the door to the bridal chamber, moments later. While the first draft of the ceremonial for the 1647 wedding to Efimiia Vsevolozhskaia includes both sprinklings, they were scratched out and not included in the second draft and the final version of the text.94 In two places in the second draft, in fact, a secretary editing the text explains that the passages about the sprinkling were to be “eliminated” (ne budet) and were not to be copied (ne pisat’) into the next version of the ceremonial.95 And if the message that Aleksei Mikhailovich’s piety was going to influence how his wedding was celebrated was not clear enough, his changes to the entertainments at the wedding made that message unmistakable. Perhaps persuaded by Archpriest Stefan Vonifant’ev, his father-confessor and the rector of the Annunciation Cathedral in the Kremlin, the tsar eliminated from the celebrations those customary and impious entertainments that might lead to rowdiness and revelry, which, in the priest’s view and probably the tsar’s, were unbefitting the Holy Sacrament of Matrimony.96 Aleksei replaced some of the more festive—and perhaps lurid—music (probably including the charivari) and other entertainment with Orthodox liturgical music sung by

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a church choir. Traditional entertainments had been contemplated for the wedding with Efimiia Vsevolozhskaia and are mentioned in the first and second drafts of the ceremonial.97 But they were eliminated from the text of the final version of the Miloslavskaia ceremonial. The narrative of the text is interrupted to explain the change: And at previous royal weddings, when the tsar went into his bath, and all day and into the evening and at night at the court they played pipes and horns and beat drums. But now the Great Sovereign, Tsar and Grand Prince Aleksei Mikhailovich, Autocrat of all Russia, did not want drums or horns to be played at his wedding, and the tsar ordered that, instead of horns and instruments and various wedding amusements, that the tsar’s own cantors were to sing, all groups alternating from polyphonic three-part [strochnoe penie] to polyphonic four-part [demestvennoe penie] from the feast days and from the Triodion, with all dignity. And in accordance with the wise and virtuous circumspection of the sovereign, there was peace and joy and great decorum.98 Clearly, Tsar Aleksei was breaking with tradition when he abolished the secular music and various rowdy “amusements” at the wedding.99 Olearius reported that Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s wedding was “carried out quietly, without the special pomp that usually accompanies [such] weddings.”100 One need not wonder if the courtiers in attendance fully approved of the tsar’s choice to replace bear tricks and rowdy music with black-clad monks chanting liturgical hymns. One final set of changes at Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s wedding in 1648 reflect the increased confidence in the Romanovs’ hold on the throne. Two key rituals with clear dynastic overtones—the blessing to wed and the mini-pilgrimages—were moved from the first day to the eve of the wedding. Like his father a generation before, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich “consulted with the Great Lord [velikii gospodin] Iosif, patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, and with his boyars, about contracting a canonical marriage for the succession to his royal dynasty [v nasledie ego gosudarskogo rodu].”101 Here, clearly, the first hierarch of the Russian Church fulfilled the role played by Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich’s father in 1626. (There being no possible stand-in for Mikhail Fedorovich’s mother, both of Aleksei’s parents being dead, that piece of the ritual was omitted.) At Aleksei Mikhailovich’s planned first wedding with Efimiia Vsevolozhskaia in 1647, the consultation and accompanying speeches were to be delivered on the morning of the wedding (as they were Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich in 1626).102 This was changed in 1648: consultation with the patriarch took place, evidently,

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two days before the wedding, and the blessing to wed occurred on the day before the wedding: “on Saturday, January 15, at the seventh hour of the day,” the tsar went to the Dormition Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin and received the blessing to wed from Patriarch Iosif (1642–1652).103 The tsar then gave a short speech that was identical to the one his father had given at the same moment in his own wedding more than twenty years before, and the patriarch replied with words almost identical to those spoken by Patriarch Filaret at the wedding of Mikhail Fedorovich. He then blessed the tsar to marry with an icon.104 The mini-pilgrimage to the Kremlin’s monasteries and churches, which figured so prominently in Mikhail Fedorovich’s weddings, as we have seen, was also moved and modified. The draft of the ceremonial for Aleksei Mikhailovich’s first proposed wedding contains an identical listing of destinations for the mini-pilgrimage and again has it at the beginning of the first day—just as it was at Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich’s wedding in 1626.105 A year later, the destinations of the mini-pilgrimage had expanded. Now, the groom “went to the Chudov Monastery, the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael, to the shrine of the Wonderworker St. Aleksei, to the Ascension Convent and the Annunciation Cathedral. And with him were boyars and okol’nichie and other high-ranking figures and courtiers.”106 The mini-pilgrimage remained a large affair, with many members of the court participating, and it now included the Annunciation Cathedral—the private chapel of the tsars (which, as we have seen, was visited by Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich at his wedding in 1571)— but it took place outside the set sequence of nuptial rites that for a century and a half had made up the wedding of a grand prince or tsar. The movement of the mini-pilgrimage appears to signal a change in dynastic priorities. Making this mini-pilgrimage the first public moment in the wedding in 1626 (and probably 1624) helped to associate the new dynasty with the old one—to create the fictive image of dynastic continuity. Keeping it there in 1647 may have had as much to do with the rush to organize the wedding as with dynastic policies, but moving it in 1648 to the day before the wedding may well have significant symbolic meaning: it may indicate a diminution of anxiety among the Romanovs and their allies over the dynasty’s legitimacy. Of course, it may also have been just one more revision introduced by the tsar to make it a better moment for genuine prayer. The tsar was, to be sure, a genuinely pious man. It is difficult, however, not to see the displacement of this vital dynastic ritual in the seventeenth century—from midday in the sixteenth century, to the forefront of the first day of the wedding, to the wedding’s eve—as a reflection of the changing levels of confidence of a dynasty that fully understood the power of rituals.

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Kotoshikhin and the Domostroi The weddings of the Romanov tsars during the first half of the seventeenth century invite a comparison with the other important wedding documentation that emerged in roughly the same period: Kotoshikhin’s On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich and the Domostroi. Setting these accounts sideby-side with the chancellery documentation illuminates the history of these texts and the skill of the secretaries and scribes working on them. It also shows the weddings of the first Romanov tsar to be major textual events in the chancery scriptoria, events that influenced literary traditions well beyond the writing desks of secretaries and scribes in the Kremlin.

Kotoshikhin’s On Russia

Grigorii Karpovich Kotoshikhin was an undersecretary (pod’iachii) in the Ambassadorial Chancery when he fled his homeland shortly before September 1, 1664. He made his way first to Vilnius, then to Poland, Silesia, Prussia, and Lübeck; he ended his wanderings in Sweden by the fall of 1665. Kotoshikhin had several good reasons to flee Muscovy. His father had made powerful enemies at court, and the family’s property had been confiscated, apparently unjustly. Kotoshikhin may have feared that the punishments of the father might well be visited on the son. He may also have feared that conditions in the Ambassadorial Chancery were about to get difficult for him. He had inadvertently maneuvered himself into the hopeless position of being a pawn in the intrigues of powerful men over him—Prince Iurii Alekseevich Dolgorukov and Prince Iakov Kudenetovich Cherkasskii—each of whom tried to cajole him into supporting their private feud against the other. Kotoshikhin may have fled to save himself from certain ruination at the hands of one (or both) of them. Or perhaps Kotoshikhin fled because he had been passing secrets to the Swedes on and off since the summer of 1663 and feared that his treason was about to be discovered.107 Kotoshikhin, it appears, had been an able and hardworking staffer in the Ambassadorial Chancery and had an extensive and varied diplomatic career before his defection, despite his ups and downs.108 Born around 1630 and entering service in the Ambassadorial Chancery around 1645 as an entrylevel scribe (pisets), he was promoted to undersecretary around 1658. He served as a member of the teams of chancellery staff attached to embassies conducting treaty negotiations in Vilnius (1658), Pöhestekule (1659), and Dorpat (1659–1660); he was also a member of the Russian embassy that negotiated the Peace of Cardis with Sweden in June 1661. Later that same

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year he was in Stockholm as a diplomatic courier, and he then served as a diplomat attached to regional commanders of Russian forces deployed in what we today call the Russo-Polish War of 1654–1667.109 When not on diplomatic assignments, Kotoshikhin was in Moscow handling the day-to-day business of the Ambassadorial Chancery, which included a range of diplomatic and dynastic matters. Among these was the preparation of documents for the first wedding of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, which were drafted by the scribes, undersecretaries, and secretaries working under Conciliar Secretary Nazarii Chistyi in the Ambassadorial Chancery, and which were deposited in the chancery’s archive after the wedding. Thus Kotoshikhin worked in precisely the place that would give him the best possible exposure to Muscovite dynastic and diplomatic policies and make him intimately familiar with some of the most important people at court, including the tsar and his family. Despite his extraordinary biography, Kotoshikhin’s name might not have become well known to us today were it not for the account he wrote in the late spring and summer of 1666 for his new master, King Charles XI of Sweden (1660–1697). This account, On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich (O Rossii v tsarstvovanie Alekseia Mikhailovicha), is a broad yet revealing description of, in Kotoshikhin’s own words, “the whole Muscovite State.”110 He arranged his account into thirteen thematic chapters, beginning with a description of the private lives of the tsars, including their weddings, and ending symmetrically in the last with a description of the private lives of the boyars, again including their weddings. In between, he described the structure and membership of the tsar’s court, diplomatic practice, chanceries and their roles in administration, military preparedness, taxation, trade, and the economy in the provinces. On Russia was quickly translated into Swedish and then circulated for “a generation or two” after his death, but it eventually fell into obscurity in Sweden and was entirely unknown in Russia.111 The text was rediscovered in the Swedish archives by Russian scholars in the 1830s and its importance was immediately recognized. It was published in four competent editions between 1840 and 1906, followed by the definitive edition and study by Anne Pennington in 1980.112 Benjamin Uroff produced an English translation of the text in 1970, but it has been broadly accessible only since 2014.113 As a worker bee in the Ambassadorial Chancery, Kotoshikhin had access to the wedding ceremonials and musters of tsars and boyars. He probably joined the scribal staff of the Ambassadorial Chancery not long after the ascension of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich in 1645, and he was on staff at the Ambassadorial Chancery when the scribes, clerks, and secretaries were working busily on the documentation for the tsar’s first planned wedding in

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1647 and his actual first wedding in 1648. In the course of that scribal work, Kotoshikhin is likely also to have handled documents from Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich’s weddings—which, as we have seen, were copied as models for the 1647 and 1648 wedding projects.114 The likelihood that Kotoshikhin worked on wedding documentation occurred to A. I. Markevich, the first serious scholar of Kotoshikhin’s life and text, who suggested that the source for the description of royal weddings in chapter 1 of On Russia was Kotoshikhin’s own experience working on Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s wedding in 1648.115 The problem, which even Markevich realized, was that there are numerous small but important discrepancies between Kotoshikhin’s description of a royal wedding and the way the wedding of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich was actually performed in 1648. Markevich explained away the discrepancies by suggesting that Kotoshikhin was attempting to produce a generalized description of royal wedding customs in Muscovy, not Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s. “Kotoshikhin’s description of the royal wedding ritual,” Markevich writes, “reflects, of course, the wedding of the tsar with Mariia Miloslavskaia, but it is presented so as to describe royal weddings in general, omitting the unique features of that particular wedding.”116 Uroff doubted this conclusion. Uroff compared Kotoshikhin’s description not only with Aleksei Mikhailovich’s wedding in 1648, as had Markevich, but with Mikhail Fedorovich’s wedding of 1626. He found that “in a number of details, Kotoshikhin’s account corresponds to the ceremonial not of Alexis’s wedding but of Michael’s in 1626.”117 But even Uroff admitted that there still were discrepancies with the 1626 wedding, and he accounted for them less charitably (though more plausibly) than did Markevich, seeing them as more likely the result of a faulty memory rather than a conscious attempt to produce a generic description of the wedding ritual.118 What Uroff does not explain is why Kotoshikhin’s account is so much closer to the 1626 text, which was composed before Kotoshikhin was born. Could his forays into the archive to retrieve and possibly copy old wedding documentation—which he almost certainly did—be enough to explain his expert-level command of the ritual, retrieved from memory and scribbled down in chapter 1 of On Russia so many years later in a distant land? Is Mikhail Fedorovich’s 1626 wedding ceremonial really the most likely source for the details in Kotoshikhin’s account on royal weddings? Answers to these questions come into view when Kotoshikhin’s description of royal weddings is compared against the original manuscript sources for Mikhail Fedorovich’s wedding (1626), and Aleksei Mikhailovich’s first planned wedding (1647) and actual first wedding (1648). His descriptions

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of the betrothal, the patriarch’s blessing of the groom, the groom’s processions to the Kremlin’s monasteries, the banquet on the second day of the wedding, and the music and other entertainment align with the earlier weddings—the wedding of Mikhail Fedorovich (to Streshneva in 1626) and the proposed wedding of Aleksei Mikhailovich (to Vsevolozhskaia in 1647)—rather than with the 1648 wedding of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich to Miloslavskaia (see table 2.1).119 Sitting in Stockholm in 1666, Kotoshikhin was therefore not remembering the ritual of the one wedding that took place during his time in the Ambassadorial Chancery (Aleksei Mikhailovich’s in 1648), nor was he attempting to produce a generic description of royal weddings, as Markevich suggested. Kotoshikhin recollected as best he could Aleksei Mikhailovich’s planned wedding of 1647, which was, as we have seen, modeled on Mikhail Fedorovich’s wedding in 1626 and was likely the only wedding he knew intimately. Neither Markevich nor Uroff compared Kotoshikhin’s account with the Vsevolozhskii texts because they were not widely available: the draft Vsevolozhskii ceremonial and muster have never been published.120 That Kotoshikhin knew and perhaps worked on the Vsevolozhskii wedding project is further implied by the fact that he includes in On Russia an account of the scandal that ruined the 1647 Vsevolozhskaia match: Some of the [other] boyars and closest men [also] had daughters, but the tsar did not think of marrying any one of them. And those maidens’ Table 2.1.  Comparison of wedding rituals in manuscript descriptions and Kotoshikhin MIKHAIL FEODOROVICH, 1626

KOTOSHIKHIN ALEKSEI ALEKSEI MIKHAILOVICH, MIKHAILOVICH, 1647 1648

Betrothal

At wedding, joined with crowning

Eve of wedding

Blessing of patriarch

Morning of wedding Morning of wedding

Morning of wedding Eve of wedding

Procession to monasteries and churches

Morning of wedding Morning of wedding

Morning of wedding Eve of wedding

Which church?

Dormition Cathedral

Annunciation Cathedral

Dormition Cathedral

Dormition Cathedral

Day 2 banquet

Couple dine together

Couple dine together

Couple dine together

Separate banquets

Music

Secular, with other entertainment

Secular, with other Secular, with other entertainment entertainment

At wedding, joined with crowning

[At wedding, joined with crowning]

Solemn church hymns only

Sources: RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, nos. 16, 17 (Mikhail Feodorovich); nos. 21, 22 (Aleksei Mikhailovich and Efimiia Vsevolozhskaia); nos. 21, 22, 23, 24 (Aleksei Mikhailovich and Mariia Miloslavskaia); and Pennington, O Rossii v carstvovanie Alekseja Mixajloviča, 36–52.

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mothers and sisters, who lived in the tsarevnas’ apartments, were jealous of this and schemed to do something to be rid of the chosen tsarevna, in the hope that the tsar would then take to himself the daughter of some other great boyar or closest man; and soon they accomplished this by poisoning her. The tsar was greatly saddened by this and took no food for many days, and afterwards thought no more of high-born maidens, for he realized that it had happened because of malice and envy. And some time later he happened to be in the church where he was crowned and saw the two daughters of a certain Moscow nobleman [dvorianin], Il’ia Miloslavskii, standing in church at prayer, and sent to his palace for some maidens and ordered to take the younger daughter of that nobleman to his upper chambers; and when the service was over the tsar came to his chambers, looked at her and became enamored, and designated her as his tsarevna, and entrusted her care to his sisters, and attired her in royal garments, and assigned trustworthy and God-fearing women to protect her until the hour of the wedding should come.121 Kotoshikhin does not mention Efimiia Vsevolozhkaia by name, nor does he get every detail about the scandal surrounding her correct.122 But he clearly knows more than most about this highly sensitive moment at court, which may explain why he also seems to know a lot about how her wedding was supposed to be celebrated. It remains to explain why Kotoshikhin might be more familiar with the Vsevolozhskaia wedding ritual (1647) than with the Miloslavskaia ritual (1648), especially when it is so clear from the surviving manuscripts that the two were worked on in rapid succession. We can only speculate, but it seems plausible that Kotoshikhin’s low rank as a scribe meant that he was assigned the tedious entry-level task of copying documents that would later be edited by more senior secretaries. Such a task would give him detailed familiarity with the rituals themselves, to be sure, but not with the changes that were later introduced by more senior secretaries, including Nazarii Chistyi. And since we know he was not in attendance at the wedding itself and therefore saw none of it with his own eyes (his name appears in none of the musters), he could have had little knowledge of the wedding ritual other than that which he had learned from reading and copying documents at his desk in the chancery.123 Which was, in any case, apparently quite a lot. Kotoshikhin returned to the topic of weddings in the last chapter of On Russia—chapter 13—where he focused his attention on the aristocratic elite,

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on the weddings of a “boyar or closest man [blizhnyi chelovek].”124 The chapter begins with the groom’s family making inquiries of the parents of a daughter of marriageable age, negotiations over a dowry, and signing the marriage contract—all elements omitted from royal wedding ceremonials. His description then largely follows the same structure as one finds at royal weddings: the families draw up lists of guests, the groom processes to the bride’s home, together they proceed to the local church where they are crowned, then the couple and their entourage process back to the groom’s home for a banquet and the consummation of the marriage. The post-conjugal bath took place on the morning of the second day, followed by a banquet; and on the third day the entire company attended yet another banquet at the home of the bride’s parents. At two points in the narrative Kotoshikhin pauses to point out that the ritual for boyars “is similar to the description of the tsar’s wedding,” which appears to be the case.125 With the exception of the preliminary negotiations between the couple’s families, the wedding of a boyar was structurally the same as that of a tsar, though likely to have been far less lavishly celebrated. Kotoshikhin also included general information about marriage (not just wedding rites) in his description of boyar weddings in chapter 13. He notes the hefty fines—“1,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 rubles in money, whatever is written into the contract”126—for breaking an engagement if, for example, it is found out that the bride was not, as promised, a virgin; or if she is “deaf or dumb or crippled, or [if the groom] is told something bad about her,” or, conversely, if the groom is found out to be a “drunkard or a gambler or disfigured.”127 In addition, Kotoshikhin reported that a couple could get divorced if the bride and groom were later discovered to be related, either by blood or by spiritual bonds (through godparents).128 Kotoshikhin also included rites for subsequent marriages, where the nuptial crown was held over the head for first marriages, rested on the right shoulder for a second marriage, and on the left for a third.129 (If both had been previously married, “no wedding is held for them,” according to Kotoshikhin. “In place of a wedding a prayer is said [byvaet molitvu]; and the marriage ceremonies do not resemble those held for unmarried persons.”)130 Kotoshikhin probably included these extra notes on the rules of consanguinity and remarriage in order to provide the Swedes a more complete understanding of Orthodox marriage in general—rules that stood in stark contrast to those governing marriage in Protestant Scandinavia and played a significant rule in the private lives of Muscovy’s leading figures. Kotoshikhin was a dutiful informant.

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The Domostroi

Descriptions of weddings of “boyars and closest men” also appear in the Domostroi—the sixteenth-century popular “guide for household management,” as Carolyn Pouncy described it.131 Tacked onto the Domostroi as its final (sixty-seventh) chapter are five documents labeled chiny, or wedding ceremonials. Chapter 67 did not start out as an original part of the Domostroi. The earliest versions of the Domostroi, dating to the mid-sixteenth century, include only the first sixty-three chapters, with the others appended later. The wedding ceremonials in chapter 67 were attached probably only in the early seventeenth century.132 Four of the five texts (the first, second, fourth, and fifth) provide only partial descriptions of the three-day celebration and emphasize different aspects of the wedding.133 It is the third wedding text in chapter 67 that provides the most detailed and complete treatment of the three-day boyar wedding.134 It is often found in manuscript form separate from the rest of the Domostroi, and has been published both as part of the “full version” (polnaia redaktsiia) of the Domostroi and alone.135 This third, “full version” begins, like Kotoshikhin’s chapter 13, with the negotiations over the dowry and wedding contract. It describes how the families agreed on the date of the wedding and devised the list of guests. The decorations in the main wedding venue, including all the contents of the various platters, and those in the bridal chamber are described in detail; and the text mentions how the bride wept over her fate and “sings her wedding songs.”136 The text details the major rites of transition, including the betrothal ceremony, which took place at the bride’s father’s house. The couple then goes in procession to the church, with the bride riding with two matchmakers in a sleigh. The couple stands on sables as they are wed and drink from (and then smash) the common cup. They then go in procession back to the bride’s father’s house after the church service (which varies from Kotoshikhin, who places the main wedding venue at the groom’s house). Just as Kotoshikhin reports for royal weddings, the couple leaves the banquet after the third course (a swan) and retires to their bridal chamber, where the marriage is consummated.137 On the next day, the couple bathes while musicians play music. The groom goes to the bathhouse to bathe and receives gifts of clothes from the bride’s father, while the bride bathes in the “main house.”138 The couple have a meal together (chicken and kasha) and later attend a banquet at the groom’s father’s house. The third day also begins with a bath—something not reported in either Kotoshikhin or the chancery documents—and later the bride’s father hosts a banquet.139

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Is there a relationship between these two textual traditions, one for royal weddings and the other for boyar weddings? Is there a link between the boyar weddings in Kotoshikhin’s chapter 13 and the Domostroi’s chapter 67? Are the wedding texts in Kotoshikhin and the Domostroi related to the extraordinary work in the chanceries in the 1620s surrounding the wedding of the first Romanov tsar? Kotoshikhin’s chapter 1 includes some information that was clearly not drawn from chancery royal wedding documentation and that derived instead from texts describing boyar weddings. For example, Kotoshikhin describes the sermon delivered by the officiating priest in the church immediately after the crowning ceremony. At the wedding of Mikhail Fedorovich and at the canceled and actual first weddings of Aleksei Mikhailovich, the texts baldly report that the officiating archpriest “instructed them in accordance with holy tradition” (i pouchal ikh . . . po sviachchennomu predaniiu).140 Kotoshikhin goes into much greater detail, however, reporting that the “archpriest instructs them how to live together.” He continues: The wife should be obedient to her husband, and they should not become angry at one another, except that for certain faults the husband should punish her a little with a rod: for the husband is to the wife as Christ is head of the church; and they should live in purity and fear of God, and fast on Sundays and Wednesdays and Fridays and during all the periods of fast; and on the Lord’s holy days and any days that commemorate the apostles and evangelists and other designated saints they should not fall into sin and should go to God’s temple and give offerings; and they should consult often with their spiritual advisor, for he will instruct them in all good things.141 This passage—which is not so much a quotation from a sermon as a summary of its contents—is nowhere in the royal wedding ceremonials but, as Uroff has already noted, is very similar to the “priestly injunction to newlyweds presented in the Domostroi.”142 That injunction, found in chapter 33 of the Domostroi, contains a set of instructions written in the same prescriptive tone and including the same admonition for husbands to “instruct their wives lovingly and with due consideration.” But nowhere is the admonition for husbands to “instruct” their wives found in official royal wedding documentation. For all the speeches in royal wedding ceremonials, the sermon is noticeably absent. Kotoshikhin in chapter 1 also goes beyond the contents of the official wedding documentation in his treatment of the wedding night—specifically, how the couple was visited after a time to verify that the union had been consummated. The official documentation is discrete, merely mentioning

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that the couple went at the appointed time to the bridal chamber, after which the narrative immediately jumps to the morning of the next day, when the couple separately took purifying baths.143 There is no mention in the official documentation of the couple’s being visited by anyone to confirm that the marriage had been consummated. Kotoshikhin’s account of royal weddings, however, fills in the missing pieces, drawing again from a source that may be related to the Domostroi. And when an hour by the clock has passed, the father and mother and tysiatskii [master of ceremonies] send to the tsar and tsaritsa to inquire of their health. And when the druzhka [best man] comes and inquires of their health, the tsar then answers that they are in good health, if the good thing has taken place between them; but if it has not taken place, the tsar orders him to return a second time, or a third; and the druzhka likewise comes and inquires. And if the good thing has taken place between them, the tsar says that they are in good health, and orders the entire wedding party and fathers and mothers to appear before him, though the archpriest does not appear; but if the good thing does not take place, then all the boyars and the wedding party disperse in sadness, without appearing before the tsar.144 The similarity between Kotoshikhin’s account here and the Domostroi is striking: The bridegroom goes about that business from which children are born. And after waiting a half hour a druzhka goes to the bridegroom and inquires of his health, and goes from the bridegroom to the father and mother to greet them and inquire of their health. And the father and mother send the druzhka to the bridegroom with orders to announce their arrival.145 Kotoshikhin’s phrasing is not identical to the Domostroi’s, but it would be unreasonable to think it really ever could have been, given the fact that this passage, like the whole of On Russia, derives from memory alone. The evidence is again circumstantial, albeit compelling, that Kotoshikhin used a range of sources to tell the Swedes what the tsar’s wedding looked like. He did not always keep straight in his mind and memory the sources from which he drew his information, but we can find the boundary lines in the text between what he knew from chancery sources and what he knew from somewhere else—perhaps from general knowledge about the Orthodox rules of marriage, and perhaps also from his access to a separate textual tradition for the weddings of Muscovy’s elite.

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But how might Kotoshikhin have been familiar with the textual traditions describing boyar weddings, versions of which may have found their way into the Domostroi? Here we must go further out on a narrowing limb: the answer to this question may lie in the way the weddings of the first Romanov tsar had become a major creative event in the Kremlin’s scriptoria. The copies made in 1624 of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century wedding documents played an important role in the revisions to the wedding ritual for the first Romanov tsar, helping the new dynasty consolidate its still tenuous hold on power, as we have seen. These copies went on to have a life of their own. The copies that Gramotin and his staff produced in 1624 were themselves recopied time and again by scribes in the chanceries and imported into uncounted manuscript miscellanies.146 Within a decade or two of the weddings, they were combined into compilation texts.147 Later, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, these compilations were then published by Novikov, Komarov, Sakharov, and others—famous editions that would be used by scholars for the next two centuries.148 The wedding of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich and Evdokiia Streshneva would attract particular attention among copyists and publishers, who at the end of the seventeenth century produced a well-known illustrated manuscript book containing a late version of the ceremonial.149 This flourish of scribal activity and the works it produced may have also spawned or accelerated the development of a textual tradition for boyar wedding ceremonials. While we are not yet in a position to know for certain, it may not be a coincidence that the boyar wedding ceremonials were added to the Domostroi only in or after the 1620s, more than a half-century after the base text of the Domostroi was compiled. Kotoshikhin was a man of extraordinary talents, foremost of which was his remarkable memory. His description of royal weddings is incomplete and not always fully accurate, but it reveals, perhaps inadvertently, a fundamental truth about Muscovite political culture: the marriage of the tsar was at the center of court politics.150 Kotoshikhin put his description of the “tsar’s happy occasion,” an expression he used more than once in his account in chapter 1—indeed, at the very beginning of chapter 1—because he evidently believed weddings explained Muscovite politics to his new Swedish masters better than anything else.151 He also believed that weddings explained a lot about the lives of the boyars at court. Kotoshikhin understood the close link between kinship and politics in his homeland. His On Russia (and the Domostroi), reflect the enduring significance of the “textual event” that the weddings of the first Romanovs tsars produced. If the wedding of Vasilii III and Elena Glinskaia in 1526 came to serve as a stable model for the weddings of Muscovy’s rulers and their relatives

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throughout the sixteenth century, the weddings of Mikhail Fedorovich and Mariia Dolgorukova (in 1624) and Evdokiia Streshneva (in 1626) did not play the same role a century later, despite all the work put into them. The scribes and secretaries in the Ambassadorial Chancery began their work on the wedding of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich in 1647 assuming, it seems, that it would follow the new model. But when that match was foiled, the young new tsar found the time and resolve to assert his own personality in the tried-and-true rituals of Muscovite marriage. The tsar insisted that his marriage lose some of its pagan charm. But he was only getting started. When his first marriage ended with his wife’s death in 1669, coupled with the death of his son and heir apparent, Tsarevich Aleksei Alekseevich, six months later, the tsar felt impelled to marry again. The wedding ritual for that second marriage further displayed and reflected the tsar’s religiosity. It would also showcase a dynasty that was fully entrenched on the throne and confident in its legitimacy. And with his place on the throne no longer in doubt, the tsar could set about making his wedding about the most important thing: the “uninterrupted succession to his royal dynasty.”

q Ch ap ter 3 “And Unlike Previous Royal Weddings, There Was Not the Usual Royal Ritual” Continuity and Change

When Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich performed the Dance of Isaiah with his second bride, Natal’ia Kirillovna Naryshkina, circling the analogion in the middle of the nave three times as the choir sang the hymn, Rejoice, O Isaiah! A Virgin is with Child; and shall bear a Son, Emmanuel, both God and Man: and Orient is His name; Whom magnifying Him, we call the Virgin blessed. O Holy Martyrs, who fought the good fight and have received your crowns: Entreat ye the Lord that He will have mercy on our souls. Glory to Thee, O Christ God, the Apostles’ boast, the Martyrs’ joy, whose preaching was the consubstantial Trinity,1 they were in the midst of a centuries-old liturgical rite governed by stable rubrics. But the service in the Dormition Cathedral that day—January 22, 1671—was nearly the only element of this wedding that was not new and different. Before and after this hour or so in the cathedral were rites, assemblies, speeches, and processions that had been revised, expanded, or wholly eliminated from the way royal weddings had previously been performed in Muscovy—even at the tsar’s first wedding twenty-three years before. It is not that the wedding was unrecognizable as such apart from the church service,

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Figure 3.1.  Peter I and his first wife, Evdokiia Lopukhina, in kniga liubvi, znak v chesten brak. Wikimedia Commons.

but that the changes in the rites must surely have impressed an onlooker far more than the continuities. The second half of the seventeenth century was a time of rapid and fundamental change in Muscovite political culture. The changes the tsar introduced into the customary celebration of his first marriage in 1648 were shortly followed by liturgical reforms starting in 1653, introducing revisions to the way the Muscovite Church worshipped the Trinity visually, musically, liturgically, and even physically.2 These changes permeated the liturgical life of the Church and all its services, including weddings. Interpreted variously

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as a protest against underlying socioeconomic processes or as a genuine dispute over belief, this “crisis of church power”—as Georg Michels has called it—within the centralizing patriarchal Church kicked open the door to other ritual reforms that both reacted to and helped shape the political culture of early modern Russia.3 The resulting Russian Church schism (raskol) was centrally—and perhaps primarily—a crisis of ritual, or better, a crisis that played out in the context and vocabulary of ritual. The crisis of ritual was not, however, limited to the divine services. The invention, modification, and reinterpretation of rituals was a regular feature of the century, especially its second half. This chapter examines the last royal weddings of the seventeenth century, starting with Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s second in 1671, and explores how changes in the way tsars wed reflected not only aspects of their own biographies—their religiosity, their physical health, their mental health, and their ages—but also the role that weddings played in this dynamic time when the ritual ground on which all politics rested was shifting tumultuously beneath them.

Rejoice, O Isaiah Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich accepted the idea of remarriage reluctantly, at least at first. He seems to have been genuinely attached to his first wife, Mariia Il’ichna Miloslavskaia, and he mourned her death deeply.4 The tsar received the news of his wife’s death already in a mournful mood. Tsaritsa Mariia Il’ichna died on March 3, 1669, after giving birth to her thirteenth child, a daughter, Evdokiia, on February 26, who herself then died two days later. These deaths were followed by that of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s four-year-old son Simeon in June, then by his eldest surviving son and heir, Aleksei, in January 1670, at age fifteen.5 In the span of less than a year, Aleksei saw his wife and heir die, leaving six healthy daughters (Evdokiia, Marfa, Sofiia, Ekaterina, Mariia, and Feodosiia) who could not succeed, and two sons (Fedor and Ivan) who could, but who were ailing either in mind or body. These deaths seem to have impelled the tsar to find a replacement for his first wife, regardless of how he may have felt about it. The bride-shows started on November 28, 1669—nearly eight months after Mariia’s death— but his first pick, Ovdot’ia Ivanovna Beliaeva, fell victim to a conspiracy against her probably led by Artamon Matveev, the eventual winner’s relative, who was also one of the tsar’s favorites.6 It had become something of a Romanov tradition to have the life of the tsar’s first pick (and the lives of her kin) ruined by the good fortune of being picked in a bride-show, but

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Aleksei Mikhailovich seems to have soon enough transferred his affections to the young and vivacious Natal’ia Naryshkina, who gave him three children in quick succession: Peter (the future Peter I the Great, b. 1672), Natal’ia (b. 1673), and Feodora (b. 1674), who died while still a toddler. Much has been made in the historical literature about the unconventional interests and personality of Natal’ia Kirillovna and of the tsar’s indulgence of those interests due to his fascination for her.7 And for good reason. It would be at her instigation, for instance, that the first theater would be built in Russia, which would host the first secular dramatic productions in Muscovy.8 Aleksei Mikhailovich also reintroduced Western instrumental music to the court, which had waned since the time of Boris Godunov, along with other styles and fashions borrowed from or mimicking Western forms.9 For all these influences, the changes in the wedding ritual for the tsar and his young and spirited bride seem not to have been her doing. She entered the Terem formally only one day before the wedding, so it is hard to imagine her (or her kin) already having the kind of influence over the tsar and his choreographers that would lead to the dramatic changes we see in the wedding ritual.10 The changes seem rather to have derived from the tsar’s own religious convictions and from a burgeoning confidence, evidently shared by members of his court, in the legitimacy of the Romanov dynasty. The weddings of Tsar Aleksei’s father and his own first wedding had to do double duty: to provide for legitimate offspring for the continuation of the dynasty and to serve as a vehicle for the dynastic legitimacy of the Romanovs. By 1671, royal weddings were again about offspring alone. Two generations in, no one seriously questioned the Romanovs’ right to rule. We know the details of the wedding from the extant unpublished wedding ceremonials—a manuscript roll (stolbets) and two beautifully produced velvet-covered manuscript books—in addition to manuscript rolls containing draft and final-version musters. Tsar Aleksei’s second wedding is one of the best documented of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.11 None of these documents were produced in the usual way, however—as a collaboration between the Ambassadorial Chancery and Military Service Chancery, with the head of the former functioning as the chief choreographer for the wedding, as Gramotin and Chistyi had done earlier in the century. This time, the head of the Ambassadorial Chancery, Afanasii Lavrent’evich Ordin-Nashchokin, was out of favor with the tsar.12 Instead of honoring him with the job, responsibility for creating the documents was handed to Bogdan Matveevich Khitrovo, the tsar’s favorite and head of the Chancery of the Great Court (Prikaz Bol’shogo dvora).13 The change in procedure likely accounts for the new structure of the narrative text itself, which was far more than previous ceremonials a literary description of the wedding.14

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Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich met his future bride during a bride-show on February 10, 1670, one of four candidates he met that day.15 The tsar married her almost a year later, the delay evidently due to an extensive investigation into a conspiracy that brought down the rival candidate, Ovdot’ia Beliaeva, whom he had met in a bride-show on April 17, 1670.16 But once the decision to marry Naryshkina had been taken, things moved quickly. On January 21, a Saturday, the tsar met with his inner circle of advisers—his sigglit—to discuss his marriage. He attributed his decision to remarry to the sorrow of his children at the loss of their mother: “We, the Great Sovereign, Tsar, and Grand Prince Aleksei Mikhailovich of all Great, and Little, and White Russia, Autocrat, after the loss of my wife, the pious Tsaritsa and Grand Princess Mariia Il’ichna, have for another year been in great sadness, seeing the incessant tears of our royal children at the loss of their birth mother, the most pious tsaritsa, whose wailing and sobbing I can no longer endure.”17 “And now,” the third-person narrative of the ceremonial resumes, the tsar, “because of his great sorrows, and asking for God’s mercy and the help of the Most Pure Mother of God and all the saints, wishes to contract a second marriage, and to take as his wife the daughter of Kirill Poluekhtovich, the maiden Natal’ia Kirillovna.”18 The “boyars, okol’nichie, and those in Duma ranks,” predictably, rejoiced in unison at hearing the happy news: And all exclaimed with one heart: Blessed is our God, glorified in the Trinity, Who has willed it to be so; and they thanked and glorified the Most Glorious, Most Pure and Ever-Virgin Mother of God, mediatrix and intercessor before Christ, Who in battle is a Victorious Leader of Triumphant Hosts; and they hymned the saints of Moscow: Peter, Aleksei, Iona, and Filipp, and the miracle-working great saint Nicholas, and our father among the saints Sergii of Radonezh, the miracle worker.19 The tsar sent word of these events to Patriarch Ioasaf, who “gave thanks to Almighty God, glorified in the Trinity, and prayed: ‘May the blessing of the Lord be upon the Great Sovereign through His grace and love for mankind, Who is good and loves mankind, always now and ever, and unto ages of ages.’ ”20 It was also on this day that the rosters of all those who were to serve at the wedding were finalized by the boyar Prince Nikita Ivanovich Odoevskii, the boyar Bogdan Khitrovo, and Conciliar Secretary Illarion (Larion) Ivanov, who took the lists of available courtiers from Semen Titov in the Military Service Chancery.21 After the list was approved by the tsar, the wedding was declared to be outside the precedence system (bez mest, or without regard for place), meaning that no one’s personal or family honor

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was enhanced or harmed by their service at the wedding in the rubrics of the system of clan rankings known as mestnichestvo.22 To press the point, evidently, that this wedding was not being choreographed by the Ambassadorial Chancellery, the ceremonial tells us that the announcements of the rosters were made in two installments: the most important positions, given to the highest-ranking courtiers, were announced by Illarion Ivanov, who served in the Chancery of the Great Court with Khitrovo, and the lesser positions by Semen Titov of the Military Service Chancery.23 Rounding out the day were two vitally symbolic rituals from days of old. The first was the entry of the bride-to-be, Natal’ia Naryshkina, into the Terem and the bestowal on her of the title tsarevna (narekli ee gosudaryneiu tsarevnoiu).24 This was the shortest interval—one day—of any previous royal wedding and, like the others, involved not only the bride but also her male and female kin taking up residence in the Terem.25 A formal event, it nonetheless must have looked something like move-in day on a college campus in the fall. The second vital ritual was the tsar’s blessing to wed. The ceremonial tells us that the tsar went to the Dormition Cathedral in the Kremlin taino—in private—which here means without the usual large crowd in a long procession, as had happened in the past, including at his own first wedding in 1648. He went there “to pray” (dlia moleniia), but the text also says that “unlike at previous weddings, the patriarch was not at the cathedral for the blessing because the Great Sovereign [Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich] wanted to come in private. And having finished his prayers in accordance with his royal will [po svoemu gosudarskomu namereniiu], he departed the church and went to His Holiness for the blessing.”26 Once standing before the patriarch, the tsar delivered a formal speech, asking for a blessing to wed. “Great Lord [velikii gospodin], our [spiritual] father and intercessor in prayer [bogomolets],” he began, “Your Holiness Patriarch Ioasaf of Moscow and all Russia! By the will of the All-Good and AllPowerful God, glorified in the Trinity, and by your blessing and counsel, Great Lord, we have desired to contract a canonical marriage, and our wedding day is tomorrow. And I ask you, Great Lord and our [spiritual] father and intercessor in prayer, to bless us, the Great Sovereign, to marry.”27 The text of the patriarch’s reply is substantially edited from the versions of this speech delivered at previous weddings: O pious and Christ-loving Great Sovereign, Tsar and Grand Prince Aleksei Mikhailovich of all Great and Little and White Russia, Autocrat! How truly can I begin to offer thanks to Almighty God, Who is glorified in the Trinity, for your royal [gosudarskoe] decision to marry,

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for you have willed to do this good thing by the mercy of Almighty God, and you appear before me, your intercessor, so that I will pray to God that your good and royal will may be blessed, and that your realm [tsarstvo] may be preserved in peace and without discord, and that all your enemies may be subdued beneath your royal feet, and that all bitter and weeping dark nights should pass away. And the day of joy and happiness now approaches, and because of this all who live in your realm, from great to small, lift up in one prophetic voice their joyful acclaim. Now the wedding is upon us, and I, your intercessor, lift my right hand in blessing, and may you, Great Sovereign, receive this blessing in fulfillment of the commandments. And having received this blessing, be glad and joyful and give praise to God. And so on the approaching day, on Sunday, let us all celebrate with psalms and chants and hymns [vse vo psalmekh i peniikh i penekh dukhovnykh].28 The speech in 1671 omits any mention of “noble [blagorodnye] children,” which is remarkable not only because children and fertility were so emphasized in the tsar’s previous wedding in 1648 (and in his father’s weddings before that), but also because the very reason Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich was marrying at all was to secure the succession. Moreover, Aleksei Mikhailovich was just shy of forty-two years old when he married for the second time. No one could then know that, like his father, he would die relatively young (at age forty-six). At the time of his first wife’s death, he had, by all reasonable expectations, many more reproductive years yet ahead of him. With two sons who were both problematical for the succession in different ways, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich needed to provide a better guarantee for the future. But his was not the anxiety of a ruler who feared for the legitimacy of this dynasty. He feared that his legitimate dynasty would fail for lack of heirs. By 1671, the Romanovs were no longer bending over backward to proclaim their legitimacy. The account of the day ends with a note that the tsar had ordered that no secular music be played at his wedding—“on drums not to bang and flutes not to play [v barabany ne bit’ i v siposhi ne igrat’]”—“because, after the death of the pious Tsaritsa and Grand Princess Mariia Il’ichna, there was no music played at all at court.”29 To add to the new tone of the day, we also learn that the guards were to parade not in special costumes for the occasion but in ordinary dress (v smirnom plat’e).30 However the tsar may have felt about his remarriage—cajoled and coerced to remarry by his family and court, or enthralled by the physical charms of his young new wife—he seems to have been perfectly aware that second marriages were, as John Meyendorff put it,

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a “condescension to human weakness,” even for a tsar.31 A man as religious as Aleksei Mikhailovich clearly could not help but feel some measure of embarrassment on tracing the steps of the Dance of Isaiah for a second time.32 The Saturday before the wedding was clearly a very full day. But what is striking about it is the absence of the mini-pilgrimage to the ancestral shrines of the Kremlin, which, it will be remembered, had been moved to the eve of the wedding by Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich in 1648. The tsar did go to church, but not to venerate his ancestors and predecessors on the throne. He went to the Dormition Cathedral “to pray,” which probably means a moleben, or intercessory prayer service. There is no record of his visiting the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael, which is where the tsars are buried, or the Ascension Convent, where the tsaritsas were buried. He asked for Heaven’s help, but, it seems, he asked for it directly, rather than through the intercessions of his pious (or not-so-pious) royal predecessors. The next day—the wedding day—began with the couple separately attending the Divine Liturgy: the bride at the Church of St. Catherine in the Terem, and the groom at the Church of St. Evdokiia, located on the floor directly above it.33 Afterward, the tsar and his bride-to-be waited in that part of the Terem occupied by his sisters and daughters (tsarevniny khoromy) “according to custom.” But this hardly followed custom. While it was the norm to have the bride and groom be together in the banquet hall just before the wedding—either the Middle Golden Palace or the Palace of Facets— and to perform then all the usual rites of separation (veiling, combing and braiding of the hair, sprinkling, and so on), nothing like this happened in 1671. Now the tsar and his bride sat in their seats until the appointed time, and then departed for the church. The ceremonial provides no details of what they did while they waited. But when the appropriate time arrived (kak prispe vremia), they went in procession to the Dormition Cathedral.34 Here again, things changed. The procession was much smaller than at previous weddings. Only fifteen courtiers accompanied the bride and groom to the church, far fewer than usual.35 At the wedding of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich in 1626, for example, the tsar was accompanied by “more than forty” in his cortège, and the bride, Evdokiia Streshneva, was accompanied by twentythree.36 These numbers were the same at Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s first wedding in 1648.37 The procession to and from the church must have made quite a different, lesser impression on onlookers than had those at previous weddings. The decreased ostentation was evidently by design. The wedding in the Dormition Cathedral was officiated by Archpriest Andrei Savinovich Postnikov, the rector of the Church of the Annunciation, the private chapel of the tsars and himself the tsar’s father-confessor.38 After

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the service, which is not described in the ceremonial, the archpriest “uttered a blessing upon the tsar and tsaritsa and delivered an edifying sermon [zriadnoe pouchenie] based on the holy writings about how to live in Christian marriage according to the commandments of our Lord Jesus Christ, his holy disciples and apostles, and the holy fathers.”39 We do not have the text of that sermon, but the ceremonial does report here that, besides two singers (pevchie), no one but those listed in the procession was permitted into the church for the service. With no full choir and only a small assembly in attendance, it was a liturgically simple affair. They wanted it that way, because he, the Great Sovereign, prepared for his wedding with spiritual labors and bodily works, being unceasingly in the holy church in vigil and in fasting, so many spiritual feats that are impossible to describe fully. And on the very day of his royal wedding, instead of hosting his great and distinguished nobles [svoikh gosudarstkikh slavnykh i po khvalam dostinykh chinov], he invited many of the poor to a banquet, dressed in rags, calling to mind the commandment of our Lord Jesus Christ, written in the Holy Gospel, that whatever you do for one of the least of these, you do for me.40 After the wedding the couple returned to the Terem (tsarevniny khoromy) where they sat for a time together in armchairs positioned on a riser. It was then that the bride cut a block of cheese into slices and distributed them to a very short list of the highest-ranking figures at court. Along with the cheese, the bride formally sent ceremonial kerchiefs as gifts to those who had served in the cortège or who had attended the tsar or his bride on the first day—a short list of names, with the rest of the court getting their gifts on the next day.41 They then ate separately: the tsar in the Stone Antechamber Palace (v Perednei v Kamennykh khoromekh), and the tsaritsa in a location called in the texts the “Third Palace” (v Tret’iuiu polatu). As he dined, the tsar sent vodka to the guards about the walls and portcullises of the Kremlin in order to toast the happy couple—if not, surely, to enhance the performance of their duties.42 If royal wedding ceremonials had always been discreet in describing the wedding night, the ceremonial for Aleksei Mikhailovich and Natal’ia Naryshkina is utterly puritanical. No mention of the conjugal elements of the wedding make any appearance at all in the official description, including the many fertility rituals that were so prominently displayed at previous weddings: the arrows, sables, grains, and honey in the corners of the bridal chamber; the sheaves of grain under the bed, the sprinkling with hops at the threshold; the placement of icons on the walls. More than likely, these

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fertility rites were eliminated, just as the other pre-Christian fertility rituals had been from other moments in the wedding.43 One assumes, however, that despite the omission in the text, the bride and groom consummated their marriage that first night as husband and wife. The second day of the wedding began, as usual, with a bath, with the tsar attended by his closest advisers, the “boyars of the cabinet [komnatnye boiare],” who congratulated him on his wedding and raised a glass of vodka in honor of the tsar and his bride. There followed a grand and formal banquet that evening in the Palace of Facets that was arranged “as at previous weddings,” with a large group of guests seated along tables as had been the custom for at least a century. But it was not at all the same as at previous weddings, because the bride was not there: she dined with her women of the court in her own apartments, holding a parallel banquet that the ceremonial points out was “without reference to the precedence system” (bez mest).44 It was during her banquet that the bride distributed to the rest of the court on both sides of the Kremlin—male and female—the gifts of bread, cheese, and kerchiefs, a ritual that in previous weddings had been performed during the rituals of separation in the Middle Golden Palace or the Palace of Facets before the church wedding. Still a vitally important ritual of social integration and solidarity for the bride and her family, it was moved from the first day to the second probably because, as we have seen, the first day of the wedding had been transformed into a much smaller-scale affair.45 Over in the Palace of Facets, where the tsar dined, he ordered the palace guards to enter in order to offer their congratulations and to receive from the tsar a token of his appreciation: the captains of the guards (golovy) received cups of bullion served to them from the tsar’s own table and cups of wine (kubki ramanei), and the lower ranks received red honey in bowls and other treats (podachi). They then returned to their posts.46 The evening had a festiveness and grandeur that must have resembled royal weddings of the past. Except for the music: “And during the Sovereign’s banquet and afterward, the Sovereign’s singers [gosudaria pevchie d’iaki] sang in three-part and four-part harmonies in the traditional way and in beautiful voices [zelo izriadnym ucheniem i glasy udobrennymi].”47 On the third day of the wedding, Tuesday, January 24, there was another banquet in the Palace of Facets, and everything was arranged “as it had been on the previous day, except that gifts [shirinki] were not given.” Presumably, this means that the tsar and tsaritsa again dined separately. The one difference noted in the ceremonial is that the tsar ordered that vegetables from his own table be taken to the abbess and sisters at the Novodevichii Convent on the outskirts of Moscow.48

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On the fourth day of the wedding, Wednesday, January 25, the tsar instructed Conciliar Secretary Illarion Ivanov to call all the guards who had manned the Kremlin’s walls and portcullises during the wedding to the Tsar’s Palace Portico (Postel’noe kryl’tso), a stairway and mezzanine leading from the tsar’s palace to the open square beneath, often used for official announcements from the court. It was from this same location that Ivanov had announced on the eve of the wedding the names of the lesser servitors who were to serve in ranks at it. Ivanov thanked the men on the tsar’s behalf for their service during the wedding, gave them vegetables, and sent them out of the Kremlin gates, their duties now completed. Sent off also at this time were the many musicians that played during the festivities on the second and third day.49 It was on this fourth day of the wedding that church hierarchs had in the past come to the court to congratulate and bless the tsar and his tsaritsa, but “the Great Sovereign commanded that this take place on another day of the Lord God’s choosing, so that those in distant cities have the time to make the trip to Moscow to receive the tsar’s favor.”50 The postponement affected not only the churchmen. The fourth day was also when lower ranks of courtiers and members of the urban middle classes appeared before the newly wedded couple to offer their congratulations and gifts. Instead, the courtiers and urban commoners appeared on February 6, when they were feted at a banquet in the Palace of Facets, where they offered their felicitations and presents.51 The next day, February 7, was the day “of the Lord God’s choosing” for churchmen to have their turn congratulating and blessing the couple. The tsaritsa went to the Golden Palace and waited while the tsar met the patriarch and the other clerics who had come in procession from the patriarchal residence across Cathedral Square. They all then moved in unison to the Golden Palace and took their places. Patriarch Ioasaf—old and frail and barely a year from his own death—gave a blessing for Metropolitan Pavel of Sarai and the Don Region to make a speech in his place.52 In it, the hierarch emphasized how the grace of God can turn misfortune into blessing and sorrow into joy—a clear reference to the tsar’s grief over the death of his beloved first wife and his happiness in his new bride.53 “And you, O most pious Autocrat,” Metropolitan Pavel exclaimed, “rejoice in God in your pious bride, as once did Abram in Sarah, Isaac in Rebecca, Jacob in the beautiful Rachel, or the beneficent [blagoplodnoi] David in Abigail, and the most wise Artaxerxes in the pious Esther.”54 Then the metropolitan blessed the tsar’s entire family, starting with his wife, Natal’ia Kirillovna, then his two sons, Fedor and Ivan, then his sisters, Irina, Anna, and Tat’iana, then his daughters, Evdokiia, Marfa, Sofiia, Ekaterina, and Feodosii.55 Listed here was the entire House of

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Romanov in 1671: a long list, to be sure, but one that likely underscored the very need for the marriage to Natal’ia: two sickly males, probably not long for this world, and eight females, none of whom could succeed to the throne.

Abigail and Esther It is worth taking a closer look at the list of happy husbands and wives in Metropolitan Pavel’s speech. We have encountered Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Rachel already. They are mentioned in the third prayer at the Orthodox crowning ceremony, which was modified for use in a speech by Patriarch Filaret when he blessed his son Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich to marry in 1626. Comparing those texts, the lists of biblical patriarchs diverges after Jacob is mentioned: in the prayer in the wedding service, the text moves next to Joseph and Asenath (parents of Ephraim and Manasseh “as the fruit of their procreation”), Zachariah and Elizabeth (the parents of St. John the Forerunner and Baptist), and the “root of Jesse” (producing the Theotokos).56 In the patriarch’s speech, the text moves next to Elkanah and Anna (the parents of the Prophet Samuel, the anointer of King David—a switch with a clear dynastic message, as argued in chapter 2).57 In Metropolitan Pavel’s speech, however, we have yet another change in the list after the three biblical patriarchs. After Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Rachel, we find King David and Abigail (table 3.1) It is perhaps, at first glance, an odd choice to include in the prayer: Abigail was possibly David’s second wife, but not the mother of Solomon, from Table 3.1.  Comparative lists of biblical and extra-biblical couples (and offspring) in wedding prayers and speeches 1602: WEDDING SERVICE SLUZHEBNIK

1626: PATRIARCH FILARET’S SPEECH

1671: METROPOLITAN PAVEL’S SPEECH

Abraham—Sarah

Abraham—Sarah

Abram—Sarah

Isaac—Rebecca

Isaac

Isaac—Rebecca

Jacob—Rachel (12 Patriarchs)

Jacob

Jacob—Rachel

Joseph—Asenath (Ephraim and Manasseh) Zachariah—Elizabeth (the Forerunner) Root of Jesse (Mother of God) Elkanah—Anna (Samuel) Other fathers who pleased God David—Abigail Artaxerxes—Esther

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whom the Davidic dynasty descends. She was known for her beauty—one of “four women of surpassing beauty in the world”—and as one of the seven great female prophetesses of the Tanakh.58 But the Muscovite authors of the speech delivered by Metropolitan Pavel may have included her and not one of David’s other wives because of the well-known verse in 1 Samuel 25, where she serves food to the future King David and attempts to mollify his anger at her first husband, Nabal, who had earlier denied David provisions, despite his having provided protection to Nabal and the other herdsmen of the region. Nabal also pointedly raised questions about David’s ancestry: “Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse?” (1 Sam. 25:10), he asks, raising the specter of low or illegitimate birth. It is precisely these claims that Abigail addresses when she later races to intercept David, who is on his way to Nabal’s land to exact punishment on him: “Please forgive your servant,” she implores, “for any offence I have given you, for Yahweh will certainly assure you of a lasting dynasty [dom veren], since you are fighting Yahweh’s battles and no fault has been found in you throughout your life” (1 Sam. 25:28).59 The reference to Abigail in Metropolitan Pavel’s speech thus pulls on many useful themes: Abigail’s beauty and intellect (she is called “a woman of intelligence and beauty” in verse 3); her wisdom and good influences on David (who proclaims: “blessed be your wisdom and blessed you yourself for today having restrained me from the crime of bloodshed” in verse 33); and, perhaps most importantly, her words predicting a “lasting dynasty,” which was the entire point of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s second marriage. The last couple mentioned in Metropolitan Pavel’s speech—Artaxerxes and Esther—reinforced these messages of dynasty and the virtues of the bride. The story of Artaxerxes and Esther is well known today and was well known in Muscovy from the biblical book of Esther.60 We read in the first chapter that in the third year of his reign King Artaxerxes (called Ahasuerus in the LXX) held a banquet for all the chief officials of his realm in the capital city of Susa that lasted 180 days. He then held another banquet lasting seven days “for all the people living in the citadel of Susa, to high and low alike” (Est. 1:1–5), while Artaxerxes’s queen, Vashti, hosted a banquet “for the women in the royal palace” (Est. 1:9). On the seventh day, King Artaxerxes sent for Vashti, “to display her beauty to the people and the officers-of-state, since she was very beautiful” (Est. 1:10–11). But Vashti refused to come. The biblical text does not provide a reason for Vashti’s disobedience, but Josephus, who wrote an account of this episode in his Jewish Antiquities, reports that Vashti’s refusal was rooted not in her insubordination to her husband, as the men in the biblical text interpreted it, but “out of regard to the laws of the Persians, which forbid the wives to be seen by strangers.”61 Whatever

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the case, the king, in consultation with “Persian and Median officers-of-state who had privileged access to the royal presence and occupied the leading positions in the kingdom” (Est. 1:14), declared that Vashti had “wronged not only the king but also all the officers-of-state and all the peoples inhabiting the provinces of King Ahasuerus,” and that “the queen’s conduct will soon become known to all the women, who will adopt a contemptuous attitude towards their own husbands” (Est. 1:17). For her disobedience, Vashti was disgraced, “never to appear again before King Ahasuerus,” so that “all the women will henceforth bow to the authority of their husbands, both high and low alike” (Est. 1:19, 20). Eventually, the king’s anger abated, and he “remembered Vashti,” meaning, presumably, that his thoughts returned again to marriage. It was then that the king’s “gentlemen-in-waiting” proposed that “a search should be made on the king’s behalf for beautiful young virgins, and the king appoint commissioners throughout the provinces of his realm to bring all these beautiful young virgins to the citadel of Susa, to the harem under the authority of Hegai, the king’s eunuch, custodian of the women” (Est. 2:1–3). Among them was Hadassah, “otherwise called Esther,” the adopted niece of the Jew Mordecai, the “son of Jair, son of Shimei, son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin” (Est. 2:5, 7). A “great number of girls,” including Esther, were brought to Hegai, who immediately identified Esther as a promising candidate for the king’s bed, giving her better food, luxurious clothing, seven “special maids from the king’s household,” and quarters for her and her maids in “the best part of the harem” (Est. 2:9). The candidates were prepared for their appearance before the king by a twelve-month “preparatory period”: six months with “oil of myrrh,” presumably for ritualized purification, and another six months with “spices and lotions commonly used for feminine beauty treatment” (Est. 2:12). At the completion of this year-long preparatory period, each candidate “went to the king”: each girl “went there in the evening, and the following morning returned to another harem entrusted to the care of Shaashgaz, the king’s officer, custodian of concubines,” and the candidate did not return to the king “unless he was particularly pleased with her and had her summoned by name” (Est. 2:13–14). When it was her turn, Esther was brought to King Artaxerxes “in the tenth month . . . in the seventh year of his reign” (Est. 2:16)—that is, four years after Vashti had been repudiated. “And the king liked Esther better than any of the other women; none of the other girls found so much favour and approval with him. So he set the royal diadem on her head and proclaimed her queen instead of Vashti” (Est. 2:17).62 Tsaritsa Natal’ia Kirillovna had herself been selected to be Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s second wife at a series of bride-shows that had run from

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November 28, 1669, to April 17, 1670. Over the course of eighteen separate sessions, the tsar reviewed sixty-nine candidates.63 When Metropolitan Pavel gave his speech, he may well have been thinking of Esther—the beautiful, pious, courageous savior of her people from the story of the biblical book of Esther, drawn to the king first by her unequaled beauty but later proven truly worthy of queenship by her honesty, loyalty to the king, and piety. It is hard to imagine otherwise how a Persian king should make his way into the speech of a Muscovite hierarch at a royal wedding. And so bride-shows were in the air when Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, urged on by his new bride, built the first theater and commissioned the first play in Muscovy, a retelling of the Book of Esther titled The Comedy of Artaxerxes.64 Performed for the tsar and his bride on October 17, 1672—a bare twenty-one months after Aleksei’s and Natal’ia’s wedding—the play reinforced many of the virtues and values that Metropolitan Pavel is likely to have had in mind during his speech.65 Natal’ia Kirillovna was portrayed as a “Muscovite Esther”—a portrayal in the play that had been foreshadowed in the speech of an agèd and venerable metropolitan.66 It is not for nothing that Metropolitan Pavel concluded his prayer with prominent biblical women. While the prayer starts with the three great Hebrew patriarchs (Abram, Isaac, and Jacob), listing their wives (Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachel) merely for identification, it moves directly to two famous biblical wives (Abigail and Esther), listing their husbands now merely for identification. Indeed, David and Artaxerxes are mentioned not in their own right but because their wives have dynastic significance. While the metropolitan surely was not intentionally making a feminist defense of the role of women in monarchy, he was pointing out that there is no dynasty without royal women, and that the names of these royal women were to be lifted high in prayer. Having concluded his speech, the patriarch blessed the tsar and tsaritsa with an icon and a gem-encrusted cross. Then he and all the other hierarchs and churchmen presented their gifts to the tsar and tsaritsa, their names announced by Khitrovo as each came forward.67 When the presentation of gifts concluded, the patriarch blessed the tsar and tsaritsa and was escorted by the tsar himself to the door of the Golden Palace. The tsar returned to his seat and received more gifts from members of his court. Then the entire assembly processed to the Palace of Facets for a sumptuous banquet, which brought the wedding celebrations to an end.68 The second wedding of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich rewrote the ritual rulebook for royal weddings in Muscovy. Out were many of the customary pre-Christian elements and many of the secular entertainments that

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had characterized royal weddings going as far back as records and memory go. Rituals were eliminated or moved to different places in the sequence of rites. And the wedding was removed from the control of the usual choreographers—the conciliar secretaries of the Ambassadorial Chancery—and handed over to favorites and to the Chancery of the Great Court. The tsar became his own choreographer, or at least exerted a determining influence on Prince Nikita Ivanovich Odoevskii, the boyar Bogdan Khitrovo, Conciliar Secretary Illarion Ivanov, and Conciliar Secretary Semen Titov, who evidently shared that responsibility among them. Whereas custom and habit made the weddings of Muscovy’s rulers a stable rite through the sixteenth century, the needs of a new dynasty and the proclivities of a middle-aged tsar made the wedding ritual something of a moving target in the seventeenth century. The extent of the changes that took place in Aleksei Mikhailovich’s second wedding has largely gone unnoticed, probably because the ceremonial and full muster have never been published.69 As a result, the significance of these changes introduced at this wedding has been underappreciated and understudied. But noticed or not, the royal wedding ritual was changing, and it continued to change through the last quarter of the seventeenth century. These changes occurred in a larger context of an underlying religious and political culture that was in flux.70 As Paul Bushkovitch closely put it, “traditional ceremonial . . . had to change, and change it did.”71 And as Edward Muir put it more generally, “if societies demand rituals, then changing societies will produce changing rituals.”72 In Muscovy, changes in culture and rituals closely tracked each other.

Changing Societies, Changing Rituals When Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich died on January 29, 1676, he left three sons behind who could—and did, in turn—succeed him. Two were born of his first marriage to Mariia Miloslavskaia, and one from his second to Natal’ia Naryshkina. The eldest of the three was Fedor Alekseevich, who was four months short of his fourteenth birthday, intelligent and pious like his father but sickly and frail. The second son, Ivan, was nine years old and severely mentally and physically handicapped. In contrast, the son born of Aleksei Mikhailovich’s second marriage, Peter, was four months short of his fourth birthday at the time of the tsar’s death but already the picture of health and vitality.73 Still, there was no guarantee in an era before antibiotics that the strapping young Peter Alekseevich would ever reach adulthood and himself produce heirs.

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The four weddings that the three brothers would contract in the 1680s— Fedor III’s two, Ivan V’s one and only, and Peter I’s first—were nothing like the weddings of their father, or each other. In part, the variation was because change had been, as we have seen, a regular feature of Romanov wedding rituals since the first one in 1624. The Romanovs and their handlers introduced changes to the older, sixteenth-century model of the royal wedding first to broadcast a specific dynastic message, then to reflect a given ruler’s personality. But the changes we see in the 1680s reflect more than motives of faith and dynasty. They at once reveal both the enduring relevance of ritual in the political culture of the Kremlin and the changes taking place in that political culture in the last decades of the seventeenth century, even before the onset of Peter the Great’s reforms. The oldest surviving son, Fedor, succeeded to the throne without controversy, although, in Lindsey Hughes’s words, it was more “a matter of tradition than a written law of succession.”74 It was hardly a surprise, however. Fedor had been designated the heir to his father’s throne in a special ceremony (ob”iavleniia) on Red Square on September 1, 1674—the church new year.75 But if the succession was clear, the future was still very murky. Fedor III’s ill health would make urgent the always-present requirement for him to marry and produce male heirs so the line could continue in the “traditional” way in this time and space: from father to son. Even so, it would only be in June or July 1680 that the new tsar would hold a bride-show, when he was already nineteen years old, the delay probably the result of his ill health. His choice—or, more likely, the choice of his favorites, Ivan Maksimovich Iazykov and Mikhail Timofeevich Likhachev—fell on Agaf ’ia Simeonovna Grushetskaia.76 The wedding was originally planned for June 13, 1680, as is evident from the unpublished draft wedding ceremonial, which was nearly totally consumed by a fire and today survives only as seventy-one fragments reassembled (not always in the proper order) into thirty-five folios by later archivists and preservation specialists.77 Enough of the text survives, however, to see that this is a very early draft of the ceremonial, with blank spaces left in the text for names to be later inserted, and the abbreviation “p” inserted where the tsar’s full title would ordinarily appear (evidently for pisat’, or “write in later”).78 The charred text also clearly reveals that Tsar Fedor III’s wedding was originally planned to be nearly identical to his father’s wedding in 1671.79 But Fedor III’s wedding did not, in the end, look like his father’s. To be sure, some key elements remained. On the eve of the wedding—Saturday, July 17, 1680—the tsar summoned Patriarch Ioakim (1674–1690) and his

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“royal advisers” (gosudarskii sigglit) to consult with him on his marriage. He met with the patriarch first, who gave him his blessing to wed: Verily have you, O pious Sovereign, Tsar, and Grand Prince Fedor Alekseevich of all Great and Little and White Russia, Autocrat, deigned to inform me, your intercessor in prayer, of this long-awaited news, and God Himself has implanted in your royal heart the peace of the Spirit [mir blagopriiatnyi]; and I have prayed for the pious Great Sovereign Tsar and Grand Prince Fedor Alekseevich of all Great and Little and White Russia, Autocrat, that his, the Great Sovereign’s, commendable [blagoizvolit’noe] intention should be fulfilled, and that it should come to pass just as he has proclaimed aloud it from his holy and royal lips, and as this intention, instilled in him by God, has brought great rejoicing to all his advisers and to all Orthodox Christians.80 This speech, although different in words, was similar in sentiment to those delivered by patriarchs before previous royal weddings. Ioakim then turned to the assembled courtiers, who “all with one voice blessed God, Who has willed it is to be so.”81 With all in accord, the tsar announced that the wedding would take place the next day, Sunday, July 18— underscoring for us the utterly ritualistic purpose of this audience— and that the bride would now enter the Kremlin formally on the eve of the wedding and be given the title “tsarevna,” just as had happened for the tsar’s stepmother, Natal’ia Naryshkina, some ten years before.82 Then the tsar went privately to the Dormition Cathedral to pray, just as his father had done in 1671—without a large retinue and without the patriarch meeting him. Thus many of the essential elements of royal weddings going back more than a century took place, condensed and formulaic, but nonetheless performed as before. No tsar, it appears, could wed without the blessing of the first hierarch of the Church or the acquiescence of the great families of the court. On the wedding day, the cortège accompanying the tsar to the church was the smallest of any on record. Nine courtiers—six boyars, one okol’nichii, the postel’nichii, and the striapchii s kliuchem—followed the groom in the procession to the church.83 The wedding service, we learn, was officiated by the patriarch—only the second time a patriarch had officiated at a royal wedding since 1560—assisted by two archpriests, two other priests, a deacon, and two singers.84 The wedding service itself is not described in any detail, except to say that there was a sermon delivered by the patriarch on the sacrament of marriage “based on the holy writings.”85

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On the next day, the tsar and his new bride received in audience all the courtiers from boyars on down to the rank-and-file—or, in the language of the text, permitted them to “behold his royal eyes.”86 The boyar Prince Vasilii Fedorovich Odoevskii announced the names of each person as he entered to see the tsar and offer his congratulations. No mention in the ceremonial is made of any gift exchange or of any parallel audience with the tsaritsa. Nor is there any mention of any special audiences with churchmen or merchants, as we know took place in 1671 and 1648. As the document itself faithfully explains: “And unlike previous royal weddings, there was not the usual royal ritual.”87 Originally intended as a duplicate of Aleksei Mikhailovich’s second wedding, Fedor III’s first wedding was entirely new and different: smaller (nine courtiers in the procession, not forty or more), shorter in length (barely three days, not four, five, or more), and abridged in all its usual elements.88 That the patriarch officiated hardly compensated for the lack of spectacle that otherwise characterized this wedding. Why the changes in the ritual were introduced is never explained in the text beyond attributing them to the tsar’s own orders: the ritual was to be arranged “according to his royal rubrics” (po svoemu tsarskou chinu), and the reduced number of courtiers serving was because “the Great Sovereign so ordered it for the blessing of his holy matrimony, to have in the processions only his closest servitors.”89 The reference to “his royal rubrics” places the impetus for these idiosyncratic wedding rituals on the tsar, but “his” revised rubrics were likely more a concession to his weak health than a reflection of his strong will.90 The ritual idiosyncrasies and concessions to infirmity reappeared at the tsar’s second wedding. Agaf ’ia Grushetskaia died in childbirth on June 14, 1681 (her infant son, Il’ia, followed her six days later).91 The tsar himself was also near death’s door, but the imperative to produce an heir to the dynasty was so strong that caution was thrown to the wind, and the feeble and, surely, reluctant tsar was forced again to perform the Dance of Isaiah, as best as his reduced condition would permit. His bride was Marfa Matveevna Apraksina, to whom he would be married for less than three months and who would outlive him by more than thirty-three years. She was the first tsaritsa not to go to a nunnery after the death of her husband (if not before, in some cases). Instead, she enjoyed a long and prosperous life as a respected widow in the Romanov family.92 What we know about the wedding comes mostly from a fragmentary and unpublished draft ceremonial, prepared before the wedding and edited afterward to reflect changes introduced into the ritual, and a court muster called the “Muster without Precedence,” again produced after the fact.93 From these sources, we learn that Fedor III’s second wedding took place on

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Wednesday, February 15, 1682, around 5:15 in the afternoon (v 6 chasu dnia, v pervoi chetverti).94 The nuptials were celebrated in the Church of the Resurrection on the upper floors of the tsar’s Kremlin apartments (vverkhu), not in the Dormition Cathedral. The tsar’s father-confessor, Archpriest Nikita Vasil’evich of the Kremlin’s Church of the Annunciation, officiated rather than the patriarch.95 The draft ceremonial begins with the wedding day, so it does not report the blessing-to-wed ritual, the renaming ritual, or the formal entry into the Kremlin, though it stands to reason that they were performed.96 Zabelin quotes an uncited source that reports that “on February 12, 1682, the patriarch came out from the tsar’s living quarters [kabineta] into the Antechamber Palace [v peredniuiu] and announced to the boyars and all the court that Marfa Matveevna [Apraksina] had been ‘declared [narekli] tsarevna and grand princess,’ by the patriarch himself.”97 The ceremonial tells us that the couple attended the Divine Liturgy together at the Church of the Resurrection, that a procession of no less than twenty-four (and perhaps twenty-eight) servitors accompanied them to and from the church for their wedding, that banquets were planned but possibly canceled (the descriptions of them are crossed out in the draft ceremonial), and that audiences and perhaps gift exchanges were planned as well, involving the urban middle classes, and probably others (though, again, this section of the draft is heavily edited and so may have been omitted).98 With no final version of the ceremonial in hand, and only a brief Muster entry to offer corroboration, we cannot know with precision what this wedding included, only what was contemplated. But we do know it was a quick affair: the “Muster without Precedence” reports that the Kremlin, which was typically closed during the several days of royal wedding celebrations, was reopened at ten o’clock that same evening.99 The Muster also reports, with perhaps a tinge of perceptible apology, that “there was no wedding ceremonial of any kind [a svadebnogo chinu nikakova nebyla].”100 Another chronicle notice reports that on the following Tuesday, February 21, a prayer service (moleben) and hierarchical liturgy was served, with the patriarch and members of the court present. After the liturgy, church hierarchs and courtiers brought gifts to the royal couple.101 Thus many, though not all, of the base elements of the traditional royal wedding were present, but it is nonetheless hard not to agree with Zabelin, who concluded that the wedding was celebrated very differently from previous weddings: “quietly, without special festivities.”102 If the two weddings of Tsar Fedor III dramatically signal the further abridgment of the old Muscovite wedding ritual, the last two weddings of the century—Ivan V’s and Peter the Great’s first—indicate just as dramatically how the wedding ritual itself could still be used to broadcast a dynastic

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message. Of all the weddings of the seventeenth century, these two are the least well documented. Still, we can piece enough together to compare them broadly and see the connections between the rituals and the politics of the court. With the birth of three children after Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s second marriage in 1671, the Romanov dynasty came to be composed of two branches. The senior branch was descended from Mariia Miloslavskaia and included Fedor III and the future Ivan V, but also a sister named Sofiia (as well as other sisters). The junior branch of the dynasty descended from the tsar’s marriage to Natal’ia Naryshkina and included Natal’ia Alekseevna and the future Peter I (see appendix C.2). These two branches competed with each other even before the death of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich in 1676, but open warfare broke out between them only afterward, a feud that Paul Bushkovitch has grippingly called “a struggle of unparalleled ferocity.”103 It was a feud that dominated court politics for the next decade and a half and lingered even into the reign of Catherine II (1762–1796), as the succession after Peter I’s death (in 1725) bounced back and forth between these two opposing branches of the dynasty.104 The weddings of the two surviving males in these branches demonstrate that even at the dawn of the modern period in Russian history, ritual, power, and politics were as intertwined as they had ever been. When Tsar Fedor III died on April 27, 1682, the question of the succession was still very much up in the air. The tsar’s lone son, Il’ia, had died shortly after birth in 1681, leaving only Fedor’s brother, Ivan, aged sixteen, and his half-brother, Peter, aged ten. But Ivan was hardly fit to rule, and everyone knew it. He was nearly blind, could not walk unassisted, and had difficulty with his speech. Peter remained the very image of fitness and health. It was likely practical considerations that led the boyars and church hierarchs assembled around Fedor III’s deathbed to select Peter over Ivan as the next tsar. Their decision was probably significantly assisted by the fact that the Naryshkins, Peter’s mother’s family, already occupied important positions of power that positioned them to advocate Peter’s rights over Ivan’s. Whatever the reason, it was Peter, not Ivan, who succeeded Fedor. Peter’s mother, Tsaritsa Natal’ia, promptly assumed the regency—placing firmly in the hands of royal in-laws the direct control of Muscovite policy and politics.105 But here Sofiia Alekseevna enters into the story. The daughter of Tsar Aleksei’s Miloslavskii bride, Sofiia strenuously opposed Peter’s succession. This energetic, highly intelligent woman had quickly became the chief figure of the Miloslavskii faction, and she stirred up the Muscovite musketeers (strel’tsy) to oppose the Naryshkin faction. The bloody revolt she instigated brought the brief victory of the Naryshkins over the Miloslavskiis to an end. The Naryshkins were compelled to share the throne, with Peter and Ivan as

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co-tsars. Most importantly, however, the regency was taken from Natal’ia, the dowager tsaritsa, and given to Tsarevna Sofiia, the co-tsars’ sister (and half-sister). What had been a Naryshkin victory quickly turned into a disaster for them. The Miloslavskiis, who had largely been displaced from the center of power and politics since the remarriage of Tsar Aleksei in 1671, found themselves overnight in firm grasp of the reins of government.106 But the victory remained fragile. Ivan’s weak health posed a constant threat to the Miloslavskii faction and to Sofiia’s regency. Should the boy die, all would be lost; the Miloslavskii’s hold on power would evaporate as quickly as it had been established. For Sofiia’s sake, and for the sake of the Miloslavskii faction, Ivan V had to marry. Only if Ivan Alekseevich had a son would Sofiia’s grip on power no longer depend on the fate of a boy king whose health was so poor and mind so weak. Ivan V performed the Dance of Isaiah, as best he could manage it, on Wednesday, January 9, 1684. His bride, Praskov’ia Fedorovna Saltykova, had been selected nominally by him in a bride-show, and she outlived her husband by some twenty-five years—the second royal widow to avoid going to a convent, and a prominent, if politically benign, figure at court until her death in 1723.107 The couple would have five daughters—Mariia (1689– 1692), Feodosiia (1690–1691), Ekaterina (1691–1733), Anna (the future Anna I, 1693–1740), and Praskov’ia (1693–1731)—but no son. Ekaterina, Anna, and Praskov’ia would marry, but only Ekaterina would have children, continuing the Miloslavskii line of the Romanov dynasty through the female line, which would last into the early nineteenth century, ending with the sad and ill-fated Ivan VI (1740–1741) and his four exiled siblings.108 (Some sources indicate that Praskov’ia had a son by her marriage to Ivan Il’ich Dmitriev-Mamonov, but the child died young.)109 No ceremonial or muster survives for the wedding, so we know very little about how it was celebrated. Some hints in one notice about the wedding suggest, however, that it was celebrated with more grandeur than Fedor III’s second wedding almost two years before. The wedding service took place not in a private chapel but in the Kremlin’s Dormition Cathedral, the traditional wedding place of tsars, and it was officiated by Patriarch Ioakim.110 In fact, it appears that the patriarchal court was tapped to serve at the wedding: along with the patriarch, two patriarchal deacons served, as well as two other priests (kliucharia), who sang the responses, and a third deacon—all three evidently from the cathedral’s clergy. This same notice tells us that a moleben was served after the Divine Liturgy on Sunday, January 13, and that on the following Wednesday, January 23, a banquet and gift exchange took place.111 There may have been additional banquets and audiences as well,

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and we know that the wedding was preceded by the traditional bride-show and the traditional renaming of the bride’s father (hence the bride’s patronymic)—from Illarion to Fedor (which is to say, Illarionovna to Fedorovna).112 Praskov’ia Fedorovna’s nineteenth-century biographer, Mikhail Ivanovich Semevskii, claimed that the wedding “was performed with all the ceremonies that usually accompanied such an event,”113 and he mentions the preparation of traditional wedding costumes and accoutrements (nariad), ritualistic purification baths on the morning of the second day of the wedding, and even music and various entertainments (igry).114 But Semevskii provided no citations to the foreigners’ accounts he quoted, and so it is not clear if what he writes is true or instead a conflation of general descriptions of Muscovite weddings. Whatever the case, the hapless tsar’s wedding was clearly to some degree a throwback to the days of the grander spectacles of his forebears, projecting a message through ritual that everyone—foreigner and Muscovite alike, Miloslavskii and Naryshkin alike—could read and understand.115 Ivan V may have been lame and lethargic, but his wedding was designed to portray grandeur and virility—a message necessary to the Miloslavskii branch of the dynasty, which had all its hopes riding on the fecundity of the sickly tsar. The Naryshkins and their allies also understood that the political future of their branch of the dynasty depended on Peter producing a male heir. The Miloslavskiis had a head start, having married their kinsmen first. The interval in the boys’ ages was on the Miloslavskii’s side: Peter was only twelveand-a-half years old when Ivan V married. The Naryshkins were spurred into action, however, when, toward the end of 1688, Praskov’ia announced to the court that she was pregnant. Very quickly, a bride-show was arranged for the young tsar and a suitable candidate, probably selected beforehand, was placed in it for Peter to pick. On Sunday, January 27, 1689—still shy of his seventeenth birthday—Peter married Evdokiia Fedorovna Lopukhina.116 If we know little of Ivan V’s wedding rites, we know even less about Peter’s.117 Again, no ceremonial or muster survives, but we do have a brief notice about it, similar to the one we have for Ivan V’s. According to it, the wedding took place not in the Dormition Cathedral but in the Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul—a private chapel in the upper chamber (vverkhu) of the tsar’s Kremlin palace.118 The wedding service itself was performed not by the patriarch, as Ivan V’s wedding has been, but by Peter’s father-confessor, Archpriest Merkurii of the Annunciation Cathedral.119 It appears to have been a low-key affair; and the public celebration seems rather to have taken place on the next day, on Monday, January 28. According to the notice, “and on the twenty-eighth, from the first hour of daylight to one o’clock in the afternoon, the bells of the Dormition Cathedral rang.”120 A

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moleben was served in the Dormition Cathedral with many church hierarchs officiating, though not the patriarch, who could not attend due to illness (za skorbiiu). Boyars were also let in for the service: after the moleben, “all the boyars and leading courtiers approached [vse podoshli boliare i vlasti]” to offer their congratulations to the couple. And with that, the account abruptly ends. Of all royal weddings in our period, the Great Peter’s was the least grand. These four weddings, unevenly documented as they are, reveal much about the court and the politics of the 1680s. Royal weddings from 1680 on were smaller affairs in comparison to those during the previous century and a half. Fedor III’s first and Ivan V’s were grander and larger weddings than Fedor III’s second or Peter I’s first, but all four appear to have been considerably smaller court happenings than any previous wedding ritual in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. Small weddings for Russian rulers were not the norm: not even Ivan IV’s fifth or seventh weddings (1572 and 1580)—for which we have sources—were scaled back, despite the obvious brashness of marrying past the permitted three times. Nor was Aleksei Mikhailovich’s second wedding in 1671, which remained a grand spectacle even with all the modifications he introduced as an accommodation to his own conscience and sense of propriety. In a span of less than twenty years, a stable and essential court ritual had been ransacked by revisions and reductions. The question remains: why were the four weddings in the 1680s celebrated so differently from the ones before it? Given that the first three weddings in the 1680s were arranged for tsars (Fedor III and Ivan V) with physical or mental disabilities, it might be easy to imagine that the changes merely accommodated the special needs of the groom. That, certainly, has been the usual explanation.121 But even in the reduced forms they took, the grooms still had to move from venue to venue, perform the liturgical rites, utter the prescribed assenting words, and meet with their courts over at least two days of wedding formalities (if not more). Only so much could be abridged for the rituals to have any effect, and not every element that was taxing was eliminated. A perhaps better explanation emerges when one steps back a few paces from the details and observes the larger context in which these changes occurred. Royal weddings were not the only rituals undergoing transformation in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. The Palm Sunday ritual stands as a particularly good example of a once sturdy rite being revised and eliminated in these decades.122 But underneath and responding to all these visible changes in the ritual life of the court were a number of fundamental transformations in the political culture that spanned the second half of

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the seventeenth century—well before, even, the advent of Peter I’s reforms. Robert O. Crummey has documented an inflation of honors—the dramatic increase in the number of courtiers holding the highest court ranks— and a number of other scholars have further shown the expansion of the administrative machinery of the state, especially the number of chancelleries (prikazy) in this same period.123 And most important of all, perhaps, was the abolition in 1682 of the system of precedence (mestnichestvo), which determined which servitors from which families could serve in positions at court and in the cavalry.124 It is probably no accident that Fedor III’s two weddings have only ceremonials (albeit rudimentary ones) and no musters, and that the weddings of Ivan V and the first wedding of Peter I have neither. While it is possible they have been lost over time, it is also true that the wedding muster, after the abolition of mestnichestvo, served no official purpose at court and so may never have been compiled in the first place. A time would shortly come when documenting weddings would serve a purpose again. But in the decade before the reign and reforms of Peter the Great, no one saw the need. The seventeenth century witnessed a crescendo of change in the political culture at the tsar’s court and in the rituals that reflected and facilitated that culture. By the second half of the century, the muffled tones of change we see at the outset of the century—trends that so impressed Edward Keenan that he spoke of a “Godunovian Renaissance”—had become fortississimo.125 The weddings of the tsars were no different from other rites at court. The changes began with the first Romanov wedding and accelerated and expanded as the century wore on. The reasons changed, too. The modifications to the wedding rites of the first Romanov were principally about enhancing the legitimacy of the new dynasty. But with time, the dynasty’s sense of security on the throne permitted it to modify the wedding ceremonies in still other ways and for other reasons. Aleksei Mikhailovich’s piety left its mark on his two wedding rituals, and the infirmities of his two eldest surviving sons likewise left theirs. It is hard not to wonder if things perhaps worked in reverse for Aleksei Mikhailovich’s third son: that the slapdash wedding ritual organized for the young Peter I left its mark on the young tsar’s personality. Peter would use weddings as much as any of his ancestors and predecessors would to send political messages and bolster his own power. And the changes in wedding rituals that were introduced in his youth would free him to consider ever more changes to the rites and symbols. Peter would tweak wedding rituals in new and unexpected—even shocking—ways, to be sure, but he was really just continuing a trend that was old and, by then, customary.

q Ch ap ter 4 “To Live Together in Holy Matrimony” Orthodox and Heterodox

When Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich instructed his chancellery secretaries in late 1647 to eliminate from his first wedding the two occasions when hops were sprinkled over him and his bride because he “desires to arrange things as he prefers,” he was removing one of the signature rituals of Muscovite royal weddings.1 His reasons for doing so are clear enough, if not openly stated in the ceremonial: the Most Gentle Tsar objected to the presence of this non-Christian rite at the solemn celebration of the Christian Sacrament of Marriage. The hops were an earthy, preChristian symbol of fertility, one that required no intercession by the Holy Trinity, the Mother of God, or the saints to be efficacious. The custom was therefore worse than ineffectual: it was sinful. The hops were just the beginning, however. The tsar altered or deleted other rituals tinged with pagan origins and meaning at both of his weddings, as we have seen—either erasing entirely the traditional non-Christian fertility rites or replacing them with Christian ones. He even went after the secular music and rowdy entertainment typical of a royal wedding, probably because they, too, contained pagan themes in the lyrics and accompanied, or encouraged, licentiousness. It took two tries, but he managed to remove from his weddings what evidently were to him the most offending and obvious pagan fertility elements of a royal wedding. To do so was required, he must have thought, in order to “live together in Holy Matrimony in accordance 101

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Figure 4.1.  Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich with church hierarchs, in RGADA, fond 135, sec. V, rub. III, no. 16. RGADA (used with permission).

with the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ, His holy disciples and apostles, and the Holy Fathers.”2 Curiously enough, the pagan rites that Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich so despised were perhaps the one constant of Muscovite royal weddings going back to our first documentary descriptions of weddings, dating at least back to 1526 and the wedding of Vasilii III and Elena Glinskaia, and certainly earlier. These pagan rites survived the remarriages of Ivan IV, the chaos of the Time of Troubles, and the refashioning of the wedding rites for the first Romanov tsar to help solidify the new dynasty’s hold on the throne. Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich may at his weddings have visited the graves of his predecessors at a different moment—and for an expanded purpose—from previous royal grooms, but the sprinklings, sheaves of grain, phallic arrows, and forties of sables were all deployed in accordance with the centuries-old custom. Only with the second Romanov, Aleksei Mikhailovich, would these traditional fertility symbols be targeted for modification and elimination. Muscovite royal weddings before (and even to an extent, after) the reign of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich certainly do have the outward look of an inartfully blended ritual, Christian and non-Christian. Long before East Slavs were Christians, they were evoking the supernatural to accomplish the goal of any marriage: fertility, prosperity, harmony, and a long life together as a couple. Daniel Kaiser has closely examined the symbols and rituals and charted the seemingly artificial blending of Christian and pre-Christian elements in the

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documented weddings of Ivan IV. Kaiser concluded that the “ritual which attended Muscovite elite marriage, even when bathed in a superficial wash of Christian ceremony, retained strong links to the non-Christian culture of Muscovy.”3 The symbols of pagan and Christian Rus’ coexisted, but the latter were artificially and awkwardly laid atop the former. “The overwhelming bulk of the ceremonies,” according to Kaiser, “owes nothing to Christianity and, in many ways, runs counter to Christian notions of marriage.”4 Kaiser concluded that the “church played a minor role in marrying Ivan” and that the “Muscovite wedding ritual at bottom derived from popular and ancient practice rather than from any recent cultural innovation,” like the adoption of Christianity.5 In the end, Kaiser ventured that, in the Russia of Ivan’s time, “Christianity had made little progress in displacing traditional, non-Christian wedding customs.”6 The comingling of Christian and non-Christian belief and practice has been explored by scholars, though rarely in the context of weddings, royal or otherwise. Historians and ethnographers of nearly every school of thought have studied the concept of dvoeverie (dual belief )—as Eve Levin has helpfully defined it: “a religious system in which pagan beliefs and practices are preserved under a veneer of Christianity”7—and they have largely agreed, despite their varied approaches, that pagan and Christian beliefs and practices stood in opposition to one another.8 “All,” quoting Levin again, “view the religion of the people in the Middle Ages—if not later—as basically pagan” and see the relationship between the people and the elites of Church and state as “primarily—if not exclusively—antagonistic.” But, says Levin, the “emphasis on conflict has distorted the evidence”: “The concept of dvoeverie demanded that scholars attempt to sort out what is pagan from what is Christian, leaving no room for overlap between the two systems, or for the development of beliefs that draw on both pagan and Christian concepts.”9 Levin prefers instead to reinterpret the “popular religion of medieval Russia as a folk version of Christianity.”10 Levin’s discerning treatment of premodern Muscovite Christianity fits what we know about weddings, a place where Christianity and pre-Christian customs come into contact more obviously than at perhaps any other moment in a person’s life. Kenneth Stevenson’s expansive treatment of the liturgical history of Christian wedding rites reminds us that “eastern rites of marriage take us into a world very different from the West, in which prayer forms and symbolism are much richer, and the mixture of folk-lore and Christian ceremony are complete.”11 For this reason, the Eastern Orthodox perspective on the cohabitation of Christian and non-Christian symbols and rituals may not have been as troubling to Ivan IV and his contemporaries as it is to some of us. As Stevenson puts it, the wedding was “a series of liturgical forms which

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arise out of ordinary life.”12 Consequently, the combination of Christian and non-Christian elements in weddings was likely not viewed as problematical at all in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and certainly not as elements in opposition to each other—at least not until religious sensibilities changed in the seventeenth century. To the extent that anyone noticed or cared about the different origins of these symbolic elements in the wedding, they might have thought of it just as Stevenson proposes: as a case of “sacralizing the secular.”13 Thus the goal of Muscovite wedding choreographers (before Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich) was never to displace traditional, non-Christian wedding customs with new Christian rites but to integrate the two into a synthetic set of rituals that “sacralized” the entire endeavor, thereby blurring the boundary between them. The Most Gentle Tsar’s revisions should be seen, then, as part of the shift in focus in religious life and a hardening of confessional identity that took place in the seventeenth century, particularly after the shock of the Time of Troubles. The evidence from royal weddings fits what Bushkovitch observed: that the early and mid-seventeenth century witnessed a “general hardening of confessional lines in Europe at this time, among Catholics and Protestants, as well as the Orthodox.”14 When it comes to the religious elements of royal weddings, we actually can be thrown off the scent by the sources themselves. The appearance of a hybrid rite with superficial Christian elements is itself suggested by the documents that were generated by the tsar’s court to memorialize the event—the wedding ceremonial and wedding muster. These sources describe only what went on outside the church service itself, with only a passing reference to the service in the church, leaving that duty instead to the service book, the Book of Needs.15 Even the Domostroi—known so well for its strict religious admonitions on everything from how to hang icons to how to greet a priest to how a Christian husband ought to rule his roost—pays little attention to the Christian elements in its descriptions of the wedding ceremony.16 To tackle the question of the role religious sensibilities and symbols played in Muscovite royal weddings we have to look beyond the usual sources—and beyond the usual brides and grooms. This chapter explores the question of religion in the royal wedding ceremony by examining the few times when there was a mixed marriage: an orthodox dynast marrying a heterodox foreigner. These instances were so rare and required such modification to the usual rubrics that we can more clearly apprehend what the Muscovites themselves saw as essential (or dispensable) elements of wedding rites.17 We also get an expanded view of the goings on inside the churches where these mixed marriages were solemnized. As a result, we can see how the Muscovites viewed the symbols and rituals they employed in their weddings, and how both pagan and Christian

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elements were unproblematic to them until Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich decided he had a problem with them at his own weddings. Three cases offer particularly rich source materials for this comparison: the 1495 wedding of Elena Ivanovna, daughter of Ivan III, and Grand Duke Alexander of Lithuania; the 1573 marriage of Mariia Staritskaia (first cousin once removed of Ivan IV) and Magnus of Denmark; and the 1605 and 1606 weddings of the First False Dmitrii (the impostor who claimed to be a son of Ivan IV) and Marina Mniszech (see appendix C.1). These weddings reveal, as Levin has already posited, that “judging medieval religion by the standard of a contemporary intellectualized and rationalized philosophical system can result only in a distortion of pre-modern religious phenomena.”18

Elena Ivanovna and Alexander of Lithuania In November 1494, a delegation from Grand Duke Alexander of Lithuania (1492–1506; king of Poland, 1501–1506) arrived in Moscow.19 Its mission was to continue negotiations for the marriage between the grand duke and the daughter of Grand Prince Ivan III of Moscow, Elena Ivanovna. These negotiations had begun two years before, when another embassy from Alexander arrived in Moscow to begin peace talks aimed at ending what we today call the Russo-Lithuanian War of 1487–1494.20 It took several tries, but in late 1494 the two sides agreed to end hostilities and to enter a loose alliance. They also agreed no longer to allow princes who had emigrated (that is, defected) from one side to the other to bring with them title to their landed estates, and they defined the boundary between the two realms with greater precision than ever before.21 An important provision for Ivan III was that the treaty employ his new title “Sovereign of all Rus’ ” (gosudar’ vsea Rusi), thereby serving as the first international recognition of it.22 Sealing the deal, finally, was the marriage of Ivan III’s eldest daughter, Elena, to the Lithuanian ruler. This was not the first time that Elena’s hand had been sought by a foreign suitor. In January 1489, Nikolaus Poppel—a man, according to John Fennell, of “keen perception, undeniable intelligence and lamentable tactlessness”— made the second of his two visits to Moscow representing the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick III (1452–1493).23 His goal was to assess the situation in Muscovy politically and diplomatically and to explore an alliance between the Muscovites and the empire against the Poles. Poppel was granted three audiences with the grand prince, the first two in the company of the boyars and secretaries of the court, the third one in private with the grand prince. At the first, Poppel broached the subject of an alliance that would be sealed with a marriage between the emperor’s nephew, Albrecht of Baden-Hachberg

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(1456–1488), and one of Ivan III’s daughters—an odd suggestion given that Albrecht had died in July 1488 (at the age of thirty-three), evidently without word reaching Poppel before his departure.24 In any case, the suggestion was ignored. At the time of Poppel’s embassy, Elena was a mere thirteen years old, which may have been reason enough to rebuff the proposal (her sisters, Evdokiia and Feodosiia, were six and four years old, respectively—too young to be considered, even in that day and age). The Muscovites showed some interest in the treaty but did not dignify the marriage proposal with a response, and so the audience ended. Poppel was granted a second interview, during which he showed his desperation and “lamentable tactlessness”: he asked to see the young grand princess so he might report back to the emperor on her appearance, but the request was regarded as impertinent by the Muscovites and brusquely rejected. As Karamzin artfully put it, Poppel was told that “our customs do not permit us to show our young maidens to their suitors or matchmakers until the time befits such an introduction.”25 Poppel caused even greater offense at his third audience when he incautiously offered Grand Prince Ivan III the title of “king” from the hand of the emperor as a further inducement to join sides with the empire against Poland.26 The grand prince instructed his secretary, Fedor Kuritsyn, to remind Poppel—and, presumably, the emperor—that Ivan III was already in possession of an ancient crown of equal rank: By God’s grace we have been sovereigns in our own land since the beginning, since our earliest ancestors; our appointment comes from God, as did that of our ancestors, and we beg God to grant us and our children to abide for ever in the same state, namely as sovereigns in our own land; and as beforehand we did not desire to be appointed [sovereign] by any one, so now too do we not desire it.27 Attempting to salvage the situation, Poppel proposed two new suitors who were also relatives of Emperor Frederick III—Frederick III of Saxony, the grandnephew of the emperor, and Siegmund of Brandenburg, the son of Elector Albrecht III Achilles of Brandenburg and the younger brother of Frederick I of Brandenburg, who was married to the daughter of Casimir IV of Poland. Ivan III rejected the idea immediately and, to drive home the point, insisted that only the emperor’s son, Maximilian, would be a worthy spouse for a Muscovite grand prince’s daughter.28 The Muscovites overlooked these diplomatic faux pas and dispatched in March 1489 their most able diplomat, Iurii Trakhaniotov, to the emperor, to pursue the idea of an alliance, to impress on him the dignity and high rank the Muscovite ruler already enjoyed, and to recruit various skilled

Cymburgis of Masovia

Margaret of Austria

Ernest of Saxony

Bolesław Januszowic

Bolesław IV Duke of Warsaw

Konrad III Duke of Masovia

Ernest of Austria

Leopold III of Austria Albert III

Albert IV

Albert III of Austria

Habsburg

Albrecht of Baden

Maximilian

Casimir IV Jagiellon

Jagaitto/ Władysław II Jagietto

Algirda

Jagiellonian

m. 1495

Siegmund of Brandenburg

Albert III Achilles of Brandenburg

Vasilii I

Elena Ivanovna

Ivan III

Vasilii II

Sofiia

Vytautas the Great

Ke˛stutis

Hohenzollern Gedyminas

Sophia Frederick of Brandenburg

Alexander of Lithuania

Charles I of Catherine Frederick III Elizabeth of Baden of Austria Holy Roman Austria Emperor

Baden (Zähringen)

Figure 4.2.  The proposed husbands of Elena Ivanovna, 1489–1495

Frederick III of Saxony

Siemowit IV Duke of Masovia

Janusz I Duke of Warsaw

Siemowit III Duke of Masovia

Piast

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craftsmen—Fennell called them “technicians”—to come to Moscow and work in Ivan III’s capital.29 Because nothing came of Poppel’s efforts either on the treaty or the marriage—clearly he was the wrong man for the job—he left Moscow at the same time as Trakhaniotov, having failed in everything except offending his hosts.30 Despite the rough beginning, negotiations for a treaty and a marriage continued. In July of the following year, Georg von Thurn (referred to in Muscovite sources by the Italian rendering of his name, Giorgio della Torre) arrived in Moscow, and finally the Muscovites were presented with a serious and competent envoy, who had a new idea for a treaty and a new groom on offer: Maximilian von Habsburg.31 Maximilian was already king of the Germans (since 1486), and, through his first marriage to Mary of Burgundy (who had died in 1482), he controlled in her name, and later their son’s, the powerful duchy of Burgundy, as well as other important possessions across central Europe. Maximilian would eventually succeed his father as Holy Roman Emperor in 1508 and become one of the most consequential Habsburg rulers in that dynasty’s long run on many thrones.32 Thurn was sumptuously received at the Muscovite court. He met with both Ivan III and, significantly, his wife—Sofiia Palaiologina, Elena’s mother—which signaled a greater seriousness of purpose on the part of the Muscovites about the treaty and marriage.33 How serious the Muscovites were about this match is indicated also by their raising the question of the bride’s religion, a topic that seems not to have been broached in earlier negotiations about Elena’s marrying a prince of Baden, Saxony, or Brandenburg, probably because those negotiations had not progressed very far. Ivan III was keen to make sure that his daughter remained Orthodox and not be forced by Maximilian to convert to Catholicism. Thurn seems to have anticipated the question and assured the Muscovites that Elena could, after her marriage to Maximilian, remain Orthodox, have an Orthodox chapel built for her use, and have Orthodox priests at hand to attend to her spiritual needs. There was the same hiccup as before, however: Thurn asked to meet with Elena and was, like Poppel before him, firmly rebuffed.34 Still, Thurn satisfied every requirement from the Muscovite side, and a preliminary agreement was signed. As a way of celebrating the alliance, gifts were exchanged: Thurn gave Grand Duchess Sofiia a bolt of grey cloth (sukno) and exotic birds (popugaia); the grand prince gave him a gold chain and cross, a fur coat, and a pair of silver spurs.35 Thurn left Moscow in August 1490, accompanied by Trakhaniotov and the secretary Vasilii Kuleshin.36 While the treaty was later duly signed by Maximilian after their arrival in the empire, one key provision in the original version could no longer be met: while negotiations had

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been going on in Moscow, Maximilian had betrothed himself to Anne of Brittany, whom he married (by proxy) in December 1490. Talks on a range of other topics nonetheless continued—there remained the matter of the treaty and alliance to finalize—and Thurn and Trakhaniotov departed for Moscow in November 1491 to continue those talks, arriving later that same month. Thurn would stay in Moscow until April 1492, working closely with Trakhaniotov to help hammer out the treaty.37 But without a marriage to cement it, the treaty was doomed, and soon other matrimonial options presented themselves. The first appeared one month after Thurn’s departure: Konrad III “the Red,” duke of Masovia and one of the last agnatic descendants of the Polish Piast dynasty, sent an envoy to Moscow in May 1493 for the purpose of proposing a treaty and a marriage.38 Konrad was the sometime avowed enemy of the Jagiellonian rulers of Poland, probably because he saw his own claim to the Polish throne as better, which, by some ways of reckoning, may well have been the case. Konrad was casting about for allies in his contest with Casimir IV’s sons, two of whom, Jan I Olbrecht (1492–1501) and Alexander (Elena’s future husband), would succeed in turn Casimir IV as king of Poland and grand prince of Lithuania. Konrad’s envoy approached Ivan III and proposed a treaty against Poland and a marriage between Konrad and Elena. There was interest on the Muscovite side initially, despite the obstacles of religion (Konrad III was a Catholic) and rank (he was a duke, not a king)—issues that were at the forefront of previous marriage negotiations. The Muscovites seemed most concerned, at least early on, that Elena be provided with an independent source of her own maintenance—towns and lands in Masovia that she would directly control— although it is likely that the issue of religion would have been raised as well if these preliminaries had been settled satisfactorily.39 But the political terrain shifted once again; instead of an alliance against Poland-Lithuania, as had motivated the previous treaty and marriage negotiations with the empire, Muscovy was more likely looking to get what it wanted—permanent hold of the border towns it had won in the war and recognition of Ivan III’s title as Sovereign of all Rus’—by making peace with Poland rather than war. And the pathway to peace, as always, started with a wedding. The delegation from Alexander in November 1492 arrived in Moscow just months after the death in the previous June of Casimir IV of PolandLithuania (grand duke of Lithuania, 1440–1492; king of Poland, 1447–1492). In fact, it was his death that opened the door to informal overtures from the Lithuanians and an exchange of letters between July and October.40 The November visit to Moscow was the first formal step in the negotiations, and it was followed by a return embassy to Vilnius in January 1493.41 May saw the

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arrival of Konrad III’s embassy, as we have seen, but the Lithuanian negotiations were back on track by June, and a solid enough agreement between the two parties was in place to permit the first formal act recognizing the new alliance: a betrothal.42 The betrothal of Grand Duke Alexander and Grand Princess Elena Ivanovna took place on Thursday, February 6, 1495. The outlines of the treaty had been hammered out in the weeks since the arrival on January 17 of the Lithuanian party, but Ivan III still required assurances that Elena would be able to remain Orthodox. On the night before the betrothal, Wednesday, February 5, the discussion between the grand prince, his boyars, and the Lithuanian delegation had been entirely about Elena’s religion. They had gathered in the grand prince’s palace (u velikogo kniazia), and Ivan III commanded one of his boyars to speak for him, saying, Our sovereign has commanded us to speak to you thus: You have said that your sovereign does not desire that my daughter to abandon the Greek faith, and we, by God’s will, desire to give our daughter to your sovereign in marriage. And so, God willing, let us meet tomorrow in the grand princess’s palace [u nashye gosudaryni zavtra budete u velikie kniagini], and there you will see the princess [i.e., Elena], and having seen the princess you will have breakfast and then the betrothal [obruchenie] will take place.43 Thus the Muscovites finally granted the Lithuanians the opportunity to see the prospective bride, something that had been denied to Poppel and Thurn. The purpose of this inspection is clear: the Lithuanians had the right—and the Muscovites in the end had to concede the point—to view the bride so that they might describe her to their sovereign on their return back home. They might also be able to evaluate quickly and surreptitiously her physical health and character, if only superficially from an examination of her posture, poise, and perhaps voice. The next day, Thursday, everyone assembled as prescribed the day before. Once again, a boyar addressed the Lithuanians: “Gentlemen! [Panove!],” he began, Yesterday we asked that you come to the grand princess’s [Sofiia’s] palace, and that the grand princess [i.e., Elena] would be here. And you are here now, and so how has your inspection gone [ino kak delu byti]? And they replied: Yesterday the boyars said that the betrothal would be today, if all was satisfactory [ino by nyne to delo i bylo] . . . And the grand prince [Ivan III], having sat down with the grand princess [Sofiia], and the princess [Elena] was present as well as all the boyars; and they sent

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for them [the Lithuanians], and the betrothal then took place. The priest said prayers, and crosses on gold chains and rings were exchanged. And standing in proxy for Grand Duke Alexander during the betrothal was Stanislaw Janowicz, the lord of Samogitia [Zhemaitiia], because Peter [Janowicz] could not be allowed to participate because he is married. The betrothal having been completed, they all went back to their own residences.44 The description here is scant, but there is enough to suggest that this was a wholly Orthodox service. The exchange of rings, the “prayers” of the Orthodox priest, the lack of any hint of a Catholic cleric, the use of the term obruchenie—all suggest that the normal rubrics of an Orthodox betrothal service were observed. The exchange of crosses and chains is not an element of the betrothal service per se, but chains on crosses were common gifts at weddings between brides and grooms in this period.45 The account also suggests that the Lithuanians were pleased enough with their visual inspection of the bride-to-be to let the ceremony proceed, though they probably saw Elena only from afar and did not speak to her. If it looked promising at the start that Elena’s religious convictions and identity would be respected by her new husband, Ivan III never ceased to worry that his son-in-law’s pledges were not worth the parchment they were written on. Contacts with the Lithuanians continued for the next year, and almost all of it was focused on the question of Elena’s religion.46 When the Lithuanian embassy arrived in Moscow in November 1494, it brought with it a formal document (list) that finally provided the wording that Ivan III was waiting for: that Alexander, a Roman Catholic, would not in the future compel his new wife to convert: We, Alexander, by the Grace of God, grand duke of Lithuania, of the Rus territories [Rus’skii], of Žemaitija, and so on, have given this document [list] to my brother and father-in-law, Ivan, grand prince of Vladimir, Moscow, Novgorod, Pskov, Tver’, Iugra, Perm’, of the Bulgars, and so on, about the following: that He has given Us His daughter, Elena, [in marriage], and We will not require His daughter to convert to the Roman faith [rimskii zakon], but will allow her to remain in the Greek faith [grecheskii zakon]. And in steadfast confirmation of this agreement, We have affixed Our seal to this document. Written in Kovno, 26 October, year 13 of the Indiction.47 A key part of those negotiations had been the wedding rituals that would unite in marriage Alexander and Elena. The Muscovites clearly believed that there was a better chance of the bride remaining Orthodox if she were

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married in an Orthodox church in an Orthodox service. The Muscovites got part of what they wanted at the betrothal in February 1494, but that had been in Moscow. Much of the negotiations over the summer were actually about the wedding ritual itself. Days before Elena Ivanovna’s departure for Vilnius, the Lithuanians were quizzed a last time about the bride’s freedom to remain Orthodox, about her having an Orthodox chapel in her royal apartments “so she does not have to walk far to church,” and about “who would marry the grand duke.”48 The Lithuanian envoys pledged that the service would be a combined Orthodox-Catholic rite: “the grand duke [Alexander] will be married by the bishop, and the grand princess [Elena] by the metropolitan.”49 And so the Muscovites expected that the wedding in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, would have the essential Orthodox elements. Elena brought with her in the caravan that accompanied her from Moscow to Vilnius the items she would need not only for a life lived forever abroad but also for the wedding ritual itself: wedding costumes for her and her husband to wear, gifts traditionally distributed at weddings, and icons. It seems the Muscovites thought the customary wedding celebrations, not just the church wedding, would have the usual Muscovite elements, as well. To that end, Elena’s caravan bought other items deemed essential for a proper royal wedding: a stallion for the groom to ride, forties of sables, the bride’s kika, clothes for after the ritual bath, platters to hold the hops for the sprinkling, and so on.50 Both inside and outside the church, this was to be a mostly Muscovite affair. The wedding did not happen in the way the Muscovites expected. After her arrival in Vilnius on February 15, 1495, the groom reneged on nearly every one of his promises about the wedding. The groom moved the wedding service from the Orthodox church to the Catholic cathedral in Vilnius, complained loudly about the Orthodox elements of the wedding service, refused to wear the nuptial crown or perform the Dance of Isaiah, and scoffed at the very idea of wearing Muscovite-style costumes provided him by his bride.51 When the common cup from which the bride and groom had drunk was smashed by the attending Orthodox priest, the groom and assembled clergy were so shocked and confused that the entire service came to a halt until everyone was assured that this was merely another one of the perfectly normal, though to their minds odd, nuptial rituals. Worst of all for Ivan III and the Muscovite side (and perhaps for Elena), soon after the couple were pronounced husband and wife Alexander began pressing his wife to convert, despite his pledges to the contrary (although she never did).52 Her fidelity to her faith was the only outcome of the marriage from which Ivan III could take any satisfaction. The marriage did not bring lasting peace to the borderlands between Muscovy and Poland-Lithuania, and the couple

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did not produce offspring who could inherit their throne. And on top of all that, the marriage proved to be fabulously expensive: Elena’s dowry and personal items amounted to a sizable fortune, which was long remembered and lamented back in Moscow.53 The first attempt in the early modern period at a union of Orthodox and heterodox sent up many red flags that would be remembered the next time a Daniilovich married outside the faith.

Mariia Staritskaia and Magnus of Denmark On the heels of his triumphant victories in the east against Kazan (1552) and Astrakhan (1556), securing Muscovite control of the length of the Volga and the approaches to the Caspian Sea, Tsar Ivan IV sought next to extend his reach to the Baltic Sea at the other end of his realm. In early 1558, Ivan sent his armies into Livonia (in modern-day Estonia and Latvia) to take it for himself. Initial victories against the Livonian Order, who ruled this space, filled the neighboring states—Sweden, Poland-Lithuania, and Denmark—with resolve to put a check on Muscovite ambitions. The Livonian War (1558–1578)—or, as Alexander Filjushkin rightly reminds us, this “series of Baltic wars,” which properly should be known by various names—eventually ground to a stalemate that turned Ivan IV’s early hopes of victory into a desperate search for a way out of the conflict with at least some of his territorial objectives met.54 As the war dragged on inconclusively, Ivan IV, or those around him, struck upon an idea for turning stalemate into a version of victory. The tsar imagined a new puppet Kingdom of Livonia occupying precisely those territories along the Baltic Sea that he had formerly hoped to conquer outright.55 It mattered little to Ivan IV that he did not at the time actually control all the territories he envisioned would make up this new kingdom. He believed he could acquire control of them by reflexive property: by creating a new kingdom in this space, whose king he wholly controlled. His plan, however, depended on the reliability and pliability of the candidate he chose to occupy the throne of this new kingdom, and here the choice was made for him by dynastic politics in faraway Denmark. A significant portion of the imagined Kingdom of Livonia had just fallen into the hands of Magnus of Denmark, the younger brother of King Frederick II of Denmark (1559–1588) and the duke of Holstein, a territory located at the base of the Jütland ( Jylland) peninsula. Magnus had inherited Holstein from his father, Christian III (1534–1559). But Magnus was a thorn in the side of his older brother the king—as Robert Frost put it, Magnus was the king’s “troublesome younger brother” with a “unique talent for dubious political manoeuvre”—and the new king sought to rid himself of Magnus while

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advancing Denmark’s interests in the Baltic region.56 Frederick II first purchased for thirty thousand thalers the bishopric-principality of Ösel-Wieck, which included the island of Ösel (Øsel or, more appropriately today, Saaremaa) off the coast of Estland (modern-day Estonia) and territories on the mainland, and then promptly gave them to Magnus in exchange for Holstein. It was a win-win-win for Frederick II: he got Holstein, got rid of his problematic younger brother, and got a stronger claim for Denmark to territories in the Baltic. As the younger brother of a strong-willed and able king, Magnus probably felt he had no choice but grudgingly to move in 1560 to Ösel, where he began his rule as prince-bishop, though, as a Lutheran, he would eventually abolish the title and style himself instead the “Lord of Ösel-Wieck.”57 It was only later, in the midst of the Livonian War being fought in the territories immediately around his, that Magnus saw an opportunity to become more than the “lord” of a corner of the Baltic. On June 10, 1570, Magnus arrived in Moscow and was crowned king of Livonia, immediately afterward pledging his loyalty to Ivan IV.58 Part of the deal that Ivan IV offered Magnus was the hand in marriage of the daughter of his first cousin, Prince Vladimir Staritskii, who, along with much of his family, had been killed by Ivan IV the year before. Two daughters had survived Ivan’s attack on the Staritskii princely line: Efimiia and Mariia. The tsar betrothed Efimiia, the older of the two, to Magnus in Moscow after his coronation, but she died of the plague the following year.59 Ivan IV promptly replaced her with the younger sister, Mariia, who was evidently too young to marry until 1573. The arrangement was fairly straightforward: Ivan IV would help Magnus transform his toehold in Livonia into a new kingdom, and Magnus would become Ivan’s ally, taking a Muscovite bride to solidify the alliance. It was a familiar enough arrangement—dynastic marriage advancing the cause of diplomacy was a common strategy in early modern Europe—and the hoped-for dynasty that would issue from Magnus and Mariia would rule this new kingdom and, perhaps, play a future role in Muscovite politics as well.60 Despite some important early successes on the battlefield, Magnus would prove himself to be, at the end of the day, an utterly incompetent general and, as Frost suggested, a dubious political maneuverer. In 1577, after a series of setbacks by both his own and Muscovite forces, Magnus broke with Ivan IV and desperately attempted to rally local nobles against both the Poles and the Muscovites. For reasons that remain unknown, though probably because of his marriage to Mariia Staritskaia, Ivan IV did not make Magnus pay for his treachery with his life. Magnus was instead compelled to renounce his royal title and put under house arrest at his residence in Pilten, in Kurland, dying

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in 1583—broken, bitter, and alone. His bride, Mariia, outlived him by some thirty years, after having given birth in 1580 to at least one child—a daughter, Evdokiia (who died in 1589). Mariia returned to Muscovy—enticed, it seems, by the prospect of a new marriage—only to be tonsured a nun (with the monastic name Marfa) on orders by Boris Godunov in 1588 at the Convent of the Mother of God, near Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery.61 Thus nothing of Ivan IV’s plans for this marriage materialized: the marriage failed to turn Ivan’s dream of a new kingdom of Livonia into a reality, it did not keep the opportunistic groom firmly in Russia’s camp, and it produced no line of heirs that might have succeeded to this concocted throne. Like the wedding between Elena Ivanovna and Alexander of Lithuania in 1495, the match was a disaster for the dynasties, and probably for the couple as well. If the marriage was a failure, the wedding rituals that united Mariia Staritskaia and Magnus in matrimony were far less trouble-filled than Elena’s and Alexander’s. The wedding is described in both a muster and a little-known ceremonial. The muster survives in numerous manuscript copies and has been published.62 It is, however, a problematic text. The muster as it survives today evidently derives from a version of the muster submitted in evidence in a precedence dispute in 1588–1589 between Prince Timofei Romanovich Trubetskoi and Prince Grigorii Andreevich Kurakin by two scheming Shchelkalov brothers, Andrei and Vasilii—high-ranking and well-connected scribes in the tsar’s chancery.63 According to the records for the dispute (which I discuss below in chapter 5), the scribes Vasilii and Andrei Shchelkalov had been asked to make a copy of the extant wedding muster so it could be determined who sat in the more honored place at the banquet table (na stol), Timofei Romanovich Trubetskoi or Vasilii Iur’evich Golitsyn (a Kurakin kinsman). Andrei Shchelkalov produced for the investigating boyars a copy of the muster that entirely omitted Trubetskoi, which did not reckon with the memories of the boyars who had attended the wedding more than a decade before. The boyars determined through interviews and comparisons with other wedding documentation that Vasilii Shchelkalov had inserted his own name in the roster, even though, by his own admission, he was ill at the time of the wedding.64 The copy was therefore deemed fraudulent, and the Shchelkalovs were accused of conspiring with the Kurakins and Golitsyns against the Trubetskois because “the Shchelkalovs are friends of the Golitsyns.”65 Every extant copy today of the muster shows the lineup of boyars at the banquet table as described in the doctored copy: Vasilii Iur’evich Golitsyn sits second at the table, and no Trubetskoi is listed at all. (Similarly, the list of wives who sat opposite the boyars omits any Trubetskaia.)66 These problems aside, the text of the muster is still useful for reconstructing the ritual since

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the Shchelkalov brothers and later copyists surely had no reason to alter the description of the wedding rites themselves (only the identity of those who performed them). Perhaps even more important than the muster, however, is the ceremonial, which survives in only two as yet unpublished copies dating from the mid-seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.67 Though only fragmentary (it treats only the first day of the wedding), it, like all ceremonials, provides a detailed description of the rituals, banquets, processions, decorations, and costumes—all arranged in the order they were performed at the wedding. The text of the ceremonial is in prospective format—verbs in the infinitive and names in the dative—indicating that it was written before the wedding, as an instruction for wedding choreographers.68 The ceremonial demonstrates that, while the traditional wedding rites outside the church took place as custom prescribed, the wedding rites inside the church were performed in parallel, with the heterodox groom and Orthodox bride entering their marriage in services officiated by their own clergy and observing their own liturgical rites. The wedding ritual took place on April 12, 1573, in the Church of St. Dmitrii on Proboinaia Street in Novgorod. According to both the muster and the ceremonial, Ivan IV himself attended, as did his son, Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich; the bride’s brother, Prince Vasilii Vladimirovich Staritskii; and Vasilii’s wife, Mariia.69 Much of Ivan IV’s court was present as well. The thousandman was Tsarevich Mikhail Kaibulovich, perhaps the leading figure in Ivan IV’s court at that moment, and numerous other boyars and high-ranking courtiers and their wives from Moscow served as best men, matchmakers, and holders of the kika, of the forty sables, of the ceremonial loaves of bread and cheese, the candles, the torches, and so on. There were a few differences in the composition of the wedding guests: the groom, unlike the bride, had no designated proxy parents (v ottsovo mesto and v materino mesto), probably because he was foreign royalty, making it awkward to place a Muscovite—or, even more so, a Dane—in the symbolic position of proxy parents. In addition, Magnus had a number of his own servitors—all of them foreigners, of course—serving in some of the traditional honorific posts at the wedding, including one of the two best men and one of the matchmakers, food servers at the banquet (devki korolevskie), and fifteen unnamed courtiers in the wedding train (15 chelovek dvorian korolevskikh).70 A close look at the ceremonial reveals very few modifications to the sequence of rites before the church wedding as compared to the rituals performed for Vasilii III (1526), Andrei Staritskii (1533), or Ivan IV (1547, 1571, 1580). The couple gathered in the dining pavilion (stolovaia izba) of an

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unidentified building chosen and specially decorated for use at the wedding, perhaps the main hall of the Archbishop’s Palace (Vladychnaia, or Granovitaia, palata) in the Vladychnyi dvor of the Novgorodian Kremlin.71 The bride arrived first, as was traditional, and then the groom was summoned. On his arrival, the bride’s hair was rebraided, the kika was put on, and both the bride and groom were sprinkled with hops. The ceremonial reports that the hops were brought with the procession that accompanied the groom to the dining pavilion, and the muster tells us that Ivan Skobel’tsyn tended to the hops and that “the wife of Prince Fedor Mstislavskii sprinkled the king and the princess.”72 Gifts—traditional ceremonial kerchiefs—were then distributed “to the sovereign tsar and grand prince and to the tsarevichi,” and, very likely, to others in the wedding party, as was traditional.73 As a rule, it was the bride who gave the gifts (though the gifts actually came from the royal Treasury), through her best man; but in this case, the text of the ceremonial points out that it was the bride’s sister-in-law—Mariia, the wife of her brother, Vasilii Vladimirovich—who gave the gifts (again, through the best man).74 This arrangement is entirely anomalous and goes unexplained in the text. Then the bride and groom were betrothed in the dining pavilion by the exchange of rings: the bride, by the priest of the Church of St. Dmitrii, and the groom, by a “Roman priest [popu rimskomu]”—an odd description given that Magnus was a Lutheran, and the officiating clergyman was undoubtedly a Lutheran minister. The couple then processed to the church, where both clergymen again officiated. The groom was married “according to his own rites [po ego zakonu],” and the bride “according to Christian rites [po kristianskomu zakonu].” But it was more than just the rites that separated the bride and groom. There was also some considerable physical space between them in the church itself. Ever mindful of Magnus’s heterodoxy, the Muscovites allowed him to enter only the vestibule of the Church of St. Dmitrii. The bride and her attendants holding the ceremonial bread, the candle, and the lanterns entered the nave of the church and stood on the left side (the side in Orthodox churches where the icon of the Mother of God appears on the iconostasis and thus assigned to women), but the groom went only so far as the church portico (v paperti) where he stood with his attendants holding the ceremonial bread and candle.75 Not being Orthodox, the groom was not allowed to enter the nave, which symbolizes the composite body of the Church and was thus reserved for baptized Orthodox Christians. The wedding service, therefore, took place with the bride and groom separated by some distance, which must have prevented the performance of some of the signature rites of Orthodox weddings, such as the Dance of Isaiah. After the church service,

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the couple processed back to the dining pavilion and sat at tables arranged in the same configuration as one finds at other Muscovite royal weddings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.76 Magnus proved himself to be far more cooperative as a groom than he ever was as an ally. He consented seemingly without complaint to perform all the traditional fertility rituals typical on the first day of a Muscovite royal wedding (the ceremonial does not describe events after day one) and he swallowed whatever sense of bruised pride he may have felt at being kept out of the very church building in which he was being married. But he had every reason to be cooperative. Magnus owed his position as king to Ivan IV; and if he wanted the fictive Livonia ever to become a real kingdom under his rule, he had to accept his Muscovite bride, Ivan IV’s overlordship, and all the rituals and symbols that came along with them. In nearly every respect, Mariia Staritskaia’s wedding in Novgorod must have been what the Muscovites thought they were going to get in 1495 in the wedding of Elena Ivanovna and Alexander of Lithuania in Vilnius. But in both cases, it was more the setting of the wedding—Vilnius versus Novgorod—than the ground rules laid out beforehand that determined how the wedding day would look in the end. The wedding rites, first and foremost, always had to satisfy the home crowd.

The First False Dmitrii and Marina Mniszech Fast forward thirty-three years, and we encounter the third instance when the Muscovites had to manage the ritual challenges of interconfessional marriage. Only this time, the context and choreographers were very different. The context was the Time of Troubles (Smutnoe vremia)—the fifteen years from 1598 to 1613 of alternating civil wars, foreign invasions, peasant uprisings, and usurpations that followed the death of the last Daniilovich tsar, Fedor Ivanovich (1584–1598). The choreographers were a tsar and a patriarch, each with questionable legitimacy. The outcome of the work of these choreographers was the most unusual Muscovite royal wedding yet, where the bride was crowned a tsaritsa beforehand, the bride and groom refused communion and may not even have been Orthodox (certainly, the bride was not), and the groom was dead in less than a fortnight, in no small measure because of the ritual irregularities that surrounded this wedding. The groom was the First False Dmitrii—the impostor who claimed to be the son of Ivan IV and his seventh wife, Mariia Nagaia. The real Dmitrii died at the age of eight in the town of Uglich on May 15/25, 1591, perhaps murdered on orders from Boris Godunov.77 The identity of the impostor has been debated over centuries. Speculations have ranged from the illegitimate son

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of King Stephen Báthory of Poland to a provincial nobleman, a Cossack, or an itinerant snake oil salesman peddling miracle elixirs. It is hard, however, not to agree with Maureen Perrie’s conclusion that there is a “strong circumstantial case” for the First False Dimitry being in reality Grisha Otrep’ev, a defrocked Orthodox monk with connections to the Romanov clan.78 Making the most of the unsettled political environment in Muscovy after the death of Tsar Fedor Ivanovich, and the physical decline, unpopularity, and untimely death of his successor, Tsar Boris Godunov (1598–1605), Otrep’ev marched into Moscow at the head of a largely Polish army and, with the support of many boyars, got himself crowned tsar on July 30, 1605. A pawn of both the Poles and the boyars, he was unable to please both and so did not last long on the throne. He was gruesomely murdered on May 17, 1606, after a Captain-Renault-like discovery by the boyars that he was not (not!) who he claimed to be. The bride was Marina Mniszech—the daughter of Jerzy Mniszech, a Polish nobleman, palatine of Sandomierz and starost of Sambor, where he held estates, and of other towns along the border between Muscovy and the Rzeczpospolita.79 As Perrie points out, Marina’s father had “belonged to a Polish faction” that advocated “the renewal of war with Russia,” which left Mniszech open to sowing discord in Moscow.80 When in his vicinity a Russian pretender unexpectedly appeared, he seized on it as a way to grab disputed cities and towns along the border that had been the object of wars and diplomacy between Poland and Muscovy for more than a century. Mniszech quickly attached his ambitions and fortunes to Otrep’ev, negotiating with him for support in men and materiel in exchange for territorial concessions that would benefit him and the Rzeczpospolita should Otrep’ev actually succeed in capturing the Muscovite crown. He also promised Otrep’ev the hand of his daughter Marina to seal the deal. The choreographers were the First False Dmitrii (Otrep’ev), who seems himself to have introduced changes to the wedding ritual in Moscow in order to accommodate his Catholic bride, and Patriarch Ignatii of Moscow, an early supporter of the First False Dmitrii who had officiated at one of his two coronations as tsar in July 1605. The close collaboration between the tsar and patriarch has long been recognized, and Patriarch Ignatii’s reputation in history has only suffered for it. He was routinely omitted from commemoration lists of patriarchs in church commemoration books (sinodiki)—perhaps the severest form of judgment a man who believed in the afterlife could suffer—and later historical treatments of him have been at best unflattering, although these have been greatly influenced by post-1613, pro-Romanov assessments of him.81 But in Moscow in 1606, he was a kingmaker.

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Marina and the First False Dmitrii in fact married twice—once by proxy in Cracow, in a ceremony very much placed in the hands of the Polish King Sigismund III Vasa and Bernard Cardinal Maciejowski (d. 1608), archbishop of Gniezno, and a second time in Moscow, in the ceremony choreographed by the tsar and patriarch. On November 19/29, 1605, Otrep’ev, who by then was openly going by the title and name Tsarevich Dmitrii Ivanovich, married Marina Mniszech in a Catholic service officiated by Cardinal Maciejowski.82 The service in Cracow put on full display the clash of cultures (Polish and Muscovite) and of religions (Catholic and Orthodox) at work in this marriage. While the groom may have already secretly converted to Catholicism, his proxy at the wedding, the secretary Afanasii Ivanovich Vlas’ev, was still Orthodox and acted like it.83 Religious and cultural sensitivities ran high and more than once caused a scene. The Catholic wedding took place at the urban mansion of Fr. Firlej, a Catholic priest from a distinguished Polish szlachta family with connections to Sandomierz, which had a large hall and chapel that could be used for the occasion.84 Because of the number of guests, however, other large brick houses in the city were utilized for the banquet and celebrations afterward. The proxy groom and his large party—“mounted on nearly two hundred horses”—went to the Montelupi House (kamienica), the former home in Cracow of Sebastiano Montelupi (d. 1600), an Italian-born merchant who served several Polish kings and queens. There Vlas’ev and his attendants awaited word of King Sigismund’s arrival at Fr. Firlej’s.85 When the king arrived, he was accompanied by his son and heir, Prince (krolewic) Władysław, and by his sister, the “Swedish princess” (krolewna szwedzka), Anna Vasa, as well as a number of ladies-in-waiting and other servitors. Vlas’ev and his suite then made their way to Fr. Firlej’s and greeted the king and his son and sister in turn. (The accounts are not entirely clear on when the bride arrived relative to the king and the proxy groom, although it is likely that she arrived before the groom.) Before the wedding service began, the proxy groom, the king’s chancellor, and Cardinal Maciejowski delivered a set of telling speeches. Vlas’ev stated, evidently very formally (the text of the speech is only described, not quoted, in the source), that he had come on behalf of his sovereign (wolą pana swego przeciw) to ask for the hand of the daughter of the voevoda of Sandomierz, and to obtain his blessing on their marriage. Next, Lev Sapieha, the king’s chancellor, replied on behalf of the bride’s father “with beautiful words” (barzo pięknymi slovy), and then Stanislaw Minski, the voevoda of łęczyski, rose to praise, in the words of the account, “the greatness of the bride’s house, her good upbringing, the bounty of her virtues, and citing examples

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that illustrious marriages such as this are nothing new in Poland.”86 The climax of this oratory moment came when Cardinal Maciejowski delivered his speech. He spoke first about the sacrament of matrimony and about how this marriage in particular displayed the Will of God. Then his words turned to the proxy groom. “God has often shown the folly of the idea of searching for a sovereign overseas or in neighboring countries,” the cardinal said. “And they placed on the throne of the great sovereigns [na stolicach wielkich hospodarow]”—here he means the throne of Muscovy—“illegitimate heirs [niewlasne dziedzice]. Now, by God’s grace and will, they have found for themselves their true sovereign in the realms of His Majesty, our gracious king.”87 Here Maciejowski is making the case that “Dmitrii” is a homegrown, true Russian tsar, and that the current occupant of the throne, the unnamed Godunov, is illegitimate, and that any potential claims of foreigners to the Russian throne are mere folly. “Dmitrii” is tsar by right of inheritance. The bride’s ancestry and virtues praised, the groom’s wisdom and prudence acknowledged, and the political goals of the union broadly hinted at, the wedding began with a hymn: the Veni Creator, a hymn to the Holy Spirit common at important liturgical moments, like coronations, elections of popes, consecrations of bishops, other ordinations, and, naturally, Pentecost.88 During the hymn, “the king and everyone else got down on their knees,” according to the account, “and the only ones who did not were the Swedish princess and the Muscovite emissary.”89 Here we have the first hint of the clash of cultures: the text interrupts the narrative to report that the two who did not kneel were the two who were not Catholic: Vlas’ev, of course, was Orthodox and the “Swedish princess” was a former Catholic who had converted to Protestantism. The Protestant princess no longer kneeled; the Orthodox proxy groom did not know the hymn. To both, to kneel was to cross a line and to participate in the Catholic rite and accept its theology, rather than merely attend one and observe the other—something neither Anna Vasa nor Afanasii Vlas’ev, for different reasons and surely with different levels of comprehension, was willing to do. The awkward moment having passed, the wedding proceeded. When the time came for the cardinal to give his sermon, he chose to address the bride and groom separately and to construct his sermons around two different scriptural passages, specifically chosen for each of them. For the bride, he chose Psalm 45:10: “Listen, my daughter, attend to my words and hear; forget your own nation and your ancestral home.”90 Then he turned to the proxy groom, and here found it appropriate to use the verse in Genesis where Abram sends a servant off to a foreign land to find a wife for his son. The cardinal bellowed that “as Abram sent his trusted servant [podskarbii] to

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a foreign land to find a wife for his son”—paraphrasing Genesis 24:2–4—so too has “Dmitrii” sent off a servant to find himself a bride here in Poland. The account omits the contents of these sermons—only the first lines of these biblical passages are quoted—but the verses used in each are suggestive of what was on the cardinal’s mind. Marina is to go off and embrace her new land, as she is to embrace her new husband in marriage. Her obligation is to produce a line of tsars, a sentiment and goal mentioned later in the same psalm and likely to also have been recited in full in the sermon: “Instead of your ancestors you will have sons; you will make them rulers over the whole world” (Ps 45:16). Marina is to be the mother of a dynasty, but the cardinal and the king probably hoped she would not forget her homeland too completely: other admonitions given her during the wedding suggest that they expected her memory of her Polish past to be sharp. As for the “trusted servant,” he too was being reminded that this wedding was a holy endeavor, with long-lasting dynastic implications. The descendants that “Dmitrii” and Marina produced would be, it was certainly hoped, a “blessing unto the nations,” just like Abram’s progeny. It is hard not to imagine that this citation of Genesis 24 might also refer to yet another famed line in Genesis, where God promises that “I will shower blessings on you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven and the grains of sand of the seashore. Your descendants will gain possession of the gates of their enemies. All nations on earth will bless themselves by your descendants because you have obeyed my command” (Gen 22:17–18). The selection of biblical verses matched remarkably well both the circumstances and the goals of this wedding. They situated the bride and groom in a familiar and biographically appropriate biblical scene, and they highlighted, in perhaps as direct a way as a sermon can, the dynastic hopes of their sponsors—the bride’s father, Jerzy Mniszech, and King Sigismund III, both of whom, of course, were in attendance. More awkward moments lay ahead, however. At the point in the service when a set of formulaic questions was directed at the bride and groom, the cardinal asked, “Has the Great Sovereign Tsar promised himself [in marriage] to anyone else?” The cautious Vlas’ev replied, “How would I know? The tsar has not instructed me on this question.” The punctilious reply evidently did not sit well with the cardinal, and so Vlas’ev turned to those standing next to him for advice on how to handle this impasse. Unwilling to take even the slightest liberty beyond his specific instructions, Vlas’ev finally said, “If he had promised himself to another maiden, then he would not have sent me here.”91 That answer was taken as sufficient—even if a bit snide—and the wedding moved on. When the service reached the mutual pledges of bride

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and groom, Vlas’ev objected to the whole thing being performed in Latin, to which he—Vlas’ev—had not agreed beforehand.92 Even so, when the cardinal said to Vlas’ev, “Repeat after me, as is required by our Catholic Church and yours: I”—and then followed the mutual matrimonial promises (to “take thee as my lawfully wedded wife”). Vlas’ev repeated everything the cardinal said, “with very good pronunciation,” but then he abruptly stopped: “I will say these words to the maiden Marina but not to you, Cardinal,” refusing to direct his pledge to anyone but the bride.93 The bride then pledged her fidelity to “Dmitrii,” as the proxy groom had pledged the tsar’s to her. When the time came in the service to exchange rings, Vlas’ev took a large diamond ring from a small box on his person and gave it to the cardinal, and the cardinal put it on the bride’s finger. Vlas’ev then took the ring from the bride but did not put it on. Instead he put it in the same small box—mindful of the fact that he was merely a stand-in for the groom. Finally, when the cardinal wanted to put his stole around the joined hands of the bride and Vlas’ev, symbolizing the Church’s role in uniting them as man and wife and the permanency of the sacramental bond of marriage, Vlas’ev abruptly stopped the ritual and turned to the bride’s mother, asking her for a clean kerchief, “so that his bare hand did not touch the bride’s hand. But they did not let him have one, so he had to use his bare hand.”94 When the wedding service concluded, the assembled guests went into an adjoining banquet hall. First went the new tsaritsa, then the Swedish princess, then the proxy groom. They all stood at a rectangular table positioned on a riser: Marina and Vlas’ev seated on one of the narrow ends, the Princess Anna Vasa and Prince Władysław on the other, the king, who came in afterward—presumably to make something of a grand entrance— in the middle of one of the long ends of the table, and the cardinal opposite him.95 Vlas’ev at first refused to sit where he was assigned, next to the bride: “Fearing the tsar, he was even careful not to allow his clothes to touch the bride’s dress,” according to the account. Vlas’ev only sat down when convinced at length to do so by the bride’s father, Jerzy Mniszech.96 Other guests sat in tables arranged about the hall and, evidently, in other houses nearby.97 Then “about forty Muscovites” appeared with gifts from “Dmitrii” for Marina, his new bride, which were distributed by Vlas’ev.98 The gifts were accepted on Marina’s behalf by her paternal grandmother, Jadwiga Torło ( Jerzy Mniszech’s mother, who is unnamed in the source), because the bride’s mother was ill (bo paniey matka chora była).99 After the gifts were presented, the guests prepared for the banquet by first washing their hands: all stood as the king washed his, but everyone else washed while seated. After the king, it was the bride’s turn, then Princess

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Anna Vasa, then Vlas’ev—who initially resisted that, too—and the king’s son, Władysław. A separate bowl of water and a towel were brought for the cardinal and papal nuncio.100 They then ate, though the proxy groom (and therefore also his bride) did not. When the king noticed that Vlas’ev was not eating, he sent a servant to inquire why. Vlas’ev replied that “it is not fitting for a slave to eat with monarchs [nie godzi się chlopu iesc z monarchami].” The king a second time asked him through a servant to eat, and Vlas’ev again declined: “Thank you, Your Royal Majesty, that you honor me for the sake of my sovereign, but I ask you to allow me not to eat at the table at which also sit the king of Poland and the daughter of His Majesty the King of Sweden. I am content to watch.”101 There followed several rounds of toasts: the king toasted the health of the bride; Anna Vasa also toasted the bride; the bride toasted the health of Prince Władysław, who in turn toasted the health of the groom; and the proxy groom toasted the health of the cardinal. Then the bride toasted the health of her new husband (“which she did on instructions from her father”), and the proxy groom toasted the health of Prince Władysław, being sure not to touch his lips to Marina’s cup.102 After dessert, which consisted of fruit and sweets, the father of the bride presented the king with a gift of six large gold-plated cups, and he presented other gifts to Anna Vasa and Władysław. Then Vlas’ev presented the bride with a gold-threaded rug and forty sables—traditional gifts at a Muscovite royal wedding. After the meal, the dancing began. The king and the bride danced first, then the king signaled to Vlas’ev to come dance with the bride next. But Vlas’ev “out of respect for [the bride]” refused to dance, protesting that “he was not worthy to touch the tsaritsa.” The king then danced with the bride again, with others joining in on the ballroom floor.103 The dancing went on for hours, and the bride seems to have not been shy about dancing with those who asked her for the honor. Vlas’ev seems never to have moved from his seat. At the end of the evening, the bride and her father approached the king, both bowing deeply before him. The king lifted up the bride, doffed his hat, and then spoke to her. The king “congratulated her on her marriage and new status [godnoci] and expressed his hope that she would lead her husband . . . who had been given to her by God, to neighborly love and friendship for the good of this kingdom, because if the people there [iesli ci tam ludzie] . . . were previously able to preserve harmonious and good relations with the kingdom’s lands even when there were no blood ties between us, then this union of love and friendship should be all the stronger now that there are such ties.”104 The king then harkened back to the cardinal’s sermon to her, seemingly contradicting the message of Psalm 45 but probably rather

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providing his own interpretation of the verse (“Listen, my daughter, attend to my words and hear; forget your own nation and your ancestral home.”). According to the account, the king emphasized to her that she not forget that she was raised in the kingdom, that here God has raised her to her present station, that here live her parents and her close and distant relatives, that she should work to maintain good relations between these states and should give guidance to her husband, so that by his friendship, good neighborliness, and readiness to render us service, he is rewarded by everything we, and this kingdom, and your father . . . do for him out of love. The king impressed upon her to remember the orders and instructions of her parents, to show them due respect, to remember God and to live in fear of God, so that He will send down His blessing; that she should instill in her descendants—if God should give her any, and which the king hopes for her to have—a love for Polish customs and to maintain friendship with the Polish people.105 Clearly, Marina was not at all to “forget [her] own nation and [her] ancestral home,” regardless of what the cardinal preached or the psalm said. The bride then took her leave of the king, again bowing low before him, and bid farewell in turn to Princess Anna Vasa and Prince Władysław. All the while, Vlas’ev “attentively listened when the king spoke to the tsaritsa” and watched as she paid her respects to the Polish royal family. The account also reports that Vlas’ev got angry when Marina fell to her feet before the king, and it had to be explained to him that she did this because “the king is her benefactor, and she his subject, while she is in the kingdom.”106 This last kerfuffle resolved, the king and his family departed and the wedding concluded. The account reports that Vlas’ev was generally pleased with how things had gone, but his attendants (dvorzanie) were not, “because some scoundrels [łotrowtwo] have stolen all our knives, and they stole our fox hats and two hats with pearls sewn in, but [Vlas’ev] told them to keep quiet about it.”107 The Poles seem not to have been very thrilled with the Muscovites, either. They accused Vlas’ev’s men of making a scene of themselves at the banquet, getting drunk, and eating at the table with their fingers instead of using proper utensils.108 Whether it was language or hymns or ritualized etiquette or table manners, the Poles and the Muscovites were following different rulebooks at this wedding, and it showed. Some of the tension clearly resulted from Vlas’ev’s own sense of the appropriate: his sense of how a man of his station should treat a woman who had just become the consort of the tsar, especially given the rules

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and conventions of elite female seclusion back home in Muscovy.109 Some of the tension resulted from different notions of polite behavior and from the obvious suspicions that the Poles and Muscovites had about each other, regardless of the hopes for “good neighborliness” and “friendship” invested in this marriage.110 And some of the tension resulted from the differences in liturgical customs between Catholics and Orthodox—and, for that matter, Protestants.111 The tension at this wedding ran through and through: it was present inside the church, during the nuptial rites, and outside the church, during the banquet, gift exchanges, dancing, and departure rituals. And that was because a wedding was a place where local culture and larger religious norms met, producing either accommodation (such as when Orthodox faithful and clergy blended pre-Christian and Christian rites) or confrontation (such as when the Orthodox and Catholic sensibilities were placed in close ritual proximity). It was, it turns out, easier to countenance a pagan rite than a heretical one. The tension between Poles and Muscovites extended even to their different understandings of what had just transpired. For the Poles, the service in Cracow was a completely valid Catholic wedding, and so when Marina arrived in Moscow nearly six months later, on May 2, 1606, she arrived as the wife and consort of the Muscovite tsar so far as they were concerned. The Polish perspective is clear from the description of the ritual in Cracow, where it is described as a “wedding” (slub) and “marriage” (malzenstwo).112 Others aware of these events in Cracow similarly described this service as a wedding, including Jacques Margaret, who referred to Marina as Dmitrii’s “wife,” even before the nuptials in Moscow.113 But the Muscovites saw the events in Cracow very differently. For them, the rites in Cracow constituted merely a betrothal, not a wedding, probably because there was no crowning service, the essential element for any wedding so far as the Orthodox Muscovites were concerned.114 Otrep’ev—the First False Dmitrii—himself seems to have understood things this way, at least at first. When he sent his private secretary, Jan Buczyński, to Poland in November 1605 to conduct marriage negotiations with Jerzy Mniszech, Marina’s father, Otrep’ev issued an “instruction” (nakaz) to Buczyński on the terms he was to pursue to secure his “betrothal,” not “wedding.”115 Some contemporaries also thought it a betrothal of some sort, including Conrad Bussov, who called Marina Dmitrii’s “betrothed.”116 On the other hand, when writing to his prospective father-in-law about a month after the wedding in Cracow (on December 22, 1605), Otrep’ev found it useful to speak instead of the service as a marriage and Marina as his wife117—terms he used again in later correspondence with Jerzy Mniszech.118 Mniszech himself also seemed to think his daughter had been married in Cracow: his letters

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to Dmitrii and Jan Buczyński both make reference to a marriage (slub).119 It is hard not to agree with Boris Uspenskii, who concluded that the wedding of the First False Dmitrii and Marina constituted an archetypical semiotic moment, when the same set of rituals, or “texts,” were “read” differently by different “readers.” The First False Dmitrii “had to speak, so to say, in two languages, and sometimes he had to do so at the same time, when the same text had to be read to two different audiences, which were hearing this text in line with their own perceptions: the same text had to be read in this situation in two different semiotic languages, the result of which was two fundamentally different understandings of the text.”120 The differences in these textual, semiotic readings would catch up to the First False Dmitrii in the end, of course, as the ritual outrages at the wedding that would take place the next year in Moscow proved to be more offensive to the Muscovite boyar elite than even his fraudulent identity. The wedding in Moscow followed about six months later Marina ceremoniously entered Moscow on May 2, 1606, in what was, in Chester Dunning’s words, “the grandest procession seen in the capital since the entry of Ivan III’s bride-to-be, the Byzantine princess Zoe Paleologue, in 1472.”121 The intention may have been to evoke a sense of grandeur and majesty, but the effect was only to rouse fear and suspicion as the huge retinue of armed and armorwearing Polish “wedding guests” filed by and promptly began behaving badly.122 Things were not off to a grand start. The wedding that took place on May 8 in Moscow was, in fact, a double ceremony: a coronation for Marina as tsaritsa and a royal wedding, both of which were unlike anything ever before seen in Muscovy. The wedding component of this double ceremony included many of the traditional elements of a Muscovite royal wedding, starting with some of the preliminary rituals involving the bride. These rituals, each somewhat modified, included the ceremonial entry of the bride into her Kremlin apartments, the Terem; the renaming ritual, where the bride received a new regnal name; and the bestowal of a new title on the bride—traditionally tsarevna.123 Marina entered the Kremlin in grand fashion on May 2 and stayed in the Ascension Convent, not the Terem, until the very early hours of May 8.124 It seems likely that she did not participate in the other two rituals until the morning of her wedding day—probably, as Uspenskii speculates, during the betrothal ceremony.125 She then began to be called “Mariia” instead of “Marina,” and tsesareva, the female form of the title tsesar, or Caesar, which the First False Dmitrii had adopted, along with the title “imperator.”126 For all the other oddities of the day, these traditional rites of passage, so essential to a Muscovite royal wedding, remained part of the choreography.127

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Other elements of the wedding rang true, as well. The banquet and other rituals were held in the Dining Pavilion (Stolovaia polata) and the Palace of Facets, and the wedding and coronation took place in the Dormition Cathedral—traditional locations for these ceremonies. There were the traditional honorific positions at the wedding (thousandman, best men, matchmakers, and so on), the ritual slicing and distribution of bread and cheese; and gifts (shirinki) were distributed to all those who normally received them on behalf of the bride, just as had happened at weddings going back a century. And there were the expected banquets and revelry—much too much, in fact, since the display of bad manners by the Polish guests would shortly incite courtiers and crowds against the tsar and his bride.128 Thus the tones and melodies of this ritualistic score would in most ways be easily recognizable as those of a Muscovite royal wedding: whatever modifications were introduced, the underlying template being used was one that scribes and courtiers would have found familiar. But the innovations made to this composition were dramatic and dissonant—and, for the First False Dmitrii, fatal. The wedding was a scandal for more than one reason. First, the Poles’ outrageous behavior at the wedding no doubt raised the level of anger and anxiety in Moscow and extended well into the week after the wedding, becoming its own source for animosity between Poles and Muscovites.129 Second, the wedding took place on a Thursday and on the eve of an important feast day.130 To be sure, Thursday was not an unheard-of day for a royal wedding: Tsar Ivan IV and his brother, Iurii Vasil’evich, both married in 1547 on a Thursday.131 But this particular Thursday was the Feast of the Translation of the Relics of St. Nicholas of Myra in Lycia from that city (Myra, in Asia Minor) to Bari (in Italy), celebrated annually on May 9 and a strict fast day.132 It was a day when weddings were not supposed to take place, and certainly a day when there could be no festive wedding banquets without violating an important fasting regulation of the Russian Church. The Muscovites’ outrage finds artful (and caustic) expression in many folksongs that played on several anti-Otrep’ev story motifs later in the seventeenth century, which surely reflect actual attitudes at the time.133 The wedding of the First False Dmitrii and Marina/Maria Mniszech was recognized even at the time as a ritual affront. The fact that the bride refused—at the urging of her father, the Polish king, and the pope (and possibly her own conscience)—to convert to Orthodoxy necessitated a number of fundamental structural adjustments to the ceremonies on May 8. While there may have been dynastic marriages with the heterodox before, this would be the first time a Muscovite ruler or heir, rather than a female member

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of the dynasty, would marry someone who had not converted—something that would not happen again until the reign of Peter I. Would the bride be prevented from entering the nave of the church, as Magnus was? Would the bride’s Catholic faith be concealed through the cunning use of ritual? Would the wedding in Cracow be acknowledged, ignored, or reinterpreted? Events on the wedding day began in the Dining Pavilion. The wedding ceremonial reports that the couple assembled there, the bread and cheese were cut and distributed among the guests, and that the best men distributed gifts. We also learn that the archpriest—here meaning Archpriest Fedor of the Annunciation Cathedral in the Kremlin—led the hymn It is Meet and Right (Dostoino est’), blessed the couple with a cross, and recited the betrothal prayers “according to the rubric” (govorit protopop molitvy obruchal’nye po chinu).134 Any Muscovite looking at these rituals so far would have seen a largely traditional wedding, but for the presence of some foreigners: the usual rites of separation that defined any Muscovite royal wedding at this moment in the ceremony. But some may have smirked in silence. The betrothal service had not been performed apart from the crowning since the wedding of Grand Prince Vasilii III and Elena Glinskaia. That it was being performed separately now may have been to satisfy the two very different attitudes of the Poles and the Muscovites about the events that had transpired in Cracow. The Muscovites evidently insisted that the crowning be preceded by the betrothal—what wedding is valid without a ring exchange?—but agreed to separate the two services, reviving an older form, to take the betrothal out of the setting of the church in order to avoid upsetting the Poles, who looked at the wedding in Cracow at wholly valid and sufficient. But many Muscovites, as we have seen, regarded Cracow as something less than a wedding— what wedding is valid without a crowning?—and so insisted that both rituals be performed in the Orthodox manner. “For the Russian side,” concludes Uspenskii, “the most important ritual was undoubtedly the Orthodox wedding. It is significant in this regard that the Russians considered it necessary to repeat the betrothal of Marina and the False Dmitrii.”135 The betrothal was merely the first planned deception of the day. Properly betrothed in the Orthodox manner, the couple then went together from the Dining Pavilion to the Palace of Facets, where the First False Dmitrii sat in the “royal seat” (tsesarskoe mesto) and Marina/Mariia stood nearby, as the thousandman, the boyar Prince Vasilii Ivanovich Shuiskii, gave a telling speech: O Royal and Great Sovereign Lady, Tsesareva and Grand Princess Mariia Iur’evna of All Russia, by God’s righteous decree and the will

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of the royal [naiasneishii] and invincible [nepobedimyi] Autocrat and Great Sovereign Dmitrii Ivanovich, by God’s Grace, Tsesar and Grand Prince of All Russia, Sovereign and Lord of many realms, His Royal Majesty [ego tsesarskoe velichestvo] has found it good to take you, royal and great sovereign lady, as his tsesareva. . . . And through God’s mercy, your betrothal has now been completed. And you, our royal and great sovereign lady, by God’s mercy and the will of our great sovereign, are now to be crowned [the ruler] of all these great and glorious realms [vstupiti v svoi tsesarskoi maestat na svoikh preslavnykh gosudarstvakh].136 The speech is fascinating on several levels, in addition to the fact that it was delivered by the boyar who would in just a few days lead a revolt against the impostor and replace him on the throne. First, even before the coronation or wedding, Shuiskii assigns to Marina/Mariia a new royal title, tsesareva, equivalent to that assumed by Dmitrii on July 7, 1605. According to the account by Arsenius of Elasson, the First False Dmitrii was crowned first by Patriarch Ignatii in the Dormition Cathedral using a crown sent to Ivan IV by Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire (ot kesaria, ot velikogo tsaria Alemanii), from which he evidently derived the right to use the titles tsesar’ and imperator. Then he moved over to the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael, where, in the chapel of St. John of the Ladder—where Ivan IV and Fedor Ivanovich are buried—he was crowned again, this time by Arsenius, using the Cap of Monomachus (Shapka Monomakha), from which he derived the traditional titles of a Russian ruler.137 And it may well be that his and his bride’s use of the titles tsesar’ and tsesareva “demonstrates,” as Uspenskii put it, “his general western cultural and political origination.”138 Second, the speech appears to base Marina/Mariia’s use of the title on the betrothal, which had just taken place. The first appearance of the title tsesareva in the ceremonial is in the speech. The few previous references to Marina/Mariia before that in the text call her gosudarynia. Other elements in her title are new as well. She is called royal (naiasneishaia) and great sovereign lady (velikaia gosudarynia): the first of these evidently taken, it seems, from the diplomatic word used most often for “crowned head” or “your majesty,” depending on context (and related to the Polish najas´niejszny).139 The second title is here applied for the first time to the spouse of a Russian ruler.140 In any event, this is a speech that has no parallels or antecedents in previous or subsequent royal wedding rituals. The speech may have been unparalleled because it had the duty of transitioning from wedding to coronation—“now to be crowned [the ruler] of all these great and glorious realms.” From the Palace of Facets, the couple and

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a large cortège moved to the Dormition Cathedral, where the wedding rites were suspended and the coronation rites began. Patriarch Ignatii officiated, crowning the betrothed but, so far as the Muscovites were concerned, still unwed Marina/Mariia as a sovereign monarch. She was, as Uspenskii put it, the “first person of the female sex ever crowned in Russia”; and she was crowned “directly by the patriarch, not by her husband, i.e., she was formally crowned not as the spouse of a tsar, but as a tsaritsa in her own right.”141 The coronation continued with an anointing, which had been a part of Muscovite coronations since 1584 (though not part of earlier coronations).142 But here a second deliberate deceit took place. The anointing that rulers received at their coronations is outwardly similar to the other liturgical occasion when the body is anointed: at conversion. Conversion happens either at baptism (a kind of conversion for infants), which is actually a double rite (and so a double sacrament) including water baptism, usually by full immersion, and chrismation; or at chrismation alone (usually for adult converts and usually an expression of oikonomia).143 In both, the priest applies myrrh in the form of a cross to the convert’s forehead, ears, mouth, chest, back, hands, and feet. The structure of the services—baptisms/chrismations and coronations—vary, of course, in their readings, hymns, and movements, but the blessing of the body is identical, with each application of the myrrh accompanied by the set phrase: “The Seal of the Holy Spirit.” It was thus a rite that, like the betrothal, could be interpreted differently by Muscovites and Poles. Muscovites could see this as a chrismation, and it seems they were deliberately encouraged to think so by the First False Dmitrii and Patriarch Ignatii, who, as Uspenskii suggested, used elements of the chrismation service at the coronation to urge onlookers to think that Marina/Mariia was converting. Poles, according to Uspenskii, would see the anointing as part of the coronation rite, one they would have recognized from their own coronations of Polish kings.144 The coronation rites were to conclude with communion, but neither the First False Dmitrii nor Marina/Maria received the sacrament. As a Catholic, Marina/Mariia was proscribed from receiving communion—though she apparently did not want to anyway—and Dmitrii, as a nominal Orthodox Christian (though secret Catholic), evidently believed that if he communed and Marina/Maria did not, her coronation might well be called into question. It was the First False Dmitrii, whom Uspenskii calls the real “director [rezhisser] of this entire scene,” who evidently decided that the best resolution to this dilemma was simply to skip this part of the rite.145 Neither would commune.146 The patriarch evidently had originally planned to include communion: the ceremonial for the wedding and coronation, which was

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composed under his auspices, includes a place for it in the rubrics.147 But we know from Arsenius of Elasson that the coronation portion of these rites ended without it.148 After the bride was crowned and anointed, the wedding resumed. Archpriest Fedor of the Annunciation Cathedral resumed his role and performed the crowning service according to Orthodox rites in the same Dormition Cathedral.149 Although a Catholic, the bride was now a crowned Russian ruler in her own right. She remained in the nave of the church and was not forced to stand in the vestibule as Magnus had been. Every indication from the evidence that remains from that day suggests that the bride performed everything as requested, though one final stir resulted from her insistence that she change out of her Muscovite costume and put on Polish clothes for the wedding.150 The wedding muster suggests that everything else that day and the next went as tradition dictated: there were banquets on the evening of the wedding day, a ritual bath and more banquets and gift exchanges on the next day, and rowdy entertainments traditional at a royal wedding. The ritual outrages of the wedding and coronation on May 8, 1606, however, played a key role in the demise of the First False Dmitrii. The problem was not just that the bride was a foreigner, dressed like a foreigner, and had foreigners in her retinue. It was not just that these foreigners wreaked havoc in the streets of Moscow, instilling fear and uncertainty in boyars and shopkeepers alike. It was not just that the bride remained Catholic, a fact that was evident despite the efforts imbedded in the rituals to conceal it. It was not just that the First False Dmitrii was a fake. The pretender lost his crown and his head in no small part because he made it impossible for ritual to do its part in solidifying and legitimating his rule. As Victor Turner pointed out, “a society continually threatened with disintegration is continually performing reintegrative ritual.”151 Wedging a coronation between the betrothal and the crowning did more than disrupt the natural sequence in the nuptial rites of passage, which was disorienting enough. It also sapped the power of the coronation to elevate and legitimate the bride. The two rites in fact worked at cross-purposes: a wedding ritually integrated the bride into the dynasty, into the world of the Terem, and into the new regime the royal couple represented, while a coronation segregated and elevated the one being crowned.152 Combining them into one ritual moment proved disorienting and disastrous. The ritual atonality of these rites undermined their meaning and, indeed, turned them into weapons in the hands of the First False Dmitrii’s enemies. The Poles made a mess of things on the streets of Moscow, to be sure. But the real mess that day took place inside the palaces and churches of the Kremlin.

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In each of these three cases of marriages between Orthodox and heterodox, the pre-Christian and other customary rites were not only seen as unproblematical to the Muscovites; they were essential to what made a wedding truly Russian. The caravan accompanying Elena Ivanovna to Vilnius intermingled crosses and icons with suitable clothes for after the purification baths on the morning of the second day and rugs to be placed under the wedding bed (presumably to hold bundles of grain). Hops were sprinkled over the bride and groom at the weddings of Mariia Staritskaia and the First False Dmitrii. All three contained the very elements that stoked the anger of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich a generation later. In fact, it was not at all the preChristian rites, but the heterodox rites—whether Catholic or Protestant— that most concerned the Muscovites in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It would have been far easier to place a pagan amulet under the wedding bed of the royal bride and groom than to hang a Latin cross over it. These three cases also demonstrate what Stevenson calls the “mixture of folk-lore and Christian ceremony” and what Levin describes as the “folk version of Christianity.” Were we today to delineate the varied rites intertwined at a Muscovite royal wedding, we might isolate the liturgical from the customary and religious. We might keep the happenings inside the church apart from those that took place outside the church, in the run-up to and after the wedding services. We might be seduced to make this distinction by the sources themselves, particularly the ceremonials, which all but ignore the liturgical rites and focus on customary rituals at the banquets, processions, and gift exchanges. But that seems not to be how the Muscovites themselves viewed things. They defended their customary rituals as much as they did the Church’s liturgical rites, with hardly a distinction, when pressed by foreign grooms or unconverted brides (and their fathers). They defended their hops and their three-bar crosses. When Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich attacked the fertility rites at his own weddings, he was making a distinction that could occur to him only in his own time and place, and that did not occur to his ancestors. The religious winds had shifted by Aleksei’s time. The rituals had to shift, too.

q Ch ap ter 5 “To Serve without Regard for Place” In-Laws and Courtiers

In the days just before Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich married on September 14, 1624, he sent his chief choreographer, Conciliar Secretary Ivan Gramotin, out before the members of the court to announce whom had been appointed to serve in honorary positions at the wedding. As the head of the Ambassadorial Chancery, Gramotin had been working on these assignments for weeks, in collaboration with Conciliar Secretary Fedor Likhachev, head of the Military Service Chancery, which maintained the master lists of names of all the tsar’s servitors.1 Among the many positions to be filled, it had been decided by the tsar and his father, Patriarch Filaret—and surely with the input of the boyars and, likely, Gramotin and Likhachev—that the seated boyars (sidiachie boiare), who sat at the banquet nearest the bride and groom, would number six, three representing the groom’s side (s gosudarevu storonu) and three representing the bride’s (s gosudaryninu storonu). On the groom’s side of the table, sitting first—closest to the tsar and therefore in the most honorable seat—would be the boyar Prince Ivan Ivanovich Shuiskii, then the boyar Prince Ivan Vasil’evich Golitsyn, and then the boyar Prince Aleksei Iur’evich Sitskii, sitting farthest away. On the bride’s side, sitting first would be the boyar Prince Dmitrii Timofeevich Trubetskoi, the boyar Prince Ivan Ivanovich Odoevskii, and then the okol’nichii Fedor Levont’evich Buturlin.2 Their wives were all to sit with them.3

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Figure 5.1.  The banquet at the wedding of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, in RGADA, fond 135, sec. V, rub. III, no. 16. RGADA (used with permission).

But there quickly arose a problem. Prince Ivan Vasil’evich Golitsyn objected to being seated lower—meaning more distant from the tsar—than Shuiskii and at the same level as Trubetskoi (the person sitting second on the groom’s side ranked as ritually equal to the person sitting first on the bride’s side).4 Golitsyn hurriedly brought a precedence suit against both Shuiskii and Trubetskoi, appealing to the tsar and the patriarch not to assign him a place “lower” than his family’s honor dictated.5 After all, he might well have pointed out, he was listed higher in Boyar Books (Boiarskie knigi) and Boyar Lists (Boiarskie spiski) than either Shuiskii or Trubetskoi; and the Golitsyns were, furthermore, agnatic descendants of the Lithuanian Gedymin dynasty and therefore, by some ways of looking at it, more illustrious than all his tablemates at the wedding.6 It was impossible, given all these considerations, for Golitsyn and his wife to condescend to sit below or equal to men whose families ranked below his in both service record and lineage. Told of the controversy, the tsar and the patriarch instructed Gramotin to go to Golitsyn and remind him that the assignments at the wedding were to fall outside the system of precedence—the complex calculus that ranked families at court according to their genealogical and service histories and determined every major appointment to a command in a military campaign or to an honorific post at a ceremony at court, like weddings. Golitsyn was

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indeed correct that his seating assignment would be an affront under normal circumstances, but Gramotin was to tell Golitsyn that “in accordance with the tsar’s decree [po gosudarskomu ukazu], it has been declared that he [Golitsyn] is to serve without regard for place” and that “no harm [porukha] will attach to him” for his service at the wedding.7 No one’s honor would be besmirched or enhanced by their service at this wedding because the roster would be excluded from all future precedence litigations. Others who had been assigned seats and duties they reckoned were beneath their place had brought similar suits, but they all had been mollified by the tsar’s and patriarch’s assurances safeguarding their honor.8 Despite these assurances (and the tsar’s direct command), Golitsyn and his wife did not appear at the wedding. Punishment was swift and harsh: the tsar that very day ordered that Golitsyn be stripped of his boyar rank and sent along with his wife into exile in distant Perm’—more than a thousand kilometers east of Moscow. His estates—both hereditary (votchina) and service tenure (pomest’e)—were confiscated (except for one near Arzamas, to pay for his upkeep while in exile), and he was placed under strict house arrest, kept under heavy guard, and permitted to leave his house only on Orthodox feast days, going to and from the local church under escort.9 The harsh punishment not unexpectedly took its toll on the proud prince. Golitsyn lived barely two years under these unforgiving conditions, taking his last breath far from home. This extraordinary case—one of the most famous in the two-century-long history of precedence in Muscovy—illuminates another dimension of ritual and symbol in royal weddings.10 The success of a royal wedding as a social, political, religious, and dynastic event depended not only on the perfect performance of the ancient and prescribed rites, but on who performed them. But while most court happenings or military campaigns could be—indeed, were expected to be—arranged in rigid accordance with the rankings of individuals and families in the precedence system, weddings could not work that way. Because royal brides in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were nearly always drawn from middle-level servitor families, it would be impossible to hold to the usual rules about precedence, or else none of the bride’s family would ever have been able to attend their own kinswoman’s wedding. Weddings had to become an exemption zone of the precedence system, so that the middle-born could mingle with their betters in ways that the court could accept—unless, of course, you were a Golitsyn. This chapter explores the choreography of Muscovite royal wedding rituals, focusing on the appointments to the honorific duties typically performed at them. It also explores the place of royal in-laws at weddings, whose presence was essential yet potentially disruptive to the very peace and harmony

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at court that the wedding was to symbolize and assure. And, finally, this chapter charts the evolving history of the precedence system at weddings. The appointment of courtiers to ceremonial and practical positions reveals the crucial political role weddings and marriage played in the Muscovite political system. The appointments of persons to honorific posts in the wedding, or their objections to those appointments, were an essential predictor of how the fortunes of boyars and courtiers would play out under the new regime represented by the tsar, his tsaritsa, and the new royal in-laws. Wedding choreography reflected and reified Muscovite court politics.

The Choreography of Kinship The politics of wedding choreography reveals itself first in wedding musters, which recorded appointments to positions at royal weddings. Musters, it will be remembered, consisted of a hierarchical list of dynasts, courtiers of varying ranks, and royal in-laws who had been assigned ceremonial duties at the wedding—names entered without narrative descriptions of the wedding rituals themselves or other textual adornments, as are found in wedding ceremonials. Drafted on manuscript rolls, the final versions would later be copied into the court’s official Muster Books, a general record of service appointments at court and in military campaigns. Scribes in the chanceries in turn copied these wedding musters at the request of countless courtiers and combined them with musters from other court appointments (military campaigns, diplomatic receptions, banquets, etc.) to become a treasured part of many private family archives. Golitsyn surely had his own copies on which to base his precedence dispute in 1624.11 How were selections made to fill the service appointments listed in a royal wedding muster? Were they determined by seniority at court or by rank, or were positions at weddings made with more practical concerns in mind? If, as we have argued, royal marriage in Muscovy was about dynastic legitimacy, continuity, and monarchical power, how did wedding choreography reflect and shape those concerns? In his description of the Muscovite royal wedding, Grigorii Kotoshikhin devotes considerable space to the appointment of courtiers in positions of honor and service at royal weddings. He wrote: The tsar then put to one side the management of affairs of the state and the land and the administration of justice, and with his princes and boyars and okol’nichie and Duma men began to plan his wedding: which of the boyars and Duma men and closest men and their

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wives to choose for each rank in the wedding party, in the mother’s and father’s place, and as seated boyars and boyar women and in the [bridegroom’s] train as the chiliarch [tysiatskii] and as boyars and groomsmen [druzhki] and bridesmaids [svakhi] and candlebearers and bread-bearers and equerries and the majordomo, and likewise on the bride’s side as seated boyars and boyar women and groomsmen [druzhki] and bridesmaids [svakhi]. And after pondering this for many days, he ordered the Duma secretaries to draw up a roster for his royal nuptials, [indicating] which boyars and okol’nichie and Duma men and closest men and their wives should occupy each rank in the wedding party, as he had chosen, whomever he selected for each rank, without regard for family or service rank or hereditary status, each to occupy the rank which had been directed for him; and after drawing up this roster the secretaries were to seal it with their signatures and present it to him. And he ordered his royal decree to be announced to the boyars and okol’nichie and Duma men and closest men in the presence of many people, so that on the day of the wedding they would be ready to serve in the rank designated for each without regard to hereditary status or family or service rank.12 Kotoshikhin tells us that the placement of courtiers in the muster was arrived at in consultation “with his princes and boyars and okol’nichie and Duma men,” and that the mechanical task of compiling the lists fell on the “Duma secretaries.” He also tells us that the tsar and his advisers made these selections “without regard for family or service rank or hereditary status,” yet leaves unanswered what other criteria might have been applied. He continues: And when the nuptials are held, if at that time any of these boyars or okol’nichie or Duma men or closest men should create any disturbance in the wedding ceremonies on the basis of his lineage or hereditary status or service rank, and the wedding ceremonies are thrown into disorder, he shall be put to death without mercy, and his service estates [pomest’ia] and hereditary estates [votchiny] shall be confiscated, for reasons of his disobedience and disturbance.13 Here Kotoshikhin may well have had Golitsyn in mind, though he exaggerates the penalty the tsar meted out for the prince’s disobedience. Despite this, Kotoshikhin is clear that appointments to positions at the wedding were arrived at collectively (if not always convivially), and without regard for “lineage or hereditary status or service rank.”

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The ethnographer Ivan Sakharov, who, as we have seen, published a wellknown, if faulty, compilation of ceremonials and musters in the 1840s, also analyzed the wedding rituals and service appointments at royal weddings. He believed that these appointments were decided by the royal groom in consultation (v sovetakh) with his boyar and advisers.14 He divided the various service appointments at the wedding into two broad categories. The first included the most important positions: the thousandman; the proxy mother and father; the best men; the matchmakers; the courtier who gave away the bride (vydaiushchii moloduiu); the attendant who veiled the bride (vskryvaiushchii moloduiu); the members of the wedding cortège; the seated boyars and their wives; the master of the horse; the equerry; the holders of the nuptial candles, torches, and ceremonial loaves; and the attendants who drew the nuptial bath (movniki).15 “Besides these main wedding posts,” Sakharov writes, “one finds other posts assigned to persons of lower ranks.”16 This second category of service appointments included the attendants who carried various items in various processions (nosil’shchiki): the rug, glass pitcher (sklianitsa), and the bench and bolsters (skameika s zgolov’iami). It also included various holders (derzhal’shchiki) of objects and accoutrements used at varous rituals: the platters with hops (for the sprinkling), the cup (chara), the comb for the bride’s hair (greben’), the forties of sables, the bride’s headgear (kika), the groom’s hat (kolpak), and the ceremonial kerchiefs given as gifts to attendants at the wedding. This second category also included the young person who occupied the groom’s seat in the banquet hall before the wedding as the assembly waited for the groom to arrive (sidel’shchik).17 The names for many of these posts were conjured by Sakharov, but the positions themselves surely did exist, although not all are documented for all weddings in these centuries. Margarita Evgen’evna Bychkova was the first modern scholar to examine royal wedding rituals and to speculate on the rationale for service appointments at them.18 Her analysis prompted her to conclude that “wedding musters were compiled so that all those who had the right to do so took part in the ceremony.”19 Who it was that had that right were, Bychkova explains, a “limited number of families that occupied a certain position in the estate structure [soslovnaia struktura] of feudal society.”20 Bychkova found that the boyar elite may have had as large a role in the selection process as the ruler, but she thought that the selection process was contentious, not collaborative. Bychkova interpreted the numerous changes inserted in wedding rosters between the draft and final versions of several sixteenth-century weddings as evidence that “a contest for the most prestigious positions” raged among the boyars. The ambitious, Bychkova contended, used all the connections

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at their disposal to secure the best assignments for themselves—“both kinship and service connections.”21 As we will see, there were many reasons for these changes in the appointments at weddings—illness, deaths, and changes of brides—and very little evidence of any conflict over positions except in respect to precedence. (The habit of seeing class conflict in every dimension of court politics is hard to break.) Still, Bychkova is quite right to emphasize the role boyars and other courtiers played in organizing a royal wedding. No court happening displays better, in fact, the consensus politics of Muscovy’s political folkways better than a royal wedding. Like others, Bychkova divided service appointments into two categories, but ones quite different from Sakharov’s. The first included those who were to sit at the banquet tables during one or more of the days of feasting (za stolom), whom she called the “guests”; and the second included those charged with filling various duties at the wedding, whom she simply called the “participants.”22 For the guests, “what mattered most was where they sat and, obviously, which day they attended the banquet.” As for the participants, “it mattered most in what part of the ceremony each person took part.” Focusing only on sixteenth-century wedding musters, Bychkova concluded that “the grand princely wedding gathered together the ruling elite, and also those whose estate privileges [soslovnye privilegii] gave them the right to participate in it.”23 For Bychkova, appointments of servitors at a royal wedding was, at least in part, a feudal privilege. While it is obvious that the thousandman had a more responsible job and a higher rank at court than the fellow who carried the rug, the musters themselves do not indicate a division of servitors into major or minor posts, or into guests and participants. They treat the assignments hierarchically, to be sure, but synthetically. Nor is it clear from the musters which positions were major and which were minor. Why should the holders of the nuptial candles, torches, or ceremonial loaves be in a category higher than the holders of the rug, glass pitcher, or platters of hops? The posts are different and vary in visibility, of course, but where, on the basis of the musters, does one draw the line between major and minor posts? And does being seated at the banquet table truly constitute a different category of participation from performing one of the honorary rites at the wedding, especially when being present was itself a form of participation? These questions aside, Sakharov and Bychkova are right that there were categories of participants at royal weddings. But the categories were not, in fact, revealed so much in the musters as in the gift ledgers (dela o razdache svadebnykh ubrustsev i shirinok), which list the gifts given to those serving in a post at the wedding. A gift ledger survives for the first wedding of Tsar

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Mikhail Fedorovich, perhaps the first one ever compiled, though it probably reflects older practice and notions of service. It lists the gifts given to all participants—including the bride and groom—and the class of gift they received. The tsar, his bride, his mother and father, and the nuns Dar’ia (the former Anna Koltovskaia, Ivan IV’s fifth wife) and Elena (the former Ekaterina/Mariia Buinosova-Rostovskaia, the wife of Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii) each received an oblong ornamental nuptial cloth (ubrusets), richly made of taffeta with pearls sewn into the fabric, and a ceremonial kerchief, also of taffeta, with gold-thread embroidery and gold fringe. This combination of gifts was clearly allotted only to members of the ruling dynasty, the nuptial cloth perhaps being the signal gift for royalty (it was given only to members of the dynasties—Daniilovich, Shuiskii, and Romanov).24 Almost all of the other guests received ceremonial kerchiefs in one of four different classes: taffeta with gold stitching and gold tasseled fringe silk (the same as that given to the six royals who also received nuptial cloths); taffeta with a fringe of gold; calico, muslin, or linen, with a fringe of gold silk; or muslin or linen, with a silk fringe without gold. A total of nine hundred servitors received gifts in 1624, and everyone with a position lofty enough to get his name in the muster received the very same class of kerchief—the one with the best ornamentation and craftsmanship. A gift ledger also survives for Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s first wedding. A nuptial cloth and ceremonial kerchiefs were again given to members of the dynasty—the groom and his three sisters Irina Mikhailovna, Anna Mikhailovna, and Tat’iana Mikhailovna—and to Patriarch Iosif. (Unlike in 1624, the bride is not recorded as having received them, though the source may be incomplete.) The ledger also reports that 340 ceremonial kerchiefs were handed out to others who served in the wedding.25 We will return to these ledgers when we discuss gift exchanges in the next chapter, but here it is important to highlight the distinction they draw between members of the dynasty and others present at royal weddings. It was members of the dynasty who received the royal gift—the nuptial cloth (along with the ceremonial kerchiefs everyone else got). Even the former wives of Ivan IV and Vasilii Shuiskii counted still as members of the dynasty. Muscovite royal weddings were occasions when members of the dynasty gathered together in a symbolic and ritualistic display of unity. It was the dynasty that was singled out, not feudal lords.26 Members of the dynasty displayed unity by their presence at the weddings and by filling some of the most important honorary positions. In 1500, at the wedding of Ivan III’s daughter Feodosiia Ivanovna and Prince Vasilii Daniilovich Kholmskii, members of the dynasty present included the

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bride’s mother, Sofiia Palaiologina, and Elena Stepanovna, the mother of Dmitrii Vnuk, Ivan III’s grandson by his first wife (see appendix C.1).27 In 1505, the younger brothers of Grand Prince Vasilii III—Dmitrii, Iurii, Semen, and Andrei—attended the wedding of Ivan III’s other daughter, their niece Evdokiia Ivanovna, and Tsarevich Peter (Kudai Kul), a converted Chingisid.28 When Vasilii III’s younger brother Andrei Staritskii married in 1533, Vasilii dispatched an emissary to fetch his other brother, Prince Iurii, from his appanage in Dmitrov and bring him to Moscow to attend the wedding. According to the ceremonial, Iurii sat next to the grand prince.29 At the wedding of Prince Vladimir Staritskii in 1549 (to Evdokiia Nagaia), the groom’s mother (Ivan IV’s aunt by marriage), Efrosiniia Staritskaia, and Ivan’s brother Iurii, sat “at the end of the [main banquet] table.” Ivan’s consort, Anastasiia Iur’eva, was also in attendance, sitting next to the tsar.30 Ivan IV was himself present at the weddings of his royal relatives, often without any special role assigned to him, such as at the second wedding of Vladimir Staritskii in 1555.31 At other times, as we will see, he did give himself a formal role. The increasingly numerous children of the Romanov tsars are listed in the ceremonials for Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich and Tsar Fedor III as present at some parts of the wedding ceremonies, though none are listed as seated at any of the banquet tables or assigned any ritual duties. At Aleksei Mikhailovich’s first wedding, the tsar’s sisters Irina, Anna, and Tat’iana had gifts delivered to them from, ostensibly, the new tsaritsa, and so were evidently not in attendance, but things were different at Alekei Mikhailovich’s second wedding.32 The tsar’s sons (Fedor and Ivan), daughters (Evdokiia, Marfa, Sofiia, Ekaterina, Mariia, and Feodosiia), and three sisters are recorded as receiving the blessing of Metropolitan Pavel of Sarai and the Don Region, whose speech at the wedding I analyzed above.33 The same blessing uttered by this metropolitan appears in the draft ceremonial for the first wedding of Tsar Fedor III. The text is fragmentary, but some names are decipherable: Tsar Fedor’s brothers (Ivan and Peter), aunts (Anna and Tat’iana), sisters (Evdokiia, Marfa, Sofiia, Ekaterina, probably Mariia, and Feodosiia), and half-sister (Natal’ia), who were all to be present at the blessing, if not at other moments of the wedding.34 Agnatic members of the dynasty and their spouses sometimes had assignments at a wedding, but only in the three most important posts: the groom’s proxy father, proxy mother, and thousandman. The proxy father was in almost every case the closest agnatic (if there was one) relative of the groom, and the post may have evolved out of the position granted to the closest agnatic kin who sat “in the Great Place” (v Bol’shom meste). Seated “in the Great Place” at Vasilii III’s wedding in 1526 were two of his brothers, Iurii

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of Dmitrov and Dmitrii of Uglich, the only time two occupied the position.35 When Ivan IV married Anastasiia Iur’eva in 1547, his younger brother Prince Iurii sat alone “in the Great Place.”36 When Ivan IV’s brother Iurii married later that same year, it was Ivan himself who served as the proxy father—the first time the term “proxy father” appears.37 Ivan IV occupied the position again when his cousin, Vladimir Staritskii, married for the first time in 1549, but neither term (proxy father or “in the Great Place”) appears in the ceremonial for Staritskii’s second wedding in 1555, though that may simply be a quirk in the surviving versions of the muster.38 For the third, fifth, and seventh weddings of Ivan IV (to Sobakina, Vasil’chikova, and Nagaia, in 1571, 1574, and 1580, respectively), Ivan’s second son, Fedor, served in this position, but it was only in the third of these that the position was called proxy father.39 The pattern of appointments as proxy father continued in the seventeenth century. Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii’s brother, Ivan, served in the post in 1608.40 The Romanov tsars appear to have been less obliged, or willing, to appoint their agnatic kin. Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich had his uncle, Ivan Nikitich Romanov (d. 1640), as proxy father for both of his weddings (1624 and 1626).41 Ivan’s son—Nikita Ivanovich (d. 1654), the last Romanov boyar—was, however, passed over for any position whatsoever at either of Mikhail’s weddings or at the first wedding of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich (in 1648). Indeed, he is not even mentioned in the sources as having been in attendance at them. His known enmity with Aleksei Mikhailovich’s tutor (diad’ka), Boris Ivanovich Morozov, who had orchestrated the tsar’s match with his first wife, may well be enough to explain the slight.42 Whatever the case, Aleksei Mikhailovich’s tutor, Boris Morozov, served as proxy father, which, in fact, he had been in real life.43 By the time of Aleksei Mikhailovich’s second wedding, the only male Romanovs alive were the tsar and his two young sons, Fedor and Ivan (aged nine and four, respectively, in 1671). Aleksei thus went outside any form of kinship, whether real or fictive, to appoint the boyar Prince Nikita Ivanovich Odoevskii as proxy father.44 The only other time a nonrelative served as proxy father was at the wedding of the First False Dmitrii (in 1606). Since he claimed to be the last of the old Daniilovich line, there were, obviously, no agnates to assume the duty. Prince Fedor Ivanovich Mstislavskii filled the role, probably because he was married to Praskov’ia Ivanovna Nagaia, the second cousin of the real Dmitrii.45 The proxy mother similarly was assigned almost exclusively to close relatives in the ruling dynasty. At Ivan IV’s wedding to Anastasiia Iur’eva—the first time a proxy mother was recorded in the musters—the role was filled by Efrosiniia Staritskaia, the wife of Ivan’s uncle Andrei Staritskii and the

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woman whom Eisenstein immortalized as Ivan’s archenemy.46 The text describing the assignment, in fact, is striking in that it marks the appearance of the term “proxy mother” before that of proxy father: “And Prince Iurii Vasil’evich, the brother of the grand prince, was ordered to attend the wedding and to be with the grand prince, and on the first day he is to sit at the banquet in the Great Place. And the proxy mother is to be Princess Efrosiniia, the wife of Prince Andrei Ivanovich.”47 The next wedding to record a proxy mother is Ivan IV’s to Mariia Nagaia in 1580, where his daughter-in-law, Irina Fedorovna (née Godunova), the wife of Tsarevich Fedor Ivanovich (the proxy father), played the part.48 The False Dmitrii’s proxy mother was Praskov’ia Ivanovna Nagaia, a relative of the pretender’s mother, and Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii had his sister-in-law Princess Ekaterina Grigor’evna (née Skuratova), the wife of Prince Dmitrii Ivanovich Shuiskii and the sister of Tsar Boris Godunov’s wife, Mariia.49 Mikhail Fedorovich had his aunt (by marriage), Ul’iana Fedorovna (née Litvinova-Mosal’skaia), the wife of the boyar Ivan Nikitich Romanov, as his proxy mother at both of his weddings.50 Finally, at Aleksei Mikhailovich’s first wedding, the proxy mother was Ovdot’ia Alekseevna (née Sitskaia), the wife of Gleb Ivanovich Morozov, brother of the tsar’s proxy father (and future brother-in-law), Boris Ivanovich Morozov; and at his second, Princess Ovdot’ia Fedorovna Odoevskaia, wife of Prince Nikita Ivanovich, the proxy father.51 The position is not recorded at the reduced version of the wedding ritual devised for Tsar Fedor III (in 1680). In only two cases do wedding musters indicate a proxy father and mother for both the groom and the bride. The first was at the wedding in 1623 of Tsarevich Mikhail Kaibulin, a converted Chingisid tsarevich from Astrakhan, and Mariia Grigor’evna Liapunova.52 Because of his high status, the wedding was treated as a court event, like the weddings of other converted Chingisids or of boyars descended in the female line from the dynasty.53 The second case was in the following year, when Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich married Mariia Vladimirovna Dolgorukova.54 Proxy parents for both the bride and groom were evidently a short-lived experiment. The bride’s proxy father and mother were dropped at Mikhail Fedorovich’s second wedding in 1626, and the positions never reappeared afterward. The texts do not tell us why. Finally, the post of thousandman frequently was assigned to a member of the dynasty as well. The person given this post became something akin to an official “master of ceremonies” at the wedding. Thousandman was, of course, a military rank historically, and its use at the wedding conveys a sense that a royal wedding was as much a court event, where courtiers served, as it was a dynastic event, where the ruler’s family gathered.55 Vasilii III’s thousandman in 1526 was his youngest brother, Prince Andrei Staritskii.56

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Andrei’s own thousandman in 1533 was his first cousin once removed, Prince Ivan Fedorovich Bel’skii.57 And Ivan IV and Prince Iurii both had their first cousin Prince Vladimir Staritskii serve in this post at their weddings in 1547.58 Whereas Ivan IV chose his younger son to be his proxy father at the Sobakina, Vasil’chikova, and Nagaia weddings, he chose his eldest son and heir, Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich, to serve as thousandman.59 The weddings of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich had as thousandman Prince Ivan Borisovich Cherkasskii, whose mother was a Iur’eva/Romanova, and who thus was arguably the closest related affine of the young tsar.60 Prince Ivan died in 1642 and was replaced at the first wedding of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich by his cousin, Prince Iakov Kudenetovich Cherkasskii.61 As in the case with the proxy parents, the thousandman for Tsar Aleksei’s second wedding came from outside the tsar’s ring of kinship: the post was filled by the Georgian Tsarevich Nikula Davydovich.62 Interestingly, only one case I know of places an agnatic kinsman of the royal groom (or bride, as the case may be) in a position “lower” in the hierarchy of duties at the wedding than thousandman: the wedding of Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii in 1608, where his third cousin once removed, Mikhail Vasil’evich Skopin-Shuiskii, served as the tsar’s first best man.63 But since the Skopin and main lines of the Shuiskii clan had separated into distinct lineages by the turn of the seventeenth century, it may be the case that Skopin-Shuiskii served not as a royal agnate but as a boyar. In this way, royal weddings were familial affairs that included members of the dynasty beyond just the bride or groom, whether as proxy parents or thousandman or as nonserving guests. The symbolism of their participation could not be lost on the court elite, most of the senior members of which were in attendance at the wedding as well. The dynasty was, in a sense, a consenting kin group; and by participating or merely being present at the wedding, they in effect pronounced their blessing on the union.

Rituals and Reconciliation Royal weddings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were more than familial happenings, however. A large percentage of the tsar’s court participated in the weddings of the grand princes and tsars. Two of the most consequential weddings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reveal the extent of that participation: the 1547 wedding of Ivan IV and Anastasiia Iur’eva, and the 1626 wedding of Mikhail Fedorovich and Evdokiia Streshneva. Both weddings came after times of bitter political infighting among the boyar elite— the minority of Ivan IV and the Time of Troubles. Both did double duty: marrying off the tsar, and making peace among feuding boyar factions.

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At the wedding of Ivan IV and Anastasiia Iur’eva, eight of the fifteen current boyars were in attendance, filling some of the most important duties. The tsar’s best men were both boyars, as was one of the bride’s.64 Boyars also summoned the tsar to the wedding; attended the tsar’s brother, Prince Iurii (whose frail health may have required special monitoring); arranged for the nuptial bed and bathed with the groom on the second day; served as master of the horse and ceremoniously “protected” the bridal couple during the banquet by riding about the palace square “with drawn sword”; and carried the wine to the church.65 More than these eight may have been present: the muster reports that “all the boyars and lesser gentry whom the tsar had appointed rode with the grand prince to the church and went with him to the churches”—a reference, it seems, to the procession to the church for the wedding service and the mini-pilgrimage to the holy places of the Kremlin traditionally taken by royal grooms after the church wedding in the sixteenth century.66 The muster also mentions two of the possible five or six okol’nichie at the wedding, walking in the procession ahead of the groom and assembling the lesser gentry.67 At the wedding of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich and Evdokiia Streshneva, sixteen of the twenty-six boyars attended in various ranks.68 Of the ten not mentioned in the official account, two were in disgrace, and one other may have been too old or sick to attend.69 Of the six okol’nichie, four are found in the wedding muster, one was in disgrace, and one other died the following year and so may have been too agèd or ill to serve.70 All other courtiers with Duma ranks—the cupbearer, majordomo, chamberlain, council secretaries, and equerry—were in attendance at the wedding.71 The musters reveal more than mere numbers. Ivan IV’s and Mikhail Fedorovich’s weddings brought together old foes in ways that publicly projected an image (if not a reality) of reconciliation and peacemaking. Sitting, eating, processing, and praying together at Ivan IV’s wedding were the two great and opposing factions at court: the Shuiskiis and their allies (the Mstislavskiis, Gorbatyis, Kubenskiis, Paletskiis, and others), and the Bel’skiis and their allies (the Iur’evs, Cheliadnins, and others). Ivan IV’s wedding brought together these formerly warring factions; and the selection of a Paletskaia as Prince Iurii’s bride later the same year may have patched things up with the Shuiskii faction all the more.72 Similarly, the musters for Mikhail Fedorovich’s wedding contain the names of courtiers who—during the fifteen years of bloody Troubles—had supported Godunov or Shuiskii, had been in the Tushino camp, or had advocated a Polish or Swedish candidate. If the election of a Romanov in 1613 expressed the desperate hope of an exhausted elite for peace, the weddings of the tsar eleven and thirteen years

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later vested all factions in a new regime based on the Romanov succession. It was with the tsar’s marriage, not his election to the throne, that peace was finally made. Even so, not everyone could attend the “tsar’s happy occasion.” The three early drafts of the muster for Ivan IV’s and Anastasiia Iur’eva’s wedding report, for example, that the bride’s best men were originally to be the boyar Prince Ivan Mikhailovich Shuiskii and his kinsman the boyar Prince Aleksandr Borisovich Gorbatyi. Prince Dmitrii Fedorovich Paletskii was for a time added to the list, perhaps as a replacement for Gorbatyi, then all three were replaced by Prince Ivan Ivanovich Pronskii and Vasilii Mikhailovich Tuchkov.73 But fate intervened. A later copy of the muster reports that “Vasilii Mikhailovich Tuchkov was supposed to serve as best man with his wife, but Vasilii was killed in a riding accident, but his wife was [at the wedding].” Tuchkov was replaced as best man by Mikhail Iakovlevich Morozov, a kinsman.74 The three drafts reveal dozens more substitutions (for unspecified reasons) before the final version of the muster was compiled.75 Musters for Mikhail Fedorovich’s wedding also report numerous changes. Draft rosters have the word “ill” (bolen) inscribed next to dozens of names, indicating that the person so labeled could not fulfill his assignment.76 Okol’nichii Prince Daniil Ivanovich Dolgorukov, for example, had originally been slated for service at the second wedding of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, but died a month before.77 The wedding muster was probably being edited up to the last minute. Despite these obstacles, choreographers of royal weddings appear to have sought to include representatives (if not all individual members) of all factions and groupings at court. Wedding choreographers plugged names into positions at the wedding with the goal of distributing honors broadly, while at the same time making room for the bride’s family to play a role in the marriages rites. That goal comes into view when we compare the rosters for the planned wedding of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich and Efimiia Vsevolozhskaia in 1647 with the roster of the tsar’s actual first wedding to Mariia Miloslavskaia the following year. The proposed union was foiled by the scheming of the tsar’s favorite, the boyar Boris Ivanovich Morozov, who objected to the Vsevolozhskaia match. But before Efimiia and her family were ejected from their Kremlin apartments, the scribal machinery in the scriptorium of the Ambassadorial Chancery had been put in motion and had composed a draft muster and ceremonial for the proposed marriage, neither of which has ever been published or extensively studied.78 At first glance, what is striking about the Vsevolozhskii and Miloslavskii musters is their similarity, not their differences. There is the same proxy

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father (Boris Ivanovich Morozov), the same thousandman (Iakov Kudenetovich Cherkasskii), and three of the same best men (out of four). The seated boyars (sidiachie boiare), the candlebearers, the torchbearers, and many of the other duties also remained unchanged. Of course, the removal of Efimiia from the Terem and the introduction of Mariia Miloslavskaia sent reverberations through the Kremlin and onto the pages of the wedding muster and ceremonial. The change in the identity of the bride would affect first and foremost the members of Vsevolozhskaia’s family who had been charged with duties at the wedding. As table 5.1 shows, three Vsevolozhskiis were to serve at the wedding. The bride’s parents were assigned to be physically very close to their daughter right up to the moment that the union was consummated, and her brother, Andrei, was to march in the cortège. These were the same positions occupied by the Miloslavskiis at Tsar Aleksei’s actual first wedding: Mariia Miloslavskaia’s father was in the bridal chamber, her mother attended her in the Terem, and five distant agnatic cousins marched in the cortège. Thus while there were more Miloslavskiis assigned at the wedding (seven) than had been planned for the Vsevolozhskii wedding (three), the positions they occupied were identical. In a wedding so fraught with plotting and intrigue as this one was, it is hard to see any evidence of it in the muster. But first glances can be deceiving. There were a number of important differences between the draft Vsevolozhskii muster and the final Miloslavskii muster that can only be explained by the politics surrounding the wedding. As table 5.1 again shows, the number of Morozovs increased only by one, from five to six, between the Vsevolozhskaia and Miloslavskaia musters. But the telling change is in the Morozovs’ service appointments. The proxy mother at the Vsevolozhskaia wedding was to be Stefanida Semenovna Morozova (née Pogozheva?), the mother of Boris Ivanovich and Gleb Ivanovich. She was replaced in the Miloslavskii muster by Ovdot’ia Alekseevna—the wife of Gleb Morozov and herself a Romanov relative through her great-grandmother, Anna Romanovna Iur’eva, the sister of Ivan IV’s wife, Anastasiia Iur’eva. Stefanida was reassigned at the Miloslavskii wedding to be with the bride “in her room.”79 Ovdot’ia’s husband, Gleb, was originally assigned to be the master of the horse but was replaced in the Miloslavskii muster by his father, Ivan Vasil’evich Morozov. Gleb was instead assigned to be with the bride’s father, Il’ia Daniilovich Miloslavskii, in the bridal chamber.80 These changes put the Morozovs much closer to the bride and her parents than they would have been at the Vsevolozhskaia wedding. The proximity of the Morozovs and the Miloslavskiis was no fluke but a purposeful message broadcast through ritual to the entire court. Il’ia Miloslavskii had become a client of Boris Morozov, who would shortly marry Miloslavskii’s other daughter, Anna. Their alliance

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Table 5.1.  Vsevolozhskii, Miloslavskii, and Morozov service appointments at royal weddings, 1647 and 1648 VSEVOLOZHSKAIA FIRST DRAFT

MILOSLAVSKII FOURTH DRAFT

In bridal chamber (u Sennika)

Raf Rodionovich Vsevolozhskii

Il’ia Daniilovich Miloslavskii

With the bride in her apartment (u gosudaryni v Komnate)

Anna Vasil’evna, wife of Raf

Katerina Fedorovna, wife of Il’ia Daniilovich

Cortège (poezd)

Andrei Rafov syn Vsevolozhskii

Semen Iur’ev syn Miloslavskii

Bride’s Family

Fedor Iakovlev syn Miloslavskii Grigorii Iakovlev syn Miloslavskii Ivan Bogdanov syn Miloslavskii Morozovs

Ivan Andreev syn Miloslavskii

Proxy father

Boris Ivanovich Morozov

Boris Ivanovich Morozov

Proxy mother

Stefanida Semenovna, wife of Ivan Vasil’evich Morozov

Ovdot’ia Alekseevna, wife of Gleb Ivanovich Morozov

Master of the horse (koniushii)

Gleb Ivanovich Morozov

Ivan Vasil’evich Morozov

In bridal chamber

Ivan Vasil’evich Morozov

Gleb Ivanovich Morozov

With the bride in her apartment

Stefanida Semenovna, wife of Ivan Vasil’evich Morozov

With the groom’s hat (s kolpakom)

Mikhail Ivanovich Morozov

With the bride in the cortège

Stefanida Semenovna Morozova

In the baths (v myl’ne)

Mikhail Ivanovich Morozov

Mikhail Ivanovich Morozov

Mikhail Ivanovich Morozov

Sources: RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no 22, fols. 63–77 and 78–98.

would intertwine the two clans for a generation.81 The wedding choreography was a declaration that a new coterie of families was in charge. To be sure, there were other differences between the Vsevolozhskii and Miloslavskii musters. Changes appear in the composition of the cortège, the roster of courtiers serving at the nuptial bath on the second day of the wedding, and the bearers of the wedding loaves.82 Were these changes the result of the change in bride? Most, evidently, were not. Edits appear throughout the sequence of musters, beginning with the first draft of the Vsevolozhskii muster and running through the three drafts of the Miloslavskii muster. Editing these musters was a continual and extensive project for the secretaries and scribes working on the texts and were likely to be the result of illnesses, death, infirmities, and other obstacles to fulfilling one’s appointment and not in any way attributable to politics. But the tweaks in the service appointments for Morozovs in the Vsevolozhskii and Miloslavskii musters bring us back to the original question about how

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and why service appointments were made at royal weddings. The Morozovs were already powerful in Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s court, and they were about to become royal in-laws. The wedding choreography reflected a new nexus of power that the tsar’s (and, soon, Morozov’s) weddings were about to create. Service appointments were not made with a view to one’s seniority of rank, nor did they follow from some feudal hierarchy or behind-the-scenes jockeying of high-powered courtiers for the best service assignments. Nor did appointments follow the rubrics of the precedence system, as Golitsyn’s suit against his tablemates at the first wedding of Mikhail Fedorovich reveals. Wedding choreography reflected and enabled power relations at court. We can vividly see power at play by returning to Golitsyn’s complaint about his seat at Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich’s wedding in 1624. All six men who were to sit at the main banquet table came from distinguished Muscovite families with long records of honorable service to the rulers of Moscow. Ivan Golitsyn, the plaintiff, was the younger brother of Vasilii Vasil’evich Golitsyn, who had been a candidate for the crown in 1613. Dmitrii Trubetskoi was a candidate in 1613 as well and was one of the leaders, along with Kuz’ma Minin and Prince Dmitrii Pozharskii, of the Second Volunteer Army that liberated Moscow in 1612.83 Ivan Shuiskii was the younger brother of Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii and married to the bride’s sister, and so was the future brotherin-law of the tsar.84 Ivan Odoevskii and Fedor Buturlin were both prominent figures in the Time of Troubles and supporters of the Romanovs in 1613. Aleksei Sitskii was likewise a leader during the Troubles and a Romanov affine.85 The tsar was thus surrounded by some of the greatest names of the court, military heroes, and former contenders for the throne, all putting their public stamp of approval on the wedding—and, by extension, renewing their stamp of approval on the Romanovs given by the Assembly of the Land in 1613. Golitsyn was ordered to sit where he was assigned not as a display of the young tsar’s power over an uppity courtier, but because his presence precisely in that place and precisely in that company was required for the messaging: these great names were showing their support for the new dynasty and celebrating a marriage that would, it was surely hoped, guarantee its continuation. Golitsyn may well have understood the political purposes of his assignment, but he reckoned, incorrectly, that his family’s honor was more important than the symbolic language of royal rites of passage. And so he died in Perm’. Royal weddings were ideal platforms for this kind of dynastic messaging. Wedding musters are vexingly resistant to interpretation, and consequently much of the reasoning behind appointments at weddings remains concealed from view. But clearly one of the motives in making service appointments

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at weddings was to reaffirm in each new generation the dynastic legitimacy and continuity of the ruling house. And that motive was pursued not only by tweaking rituals, as we have seen, but by carefully selecting the courtiers to perform those rituals—women and men whose very identity communicated a message as much as did the rites they performed.

Royal In-Laws Given the fact that so many Daniilovich and Romanov brides came from such relatively middling backgrounds, the wedding was often the first time the bride’s kin ever appeared at a court function in such high rank or in such lofty company. No Sobakin, no Vasil’chikov, no Streshnev, and no Miloslavskii, for example, would have had the requisite honor to have been seated at a banquet table with the tsar or his boyars before one of their daughters married into the dynasty. The best they could have hoped for was to be a table server, pouring wine and clearing plates from the table.86 The wedding ritual thus served as a means of introducing the new royal in-laws to the court. Their appearance at the wedding in sometimes relatively large numbers and their placement in prominent assignments prefigured, in a sense, the position some of them would occupy in the new regime, as members of the inner circle of power and privilege at court. Weddings were launching pads for new members of the boyar elite. The composition of the wedding musters over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reveals that in-laws were frequently (though not always) present at royal weddings, and when they were, they were typically given assignments positioned close to the persons of the bride and groom. Members of the bride’s family were most frequently assigned to duties that pertained to the wedding bed, as we saw with the Vsevolozhskii and Miloslavskii musters: ritually guarding the couple’s wedding bed (spat’ u posteli), overseeing the bed’s preparation for the wedding night (slat’ posteliu), or simply being “at the bedside” (u posteli). Those assigned here also sometimes oversaw the installation of icons and various fertility symbols in the bedchamber, and they attended to the couple’s incidental needs overnight (presumably being stationed outside the bedchamber). In addition, male in-laws frequently prepared or attended the groom in the ritual baths on the morning of the second day of the wedding, a purification ritual designed to eradicate the “uncleanness” of intercourse.87 In-laws often served as the bride’s best men or as the groom’s second best men, and they are recorded as members of the wedding cortège—either walking before the tsar or behind the bride’s sleds. They sometimes carried or tended to the tsar’s cap and nuptial candles

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or performed a number of other duties, such as carrying the forty sables or tending the hops for the sprinkling ceremony. One does not ever see in-laws in the most prominent positions, such as thousandman, or giving any of the speeches. These most important jobs were reserved exclusively for royal relatives or members of the most important clans at court. The bride’s kin stayed close to the bride and to the symbolic accoutrements of fertility. The in-law’s entrée into the inner world of the Kremlin was clearly through their kinswoman, and her alone. The number of in-laws at weddings varied substantially from wedding to wedding. The muster for the wedding of Grand Prince Vasilii III and Elena Glinskaia in 1526 lists only the bride’s young sister, Nastas’ia, who sat “in the grand prince’s place.”88 At Ivan IV’s wedding with Anastasiia Iur’eva in February 1547, seven of the bride’s kinsmen are mentioned in the final version of the muster, including the bride’s brothers, first cousins, a second cousin, and the wives of her first cousins once removed.89 At the 1549 wedding of Prince Vladimir Staritskii to Princess Evdokiia Nagaia, only two of the bride’s kinsmen were present, an uncle and a first cousin.90 At the Bel’skiiShuiskaia wedding in 1554, two Shuiskiis and the two sisters of the Bel’skii groom were present.91 The later weddings of Ivan IV stand out for the large number of in-laws. The Sobakin wedding in 1571 had twelve members of the bride’s family present—the bride’s father, uncles, brothers, a cousin, and several second cousins—more than at any other sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury wedding.92 The Vasil’chikov wedding in 1575 had nine royal in-laws present, and the Nagaia wedding in 1580 had ten.93 At the wedding of the First False Dmitrii, the bride’s father is mentioned, but the places of the inlaws were filled instead by the Nagois, the family of the mother of the real Dmitrii.94 The wedding muster shows how the Nagois played along with the charade of Dmitrii’s identity. It includes ten Nagois, some filling duties that in-laws frequently filled (the bride’s first best man, the groom’s second best man, those attending the baths, the candlebearers, guests seated at the banquet tables, and so on). In addition, the proxy mother was Praskov’ia Ivanovna Nagaia—a second cousin of the real Tsarevich Dmitrii—and the proxy father was her husband, Prince Fedor Ivanovich Mstislavskii.95 Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii’s wedding in 1608 was more typical.96 The bride’s father and uncle were present, and the groom’s family was represented by only three persons—a distant cousin (the tsar’s first best man), brother (proxy father), and sister-in-law (proxy mother). Romanov weddings followed a similar pattern. Seven Dolgorukovs were assigned to duties at Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich’s wedding to Mariia Dolgorukova in 1624, including the bride’s father—who was the bride’s proxy father (a singular moment when

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the ritual and biological roles coincided)—and mother, who was one of the boyars’ wives at the bedside.97 Ten Streshnevs served at Tsar Mikhail’s second wedding.98 And, as we have seen, three Vsevolozhskiis and seven Miloslavskiis appear in the musters for Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s planned and actual first wedding.99 In-laws are absent from the rosters of the weddings of Prince Iurii Vasil’evich and Ul’iana Paletskaia in 1547, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich and Natal’ia Naryshkina in 1571, and Tsar Fedor III and Agaf ’ia Grushetskaia in 1680. In the case of Iurii Vasil’evich’s wedding, the Iur’evs—the family of Ivan IV’s wife, Anastasiia—occupied those posts that were often reserved for the bride’s family. Seven Iur’ev in-laws, plus the tsaritsa herself, served at the wedding, and four more relatives in the Iakovlev branch of the family served as well. The other in-law family at court, the Glinskiis (Ivan IV’s and Iurii Vasil’evich’s mother’s family) had five members present.100 In the case of Aleksei Mikhailovich’s wedding to Natal’ia Naryshkina, four Miloslavskiis appear in the muster, but not in the usual assignments for royal in-laws.101 Attending the bridal chamber—a traditional place for the bride’s family—were the boyar Prince Ivan Alekseevich Vorotynskii, the tsar’s first cousin (his mother and Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich’s second wife were sisters), and Artamon Sergeevich Matveev, the tsar’s favorite and the bride’s kinsman, with whom she lived prior to the bride-show that made her the tsar’s consort. Matveev and his wife also walked in the cortège.102 Matveev is the closest thing we get to a Naryshkin in-law at the wedding. As for Fedor III’s wedding to Grushetskaia in 1680, the absence of in-laws appears to be merely one of the several modifications in the wedding ceremony that was introduced toward the end of the seventeenth century.103 Three Apraksins were supposed to serve at Fedor III’s wedding with their sister, but the surviving source is a very rough draft and we cannot know if the wedding was performed as described.104 Stepping back from the musters a bit, we can discern now a fairly stable set of honorary positions at the wedding from the second quarter of the sixteenth to the last decades of the seventeenth centuries. Appointments to these positions seem to have been distributed across factions at court, almost certainly with the intention of fostering social solidarity and facilitating peacemaking. Overlying that general distribution, however, were certain regular service allocations: the members of the dynasty occupied one place of honor (as guests or filling the most prominent and visible positions at the wedding) and the royal in-laws another (as attendants of the bride and the royal nuptial bed, and sometimes other duties). These allocations served essential purposes: to solidify support among royal relatives around the new

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couple and to introduce new blood into the court elite: the bride’s kin. Both allocations served dynastic purposes. Both were as essential to the dynastic regime as was the birth of heirs.

Weddings and Precedence The dynastic goals of wedding choreographers ran up against the traditional ways of ranking courtiers and clans in the Muscovite elite. The system of precedence may have predominantly been used to assign command positions in military campaigns, but its rubrics regulated a variety of court functions as well.105 As a result, wedding choreographers had to contend with or evade the rules of the system. Nothing could short-circuit the goals of dynasty and legitimacy more than precedence suits brought by disgruntled courtiers who, often on the eve of the wedding, decided they were unhappy about their assignment or seat. Weddings and precedence have a long and intertwined history. Perhaps the first instance of a dispute at a wedding occurred in 1418, when Prince Iurii Patrikeevich married Anna Vasil’evna, the daughter of Grand Prince Vasilii I of Moscow.106 A dispute broke out between Fedor Sabur, a scion of a boyar clan, and the groom’s older brother, Prince Fedor Patrikeevich. Fedor Sabur objected to his seating assignment at the wedding banquet table, which was “below” the seat assigned to Prince Fedor Patrikeevich, who, although of very distinguished lineage (he was a descendant of Grand Duke Gedyminas of Lithuania), was a recent arrival in Muscovy, having come to Vasilii I’s court with his two brothers only in 1408.107 The grand prince had requested that his daughter’s future brother-in-law be permitted to sit “above” the most prominent boyars at court during the banquet, and it appears that they had agreed. But Fedor Sabur raised an objection that would have made a Golitsyn proud. Prince Fedor Patrikeevich evidently countered that he was about to become a royal in-law and so was therefore due an accommodation, but Fedor Sabur snapped back with one of the great lines in the history of the Muscovite precedence system: “He [i.e., Iurii Patrikeevich, the groom] has God in his kika [a married woman’s headgear], but God is not in your kika,” or, perhaps better: “He has a high place because of his wife, but you have no such advantage.”108 This story, sometimes generously called the “Kika Tale,” is well-known and possibly apocryphal,109 but it “showcases,” in Nancy Kollmann’s words, “the tensions that later persisted in the precedence system, countering claims to status based on marriage and kinship with claims based on service heritage.”110 The story of weddings and precedence really begins in 1500, at the wedding of Feodosiia Ivanovna and Vasilii Daniilovich Kholmskii. Even at that early

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date, wedding choreography was accommodating the expectations of the precedence system. The Kholmskii muster reports that Mikula Angelov, a Greek who had come to Moscow as a member of Sofiia Palaiologina’s entourage, and Ivan Ivanov syn Barshov, from an old Muscovite courtier family, were to “alternate” (peremeniaias’) holding the rug, indicating that they both got a turn at performing this symbolically important duty, possibly as a way of integrating the newcomer Angelov into the hierarchy of the court while not disappointing Barshov’s expectations that his rank and status afforded him this high privilege.111 Traces of the precedence system are also evident at the 1555 wedding of Vladimir Staritskii and Evdokiia Odoevskaia. The wedding description reports that, on the first day of the wedding, Mikhail Iakovlevich Morozov was to sit at the side table (v Krivom stole) and Iurii Mikhailovich Vorontsov in the okol’nichii’s seat. They were to switch seats on the second day, and then on the third day switch again, “so that Mikhail again is to sit in the side table, and Iurii in the okol’nichii’s seat.”112 The wedding choreographers in both cases— 1500 and 1555—were evidently mindful of the rules of precedence and were switching the assignments to keep things even between the two and avoid an ugly scene. In the first half of the sixteenth century, weddings, like other court happenings, were clearly subject to the precedence system. That they were is also shown by how they were recorded in the Military Muster Books—the official compendium listing the names of courtiers who served in military campaigns and which were the chief sources used when adjudicating precedence disputes. The official muster books were destroyed in 1682 with the abolition of the precedence system, but copies made and maintained in private hands survive in relatively large numbers. Wedding musters were included in two versions of these musters: the Sovereign’s Muster (Gosudarev razriad, GR) and the Extended Redaction of the Muster Books (Prostrannaia redaktsiia, PR).113 Weddings are treated differently in these two versions of the Military Muster Books: GR’s wedding musters appear together at the beginning of the book, although later redactions omit them altogether. PR places them chronologically among other recorded events. The reason for this difference may be that GR is an unofficial copy of the official Muster Books, while PR was produced in private hands and kept in the private libraries of Muscovy’s elite. As weddings came progressively to be exempted from the precedence system, the wedding rosters were pulled out of the chronological entries in GR, but not always discarded. They were merely moved to the front of the book, probably, as Kollmann says, because they were “deemed so important.”114 The role of weddings in the precedence system is also shown by the fact that they served as evidentiary sources in precedence litigations. Two

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precedence cases illustrate the point. The first occurred in 1588 and pitted the boyar Prince Timofei Romanovich Trubetskoi against the boyar Prince Grigorii Andreevich Kurakin. The dispute again concerned the seating order at a banquet, this time a banquet held for Lithuanian emissaries. Trubetskoi objected to being seated below Kurakin, claiming that his ancestors had served above the Kurakins (and their Golitsyn progenitors) in the past. As proof, Trubetskoi offered the muster from the 1573 wedding of Princess Mariia Vladimirovna Staritskaia and Magnus, the “king” of Livonia (a text discussed in chapter 4). A report from the investigation into Trubetskoi’s claim survives. It narrates how the boyars discovered that the secretaries in charge of the royal archive, Vasilii and Andrei Shchelkalov, had falsified a copy of the wedding muster in order to aid their kinsmen, the Kurakins, in the litigation: And the boyar Prince Timofei Romanovich Trubetskoi appealed to the boyars, that “they had found this little excerpt in the possession of Vasilii Shchelkalov’s, but not the Wedding Books; and in that excerpt it is written that at the wedding of King Artsymagnus the following sat at the table: Prince Petr Tutaevich Sheidiakov, Prince Vasilii Iur’evich Golitsyn, and other boyars, and the scribe Vasilii Shchelkalov. But at that wedding my cousin Prince Fedor Mikhailovich Trubetskoi sat below Prince Petr Sheidiakov, and below my cousin Prince Fedor sat Prince Vasilii Golitsyn, and many of the boyars remember this; and the boyars are my witness that at that wedding Prince Vasilii Golitsyn sat below my cousin Prince Fedor; and now my cousin Prince Fedor is not written down [in the excerpt]. And what is going on here is that Andrei and Vasilii Shchelkalov have been up to no good; they altered this wedding and did not list my cousin Prince Fedor as having been at that table because of their friendship for the Golitsyns, because the Golitsyns and the Shchelkalovs are friends and relatives by marriage. . . .” And the boyars asked Vasilii Shehelkalov: “You say that you were ill at the time of the king’s wedding, and that the wedding ceremonial was in the possession of your brother Andrei; but why are you yourself listed as seated with the boyars?” And Vasilii Shchelkalov said, “The sovereign himself assigned to me that seat because the scribe who arranges the wedding documents sits with the boyars.” And the boyars ordered their [the Shchelkalovs’] statement be taken down, and [they ordered] Andrei Shchelkalov to find all the Wedding Books and to bring them up to the boyars. And on the next day, the scribe Sapun Avramov brought a draft copy of King Artymagnus’s wedding

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to the boyars, and [he] said that he had found it in Vasilii Shchelkalov’s box; and in this copy Vasilii Shchelkalov was written as seated with the boyars, and [the name] Vasilii Shchelkalov was written by Vasilii himself, and the corrections [to the text were written by] his brother Andrei Shchelkalov. And the boyars asked Vasilii Shchelkalov, “Why did [you] write your own name as being seated with the boyars, but yesterday you yourself told us that you were ill at the time of the wedding?” And Vasilii Shchelkalov said before the boyars, “But is that even my hand? I am afraid that someone forged it.” And the boyars ordered him to look at the handwriting [in the text], and Vasilii Shchelkalov, having looked at the copy, said that it was indeed his hand. . . . And the boyar Prince Timofei Romanovich Trubetskoi addressed the boyars, that “this copy was criminally falsified by Andrei and Vasilii Shchelkalov [out of friendship] to Golitsyn, [because] they saw that at that wedding Prince Vasilii Golitsyn sat below my cousin Prince Fedor, and Vasilii [Shchelkalov] wrote [his own name] in his own hand in the copy as a deception.”115 This fascinating text demonstrates that royal weddings were a legitimate source of reference for precedence litigations, and, by the same token, that not all weddings were bez mest. The Mariia Staritskaia-Artsymagnus wedding clearly was deemed to have been within the rubrics of the precedence system by the litigants involved in this case. And, indeed, by inserting his own name in the muster in a prominent position, Vasilii Shchelkalov sought to take advantage of the dispute between Trubetskoi and Kurakin as a means to advance his own clan’s standing in the precedence system.116 A second instance when wedding musters were consulted to help resolve a precedence dispute involved a 1627 case between A. O. Pleshcheev and V. N. Pushkin.117 Among the many sources utilized in this case was the 1547 muster for the wedding of Ivan IV and Anastasiia Iur’eva. The question to be determined by this suit was whether a Pleshcheev ancestor had served at the wedding below a Volkonskii ancestor, which would have implications for the relative status between the Pleshcheev and Pushkin clans.118 Both litigants presented different versions of the list of servitors who had walked in the wedding cortège beside the bride’s sled (s velikoiu kniagineiu khoditi u sanei) and who were at the head of the lesser gentry in the cortège (detei boiarskikh zbirati). The case was resolved by an extensive comparison of the service histories of these two clans, and by trudging into the archive of the Military Service Chancery to see how the muster for Ivan IV’s wedding recorded

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this part of the ritual. Unable to find the full muster, they again settled for excerpts, which supported the Pleshcheev position (though the outcome of the larger case is unknown). The fact that early wedding choreography seems to account for the precedence system (alternating assignments in some cases), that royal wedding musters were included in Muster Books (although later isolated or removed), and that some sixteenth-century weddings served as source materials in precedence disputes together demonstrate that weddings were originally part of the precedence system. But the status of weddings within the precedence system was changing by the mid-sixteenth century. It was proving impossible to reconcile the dynastic goals of a royal wedding with the existing hierarchies among courtiers. How do you accomplish the peacemaking and social integration goals of a royal wedding when staging it breaks so many of the essential rules that established the social hierarchies inside the Kremlin? The answer, it seems, was to carve out a marriage exemption to the rules. The first possible notice of bezmest’e—the removal of the wedding ritual from precedence rubrics—appears in some short-redaction copies of the muster for the 1554 wedding of Princess Marfa Vasil’evna Shuiskaia and Prince Ivan Dmitreevich Bel’skii. (This wedding was regarded by the court as a royal wedding inasmuch as the bride was the great-granddaughter of Ivan III through his daughter Evdokiia’s marriage to Tsarevich Peter. Unlike other boyars’ weddings, the ceremonial for it was compiled in the ruler’s scriptorium and preserved in the royal archive.)119 The notice of bezmest’e pertained only to the wedding train (poezzhan’e), not the entire muster: “and many courtiers [dvoriane] are written without place [napisany bez mest].”120 But the unpublished long redactions, which are older and better reflect the protograph, omit this line, so it may be that this first bezmest’e notice is a later addition to the text.121 The first firm notice of bezmest’e appears in the muster for the wedding of Ivan IV and Mariia Nagaia in 1580, but even here there is evidence that later handlers of the text attempted to alter it. The passage reads: “And the sovereign ordered all to be at his wedding without places in all ranks.”122 This line appears in all versions of the wedding muster except two—the version in PR and in a fragment of the Nagaia wedding muster in Novikov’s Drevniaia rossiiskaia vivliofika (DRV), which was mistakenly attached to the 1555 muster for Vladimir Staritskii.123 In these two versions, the wedding is specifically identified as s mesty—literally, “with places”—meaning falling under the rubrics of the precedence system. The s mesty notices in PR and the DRV are almost certainly both forgeries. The default position for all royal weddings was, as we seen, s mesty: as

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a court function they would normally be subject to the precedence system. Thus it would not be necessary to insert a line in the muster to that effect. In fact, such a line appears in no other known wedding muster or ceremonial. It would, however, be necessary to insert a special line in the text in order to remove a wedding from precedence reckonings, and such lines do begin to appear, starting with the 1580 Nagaia wedding (and possibly the earlier Shuiskaia-Bel’skii wedding). The changing of the text from bez mest to s mesty may have been simply a corruption introduced by some later copyist, or it may have been a deliberate falsification. The DRV fragment, it has been determined, is a copy of a manuscript that had belonged to Semen Fedorovich Nagoi, the bride’s uncle.124 A suit had been lodged against Semen and his brothers Afanasii and Fedor (the bride’s father)—who had been given the high honor of sitting in the first three seats at the main banquet table— by their kinsman, Roman V. Alfer’ev.125 The Nagoi brothers won the case, and Alfer’ev was instructed to serve as assigned. If the wedding were to fall under the precedence system—if it were to be s mesty—the high honors the Nagois were accorded at the wedding would become part of their family’s permanent service record and thus usable in future precedence litigations. By falsifying his copy of the wedding muster, Semen may have been attempting to make a grab for the status and rank of which he was deprived by the short-lived marriage (three-and-a-half years) of his niece to Ivan IV. By the turn of the seventeenth century, bezmest’e notices in wedding ceremonials and musters had become normative. The muster for the wedding of the First False Dmitrii in 1606 to Marina Mniszech again contained such a notice for the wedding cortège.126 Precedence disputes were so feared by Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii that not only was his wedding with Princess Ekaterina/ Mariia Buinosova-Rostovskaia in 1608 bez mest, but the official muster was destroyed immediately after the wedding: “And Tsar Vasilii’s wedding was without place, and after the wedding, [Tsar Vasilii ordered] the muster burned.”127 Documents for Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov (for his weddings with Mariia Dolgorukova in 1624 and Evdokiia Streshneva in 1626) contained a notice of universal bezmest’e.128 So too did the three ceremonials composed for Aleksei Mikhailovich’s planned and actual weddings.129 The notice inserted into the Miloslavskaia ceremonial is typical of these seventeenth-century notices: And the sovereign ordered the boyars and okol’nichie and Duma people and tablemen and adjutants and courtiers and chancery people all to serve without places [v chinekh vsem byt’ bez mest]. And this, his royal edict, the sovereign commanded be copied and countersigned by the

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hands of the Duma people, and to confirm [the edict] with his royal seal; and he who defies this royal edict and brings suit to the sovereign against someone over place, will for this be reproached and for this be placed in great disgrace by Tsar and Grand Prince Aleksei Mikhailovich of all Russia.130 Last, Tsar Fedor III’s wedding in 1680 (to Agaf ’ia Grushetskaia) was probably also originally planned to be bez mest. Although the part of the original draft wedding ceremonial that would contain the notice is lost, the fact that Fedor’s ceremonial was based nearly word-for-word on the ceremonial for Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s second wedding strongly suggests that the bezmest’e notice would have been copied as well.131 Besides, we would hardly expect to see a revival of precedence at weddings just two years before the institution was abolished. In any case, whatever the original plans had been for the wedding, Fedor reduced the celebrations to a bare minimum and had only a few very close relatives and advisers present, as we have seen. No banquets and processions of the former type took place, and so the chances for any possible suits about place and honor were greatly reduced. When Tsar Fedor married Marfa Apraksina in 1682, the ceremony was similarly small and informal, and by then precedence did not matter. The system had been abolished in January 1682, a month before the tsar remarried. Even so, the memory of precedence lingered. Decades after precedence was abolished, seating at a wedding could still cause a ruckus. In October 1711, at the wedding of Peter I’s son, Tsarevich Aleksei Petrovich, an incident took place that Iurii Eskin has described as “a purely precedence type” of incident.132 Prince Boris Ivanovich Kurakin objected to his seat at the banquet table: instead of sitting next to Peter I, Kurakin’s brother-in-law and uncle of the groom (Kurakin was married to Kseniia Fedorovna Lopukhina, the sister of Peter I’s first wife, Evdokiia), that place of honor had been given instead to James Bruce, one of Peter I’s closest friends and advisers. Moreover, others were placed between him and Bruce: Count Gavriil Ivanovich Golovkin; Prince Iurii Iur’evich Trubetskoi, and Prince Vasilii Lukich Dolgorukov, all sitting “above” Kurakin—meaning closer to the tsar. Kurakin found himself “required to take the last place and lower” than these others, “and I made a point,” he wrote in his memoirs, “of showing my dissatisfaction.”133 Kurakin’s emotions were traditional for a man of his standing (and for a Golitsyn relative), but he could not file a precedence suit. All he could do was lodge his complaint in his memoirs, revealing that legislative fiats sometimes have little effect on underlying attitudes.

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Royal weddings not only served as sources of reference in precedence disputes, they were sometimes themselves the cause of them. Even in cases where the wedding had been declared without place, we find courtiers bringing suits against other courtiers over matters of family honor. Precedence disputes arose at four weddings, all clustered at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries. Though these suits were serious disruptions to the wedding planning, these weddings account for a minority of precedence disputes in the years when these weddings took place. The numbers tell the tale. Ivan IV’s wedding with Mariia Nagaia in 1580 sparked four suits, or 14 percent of the twenty-eight disputes recorded in that year. Two of the seventeen disputes in 1608 came out of the wedding of Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii and Ekaterina/Mariia Buinosova-Rostovskaia, or about 12 percent. The wedding of Tsarevich Mikhail Kaibulin and Mariia Liapunova in 1623 sparked three suits, or about 18 percent of the seventeen cases in that year. Six precedence disputes erupted at Mikhail Romanov’s first wedding in 1624, slightly more than a third of all disputes brought that year (also seventeen) and the most disputes by number and percentage at any wedding.134 By far, most of the precedence disputes in these four years (1580, 1608, 1623, and 1624) concerned command assignments in army regiments or postings as military governor.135 Thus, although weddings could spark precedence disputes, they were clearly not the chief source of them. What is unexpected about the list of wedding-related precedence disputes is the almost total absence of suits brought by or against royal in-laws. Only two precedence cases involved the bride’s family and their assignments at the wedding. The first was the suit brought at the 1580 wedding of Ivan IV and Mariia Nagaia by Roman Vasil’evich Alfer’ev, mentioned above. (Alfer’ev was evidently content with the assurances that the wedding was without place.) The second case was brought not against an in-law but by an in-law. At Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich’s first wedding in 1624, the bride’s father, Prince Vladimir Timofeevich Dolgorukov, objected to being seated “lower” than the boyar Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev.136 It was a ridiculous claim: the Dolgorukovs were an ancient family, to be sure, but the Sheremetevs’ service record made them one of Muscovy’s most illustrious families, and service trumped pedigree. (The plaintiff was again mollified by a reiteration of bezmest’e.) Given that in-laws were typically not from prominent families and yet often played highly visible roles at royal weddings, it is striking that we do not find in-laws entangled in litigations with their “betters.” Robert Crummey suggested that “the tsar’s in-laws rarely took part in litigation,” whether wedding-related or not; and that the absence of litigation against a royal bride’s family at weddings was probably due to the acquiescence of the great

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clans, who accepted the presence of in-laws at the wedding ceremony in posts well above their station.137 In other words, there was practically no litigation because the entire elite, not just the groom, understood that in-laws had to be there—although there would still be the likes of Fedor Sabur who would not go along with it. The Muscovite wedding ceremony functioned as an integral part of the kinship-based political system and as a ritual platform for social integration and peacemaking. Wedding choreographers could therefore neither favor one faction or kinship network over another nor strictly follow the rules of precedence. Service appointments surely were made with an eye to those networks and rules, and courtiers clearly coveted their assignments, as well as the ceremonial kerchiefs they received, which served as both a kind of wedding favor and commemorative medal, one not worn on the breast but spread on a table or hung over an icon. But weddings also served larger dynastic purposes, where the prestige of the ruling house was bolstered by the service of members of prominent clans, whose very presence at the wedding helped broadcast an image of dynastic legitimacy and social solidarity. As Kollmann put it, royal weddings “had the effect of integrating the elite.”138 Wedding choreography was a key tool in achieving that integration.

q Ch ap ter 6 “To See Your Royal Children on the Thrones” Brides and Gifts

Even as Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich’s first wedding on September 19, 1624, was still being celebrated, a tableman (stol’nik) crossed the Kremlin’s Cathedral Square to the Ascension Convent, where Ekaterina/Mariia Petrovna Buinosova-Rostovskaia, the former wife of Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii, had been living for the past fourteen years as the nun Elena. The unnamed tableman brought wedding gifts with him, sent directly from the tsar and his bride, Mariia Vladimirovna Dolgorukova: an oblong ornamental nuptial cloth, richly made of taffeta with pearls sewn into the fabric; and an ornamental kerchief, also of taffeta, with gold-thread embroidery and gold fringe. The next day, the tableman Prince Daniil Grigor’evich Gagarin was dispatched from the wedding to the Tikhvin Convent, about 480 kilometers north of Moscow, bearing the same gifts for Anna Alekseevna Koltovskaia, the fourth wife of Ivan IV, who had been living there for the past fifty-two years as the nun Dar’ia.1 The marriage between Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich and Mariia Dolgorukova was short-lived, however. Tsar Mikhail’s bride was dead four months after the wedding, possibly the victim of a conspiracy of opponents of the marriage at court.2 When the tsar married for a second time, on February 5, 1626, Prince Daniil was sent to Dar’ia again with yet another nuptial cloth and kerchief.3 (No source reports gifts sent to the nun Elena in 1626, but presumably they were.)

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Figure 6.1.  Tsaritsa Evdokiia Streshneva and the women of the court during her wedding, in RGADA, fond 135, sec. V, rub. III, no. 16. RGADA (used with permission).

Surviving written instructions (pamiat’) given to Prince Daniil for this second trip to the nun Dar’ia provide some of the details about his mission in 1626 (which were probably the same as those given him in 1624). On arrival at the Tikhvin Convent, he was to go immediately to Dar’ia and inform her that he had been sent to her “by the Sovereign, Tsar and Grand Prince Mikhail Fedorovich of all Rus’ and by his consort, Tsaritsa and Grand Princess Evdokiia Luk’ianovna of all Rus’, directly from their wedding with an nuptial cloth and kerchief.”4 Prince Daniil was then to present the gifts on two separate platters, along with a letter from Tsar Mikhail (gosudareva gramota), which is now lost but probably contained a formal announcement of the wedding and a description of the gifts. The nun Dar’ia was then to offer Prince Daniil something to eat and to give him a return letter (otpiska) and a blessing to depart for Moscow. On his return to the capital, Prince Daniil was to report immediately to Council Secretary Ivan Gramotin at the Ambassadorial Chancery and deliver her letter to him.5 Dar’ia’s letter would later be read aloud publicly to the tsar and tsaritsa, probably with senior members of the court in attendance to hear the formulaic, yet still meaningful, words.6 These expeditions from the weddings of the first Romanov tsar to extsaritsy from the two previous dynasties (Daniilovich and Shuiskii) were integral parts of a symbolic and meaningful exchange of gifts that took place at Muscovite royal weddings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Gift

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exchanges involved not just the members of the dynasty but the entire court. Gifts were exchanged between the bride and the members of the dynasty into which she was marrying and with courtiers of every rank who served at the wedding; church hierarchs sent and received gifts; boyars and other important servitors gave and received gifts; even, as we have seen, prominent members of the court who were not in attendance at the wedding for one reason or another were sent a ceremonial kerchief to commemorate the wedding. No one was left out—not ex-tsaritsy living in remote monasteries, not even the guard who manned one of the Kremlin’s gates during the three days of wedding celebrations. To be sure, the gifts were very different in fineness and cost, but they all served the same function: to introduce and integrate the new bride and her family into her new political and social environs at court. This chapter examines the way rites of passage and gifts interacted to create social cohesion in the Muscovite court. Gifts at weddings served a variety of functions: they helped integrate the bride (and her family) into the social hierarchy of the Kremlin, they reified lines of attachment and loyalty between the court elite and the dynasty, and they solicited the public and prayerful support of religious leaders of the Russian Church in distant locales across the tsardom. Gifts were objects that servitors of all ranks took home with them. They were physical reminders of service at the wedding, but also a token of membership in a limited circle of courtiers who spent their lives serving the tsar. Gift exchanges offered a means to transmit far and wide the social and political messages being choreographed in the otherwise largely indoor and (literally) walled-off happenings in banquet halls, churches, and living spaces inside the Kremlin. Gifts were, consequently, an essential element of the larger goals of all royal weddings: to project an image of power, legitimacy, continuity, solidarity, and beneficence.

Rites of Passage, Brides, and Gifts Gifts and weddings as rites of passage lead us into contentious territory among the scholars in various disciplines. All discussions of the gift necessarily begin with Marcel Mauss’s The Gift (Essai sur le don), which established the original questions about “the gift” that he and his successors (mostly anthropologists and sociologists, but increasingly historians) would pose and contest. Mauss argued that there were “three themes of the gift, the obligation to give, the obligation to receive and reciprocate,” and that gift giving was a fundamental attribute of human society, including its religious beliefs and notions of the sacred.7 This cycle of gift giving accomplished many things at the same

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time: it created social stability even as it reinforced existing social hierarchies; it circulated goods through pre-market economies; it served as a form of peacemaking among rival clans, kinship networks, tribes, and settlements; and it bolstered the formation and stability of political order. Mauss has not, of course, gone unchallenged in the last century. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Annette Weiner, Maurice Godelier, and others have stretched and pulled on Mauss’s original thesis variously, emphasizing kinship (the exchange of women in the marriage market), or objecting to the religious component of the gift (the insistence of Mauss that gifts are endowed with a spirit that propelled the circulation of gifts through a group), or introducing exceptions to the gift-giving ethic (the notion that some objects are too sacred or valuable to be given away).8 But none of these tweaks has overthrown Mauss’s original contention that gifts and gift exchanges lie behind the formation and maintenance of increasingly elaborate social structures. Gift exchanges, for Mauss, do double duty. The exchange of gifts fosters both solidarity and hierarchy. The giver of a gift forms a bond with the receiver inasmuch as the gift signifies that the two parties belong to the same social world and adhere to the same religious and cultural conventions. As Mary Douglas put it, a “gift that does nothing to enhance solidarity is a contradiction.”9 At the same time, a gift reinforces status in society. One party or person may be required and expected to offer gifts, but the other side is equally required to accept them and the “burden” that comes along with them: a responsibility to reciprocate—either literally or through patronage or other social support—and thereby participate in the common yet stratified culture facilitated by and expressed in the gift. Van Gennep’s three-stage model—rites of separation, transition, and incorporation—has been a helpful lens in interpreting the extant sources describing royal weddings, as we have seen, but the connection between gifts and rites of passage is less obvious. Van Gennep never discretely explored the connection in Rites de passage, though gifts “punctuate,” as Ilana Silber put it, the model through and through. Silber examined the role of gifts in Van Gennep’s model and has convincingly argued that gifts are “omnipresent” in Rites de passage, even if “Van Gennep never gets to question nor problematize, least of all theorize, this pervasive connection between gifts and rites of passage.”10 That would come later, with Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Victor Turner, and a lengthy lineage of successors who will elaborate on (and often depart from) Van Gennep’s ideas on liminality to such an extent that Van Gennep’s ideas on gift giving would be largely overshadowed.11 Still, Silber shows that gifts play a vital role in Van Gennep’s model, marking each passage from “separation” to “transition” to “incorporation.” Silber

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argues that gifts are vital to Van Gennep’s model and that they “become a part and parcel of ritual processes, to the point of even constituting a fundamental if ever unstable and enigmatic ‘rite of passage’ of its own kind.”12 In fact, although Rites de passage has often been thought to have ignored the gift, Van Gennep actually established in it the very contours of the debates over the gift that have raged ever since. “The focus in Van Gennep’s text,” according to Silber, “is on the integrative, inclusive, solidary facets of gift interactions.”13 Despite the raging debates among the specialists, gifts, it was agreed, brought people together. We arrive at a useful intersection of gift theory and Muscovite sources when we consider Mauss (and his heirs) and Van Gennep’s rites of passage in the context of new studies of gifts and power. Florin Curta, for example, examined gift giving at the Merovingian and Carolingian courts between the sixth and tenth centuries and proposed that we “reevaluate gift giving as a political phenomenon, instead of an economic strategy or a mere mechanism for maintaining social stability.”14 Curta shows that “gift giving was not about social bonds or glue.”15 He continues, “Merovingian and Carolingian gift giving was primarily about politics, not economics, although the two spheres of social activity were certainly not completely separate. Merovingian and Carolingian Francia had no gift economy, but Merovingian and Carolingian political economy can only be understood in terms of gift-giving practice that often took a public, almost ceremonial form.”16 Curta focused not on external or, to use an anachronism, “diplomatic” gift exchanges but on “ ‘internal’ gift-giving practices within Merovingian and Carolingian societies”—exchanges among the ranks of elites around the king—and found that, in this setting, gifts “should be treated as a category of power and as a political strategy.”17 Curta thus goes beyond Van Gennep’s and Mauss’s concern for the gift as a mechanism for building social solidarity and presents it principally as a means for establishing power hierarchies and reinforcing political relationships within a ruling coterie. Curta gives us a way to reconcile the two goals of the gift: social integration and hierarchy. When viewed through the lens of power, the gift can both integrate outsiders and reaffirm existing and essential hierarchical power relationships. Curta provides the missing piece in so many classic treatments of the gift—including Van Gennep’s—which identified these two goals (social integration and hierarchy) but rarely grappled with, let alone resolved, their seeming cross-purposes. The rites of passage of the bride at a Muscovite royal wedding placed key ritual actions in her hands. Her transition from maiden to wife and from commoner to tsaritsa was announced and enabled by her choreographed participation in gift exchanges. The connection between the

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gift and rites of passage is imbedded in the accounts of the agency of royal brides at royal weddings in Muscovy. We can begin our study of gifts, power, and brides with the dowry inventories compiled in 1506 for Evdokiia Ivanovna (daughter of Ivan III) when she married the converted Chingisid Tsarevich Peter (Kudai Kul) on January 25, 1506; and for Mariia Saburova (Grand Prince Vasilii III’s sister-in-law) when she married Prince Vasilii Semenovich Starodubskii (the grand prince’s agnatic kinsman) on April 23, 1506.18 Both weddings were celebrated in Moscow with Orthodox rites. These two inventories give us the earliest glimpse of how gifts were exchanged at weddings and what the meaning of these exchanges might have been. At both weddings, gifts were exchanged on the eve of the wedding and during all three days of celebrations. Evdokiia Ivanovna’s and Tsarevich Peter’s wedding began with Grand Prince Vasilii III giving gifts to both the bride and groom on the eve of the happy occasion (Saturday, January 24, 1506)—objects that the couple would need and use during the course of the three-day celebration (jewelry, formal wedding costumes, a stallion for the groom, and so on), and other gifts that would most likely form part of their new household. On the wedding day, before the wedding services in the church, Vasilii III again gave useful gifts to the bride and groom (a cross, a gold chain, a kaftan, and other personal items); and Grand Princess Solomonida, Vasilii III’s bride of just a few months, also gave the groom traditional gifts (including a belt, or poias’). At this time, or perhaps later in the day, the grand prince gave the couple crosses, icons, comforters, and linens for use in the bedchamber. The second day of the wedding opened with the bride and groom in the ritual baths, where Vasilii III and Solomonida sent clothing and other customary gifts to the couple (fur coat, sandals, new dress clothes, and so on). A banquet followed afterward, hosted by the groom, where it was now the groom’s turn to offer gifts to the grand prince and grand princess (imported bolts of velvet and sables). At this banquet, the inventory reports that Tsarevich Peter gave gifts (dary) to Grand Prince Vasilii III and Grand Princess Solomonida, and to Vasilii III’s four younger brothers—Dmitrii, Iurii, Semen, and Andrei—and that the gifts were “obtained from the grand prince’s Treasury,” underscoring the purely ritualistic nature of these exchanges. Also on day two, the grand prince sent his youngest brother Andrei (then only sixteen years old) to give to the bride, his sister, a number of gifts from the grand prince, including an icon, jewelry, gems, and “villages in Pereslavl’: Romanovo and Petrishchovo.”19 The gift of these villages to Evdokiia appears in no other source and was in addition to the towns of Goroden, Klin, and five others given by Grand Prince Vasilii III

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to Tsarevich Peter.20 After the banquet, the groom took a goblet of mead to the grand prince and grand princess in their respective bedchambers. The rulers in turn offered gifts (a gold ladle and silver goblet for Peter, and an icon of the Mother of God with Child for Evdokiia). The last day of the wedding finds the couple at a final banquet (otvodnyi pir) hosted by the grand prince, and the inventory lists gifts given by Vasilii III, Solomonida, Prince Semen, and Prince Andrei to both the bride and groom (the other brothers, Dmitrii and Iurii, were evidently not present at the banquet).21 The presence of Grand Prince Vasilii III’s younger brothers cannot be mere chance. Their role in the gift exchanges served not only as a symbol of their approval of the union between Tsarevich Peter and their sister but also possibly as a statement of the new familial order in the dynasty that vaulted Tsarevich Peter to the second position in the dynasty—second to the grand prince and above the collateral members of the dynasty. The fact that none of the four brothers were married at the time—and that three of them never would marry—could not have been anything but the symbolic subordination of these brothers to their new brother-in-law in the eyes of those who were at the banquets.22 The new order in the dynasty was probably also signaled by the granting to Evdokiia of her own towns (in addition to those assigned to Peter separately), which, in addition to providing for her maintenance, elevated her status in the ruling dynasty, especially given the fact that these towns were conveyed to her by her brother Prince Andrei. The role in the wedding of the younger brothers might also signal attitudes about royal succession in Muscovy. This marriage between Vasilii III’s sister, Evdokiia, and Tsarevich Peter spawned a branch of the dynasty that would last into the seventeenth century—longer, even, than the main trunk of the dynasty that descended from Vasilii III. Two daughters issued from this union, both of whom married prominent boyars at court.23 These royal boyar lines were treated as ancillary lines of the dynasty, as demonstrated by the fact that later marriages in this line were recorded by the royal chancery, unlike the marriages of other boyar clans at court.24 The privilege of the boyar lines descended from Tsarevich Peter and Evdokiia Ivanovna was also posited by Zimin, who speculated that the still childless Vasilii III had designated Tsarevich Peter, not any of his younger brothers, as his heir in his first will, written in 1509 (and now, alas, lost).25 The evidence from the dowry inventory tends to support Zimin’s speculation, and—whatever the truth of that speculation—demonstrates that gifts were serious and meaningful matters at Muscovite royal weddings from the very moment detailed descriptions of them begin to appear in sources. Gifts cemented the bride and groom into the court elite and signaled key realignments in the dynasty, including perhaps even the succession.

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The wedding of Mariia Saburova and Starodubskii three months later followed the general structure of Evdokiia’s and Tsarevich Peter’s, but there were several noteworthy adjustments. The grand prince gave gifts to the bride and groom on separate days before the wedding (the bride, two days before the wedding; the groom the day before), and there was an additional banquet on the fourth day of the wedding when gifts were exchanged. It also appears that none of Vasilii III’s younger brothers were present at any of the wedding celebrations, or, at least, no gift exchanges involving them are recorded. The banquet on the fourth day of the wedding is of particular interest. According to the dowry inventory, on that day the bride’s father, Iurii Konstantinovich Saburov—who was father-in-law both to Starodubskii and to Vasilii III—hosted a banquet for the bride and groom. Vasilii III specified to Starodubskii what gifts he was to give to his father-in-law (three forties of sables, Venetian velvet, Brussa fabric, and three bolts of damask). Then Iurii Konstantinovich and his wife, Mariia, presented similar gifts to the groom in return: Venetian velvet, Brussa fabric, Venetian damask, and forty sables; Mariia gave him Brussa fabric, Venetian damask, and forty sables.26 It is not entirely clear from the text that Vasilii III and his wife, Solomonida, were present. In any event, it is likely that these gifts (like the gifts from Tsarevich Peter to Vasilii III’s younger brothers) were drawn from the grand prince’s Treasury; and so these gift exchanges function as all gift exchanges do: as a means of solidifying publicly and symbolically the two parties, in this case, two sons-in-law and their father-in-law. The grand prince and grand princess also sent gifts to Starodubskii’s mother, Sofiia (two formal women’s costumes, or torlopy), who was perhaps too ill or elderly to attend the festivities on the fourth day.27 But at both weddings, it was the brides that determined their husbands’ worth at court. Tsarevich Peter was a Chingisid and Starodubskii an agnatic scion of the Daniilovich dynasty—illustrious parentages in both cases, to be sure. But these same illustrious lines actually made them outsiders, closely related by neither blood nor marriage. Their access to the court and the grand prince’s favor came horizontally, as a product of their marriages. Evdokiia Ivanovna was the grand prince’s sister, and Mariia Saburova was his wife’s sister. Tsarevich Peter and Starodubskii certainly benefited from their backgrounds, but these brides enhanced their husbands’ status in the court based on the currency that mattered most: marriage links to the person of the grand prince himself. Exchanging gifts with dynasts (Vasilii III’s brothers, at Evdokiia’s wedding) or in-laws (the father of the Saburova sisters, at Starodubskii’s) reified bonds that could not be based on blood alone or at all. Gifts substituted for blood, creating a fiction of relatedness and social

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belonging that was as strong as blood but purely symbolic and therefore open to newcomers. Gifts, then, facilitated not only social integration. They facilitated the introduction and acceptance of new blood into the old elite. These uses of the gift were integral parts of the rites of passage at Muscovite weddings and would be wholly recognizable to Van Gennep.

Gift Exchanges, Power, and Social Integration Gifts moved from person to person at Muscovite royal weddings in two directions, both involving the bride. The first took place on the first day of the wedding, just before the church wedding, when the bride took part in the set of rites of separation in the presence of the entire court and when the Orthodox betrothal ceremony was performed. It was then that, in most cases, the bride distributed gifts or had them distributed in her name. The second were the gift exchanges that took place over the course of the wedding, when other gifts were given or exchanged as integral parts of other separate ritual moments performed at banquets or special audiences at the wedding. Each gift giving or gift exchange was linked to a ritual moment in the sequence of rites of passage performed at the wedding, just as Van Gennep tells us to expect. Each was an essential element of a composite rite that collectively helped accomplish the marriage, integrate the bride, and reaffirm power relationships at court. The gift served as an amplifier of the messages that were being acted out and broadcast during the three (or more) days of rites and ceremonies inside the Kremlin’s palaces and churches. Gift-giving rites together constituted a coherent arc of actions that accomplished different things from day to day. The early inventories reflect this arc, but real details emerge from a discrete analysis of the wedding ceremonials starting with the wedding of Prince Andrei Staritskii in 1533. Day 1

The distribution of gifts on the first day of a Muscovite royal wedding was key in terms of integrating the entire court around the newly married royal couple. It was on this day that gifts were distributed to those who held the most important honorific duties at the wedding, in the sixteenth century, and to the entire wedding party, in the seventeenth—from the thousandman to the bride’s and groom’s best men, guards at Kremlin gates and portcullises, and even musicians and other entertainers of various sorts. Day 1 was all about the bride. In each of the weddings for which we have data, the disbursal of gifts on the first day took place at the same bride-focused

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moment in the sequence of rituals: at the time when the bride-to-be and the groom had gathered together in the principal venue (usually the Middle Golden Palace or, later, the Palace of Facets) where most of the banqueting, speeches, and many other nuptial rituals would take place (see table 6.1). It was at this moment when the bride’s hair was braided and veiled, when she and her groom were sprinkled with hops to ensure their fertility, and when bread and cheese were cut and distributed among all those present. This crucial moment, laden with ancient and earthy fertility symbolism, was also the moment when the bride—sometimes through her best man—distributed ceremonial kerchiefs on platters to all those present. At the wedding of Prince Iurii Vasil’evich (Ivan IV’s brother), the bride herself handed out the gifts.28 At the weddings of Andrei Staritskii, his son Vladimir Staritskii, and Tsar Simeon Kasaevich, the task was performed by the ruler’s consort (Elena Glinskaia or Anastasiia Iur’eva), probably because these weddings of appanage princes and a converted Chingisid were hosted by the Muscovite ruler.29 At the weddings of Prince Ivan Bel’skii (a prominent boyar whose bride was descended from the ruling family) and the first two Romanovs, it was performed on the bride’s behalf by her first best man, though at Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s second wedding the groom’s first best man did the job.30 The gifts disbursed at this moment and shortly thereafter were, as the sources unanimously indicate, ceremonial kerchiefs, and they were given in large numbers. Details exist only for seventeenth-century weddings, but the overall pattern may have been the same in the sixteenth century. The totals are impressive: for Mikhail Romanov’s first wedding in 1624, 818 kerchiefs of four different classes were distributed (see table 6.2).31 The most richly decorated examples went to members of the dynasty, along with a nuptial cloth, as we saw in the previous chapter. These were exclusively gifts for royalty. Kerchiefs went to those who held the most important honorific posts at the wedding, and less luxurious examples went to the lower ranks of servitors, including scribes and clerks at the chancelleries whose workshops produced many of the accoutrements for the wedding (including the kerchiefs themselves), palace guards, zhil’tsy who served food and drink at the banquets, and musicians. At the first wedding of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich in 1648, 345 kerchiefs were distributed (see table 6.3).32 Most of these gifts, certainly those for the most prominent attendants at the wedding, appear to have been distributed at this moment, but kerchiefs given to lower-ranking servitors were sent the next day, presumably also in the bride’s name.33 Gifts were given far and wide, but the range of recipients expanded significantly between sixteenth-century weddings and Romanov weddings of the seventeenth century. According to the ceremonial for Prince Andrei

bride’s best man gives shirinki

Bride’s first best man→groom, patriarch/father, Marfa Ivanovna; bride→Dar’ia; bride’s second best man→proxy parents, thousandman, boyars and other senior attendants

Bride’s first best man→groom, Irina M., Anna M., Tat’iana M., Patriarch Iosif; bride’s second best man→proxy parents, thousandman, boyars, and other senior attendants

Ivan Dmitrievich Bel’skii and Marfa Vasil’evna Shuiskaia, November 8, 1555

Mikhail Fedorovich and Evdokiia Streshneva, February 5, 1626

Aleksei Mikhailovich and Mariia Miloslavskaia, January 16, 1648

GP=grand prince; GPr=grand princess; T=tsar; Ts=tsaritsa

Aleksei Mikhailovich and Nata- Groom’s first best man→sons and lia Naryshkina, January 22, daughters of groom, to patriarch, to 1671 other senior church figures

Ts→T, Iurii, groom, boyars and deti boiarskie, cortège

Tsar Simeon Kasaevich and Mariia Kutuzova-Kleopina November 5, 1554

T→mother of groom, groom, bride; Ts→groom, bride

THIRD DAY

Groom’s first best man→those holding honorific posts at wedding

T→groom; Groom→T, Ts, Iurii, Ul’iana, Simeon; T→Vladimir Staritskii; Ts→bride; Tysetskii→Vasilii VladimirovT←groom ich; Ts→bride; Iurii→groom; Ul’iana→bride

T→groom; groom→T, Ts, Iurii, Ul’iana; groom←T, Ts, Ul’iana

Groom→T, Ts, Tsarevna, Iurii, Ul’iana

Iurii Vasil’evich and Ul’iana Paletskaia, November 3, 1547

Vladimir Staritskii and Ts→T, groom, boyars and deti boiarskie, Evdokiia Nagaia, May 31, 1549 cortège

Groom→T, Ts; groom←T

Bride→T, Ts, groom, boyars and deti boiarskie, cortège

Andrei Staritskii and Evfrosiniia Khovanskaia, February 2, 1533

SECOND DAY Groom→GP, GPr; groom←GP

FIRST DAY

GPr→GP, groom, “boyars and princes,” cortège

WEDDING

Table 6.1.  Gift exchanges at Muscovite royal weddings, 1533–1671

Patriarch and hierarchs→groom and bride; boyars, courtiers merchants→groom

Hierarchs→groom; boyars, courtiers merchants→groom (gifts not accepted); hierarchs→bride; boyars, courtiers, merchants→bride

FOURTH DAY

February 7: patriarch→groom; patriarch→bride; boyars and other leading courtiers, merchants→groom and bride; Gifts from lesser servitors returned to them; groom→hierarchs: goblet (kubok)

OTHER

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Table 6.2.  Classes of gifts disbursed at the first wedding of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, 1624 CLASS OF SHIRINKA

RECIPIENTS OF GIFTS

NUMBER

Ubrusets of taffeta with pearls, and shirinki of taffeta with gold stitching and tasseled fringe of gold

Groom, bride, groom’s mother and father, the nun Dar’ia (wife of Tsar Ivan IV), and the nun Elena (wife of Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii)

6+6

Shirinka of taffeta with gold stitching and tasseled fringe of gold

Metropolitans, bishops, proxy parents, thousandman, best men, seated boyars and boyars’ wives, boyars and boyars’ wives at the nuptial bed or attending the bride, servitors who walked in procession, the officiating priest, other officiating clergy, other ranks of servitors holding high honorific posts at the wedding

397

Shirinka of taffeta with fringe of gold silk

Chancery scribes who held honorific posts; commanders of guards at doors, portcullises, and gates

116

Shirinka of calico, muslin, or linen, with fringe of gold silk

Zhil’tsy who served food and drink, cupbearers, chancery scribes and clerks, artisans in tsar’s workshops, clergy, commanders of musketeer units, guards at portcullises and gates

191

Shirinka of muslin or linen, with fringe of silk without gold

Clergy, chancellery clerks, artisans in tsar’s workshops, singers, musicians

114

1 ruble each (instead of a shirinki)

Zhil’tsy

70

Total:

900

Table 6.3.  Classes of gifts disbursed at the first wedding of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, 1648 CLASS OF SHIRINKA

RECIPIENTS OF GIFTS

NUMBER

Ubrusets of taffeta with pearls, and shirinki of taffeta with gold stitching and tasseled fringe of gold

Groom, groom’s three sisters, Patriarch Iosif

5+5

Shirinka (not described)

Metropolitans, bishops, proxy parents, thousandman, best men, seated boyars and boyars’ wives, boyars and boyars’ wives and all other servitors at the wedding

340

2 or 3 rubles each (instead of shirinki)

Zhil’tsy, guards, scribes, food servers

48+

Total:

398+

Staritskii, Grand Princess Elena gave kerchiefs to “the grand prince and Prince Iurii Ivanovich [his brother], and to the boyars and lesser gentrymen on the grand prince’s side, and to the entire wedding cortège.”34 The same formula appears in the wedding ceremonials for the other sixteenth-century weddings.35 Thus sixteenth-century weddings mention gifts given in the bride’s name only to the most senior members of the wedding entourage.

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Seventeenth-century wedding ceremonials, however, mention more ranks of servitors receiving them on the first day. According to the ceremonial for Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich’s second wedding, the bride’s second best man, Roman Pozharskii, “gave in the tsarevna’s and grand princess’s name, kerchiefs and bread and cheese to the proxy mother and father, to the thousandman, and to the seated boyars and their wives, and to the other boyars and their wives who attended the wedding bed.”36 The ceremonial for Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s first wedding similarly points out that the bride’s first best man brought gifts to the tsar, his sisters, and the patriarch. At the same time, the second best man took kerchiefs, bread, and cheese in the bride’s name to the “proxy mother and father, the thousandman, to the seated boyars and their wives, and to the boyars and okol’nichie who served in ranks [v chinekh] and to the wedding cortège,” as well as to the “women of the court who were in the bride’s room and to the boyars and their wives who attended the wedding bed.”37 Even those not in attendance were included: it was at this moment at Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich’s wedding in 1624 that a tableman was sent to the Ascension Convent to present a gift to the ex-tsaritsa, the nun Elena, and that kerchiefs were sent to the boyar Prince Ivan Mikhailovich Vorotynskii and his wife, who may have been too elderly to attend the wedding.38 Similarly, it was at this moment at the wedding of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich in 1648 that kerchiefs were sent to the elderly boyars Nikita Ivanovich Romanov, Dmitrii Mamstriukovich Cherkasskii, and Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev, who did not attend the wedding.39 And it was routine in the seventeenth century to send gifts to the large number of Orthodox hierarchs and monastic authorities whose duties and distance kept them from attending any of these weddings.40 But despite all the careful planning, sometimes there were not enough gifts to go around. Just after the first wedding of Tsar Mikhail Romanov, a hundred rubles were requisitioned from the Great Court (Bol’shoi dvor) to give to zhil’tsy who had “served food and drink at the banquet tables and who were stationed at the court on various duties [u del]” during the wedding. They were to be given one ruble each in place of a kerchief (za shirinku). Seventy zhil’tsy were paid (leaving thirty rubles to be returned, presumably, to the Treasury).41 Similarly, seven priests, six deacons, and six readers (d’iachki) who evidently served in some unspecified capacity at the wedding never received their kerchiefs and petitioned the tsar for them. An investigation ensued, in part by examining the records reporting what gifts other clergy who served at the wedding had received. The text is truncated, so we do not know how the petition was resolved or if the clergy received rubles instead of kerchiefs, but they probably did.42

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Shortages of gifts also occurred at Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s first wedding. Once again, it was the zhil’tsy who were shortchanged. A petition survives from those who served food at the wedding, requesting “kerchiefs or money instead of kerchiefs.”43 The tsar complied with the request; a note in Council Secretary Nazaryi Chistyi’s hand records that on 26 January (ten days after the wedding), the tsar ordered the men to be given two rubles each.44 (Note that the monetary substitute had doubled between 1624 and 1648.) To fulfill the tsar’s order, Keeper of the Seal (Pechatnik) Fedor Fedorovich Likhachev was commanded to send forty rubles to Chistyi at the Ambassadorial Chancery for disbursal to the twenty zhil’tsy. The only problem was that the list sent to Chistyi contained twenty-four names, not twenty.45 Four still had received nothing. As a result, one of the four, Denis Timofeev syn Ul’ianov, petitioned again.46 Chistyi and other scribes evidently went back and looked over the list in the first petition, saw that they needed more money, and took action to get the tsar to approve the disbursal of two rubles each for the men. But careless scribes in either the office of the keeper of the seal or in the Ambassadorial Chancery misread the list (two brothers were listed together but counted, evidently, only as one name), and so money was procured for only three additional zhil’tsy.47 The surviving documentation does not tell us if the last poor man on the list ever got his rubles. These ceremonial kerchiefs were not mere trinkets. For the vast majority of those who received them, the gift could not only remind them of their service at the wedding but also function as a token of honor—a tangible link between the servitor and the court—indeed, a link even with the royal couple. These ceremonial objects could be displayed prominently in the household, or, for the especially pious, donated to a church or monastery. The objects became part of the wealth and honor of the recipient’s family. For those who received money—whether one or two rubles (and in some cases more)—the opportunity to put their honor on display was lost, but money could otherwise be used to enhance the family’s comfort and honor. What is vital to note here is that enormous efforts were made to include everyone who served at the wedding. Missing even one servitor would diminish or negate the very social integration the gifts on Day 1 of the wedding were intended to foster. Gift giving on the first day thus served a double purpose. First, it integrated the bride into her new milieu. Gifts were distributed at the critical moment when the other key rites of passage were being performed—just after her arrival in the banquet hall and before the betrothal and crowning services. It was expected that a royal bride would give gifts as much as it was expected that she would have her hair rebraided to denote her married

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status or that she would don a veil and wedding headdress and allow plates full of hops to be poured over her head. The texts of the ceremonials—and, it should be added, the Domostroi and Kotoshikhin’s account—treat gift giving as an integral element of the sequence of rites that made a maiden a wife.48 The second purpose of gift giving on the first day was dynastic, which we see most plainly at Tsar Mikhail Romanov’s first wedding, where the number of ceremonial kerchiefs given out was so high. By placing kerchiefs (or, as the case may be, rubles) into the hands of servitors who willingly accepted them (even petitioning for them) helped connect everyone at the wedding with the new regime that was represented by the tsar and his new bride. Gift giving on Day 1 was an act of insistence: a demand as much as an invitation that the court accept the new tsaritsa as they had accepted their gift from her. The gifts given by the bride or in her name thus did more than just integrate the bride into the social world of the Kremlin. It imposed an obligation among senior courtiers (and others all the way down to palace guards and court musicians) to reciprocate with their loyalty and service. It was an exchange that would be wholly recognizable to Mauss. Days 2 and 3

The exchange of gifts on Day 2 and, sometimes, on Day 3 were all about the groom. In each of the sixteenth-century weddings, the groom is not the ruler but a collateral member of the dynasty (a younger brother and a cousin), a cognatic descendant of the dynasty (Bel’skii-Shuiskaia), or a converted Chingisid. Thus we do not know how the exchanges would have worked had the groom been the grand prince or tsar. Still, Days 2 and 3 are true gift exchanges (rather than the gift giving, without receiving anything in return, of Day 1); and these exchanges all involved the groom, on the one hand, and members of the dynasty, on the other. Thus we know that Prince Andrei Staritskii gave unnamed gifts to his older brother, Grand Prince Vasilii III, and to his sisterin-law, Grand Princess Elena, and that the grand prince gave Prince Andrei in return a fur coat.49 The pattern of exchanges is the same at Prince Iurii Vasil’evich’s wedding (the groom gave unspecified gifts to the tsar and tsaritsa; the tsar gave a fur coat to the groom).50 The other wedding ceremonials for the sixteenth century likewise describe exchanges between the groom and sometimes the bride and members of the immediate royal family. In two cases, Day 3 was used as an additional opportunity for an exchange of gifts between the groom, the bride, the ruler, the ruler’s consort, and, in the case of Vladimir Staritskii’s wedding, the groom’s mother-in-law (see table 6.1). Gift exchanges on Days 2 and 3 shifted the focus from the bride to the groom

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as both the giver and the receiver of gifts. It also focused more narrowly on the new family created by the marriage: the newlywed couple and their relatives and in-laws, rather than the entire court. This more intimate gift exchange disappeared in the seventeenth century. Day 2 was not used for a gift exchange at Tsar Mikhail Romanov’s second wedding or at Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s first wedding. The gift exchanges among the members of the royal family were subsumed into the activities on Day 1. Day 2 does contain a gift exchange at the second wedding of Tsar Aleksei, but this is because gifts normally given on the first day were divided between Days 1 and 2: the members of the dynasty and the senior servitors receiving gifts on Day 1, the rest of the servitors at the wedding receiving them on Day 2. These gifts on either day may no longer have been symbolically from the bride since it is the groom’s best men who bestowed the gifts, not the bride’s. Why the intimate gift exchange between the newlywed couple and the royal family should disappear in the seventeenth century is never explained in the sources, though one cannot help but note the greater emphasis that the new Romanov dynasty was placing on the larger, more public gift exchanges (on Day 1 and, as shown below, Day 4), probably as a means to build solidarity between the tsar and the court elite.51 Day 4

Perhaps the biggest innovation in gift exchanges at Muscovite royal weddings falls on Day 4, which had not been part of sixteenth-century antecedents. It was probably at Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich’s first wedding in 1624 that gift exchanges were reconceptualized and the fourth day of the wedding was added specifically to provide for a banquet with church hierarchs and for a final gift exchange.52 On this fourth day, it was the bride and groom who received gifts from the entire court and from Muscovite elite society, starting with the hierarchs and monastic authorities, down even to lower-ranking servitors and merchants. This audience reversed the direction that gifts flowed as compared with the first day: the bride giving gifts to the groom and members of the court on Day 1; members of the court and society giving gifts to the bride and groom on Day 4. This audience also included the leadership of the Orthodox clergy, who went unmentioned in sixteenth-century wedding ceremonials. The ceremonial for Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich’s second wedding describes this ritual in detail: And on the fourth day, at the third hour, the sovereign ordered the Lesser Golden Palace [Zolotuiu polatu menshuiu] be prepared, and he

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sent for his father, the Great Sovereign Patriarch Filaret Nikitich . . . and Prince Aleksei L’vov presented to the sovereign and to the patriarch gifts inscribed on a list, and what these gifts were is written down at the Royal Treasury [na Kazennom dvore]. And the metropolitan of Krutitsa and Bishop Iosif blessed the sovereign with icons, and archimandrites and hegumens did so as well, and they brought gifts to the sovereign by rank [po chinu]: silver cups [kubki serebrianye] and bowls [stopy] and gold satin [otlas zolotnye] and sables. And after that, boyars and those in Duma ranks [dumnye liudi] approached the sovereign with gifts, and after the boyars, the ranks of merchants [gosti and gostinye and sukonnye and chornye sotni] presented gifts, and the sovereign accepted none of these gifts. And after that, the tsar and grand prince and the great sovereign the patriarch walked together to the tsaritsa’s apartments, and gifts were brought to her in the same manner as they had been brought to the tsar.53 This audience was performed generally the same way at Tsar Aleksei Mikhailvoich’s two weddings, though at his first wedding the gifts were given to the tsar and tsaritsa together (not in separate audiences), and at the second wedding the joint audience was held fifteen days after the wedding, not on the fourth day.54 The ceremonial for the second wedding also points out that Tsar Aleksei ordered the gifts from the lesser ranks be returned, just as Tsar Mikhail had done.55 Majesty and magnanimity were expressed together when the tsar received then returned the gifts of the lower ranks and merchants. This audience must have been a sight to behold. Processions of robed clergy with carts bearing luxurious presents for the sovereign and his consort, rows of boyars and other senior servitors dressed in their finest costumes and bearing gifts of their own, and representatives of all the lower ranks of servitors and merchants in Moscow—many of whom, very likely, had on this occasion their first peek inside the palace complex. There was also a rigid ritual observed, as the ceremonial for Tsar Aleksei’s second wedding points out. While the clergy was allowed to enter the Palace of Facets, where the audience was held, and to approach the tsar, even to kiss his hand, lesser ranks were not allowed to approach as near, and the merchants, who were represented by only two or three from each rank, were received only at the doorway to the room and not allowed to enter. The gifts that the tsar received were rich and varied. A remarkable list of gifts brought to Tsar Aleksei on the fourth day of his first wedding in 1648 survives. The text is fragmentary but declares itself to be a list of gifts brought to the royal couple from the patriarch and other clergy and from

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the monasteries, from boyars and others in Duma ranks, from tablemen and chancery scribes and clerks, and from merchants of various ranks.56 Unfortunately, the only part of the text that survives are the gifts from church hierarchs and from monasteries.57 The list is systematic and organized, including gifts from seven hierarchs and nineteen monasteries, and gives a glimpse of the ritual and wealth being exchanged. It reports, for example, that Patriarch Iosif gave three richly inlaid and engraved silver goblets with lids, six bolts of Turkish velvet of varying sorts and colors, four bolts of satin, one bolt of moire, three bolts of damask, sables (grouped in forties, but the manuscript is frayed here and so does not show how many), and a hundred ducats (zolotykh).58 The patriarch similarly gave the tsaritsa three goblets, six bolts of Turkish and Persian velvet, four bolts of satin, one bolt of moire, three bolts of damask, three forties of sables, and a hundred ducats.59 The total value of these gifts was 982 rubles, 2 altyn, 1 den’ga.60 The text also reports that the senior clergy (vlasti) at Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery gave to the tsar three silver engraved goblets, a small engraved wash basin, three bolts of Venetian and Turkish velvet, seven bolts of various kinds of satin, three bolts of moire, four bolts of damask, two forties of sables, and a hundred ducats. Holy Trinity-St. Sergius gave the tsaritsa three similar silver engraved goblets, a silver cup, three bolts of Venetian and Turkish velvet, nine bolts of satin, one bolt of moire, three bolts of damask, two forties of sables, and a hundred ducats. The total value for these gifts (excluding the ducats) was 1,238 rubles, 27 altyn, 4.5 den’gi (the largest single amount given).61 The Nativity Monastery in Vladimir gave to the tsar a silver cup with a lid, one bolt of Persian velvet with stripes, and forty sables. The tsaritsa received a similar cup and lid, one bolt of gold satin, and forty sables, all valued at 128 rubles, 3 den’gi.62 Adding together the values included in the ledger for all the gifts from hierarchs and monasteries, the tsar and his bride collected 5,282 rubles, 2 altyn, 3 den’gi, plus the 200 ducats from Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery. Remembering that this is a mere fragment of the total brought in, the gifts offered to the tsar and his bride by his servitors—both sacred and secular—must have come to a staggering sum. Day 4 extended the boundaries of gift exchange past the servitors in the wedding party of Day 1, and past the royal family and in-laws of Days 2 and 3, to the entire secular and spiritual elites of the realm. Day 4 linked the entire ruling classes with the tsar and tsaritsa as a ruling couple, a point underscored by the separate audiences (one for the tsar, the other for the tsaritsa) in the earliest performances of this ritual in the seventeenth century. Both bride and groom were honored and acknowledged. Through the

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tribute of gifts, the entire society, with the exception of peasants and the unfree, showed its acceptance and approval of the royal match.

The Gift of Prayers for the Dynasty God’s acceptance and approval were solicited, too. Just as courtiers were sent with gifts to former tsaritsas in 1624 and 1626 to announce the wedding to members of the dynasty, other courtiers were dispatched at the same time with letters to senior churchmen to notify them formally of the wedding and request their prayers. On September 19, 1624, courtiers set off from Moscow to Metropolitan Makarii of Novgorod, Metropolitan Varlaam of Rostov, Archbishop Pavel of Pskov and Izborsk, Archbishop Kornilii of Vologda, Archbishop Antonii of Riazan’, and Bishop Rafail of Kolomna.63 Undoubtedly, others were dispatched to other locales as well, though the surviving records are incomplete. The situation was much the same at the time of Mikhail Fedorovich’s second wedding on February 5, 1626. Courtiers traveled to Makarii of Novgorod, Bishop Pavel of Pskov and Izborsk, Archbishop Pafnutii of Tver’ and Kashin, Metropolitan Matvei of Kazan’, Antonii of Riazan’ and Murom, Rafail of Kolomna and Koshira, Kornilii of Vologda, and Varlaam of Rostov.64 These expeditions were complex and lengthy affairs, taking as much as two months to complete. And the mission was supremely serious: the courtiers were sent to solicit prayers to God for the tsar, his bride, and for “heirs for the succession of the realm.” These expeditions are described fairly well in the set of memoranda (pamiati) and letters (gramoty) that survive from these two weddings. A draft memorandum to the zhilets Stepan Izvolskii in February 1626 provides detailed instructions to him on his mission. Izvolskii was given memoranda that he was to distribute to local officials along the route he was to take, instructing those local officials to provide passage (by riverboat or overland) through the territories he traversed on his way to deliver his gifts and royal letters.65 Izvolskii was to go to Tver’ and to present himself directly to Archbishop Pavel. Izvolskii was instructed to give a letter from the tsar and his new bride to the archbishop, and also to present the tsar’s gift: a kerchief of taffeta with a gold tasseled fringe. Izvolskii was then to receive the hierarch’s blessing “with an icon or with something else” and to accept a counter-gift and a letter from the archbishop replying to the tsar. Izvolskii was then to set off immediately back to Moscow, “in no way detained,” and report to Council Secretary Ivan Gramotin, where the gift would be appraised (in rubles) and entered into the records of the Ambassadorial Chancery. The chancery would also deposit the letter from the hierarch in its archive after having it

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read aloud to the tsar himself, possibly in a special royal audience arranged for that purpose.66 In the case of the two weddings of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, the courtiers carried two letters from the tsar. The first pertained to the gift—naming the courier who brought it, a description of it, and instructions for the hierarch to send the courier back to Moscow without delay. The letter given to Ivan Opukhtin, who delivered a ceremonial kerchief to Metropolitan Matvei of Kazan’, is typical: From the Tsar and Grand Prince Mikhail Fedorovich of all Rus’, to Our intercessor in prayer [bogomolets], Matvei, metropolitan of Kazan’ and Sviiazhsk. We and Our wife, Tsaritsa and Grand Princess Evdokiia Luk’ianovna, have sent to you Our favor [zhalovan’e] from Our wedding, with the zhilets Ivan Opukhtin, a kerchief of taffeta, with gold stitching and gold tassels, and you, as Our intercessor in prayer, do receive Our favor and beseech God for Our health and the health of Our Tsaritsa, and you should not detain Our zhilets Ivan Opukhtin in his return back to Moscow. Written in Moscow, in the year 7134/1626, February [space left blank for the day].67 We do not have an example of the second letter sent with Opukhtin, but we do have Metropolitan Matvei’s response, which evidently contains extensive quotations from it: To the pious and most noble and Christ-loving and God-selected Grand Prince Mikhail Fedorovich of all Rus’, autocrat, your intercessor in prayer, o sovereign, Matvei, metropolitan of Kazan’ and Siiazhsk, prays to God and bows down before you, o Sovereign, on February 22 of the year [7]134. In your letter, o Sovereign Tsar and Grand Prince Mikhail Fedorovich, it is written to me, your intercessor, that you, o Sovereign Tsar and Grand Prince Mikhail Fedorovich, and Tsaritsa and Grand Princess Evdokiia Luk’ianovna, have sent to me your favor from your royal wedding: a kerchief of taffeta, stitched in gold with gold tassels, with the zhilets Ivan Opukhtin, and I, your humble intercessor, o Sovereign, have received your royal favor, the kerchief, from your radiant royal wedding, and I have given praise and prayed to the Most Merciful and Most Generous God in the Trinity, who Loves Mankind, and to the Most Pure Mother of God, and to all the saints for many years of health for you, the pious and most noble and Christ-loving and Godselected Great Sovereign and Tsar and Grand Prince Mikhail Fedorovich of all Rus’, and for the Christ-loving Tsaritsa and Grand Princess

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Evdokiia Luk’ianovna, and that God should grant to you, Great Sovereigns, noble children for the inheritance of your family and that God should keep your realm in peace and stability and without disturbance [mirno i tikho i nemiatezhno] and forever and unto ages of ages provide all blessings. And I, your humble royal intercessor, bow down before your gracious royal kindness and favor; and may the mercy of God and of His Most Pure Mother of God, and of Her Glorious and Honorable Annunciation, and of the great miracle-working saints of Kazan’, Ss. Gurii and Varsonofii, be with your majesty [s vashim tsarskim blagorodiem], now and ever. Amen.68 Clearly, the point of Opukhtin’s expedition (and others like it) was to reach out to Orthodox senior churchmen and centers of worship across the tsar’s realm. The gifts delivered by Opukhtin and the other couriers linked the hierarchs to the wedding celebrations back in Moscow. The churchmen received exactly the same gift as the churchmen and secular figures who were actually present at the nuptials. While the second letter also evidently contained a description of the gift, its main purpose was to solicit prayers, perhaps involving all the clergy of the entire diocese, for the health of the couple, the birth of heirs, the victory of the tsardom over its enemies, and for peace and prosperity—a liturgical acknowledgment of the tsar’s marriage and an institutional invocation (probably a moleben service) for God’s grace on the couple and the dynasty. Many of these same goals and procedures appear in the correspondence between the court and church hierarchs at the time of the first marriage of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich on January 16, 1648, including many new details about how these expeditions were pulled together. In the case of this wedding, it appears that some church hierarchs received visits from two different courtiers, one immediately after the wedding, bearing the gift—again a kerchief—and another with a letter soliciting prayers from the hierarch and all the clergy of his region. For example, Archbishop Levkei of Pskov and Izborsk received his gift from Ivan Mikhailov syn Ofrosimov, who arrived in Pskov on January 31, but the letter about prayers, which mentions the gift, was brought to Pskov only on February 6 by Levontii Kharlamov.69 Most of the hierarchs receiving gifts and letters from the tsar did so on different dates—sometimes as much as a month apart—and from different courtiers. A few hierarchs, however, apparently received both their gift and the letter at the same time from the same courtiers. Archbishop Moisei of Rostov and Murom, Metropolitan Simon of Kazan’ and Sviiazhsk, and archbishop Pakhomii of Astrakhan’ all had only one visit from Moscow.70 In the case of

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Bishop Rafail of Kolomna and Koshira, he was also given both but that was because he was in Moscow at the time of the wedding and received his gift directly from the Ambassadorial Chancery.71 Why on some occasions in 1648 two trips were made instead of only one is not clear from the surviving documentation, but the gift and the prayers were important enough to justify the expense and logistical energy to make both trips happen. (The incomplete documentation also leaves open the possibility that two trips may in some cases have also been made for Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich’s weddings in 1624 and 1626.) It was not only church hierarchs who received these requests for formal, liturgical prayers for the couple in churches and monasteries across Muscovy. In some remote areas, the letter announcing the tsar’s wedding and soliciting prayers was sent instead to the local secular administrators. Here the solicitation for prayers apparently involved no gifts but focused instead on the projection of an image of a united Christian polity joined in prayer for its rulers and, it was intently hoped, its heirs. A 1648 letter survives from Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich to the okol’nichii Prince Vasilii Grigor’evich Romodanovskii, the voevoda of Arkhangel’sk and the Kholmogorskii district (uezd); and an essentially identical letter, also from 1648, survives from the tsar to the boyar Lavrentii Dmitreevich Saltykov in Nizhnii Novgorod.72 The letters have the same goal as those sent to the hierarchs. They instruct Romodanovskii and Saltykov to enjoin the clergy of their regions to pray in the familiar ways for the tsar and his bride. The letter to Romodanovskii reads: From Tsar and Grand Prince Aleksei Mikhailovich of all Rus’ to the city of Arkhangel’sk, to Our okol’nichii and voevoda, Prince Vasilii Grigor’evich Romodanovskii, and to Our scribe Grigorii Uglev. By the grace of Almighty God and with the blessing of Our father and intercessor, Patriarch Iosif of Moscow and all Rus’, We, the Great Sovereign, have contracted a canonical marriage, and that marriage took place on January 16 of the present year, 7156/1648. And when you receive this edict [gramota], you should go to the cathedral church and order that all monastic archimandrites and hegumens and cathedral archpriests, and the priests and deacons of all the churches of the city and its environs should gather together; and you should instruct them to pray in accordance with the Church’s rubrics [po tserkovnomu ustavu] in the monastic cells and in the churches to the All-Merciful God and to His Most Pure Mother, and to all the saints for Our health and the health of Our Tsaritsa and Grand Princess Mariia; to pray that the All-Merciful God will give to Us noble children for the succession of

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our family, that God will crush Our enemies under Our feet, and that Our realm will be preserved in peace and be without disturbance. And you are to write and circulate a letter requesting prayers [bogomolnye pamiati] in the Kholmogorskii uezd and in the coastal areas, in monasteries and in sketes [v monastyri i v pustyni], so that in these locations the archimandrites and hegumens and monastic and parish clergy will pray for Our health and the health of Our Tsaritsa and Grand Princess Mariia in the manner described above.73 Romodanovskii and Saltykov—and, no doubt, many others for whom no documentation survives—were not themselves asked to pray for the tsar (though one might venture that it was assumed that they would) but rather were instructed to gather the local clergy together and arrange that they do the praying. The request here and in the letters to the church hierarchs was for formal, liturgical services—“in accordance with church rubrics”—and for private prayers of monastic clergy “in their cells.” In the cases of these letters to Romodanovskii and Saltykov, the tsar and his court employed normal administrative channels to assure that all regions of the tsardom joined in unison prayer for the royal newlyweds. That the Church solicited prayers for the couple’s health, for the birth of heirs, for victory, and for peace and prosperity is plain enough from the correspondence between the tsar and his hierarchs. But why these four themes? It may be that the correspondence reflects a wholly formulaic request and includes standard themes for liturgical invocations. Prayers for victory over enemies, for example, are a common refrain in letters to the tsar reporting that prayers had been performed in regional churches and monasteries. Concern for the safety and victory of Orthodoxy over enemies appears as a matter of course in litanies and molebens served in churches across Muscovy, and likewise finds its way into countless story motifs in vitae and other literary and polemical texts.74 But closer inspection of these letters and other texts suggests that these four themes (heirs, victory, peace, and prosperity) were not treated as equally important and, what is more, they appear linked to the interests of the dynasty and dynastic marriage. Health, of course, was an indispensable request, the one requirement on which all others depended because it was a prerequisite for childbirth. Prayers for one’s health and for “many years” were part of the litanies of the Divine Liturgy and other church services, a common request sent to monasteries (along with a donation so the monks would pray “without ceasing” for one’s health or recovery from illness), and even appear in the toasts of tsars at banquets and other festive celebrations.75 The health of the bride and

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groom is the only request mentioned uniformly both in the letters thanking the tsar for his gift and in the letters back to the tsar reporting that liturgical prayers had been performed as instructed. The health of the ruler, his bride, and by implication the tsardom thus find resonance in a variety of venues— liturgical and secular—and so would have sounded familiar to the ears of those offering (or hearing) these prayers. The theme of childbirth—of heirs and successors in the case of royal brides and grooms—was closely associated with all marriages, as one might expect. The sheaves of rye under the nuptial bed, the “showering” of the couple with hops, the combing and rebraiding of the bride’s hair, the cutting of ceremonial loaves of bread and cheese, even the choice of icons hung on the walls of the venue where the wedding banquet took place (the Mother and Child, the Annunciation, Christ’s Nativity)—all of these Christian and preChristian symbols surrounding made it abundantly clear what the marriage was for—the birth of offspring.76 That traditional focus rose to the level of an all-consuming fixation when the groom was the head of a dynasty. The fixation on dynasty is obvious, for example, in the letter from Archbishop Levkei to Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich thanking him for the ceremonial kerchief he received on January 21, 1648. Not just the bride and groom received the gift of prayer in return for the kerchief, but the entire dynasty. Levkei prayed “for your health, Sovereign Tsar and Grand Prince Aleksei Mikhailovich and the health of your tsaritsa, our Great Sovereign Lady [o nashei velikoi gosudaryni], the pious Tsaritsa and Grand Princess Mariia Il’ichna, and for your royal sisters, our royal Ladies: for the pious and noble Tsarevna and Grand Princess [velikaia kniazhna] Irina Mikhailovna, and for the pious and noble Tsarevna and Grand Princess Anna Mikhailovna, and for the pious and noble Tsarevna and Grand Princess Tat’iana Mikhailovna.”77 Yet there are hints in this correspondence between tsars and hierarchs that heirs are what the groom and his bride wanted most from God. Perhaps the real meaning and intent of these prayers is best exposed in a letter sent to Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich by Larka Radilov from the remote village of Kaigorodok, on the edge of Siberia. Radilov reports to the tsar that he encountered the zhilets Stepan Shishkin (one of the courtiers sent with gifts and letters to Archbishop Gerasim of Sibir’ and Tobol’sk), evidently as he was passing through the district where Radilov was assigned and serving. Radilov reports that Shishkin “told me, your servant [kholop], about your royal wedding” and that no letter informing the populace of the wedding and soliciting prayers for the tsar and his bride had been distributed in Kaigorodok. Radilov evidently saw or was told the contents of one of Shishkin’s letters (intended, evidently, for some other locale) and wrote to the tsar—the

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tone is plainly self-serving—that he had fulfilled the prescriptions ordered elsewhere: and such letters have not been delivered in Kaigorodok, and I, your servant, heard about your royal wedding only just now and immediately ordered the singing of a moleben with the ringing of bells in the cathedral church for you, Sovereign Tsar and Grand Prince Aleksei Mikhailovich of Moscow and all Russia, and for your pious Tsaritsa and Grand Princess Mariia Il’ichna, and [they] prayed for many years of health for you both, prayed that God should bless you, Sovereign Tsar and Grand Prince Aleksei Mikhailovich of Moscow and all Russia, with your pious Tsaritsa, our Sovereign Lady [gosudarynia], Grand Princess Mariia Il’ishna; and that you may reign on your royal throne for many years; and so that we, your servants, might behold your wedding [videt’ tvoiu gosudar’skuiu radost’] and see your royal children on the thrones of Vladimir and Moscow and on all the great thrones of the Russian realm.78 Here, as with Saltykov and Romodanovskii, there is no gift to induce prayer on behalf of the royal couple, but the concerns are almost the same. Radilov may have only had a glimpse of Shishkin’s letters, or perhaps he was only told what was in them. But one way or another he deduced what was most important: that what God was supposed to grant was the good health of the royal couple and the birth of heirs and successors to the “thrones of the Russian realm.” Heirs and succession superseded all the other supplications hymned before the ears of God. Gift giving and exchanges at Muscovite royal weddings were, to apply Silber’s words, an “occasion for an elaborate flurry of practices, full-blown rituals indeed, with a structure, phases, and sequences of their very own, unfolding between donor, recipient, and a group of witnesses, or audience.”79 The weddings of Russian dynasts fit very well with Silber’s reading of Van Gennep’s Rites de passages and Curta’s observations about power and the gift. Gift giving and gift exchanges bolstered solidarity among the elite and social integration of the new in-laws into the inner circle of the Kremlin. They also helped confirm the social hierarchies between and among the courtiers who revolved around the ruler in concentric orbits of status and power. Thus the gift addressed many needs at once: it reaffirmed solidarity and hierarchy, integrated the bride and her family into the elite, and justified the patterns of power at court by projecting images of legitimacy, dynasty, prosperity, continuity, and sanctity. More than any other ritual of the court, weddings did the heavy lifting when it came to constructing an image of monarchical power.

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This study of gifts at weddings also shines a spotlight on the role of the bride at royal weddings. It was the bride who went through the rites of passage, to be sure; and her transformation from maiden to wife and from commoner to royalty was certainly treated as a far greater transformation than that which occurred to the groom, who was already royal and probably not as virtuous and virginal as was presumed (ritually and culturally) to be the case with the bride. Rituals happened to the bride: she was veiled, her hair was combed and braided, her costumes changed, her body was sprinkled with hops. To be sure, some actions (sprinkling, hair combing) happened to her and her groom, and gift exchanges involved nearly everyone. But the documents describing Muscovite royal weddings show that gift giving was a different sort of action. It was an act of agency. The bride (or, at her formal direction, her senior attendant) gave gifts by hand to the senior courtiers in the Middle Golden Palace or Palace of Facets—wherever the banquet was held. Even if the action were prescribed by the rubrics of the wedding ceremonial, the bride was performing the rite, not having a rite performed on her. She was at that moment like any of the other attendants at the wedding undertaking prescribed yet symbolically vital actions—like the utterers of set speeches or the Master of the Horse riding a mount with saber drawn around the tsar’s palace on the wedding night, “protecting” it, as it were, from all who might do evil against the couple. No one could send the message of solidarity, hierarchy, and power the way the bride could by giving gifts at the prescribed time and to the proper people. It was thus not for nothing that the role of gift giver was in the sixteenth century taken away from the brides of collateral members of the dynasty and given to the grand prince’s or tsar’s wife, a modification that displayed and imposed familial order in the dynasty, signifying the seniority of the ruler’s line over collateral lines. To give a gift was an exercise of power. But like the other rites of passage at a Muscovite royal wedding, gift giving and gift exchanges underwent fundamental redefinition and change at the end of the seventeenth century. As Russian court culture changed in the last decades of the century, even before it was radically “transfigured” by the reforms of Peter I the Great, the rites of passage at a wedding lost their ancient meaning and the symbols came to be hollow and alien to a dynasty and elite that was transforming the political culture and its symbols. Weddings, more than any other court rite, were the most radically altered ritual of the Russian court. Examining how and why the dynasty and the elite “transfigured” the gifts, religious symbolism, choreography, and dynastic imagery imbedded in the centuries-old wedding rituals of Old Muscovy is where we go next to conclude our study of the tsar’s happy occasion.

q Ch ap ter 7 “Delight in Exposing the Old Methods of the Country” Transfigurations and Parodies

In June 1712, two weddings took place in St. Petersburg, the new capital of Russia, but they really were both part of a set. On June 1, according to the court’s Court Journal (Pokhodnyi zhurnal), Prince Iakov Fedorovich Dolgorukov, one of Peter I’s oldest and most faithful servitors, who was about seventy-three years old at the time, married Princess Irina Mikhailovna Cherkasskaia, who was much younger, in the palace of Prince Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov, Peter I’s notorious favorite.1 Charles Whitworth, the British ambassador who served in Russia between 1704 and 1712, tells us that the “Czar officiated as marshall, and the ceremony lasted two days.” Whitworth in his account seemed most drawn to the antics at the wedding: “On the first the Czar punished a great part of the company, and amongst the rest the czarinne, for coming later than the hour appointed; but the next day the ladies had their revenge, for His Majesty, staying longer than he designed in the senate, they obliged him and all his councillors to undergo the same table-discipline of a great glass”—a reference to the Cup of the Double-Headed Eagle (kubok Bol’shogo orla), one of the many large and ornate cups that Peter had fashioned for ceremonial events involving excessive drinking.2 Peter’s punishment was to drink. That Peter served as “marshall,” that the wedding was two days (not the usual three), and that women and men were clearly intermingling (and imbibing) demonstrates fairly clearly that this was not a traditional Muscovite wedding, where the 189

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master of ceremonies was called something different (tysiatskii) and where men and women kept a respectful distance from each other. Quite a different wedding took place two days later. Peter Ivanovich Buturlin, the mock archbishop of St. Petersburg in Peter’s Unholy Synod, married an unnamed bride in a wedding that, according again to the Court Journal, involved the entire royal family and leading members of Peter’s court, as well as foreign ambassadors and residents. The wedding lasted three days and was set in three locations: On the first day, the bride, groom, and guests first attended the church wedding in St. Petersburg, where everyone was dressed “in ancient costume” (v starinnom plat’e), then sailed to Peterhof for evening entertainments. The second day was spent on Kotlin Island, where Peter’s new navy rode at anchor, and the third day was back in St. Petersburg.3 Again, Whitworth provided helpful details: Peter had “appointed a wedding to be kept after the old fashion.” The wedding guests—“he himself, the czarinne, the princesses, the ladies with the nobility and foreign ministers” and everyone, “even to the footmen”—were provided traditional Muscovite clothing to wear, which, Whitworth notes, was “very extraordinary

Figure 7.1.  Engraving by Aleksei Zubov of the wedding of Peter I and Catherine Alekseevna (Catherine I). Wikimedia Commons.

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and inconvenient.” Foreigners, too, were “sent habits” to wear. To complement this masquerade, Peter “sent for his father’s old musicians from Moscow” to perform the old tunes and hymns. The entire assembly attended the church wedding in these costumes, then set off for Peterhof. The spectacle was all for show: “The Czar all the way,” Whitworth writes, “took a particular delight in exposing the old methods of the country.” On the second day, the assembly “appeared in their usual dress”—meaning Western costume— and traveled by boat to Kotlin Island, where the revelry continued. On the third day, June 5, the wedding guests dined aboard a ship, then returned to St. Petersburg, presumably again dressed in western fashions.4 The two weddings broadcast different but linked messages. The Buturlin wedding was designed to be a parody of Old Russia—one in a series of such parodic weddings choreographed by Peter to mock the past and “juxtapose the old and the new,” as Ernest Zitser put it.5 It did that by mimicking the traditional Muscovite wedding just enough to conjure its image: a traditional three-day event, the ornate church wedding, and the traditional costumes on the first day. But a parody is not a duplication. This was not a full Muscovitestyle wedding, but one that purposefully borrowed some of its most characteristic elements to draw a contrast between old times and the present. To have foreigners attend the wedding was a divergence from custom to begin with; to have them dress in traditional Russian costume was a deliberate attempt to play at being Muscovite. The Dolgorukov-Cherkasskaia wedding, in contrast, displayed elements of a new ritual template. It broke with custom not for the sake of parodying it but in order to experiment with new ways of performing a wedding. Both weddings belong to a single effort by which Peter was, to borrow from Zitser again, “transfiguring” Russian rituals, and the political culture underneath it, into something new. The first wedding, Dolgorukov’s, was a point on a line vectoring away from the old rituals. The second, Buturlin’s, reinforced the movement ahead by parodying that past. Weddings during the Petrine era appear outwardly to be an eclectic collection of brides, grooms, and rituals. There were royal marriages in St. Petersburg, dynastic marriages abroad, and parodic weddings of courtiers and jesters. This chapter, however, treats the weddings of the Petrine era as a unit. It explores how royal weddings were linked to the parodic weddings both to create a new ritual rubric for royal weddings and to help Peter not only advance his reforms but establish a model of monarchy rooted in his own charismatic authority, rather than traditional dynastic rule. It also situates the weddings of the era in the context of their immediate precursors— the weddings of Peter’s elder brothers and the second wedding of his father,

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which were themselves a departure from the traditional nuptial rites of passage that had been performed in the sixteenth and most of the seventeenth centuries. Finally, this chapter brings many of the themes that we have explored—ritual, dynasty, religion, and women at weddings and in the larger political culture—into the Petrine era, revealing that, for all the changes in form, the function of the tsar’s (and later, emperor’s) happy occasion remained much the same: politics and power.

Royal Weddings in Petrine Russia The first important steps toward creating a new wedding ritual were the opportunities Peter I seized on to mock the old ones. In January 1694, Peter I arranged for the marriage of Iakov Fedorovich Turgenev, a low-ranking chancery clerk who had become one of Peter I’s court jesters. The wedding was the centerpiece of the celebrations following Peter I’s mock “conquest” of Moscow by his Preobrazhenskii Regiment in the Kozhukhovo wargames, and it borrowed liberally from the raucous displays and social commentary of Yuletide mummers.6 It was the first in a series of parodic and masquerade weddings that Peter I orchestrated to poke fun at the Muscovite past. But the purpose was deadly serious. The Turgenev wedding—and the other parodic travesties that followed—were not pointless excuses for buffoonery and drunkenness: they were key features of Peter’s designs to “transfigure” the tsar’s court and the political culture, binding it together. Thus both the parodic weddings of jesters and the more stately weddings of Peter I’s Romanov kin served the purpose of legitimizing the cultural, political, and administrative reforms he was beginning to enact. Weddings even in Peter’s time were still useful tools for rulers to achieve their goals. The parodies at the Turgenev wedding were replete with biting allusions to the Muscovite past. Our lone detailed account of it comes from diary entries attributed to Ivan Afanas’evich Zheliabuzhskii, a distinguished Russian diplomat from an old Muscovite servitor family.7 The account reports that Turgenev married the “widow of a secretary” (na d’iach’ei zhene), and that the wedding cortège included “boyars, okol’nichie, and members of the Duma, and all ranks of palace servitors,” and they all “rode on bulls, goats, pigs, and dogs.” Their costumes were part of the comic fun: “they wore ridiculous costumes [a v plat’iakh byli smeshnykh]: sacks made out of bast, bast hats, caftans decorated with the paws of cats, vulgar multicolor caftans decorated with squirrel tails, straw sandals, mouse-lined mittens, and straw caps.”8 Meanwhile, the bride and groom rode “in the tsar’s best velvetupholstered carriage” and were immediately followed by “the Trubetskois,

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Sheremetevs, Golitsyns, and Gagins in velvet-lined caftans”—ancient aristocratic clans, some with their own long and colorful histories at Muscovite royal weddings, as we have seen. The nuptials were celebrated under temporary canopies erected in a field opposite the barracks of the Preobrazhenskii and Semenovskii Regiments, where a full wedding banquet (banket velikii) also took place over the course of three days. The Muscovite past was also in the crosshairs in January 1702, when Peter I arranged for the marriage of another longtime court jester, Feofilakt (Filat) Pimenovich Shanskii. We have no formal Russian description of the wedding, although a roster of guests survives; but both Cornelius de Bruyn (1652–1727)—a Dutch artist, traveler, and author—and John Perry (1670– 1732), an English naval engineer, provided brief but consistent accounts of it.9 Shanskii was a courtier with a long but modest service record, and his bride was a princess of the Shakhovskoi clan, one of the most illustrious families of the day.10 Thus even before the wedding occurred, the old social boundaries of Muscovite society were being mocked by this mismatch. This was an arranged and unequal marriage, “designed,” as Mariia Andreevna Alekseeva put it, “as a deliberate parody of traditional customs.”11 One of those customs was the endogamy of the elite. Both Perry and de Bruyn grasped Peter’s purpose. Perry tells us that Peter planned the wedding “to reform and convince his People of the Folly of being bigotted to their old Ways and Customs, and that there was no real Evil in changing them for new.”12 De Bruyn was so struck by what he saw that he decided he had to insert a description of the wedding in his account because, “being so singular as it is, I concluded every body would be curious to know as much of it as they could.”13 The wedding service took place in the Church of the Annunciation in Moscow (which one is not specified), and the wedding celebrations were held in the palace of Franz Lefort in the German Quarter. Large enough to hold all the guests—de Bruyn says there were as many as five hundred—the Lefort palace also suited Peter’s purposes because it was a familiar setting that had played host to many of Peter’s previous carnivalesque gatherings that mocked Muscovy.14 The setting was matched by the carnivalesque choreography. Mirroring Muscovite antecedents, the Shanskii-Shakhovskaia wedding was three days in length; and like the Turgenev wedding, Peter required all his guests, even the foreigners, to don Muscovite costumes: “every Person who was invited (whose Names of both Sexes were set down in writing) should,” reports Perry, “provide themselves with the same Habit that was worn in Russia in the Days of their Fathers about 200 Years before; and that the whole Ceremony should be perform’d after the same manner as it was at that time.”15

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Women also “were order’d to be dress’d after the old Russ Manner.”16 The guests stayed in these ornate but obsolete costumes for the first two days, excused from the recent ordinances Peter I had issued prohibiting the elite from wearing traditional Muscovite costumes.17 It was only on the third day that, according to de Bruyn, “it was resolved to appear in the German dress, and every body did so, except some of the Russian Ladies.”18 Peter used costumes in 1702, just as he had in 1694, to draw an obvious and condescending contrast with the Muscovite past. The layout of the wedding banquets was similarly traditional. Men and women were kept separate on the first two days, dining in different ballrooms of the Lefort palace. Engravings by Adriaan Schoonebeek made shortly after the wedding show two ballrooms in the palace, one for the groom and the men, the other for the bride and the women.19 The bride and groom sit at raised tables in the corners of their respective ballrooms. The tables for the guests ran along the three walls of the rooms opposite the main table, with an extra table running parallel to the table at one end, creating a space in the center for guests to mingle and for entertainment. As Perry reports, the guests fumbled along with the mockery, but not without complaints and confusion: A splendid Entertainment was prepared for the Company: but the Victuals, and way of serving it to the Table, was, on purpose for Mirth made irregular and disagreeable, and their Furniture poor and mean, their Liquor also was as unacceptable, the best of which (as in the Days of old) was made of Brandy and Honey, and yet they were obliged to drink it, for though there was a grievous begging and complaint made in jest and in earnest, yet there was not one Glass of good Beer, nor one drop of any Wine to be had that Day, for they were told, that their Fathers had not drank any, neither must they; the Dancing and Musick in the Evening was after the Russ Fashion.20 At the conclusion of the first day, the bride and groom were escorted to a special pavilion a short distance away from the Lefort palace that had been “erected on purpose.”21 Perry makes the point that, despite it being January, the pavilion had no stove for heat so that another old Russian custom could be exposed and taunted: although Shanskii and Shakhovskaia “happen’d to be married in the depth of Winter, to lie, as the Czar now order’d his Jester, and as some of the Russ still superstitiously follow, always the first Night with the Bride in a cold Room.”22 Perry’s account stops at the end of the first day, and de Bruyn merely says that the banqueting continued on the second day and the guests “staid

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much as they did the night before.”23 But on the third day, when the guests removed their caftans and fur coats and put on “German dress,” de Bruyn says that “the men and the women sat at table together, as the custom is with us; and there was dancing and skipping about, to the great satisfaction of the Czar himself, and all his guests.”24 On day three, the guests were no longer Muscovites. At both the Turgenev and Shanskii-Shakhovskaia weddings Peter contrasted the old and the new.25 The eighteenth-century historian Ivan Ivanovich Golikov reports that the Shanskii wedding was “conducted with all the ancient rituals, at which all the distinguished [courtiers] with their wives were to be in ancient costume [nariad].”26 Golikov further reports that the [banquet] tables were arranged in the ancient manner, and [the guests] were all served by a jester and by matchmakers, in the ancient manner: warm wine, beer and honey, with bows and incessant courtesies. And the guests laughed at those [in attendance] who hold to the ancient ways and who turned red out of shame. But the monarch, who sat as one of the naval officers, mockingly praised this [exaggerated manner of] serving, and said: “this drink was used by your ancestors, and the ancient customs are always better than the new ones,” and so on. By such mockery and exaggerated manner of serving of the mentioned drinks in the ancient manner he intended to elicit a great reaction.27 Peter used costumes to encapsulate the Muscovite past—we are, after all, what we wear—and he used music, food, the layout of the physical spaces, and the breaking of social rules and boundaries to emphasize the point. The greatest names of the court riding bulls, goats, pigs, and dogs; exotic and undanceable music; strange and unpalatable dishes; men and women separated—all happened inside an otherwise recognizable template of a royal wedding. These early parodic weddings of Peter’s reign set a course for ritual experimentation that would influence not only later parodies but also the new-style wedding rituals that Peter was assembling for himself and his family. Anna Ioannovna and Friedrich Wilhelm of Kurland

Peter I remembered these parodic spectacles when he choreographed the wedding of his niece Anna Ioannovna—the future Empress Anna (1730– 1740)—and Friedrich Wilhelm, duke of Kurland, which took place between Tuesday, October 31, and Thursday, November 2, 1710. Peter at the same

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time planned the wedding of his court dwarf, Iakim Volkov, who married just two weeks later. The two weddings were, as Lindsey Hughes observed, a “striking example of how ‘real’ and ‘mock’ court life intermingled.”28 The first to marry was Peter’s niece. The choice of spouse for Anna was determined by Russia’s diplomatic objectives in the Great Northern War, which had by then been raging a full decade. Peter hoped to solidify Russian control in the middle Baltic lands, which his armies had partially occupied early in the war. It was a classic case of foreign policy being reinforced by a dynastic marriage, in this case between the duke of Kurland, whose ancestors had possessed the duchy since the last time the Russians were involved in this space (the Livonian War), and the daughter of a tsar.29 It probably did not much matter which of Ivan V’s daughters Friedrich Wilhelm of Kurland married, and all three (Ekaterina, Anna, and Praskov’ia) were considered. But the choice at length fell on Anna, and the wedding contract was signed on June 10, 1710. It provided for a dowry of 200,000 rubles (articles 2 and 3); that Anna could remain Orthodox, have a staff of clergy to meet her spiritual needs, and have an Orthodox church maintained for her in the capital of Kurland, Mitau (modern-day Jelgava, Latvia); and that, should any children be born of the marriage, the sons would be raised Lutheran—so they could succeed to the duchy—and the daughters Orthodox (article 6).30 Similar provisions would be made later in the marriage contract for Anna’s sister, Ekaterina Ioannovna (who married Karl Leopold of Mecklenburg-Schwerin in 1716), which similarly split the children by religion (sons Lutheran, daughters Orthodox).31 By contrast, the contract for Anna’s and Ekaterina’s half-brother, Tsarevich Aleksei Petrovich (who married Charlotte Christine Sophie of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel in 1711), required that all the children of the marriage to be raised Orthodox, probably for the sake of the succession.32 None of the spouses converted, and only Anna’s wedding (which took place in St. Petersburg) was choreographed personally by Peter. (Ekaterina Ioannovna’s and Tsarevich Aleksei’s weddings took place abroad—in Danzig and Torgau, respectively.) Anna Ioannovna’s wedding was the first in the Romanov dynasty since 1689 (when Peter married for the first time), and, to quote Hughes again, “the first important royal rite of passage to be held in St. Petersburg,” which “set the tone for others to come.”33 The wedding was perhaps the most important of Peter’s reign as a creative ritual moment. While the attention of scholars has often fallen on Peter’s second wedding, Anna Ioannovna’s has been understudied. As Olga Ageeva put it, with some impatience: “the transitional eighteenth century—when there occurred a break in wedding culture in the various strata of Russian society, when political, social, and

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cultural processes taking place at that time can be found reflected in daily life—remains unstudied.”34 To be sure, placing the wedding in the context of Peter’s parodic weddings and his own and later weddings only confirms that the omission has been costly. Anna Ioannovna’s wedding was a deliberate blend of old and new.35 Like most royal weddings, it was three days in length; and Aleksandr Menshikov’s new and comparatively large and lavish palace on Vasilievskii Island served as the setting of the church service, wedding banquets, and fireworks displays. The men and women attending the wedding were given honorific duties, not unlike those we find in traditional Muscovite royal weddings: Peter I himself assumed the role of marshal, or master of ceremonies. He had originally assigned himself the role of proxy father of the groom but surrendered that role to Menshikov. The groom’s “brother” (or best man—essentially the same as druzhka in traditional weddings) was Vice-Admiral Cornelius Cruys, the commander of Peter’s Baltic Fleet. The bride’s proxy father was Admiral Fedor Matveevich Apraksin, and her “brother” was Chancellor Gavriil Ivanovich Golovkin. The couple was attended by groomsmen (shafery)—twelve naval officers and twelve officers of the Preobrazhenskii Regiment—all of whom, plus many other courtiers and ladies of the court, also composed the wedding cortège. It was a huge affair: German musicians played “on every sort of instrument,” men manned the fireworks, and oarsmen ferried the wedding party across the Neva River to the Menshikov palace and back.36 Unlike Peter’s parodic weddings, the men and the women wore Western fashion the entire time (not just on the final day). Day 1 of the wedding began at about 9:00 a.m., with the men of the court already gathered in the groom’s residence and the bride and the ladies of the court gathered at the palace of the dowager tsaritsa, Praskov’ia Fedorovna (Ivan V’s widow and Anna Ioannovna’s mother). Peter I set off from the duke’s residence to Tsaritsa Praskov’ia’s palace to retrieve the bride-tobe, accompanied by a large retinue—a trip that required boarding several boats—and he returned with her and her attendants at about 11:00 a.m. When they arrived at the duke’s residence, the entire assembly, men and women, sat down for a brief meal of cold dishes, then boarded barges and boats to cross the Neva River to the Menshikov Palace. Menshikov himself greeted the guests as they went ashore on Vasilievskii Island. The guests then formed themselves into a cortège, with each person assigned a place in the line; and then the assembly made its way directly to the chapel in the Menshikov palace.37 The wedding in the chapel was perhaps the most tradition-violating element of the entire event. According to the Danish diplomat Joost Juel,

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the service followed traditional Orthodox wedding rubrics (presumably, a combined betrothal and crowning) in Slavonic, but phrases in the service intended for the groom were translated (by Juel’s own secretary, as it turns out) into Latin. Many of the traditional Orthodox elements were eliminated, evidently at the groom’s insistence and with Peter I’s acquiescence. The couple did not drink from a common cup, they did not perform the Dance of Isaiah, and they held no candles during the crowning service.38 These liturgical concessions to the duke must have been made well in advance of the wedding because Juel reports that many Russian Orthodox clerics refused to participate in this abbreviated service. In the end, Peter had to resort to having his own father-confessor, Fr. Feodosii (Ianovskii), perform the wedding.39 And it must have been no easy affair for the priest: the crowns over the couple were held by Menshikov (over the bride) and Peter himself (over the groom), but, according to Juel, Peter got tired of having his arm up in the air so long and so turned to the “quartermaster” of his boat, who was standing next to him, to take over the job. Peter then told Fr. Feodosii to hurry it up.40 After the wedding, Peter led the newlyweds and their guests to the two ballrooms in the palace that were being used for the banquet. There were three tables set up in the main ballroom and one in another. The bride and groom sat on one side of the main table, and on the other sat the bride’s sisters, the dowager Tsaritsa Praskov’ia, Peter’s sister, and other ladies of the court. At the second table sat the wives of important Russian courtiers and other important ladies of the court on one side, and Russian and foreign dignitaries (kavalery) on the other. At the third table sat Russian ministers, foreigner ambassadors and visitors, and high-ranking officers in the army and navy. The fourth table for the remaining guests was set up in the adjacent ballroom.41 The tsar himself oversaw the serving of the food, along with the twenty-four groomsmen, and cannon salutes accompanied every toast— apparently too numerous for our foreign informants to count. Dancing “in the Polish and French manner” went late into the evening, when the bride and groom were escorted by the tsar to their bridal chamber.42 Days 2 and 3 were nothing like Day 1, nor much like a traditional royal wedding. They resembled more one of Peter’s parodic weddings from the years before. Friedrich Christian Weber, the Hanover-born English diplomat in St. Petersburg, tells us that the highlight of Day 2 was a banquet held at the duke’s residence—a traditional enough event for Day 2—but at the banquet there were served two large cakes (about ninety centimeters tall), out of which popped one dwarf each. Peter helped the dwarfs up on the newlyweds’ table, where they danced a minuet. There was music, dancing, and toasting—“much more frequent and more than on the previous day”—

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accompanied by a cannon salute each time a glass was raised. A stunning fireworks display ended the festivities, including three burning displays on barges in the Neva, described by Weber: one with the couple’s monograms (A and FW, presumably) and their coats of arms, bound together by Cupid, who hovered above; a second with palm trees bent toward each other and the words Principes amoris feodere juncti (Sovereigns, united by love); and a third with Cupid hammering on an anvil, joining two hearts, and the words (in Russian) TWO I JOIN TOGETHER AS ONE.43 Day 3 was given over to the duke’s Lutheran pastor, who performed some nuptial rites of his own and gave a sermon based on the text of Psalm 12:5–6.44 It is not clear if the bride attended the service or only the groom, but it is entirely possible she did. (He, after all, attended the Orthodox service.) Wedding festivities concluded on the following Sunday (November 5/16), with the duke hosting a dinner for Peter, other members of the royal family, ladies of the court, foreign ambassadors and dignitaries, and other “knights,” all seated at three tables, very much like the first day.45 Anna Ioannovna’s wedding was thus a hybrid ritual: part modern, part Muscovite; part “real,” part mockery—to borrow Hughes’s terms. Peter employed many of the old Muscovite traditions, especially on Day 1, but always with a difference. Many of the honorary positions found at a traditional royal wedding were assigned to the leading courtiers, but with different titles for the positions. The bride and groom began the day separately, the groom with the menfolk and the bride with the womenfolk, and they came together just before the wedding at the groom’s residence, where they and their guests took a small meal, just as in former times. But there was no sprinkling with hops or combing of the hair, veiling, or gift exchanges. A cortège accompanied the bride and groom to the church for the wedding, but the assembly included foreigners and women, which was never the case in traditional Muscovite royal weddings. After the wedding service and back at the banquet hall, a meal of traditional fare was served, then the bride and groom retired, being sent off to the bridal chamber by a small assembly of guests. But there was no portal ritual or speeches commending the bride and groom to each other. The parodic elements appeared on Day 2, drawn from weddings that Peter had previously choreographed for his jesters and dwarfs but also juxtaposed with Western elements. There were jesters and dwarfs but also Western-style music and dancing. And the costumes on all three days, of course, were the fashions of the day. Day 3 broke entirely new ground by allowing separate heterodox rites to be performed. In every previous case, the wedding with the heterodox had been liturgically mixed, with Orthodox

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and Catholic or Lutheran clergy concelebrating. This time, the wedding on October 31 was wholly Orthodox, if somewhat blemished by the abbreviations, and the service and sermon on November 2 were wholly Lutheran. Anna Ioannovna’s wedding posed a unique choreographical challenge for Peter, and his use of eclectic models—Muscovite, Western, carnivalesque— would have impressed the likes of Ivan Gramotin or Nazarii Chistyi, the “ritual experts” for the weddings of Peter I’s father and grandfather. In fact, Peter could hold his own among the greatest choreographers of early modern Russian ritual. But it was all for naught. The marriage was short-lived and tragic: Duke Friedrich Wilhelm of Kurland died en route to Mitau two months after his grand wedding in St. Petersburg—heterodox rituals and edifying sermons being, apparently, no defense against a high fever. The hybrid structure of Anna Ioannovna’s wedding was replicated very closely two weeks later, on November 14, at the wedding of the dwarf Iakim Volkov and an unnamed dwarf bride.46 This time, however, the purpose was not to pepper the serious rites of passage of a royal princess with carnivalesque elements from the parodic weddings—dwarfs bursting from cakes—but the opposite: to put on a parodic wedding peppered with more formal rites, like some of those that had just been performed at the wedding of Anna Ioannovna and Friedrich Wilhelm. Not only did the Volkov wedding borrow the structure of Anna Ioannovna’s, it took place in the same location (the ballrooms in the Menshikov palace), had the same honorific posts assigned to many of the same people (the tsar just as impatiently held the crown over the groom’s head at the wedding), and the same entertainments, meals, and toasts (although the cannons used for the salutes were miniature ones). But to raise the comedic power of the rites, Peter arranged for as many dwarfs as could be found in Moscow to be brought to St. Petersburg—perhaps as many as seventy-two—where they attended the banquet and other celebrations alongside average-sized guests.47 The dwarfs, both men and women, lived up to expectations: they were dressed in the finest Western fashions, but their very appearance and movements elicited laughter, even in church (even by the priest); during the banquet, they were seated in the center so that all the average-sized guests—including Anna Ioannovna and Friedrich Wilhelm—could observe them from their seats around the periphery of the ballroom; they drank to excess and got into fistfights or simply passed out; and their peasant manners and speech contrasted starkly and unflatteringly with the finery of the setting. All these heartless, comedic moments were imagined and planned by Peter, probably drawing on his experience choreographing the Turgenev and Shanskii weddings years before. The Volkov wedding can be seen as a

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continuation—Hughes called it a “sequel”—of Anna’s wedding.48 Many elements of the old Muscovite royal wedding rites continued on, but their meaning was changing. The hybrid wedding rites retained enough of the old rituals to satisfy the liturgical concerns of the Church and the social sensibilities of the elite but retrained the focus and ritual message of the wedding. The new ritual aimed to create, as Zitser put it, a “chivalrous community of believers in the charismatic authority of the divinely ordained warrior tsar.”49 Peter harnessed the rituals in Anna Ioannovna’s and Volkov’s weddings primarily for the benefit of himself as ruler, not the dynasty. He accomplished this goal by both reviving and mocking the old ways. It was not for nothing that Peter held the crowns above both grooms’ heads in church and served dinner to the guests at the banquet. Peter was ubiquitous in the rituals—liturgical and secular—just as he was in life. The wedding of Anna Ioannovna was the first blow against his dynasty; the final blow would be struck when Peter wrote a new law of succession in 1722, which allowed the ruler to pick his own successor without regard to any order of succession and therefore functionally eliminated any useful notion of dynasty from Russian succession politics.50 Peter the Great and Marta/Catherine Skavronskaia

The marriage of Peter and his first wife, Evdokiia Lopukhina, was not a long or happy one. Like all dynastic weddings, it was an arranged match, even though Peter’s mother and her allies had gone through the motions of a bride-show, the last one ever performed in Muscovy.51 By most accounts, Peter never warmed to his bride, but the marriage started out well enough, through at least the birth of his first children, Aleksei (1690) and Aleksandr (1691).52 Peter’s initial feelings toward Evdokiia—whether they were “love” or indifference—gradually turned into dislike, and his emotions soon fixed instead on Anna Mons, the beautiful daughter of a Westphalian wine seller in the German Quarter, whom he met in 1696.53 She became Peter I’s mistress shortly afterward, a relationship that ended his first marriage and itself only ended with Peter’s second marriage to Marta Skavronskaia, better known as Catherine I (1725–1727).54 Peter may have long wished to free himself of his first wife, but it was only with his Grand Embassy to the West in 1697–1698 that he began to insist on ending the marriage. Peter had decided to dispatch his wife to a convent— making use of a Muscovite precedent that reached back to the days of Vasilii III and his first wife, Solomoniia Saburova. Prior to his departure, Peter broke with his wife’s family—probably, as Paul Bushkovitch suggested, because he had already decided to separate from her. Peter sent his father-in-law, Fedor

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Avramovich, to remote Tot’ma, and Evdokiia’s uncle, Vasilii Avramovich— both men boyars—to equally remote Charonda. Another uncle—Sergei Avramovich, a tableman—was dispatched to Viaz’ma.55 While in London, Peter began sending letters to his kinsmen—Lev Naryshkin and Tikhon Streshnev (both royal in-laws)—and to Evdokiia’s father-confessor urging them to convince her to quit the marriage, but she resisted every appeal.56 After his return to Moscow in August 1698, he met with Evdokiia on September 10 for four hours, and in a heated exchange prevailed on her to take the veil.57 When that did not work, Peter took Aleksei, their eight-year-old son, from her and placed him with Peter’s sister, Natal’ia.58 When even that did not work, Peter simply ordered that Evdokiia be apprehended on September 23 and taken to the Convent of the Intercession (Pokrovskii monastyr’) in distant Suzdal’, where she was placed under guard.59 In May 1699, Peter ended the stalemate and his marriage by dispatching the courtier Semen Iazykov to Suzdal’ to oversee the tonsuring of his wife as the nun Elena.60 To be sure, Peter’s and Evdokiia’s marriage was a mismatch. Peter fetishized all things Western. He was more at home with the foreigners of the German Quarter of Moscow than with his boyars or Orthodox churchmen. Evdokiia was, by contrast, the model of Muscovite womanhood— demure, outwardly pious, perfectly at home in the routines of the Terem, and unreceptive to Western ways. The stark differences that separated Peter and Evdokiia mirrored, in a way, the differences between Old Russia and the Russia Peter was struggling to create. As Paul Bushkovitch put it, “traditionalism and conservative opposition to foreign ways made an alliance of opponents of the tsar,” and there could have been little doubt that “Evdokiia herself was firmly in the traditionalist camp.”61 Thus it would not be enough to exile his wife from his bed. Peter would also have to attack the traditionalism and conservatism that bound his enemies against him. Ritual would be his best weapon in that attack. Peter’s second wife appears in the sources for the first time in May 1704, but it is an indirect reference.62 Accounts of her origins vary and little is known for sure: no less than eight possible theories of her origins have been offered by historians, and her background became a topic of some academic interest and debate starting in the second half of the nineteenth century.63 Not even her surname—Marta Samoilovna Skowrońska (later, Skavronskaia)— is firmly established.64 Most accounts agree that she was discovered in the town of Marienburg, present-day Alu¯ksne (in Latvia), possibly in the summer of 1702, in the household of a Lutheran pastor named Ernst Glück, where she lived and worked as a domestic servant. She and Glück passed into Russian custody as the Russian army, in an action early in the Great Northern

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War (1700–1721), took the town that summer; she then perhaps went with him when he arrived in Moscow in January 1703 to help start and teach at a school. Perhaps, as some of the eight stories have it, the future Catherine I made it to Moscow by becoming, in succession, the mistress of the Russian commander in Livonia, Field Marshal Boris Sheremetev, then of Aleksandr Menshikov, and then of Peter I himself, but the evidence is anecdotal, though broadly accepted. It is clear enough, however, that in the short span of a year, Marta had transformed herself from a poor and illiterate servant girl in a remote Livonian town into the inseparable mistress of the Russian tsar. She at some point converted to Orthodoxy and took the name Catherine Alekseevna (the patronymic was taken from her godfather, her stepson Tsarevich Aleksei Petrovich).65 She soon became much more than a mistress. In 1711, Peter married Catherine in a private ceremony, about which we know next to nothing (not even the date of it is without dispute), followed by a public wedding the following year.66 This remarkable woman—the “Livonian Cinderella,” as Lindsey Hughes called her—would after Peter I’s death become empress of Russia and the ancestress of the subsequent Romanov dynasty.67 The public wedding of Peter and Catherine took place on the morning of February 19, 1712, in St. Petersburg.68 The city celebrated the wedding in grand fashion, with fireworks, cannon salvos, and banquets that lasted until February 22. Sources for the wedding include, first of all, the account by the Englishman Charles Whitworth.69 A famous engraving by Aleksei Zubov, which appears at the beginning of this chapter, depicts a scene from the wedding banquet.70 While no official final description or list of guests survives, the names of most of the guests and participants can be gleaned from two sources: a draft list of the top ceremonial posts at the wedding, inscribed and edited by Peter himself;71 and the notes taken by Peter’s personal secretary, Aleksei Makarov, in the days just after the wedding, which contain both a brief description of events and a partial list of guests.72 Taken together, it is possible to reconstruct both the larger part of the guest list and the seating arrangements at the banquet on the first day of the wedding.73 The guest list was large and made up of some of Peter’s most trusted advisers and companions, particularly from the new navy. In fact, Peter himself married as much as a naval officer as a tsar, wearing the uniform of a rear-admiral.74 The wedding marshal was Aleksandr Menshikov.75 There were two proxy fathers (one for the groom, one for the bride): Cornelius Cruys and Admiral Count Ivan Fedorovich Botsis—the former the Norwegian-born (and Dutch raised) vice-admiral in command of the Baltic Fleet, and the latter the Greek-born rear-admiral commanding Peter’s galley fleet.76 Peter and Catherine also each had proxy mothers. Peter’s was Cruys’s

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wife and Catherine’s was originally to be Dar’ia Mikhailovna, Menshikov’s wife, but Peter decided to make Dar’ia one of the two proxy sisters instead and assigned Tsaritsa Praskov’ia, Ivan V’s widow, to the position, perhaps to bolster Catherine’s status by making her the fictive daughter of a tsaritsa.77 The groom’s proxy brother was Fedosei Moiseevich Skliaev, Peter’s best and most energetic shipbuilder and a companion since childhood; and Catherine’s was Ivan Mikhailovich Golovin, who headed Peter’s shipbuilding industry. The proxy sisters were Anna Ioannovna, the widow of Duke Friedrich Wilhelm of Kurland, and Dar’ia Menshikova. The bride’s attendant (forshinder) was the young Count Mikhail Golovkin, the son of Peter’s chancellor, Gavriil Ivanovich Golovkin. The bride’s ladies-in-waiting (blizhnie devitsy) switched off between Peter’s and Catherine’s daughters, Anna and Elizabeth, who were aged five and three respectively, and his nieces, Ekaterina Ioannovna and Praskov’ia Ioannovna, because Peter’s young daughters were, as Whitworth notes, “too tender to bear the fatigue.”78 The roster also included fifteen groomsmen, almost all of whom served in Peter’s navy.79 Two of the groomsmen, Aleksandr Vasil’evich Kikin and Pavel Ivanovich Iaguzhinskii—“two persons in a good degree of favour”—were, according to Whitworth, “sent about” on the eve of the wedding (February 18) to “invite the company to His Majesty’s ‘old wedding’ ”—a reference to the fiction that the wedding was merely the public version of the wedding that had taken place the year before.80 The assignment given to Kikin and Iaguzhinskii was very much like that given to conciliar secretaries on the eves of traditional Muscovite royal weddings, such as Ivan Gramotin in 1626, who announced the roster for the wedding and informed the participants when and where to report the next day (raising the ire of Golitsyn).81 Makarov’s list also includes the names of guests not given formal positions at the wedding who occupied some of the choicest seats at the banquet tables. These included some of Peter’s most senior advisers (the chancellor, Gavriil Golovkin; Senator Prince Iakov Fedorovich Dolgorukov; Senator Count Ivan Alekseevich Musin-Pushkin; General James Bruce, and so on); and ambassadors or dignitaries from England, Poland, Holland, Denmark, and Venice.82 Also there were Prince-Pope (kniaz’-papa) Nikita Moiseevich Zotov, Bishop Peter Ivanovich Buturlin, and Archdeacon Prince Iurii Fedorovich Shakhovskoi—three leaders of Peter’s Unholy Synod.83 G. V. Mikhailov estimates on the basis of his study of the Zubov engraving that there were about 160 guests, “not counting groomsmen, musicians, and singers.” A third of them, according to his count, were foreigners.84 The Romanov dynasty was well represented among these guests. Peter had instructed his sister, Natal’ia Alekseevna, to bring his two daughters (Anna

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and Elizabeth) with her to St. Petersburg from Moscow, and he arranged for other relatives to make the trip separately, as well.85 On the eve of Peter’s wedding in February 1712, the Romanov dynasty consisted of fifteen members (not counting the bride), only two of whom were male. Besides Peter himself, four were Peter’s half-sisters, one his full sister, one Ivan V’s widow, another Fedor III’s widow, three his nieces, two his daughters, and then his son and his son’s new bride.86 Of these, eight (including Peter) attended the wedding: Peter’s sister, three nieces, two daughters, and Ivan V’s widow. Most of the others were too agèd, living in monastic communities in Moscow, or absent for unknown reasons. The most glaring absences were Tsaritsa Marfa Matveevna, the wife of Fedor III, who was on cordial but not particularly close terms with her half-brother and preferred to live and dress in the Muscovite manner; and, significantly, Peter’s son, Tsarevich Aleksei Petrovich, who was abroad.87 Those exceptions aside, Peter was surrounded by most of his closest kin when he wed a woman who offered her husband and Russia absolutely no diplomatic or dynastic advantages. In fact, Peter was keen to emphasize the nondynastic nature of the match, meeting with his sister Natal’ia and his three nieces on March 10, 1711, just before his departure for the Pruth campaign. According to Joost Juel, Peter admonished them all “to regard her as his legitimate wife. They then congratulated Ekaterina Alekseevna and kissed her hand.”88 Unlike most previous royal matches, this was one of Russia’s few true royal love matches. The first day of the wedding began with the bride and groom going to the Church of St. Isaac of Dalmatia at 9:00 a.m., where the wedding took place.89 After the conclusion of the service, during which, according to Whitworth, “no one assisted but those who were obliged to it by their offices,” Peter and Catherine went to Menshikov’s palace and stayed there for a short time while the guests assembled at Peter’s newly built Winter Palace, where the banquet was to be held.90 Which of the guests were “obliged to it” and which gathered instead at the Winter Palace is not specified in the accounts, but before long Peter, Catherine, and those with them made the trek across the Neva River to “Peter’s house” and all were together for the grand celebrations. The Winter Palace was ready and waiting for them. The assortment of guests—high-ranking ministers, naval officers, foreign dignitaries, the Unholy Synod, and members of the dynasty—sat at tables shaped and arranged unlike at any previous royal wedding. According to Zubov’s engraving and the Court Journal, the royal couple and their guests sat on both sides of a large ring-shaped table in the palace’s main ballroom. The table had a single narrow passage through which guests seated on the inside edge of the table (and table servers) could reach their seats.91 Furthermore, Zubov’s engraving

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shows that the seating arrangement focused attention on the bride and the groom and grouped the men and the women around them. On one side of the circular table sat Peter. Next to him were Botsis, Skliaev, Cruys, Golovin, the foreign envoys, and prominent Russian and foreign guests. Directly across from Peter sat Catherine. Next to her sat Tsaritsa Praskov’ia, Dar’ia Menshikova, Tsarevna Natal’ia Alekseevna, Tsarevna Anna Ioannovna, Cruys’s wife, and women of the court and the wives of foreign dignitaries.92 Close inspection of the engraving shows an almost perfect separation of men and women—men occupying the half circle of seats on Peter’s side of the table, and women occupying the other half on Catherine’s side. The lone exception was the bride’s attendant, Mikhail Gavriilovich Golovkin, a young boy who sat directly across from Catherine (according to Zubov’s engraving) and ran errands and messages for Catherine during the wedding. Despite the unconventional shape of the table, the seating recognized rank, just as at traditional Muscovite weddings: the closer to Peter or Catherine one sat, the more honorable one’s station, with the proxy parents, sisters, brothers, and the bride’s attendant having the closest proximity. At the same time, the seating did not isolate or elevate bride and groom. Peter and Catherine were the center of attention, to be sure, but they sat among their guests at eye level, undifferentiated by any special décor. The only guests singled out were those seated at a small rectangular table placed in the open space in the middle of the ring-shaped main table: the three “religious” (Zotov, Buturlin, and Shakhovskoi)—all members of Peter’s Unholy Synod.93 In this way, all the guests seated on the outer edge of the table could see and presumably be amused by the costumes and gesturing of these three. Mikhailov counts forty-four persons seated at the circular table, plus the three “clerics” at the center table, to make a seating capacity of forty-seven. Tables were set up in six other rooms of the palace for the other guests, each apparently grouping guests by their relative rank.94 The banquet was only the beginning of the festivities. Like Anna Ioannovna’s wedding, there were many toasts during the meal, each accompanied by cannon volleys. Dancing followed dinner, and a fireworks display after that.95 And again like Anna Ioannovna’s, the fireworks were not merely rockets shot into the air, but an element of a much larger display, including decorative, sculpted structures involving pyrotechnics. The Court Journal describes a display of ignited Latin letters spelling out the word “VIVAT.”96 A contemporary engraving of the wedding shows two intertwined columns capped by the bride’s and groom’s monograms. To the left of the structure, Peter stands represented as Hymen (the Greek god of marriage), with a

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lit torch in his hand and an eagle at his feet. Catherine stands to the right of the structure, holding a burning heart in her hand with doves kissing at her feet. Surmounting the entire display was an “all-seeing eye” and crown, with a banner bearing the words (in Russian): “UNITED IN YOUR LOVE” (v tvoe[i] liubvi soedinennyi).97 Celebrations went well into the night. On the next day, the guests gathered again at the Winter Palace at 3:00 p.m., and dined until 7:00 p.m., after which there was again dancing until midnight. On the third day of the wedding, Menshikov hosted the banquet in his palace, and a final dinner was hosted by Tsaritsa Praskov’ia, the bride’s proxy mother.98 The famed ring-shaped table aside, Peter’s and Catherine’s wedding is noteworthy not for its innovations in ritual but for the way it drew on recent (and not so recent) antecedents. Peter drew first on ritual elements he had introduced at the wedding of Anna Ioannovna in 1710, including some new terms for honorific positions, the dancing, fireworks, and the use of multiple ballrooms for the banquets. He also drew on his experience choreographing parodic weddings: the Turgenev and Shanskii weddings, principally, which may have inspired the use of the dwarfs to entertain the guests at the second day of Anna Ioannovna’s wedding, and the presence and prominence of the three “religious” at Peter’s and Catherine’s. But Peter also drew from Muscovite antecedents. In both 1710 (Anna Ioannovna’s wedding) and 1712 (his own second wedding), Peter assigned to his favorites duties that were clearly modeled on Muscovite wedding rituals. Makarov’s notes in the Court Journal even use the Muscovite terminology, such as proxy father (v ottsovo mesto) and proxy mother (v materino mesto). To be sure, some of the terms are new, though similar to older forms (v bratnee mesto, v sestrino mesto), or borrowed from abroad (forshinder), but the roles these guests played were identical to the roles played by servitors in Muscovite times. Even the job given to the young Mikhail Golovkin as the bride’s attendant at the banquet is modeled on the role given to the young child who sat “in the tsar’s seat” (or “prince’s seat”—na kniazhoe mesto or na tsaria i velikogo kniazia mesto), next to the bride in the banquet hall just before the wedding.99 Peter drew on his own experiences as a choreographer and on a memory of past weddings; and while he was often willing to use that memory of the past to mock it for his own ends, he was also willing to borrow from it. Peter’s and Catherine’s wedding in 1712 was in some respects a revival of the Muscovite weddings of his father and grandfather—a reaching back over the revised and reduced wedding rites of his older half-siblings to the fuller, richer rites of the very court Peter was otherwise so set on changing.

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Peter’s Parodies Four months passed before Peter got a chance to ply his skills again as a wedding choreographer. On June 1 and 3, 1712, Peter choreographed the weddings of Prince Iakov Fedorovich Dolgorukov and Peter Ivanovich Buturlin, as we have seen. The two weddings reveal the ritual links between, and single purpose of, the parodic and new-style weddings. Both functioned like notepads in which Peter, the choreographer, edited and reedited the rites of passage into a court ritual that helped build momentum for his larger reforms. Both displayed rites that served the interests of tsar over those of dynasty. No treatment of Peter’s reign can avoid grappling with the “unholy” assemblies he staged, including the parodic weddings, but interpretations have run the gamut on their meaning and relevance to Peter’s reforms and character. On one end, perhaps, is James Cracraft, who nearly fifty years ago gave us the classic interpretation that has held sway for a generation. “Having little or no personal discipline,” he wrote, “having a gargantuan capacity for drink and fun and games, and perhaps only dimly conscious of what he was doing, Peter continued with his motley company to indulge in their drunken parodies, and so to trample on the symbols of the whole way of life.” Cracraft searingly concludes that “it is worth remembering this darker side of Peter’s character, this possibly tragic flaw in the founder of the Russian Empire.”100 Perhaps on the other side of the historiographical range—closer to where this study falls—is Ernest Zitser, who abjured comments about character and saw Peter’s “fun and games” as serious business: “royal spectacles,” he writes, “constituted an integral part of the company’s attempt to articulate and enact its reformist political vision.”101 Indeed, Zitser claims that “far from being a sign of Peter’s irreligion or drive toward secularization, these spectacles”—and he is referring here to the full range of unholy rites choreographed by Peter, not just weddings—“demonstrated how fundamentally Peter and his company were indebted to late Muscovite religious justifications of political rule.” It is hard, looking at the evidence from weddings, not to agree with Zitser that “Petrine parodies were not trivial or embarrassing asides in the teleology of Russia’s modernization but rather crucial constituents of a distinctively Petrine court culture.”102 How crucial ritual was to Peter’s court culture is on full display in two linked parodic weddings in the last decade of his reign. The first and bestdocumented of these later parodic weddings occurred in 1715, when Nikita Zotov, the tsar’s agèd former tutor and the prince-pope in his Unholy Synod, married Anna Stremoukhova (née Pashkova), the widow of one of the officers in Peter’s Preobrazhenskii Regiment.103 Peter was too engaged with the

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preparations for his next campaign against the Swedes to choreograph every detail of the wedding himself. Instead, he handed it over to his chancellor, Gavriil Ivanovich Golovkin, who doubled as head of the Ambassadorial Chancery, the same bureau that had the job of choreographing Muscovite weddings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (with some exceptions).104 Golovkin and his secretaries, undersecretaries, and scribes worked up several drafts and a final version of what would in Muscovite times be called a ceremonial, though it appears Peter had some input as well.105 We also have brief notices about the wedding recorded by Peter’s personal secretary, Aleksei Makarov, in his Court Journal.106 Friedrich Christian Weber left a colorful and detailed account.107 As a result, we know more about this wedding than most others in Peter’s reign, including the tsar’s own.108 Nikita Zotov’s wedding had been in preparation for months. It was from the beginning to be a masquerade, and a guest list went out in September 1714, along with instructions on picking a costume from cultures and regions around the world.109 The guests were also assigned musical instruments—more accurately described as noisemakers, given the likely low level of musical proficiency of the guests. “Every four Persons,” Weber writes, “had their proper Dress and peculiar musical Instruments, so that they represented a Hundred different sorts of Habits and Musick, particularly of the Asiastick Nations.”110 There were altogether between three hundred and four hundred guests—so large a company that it required a rehearsal in December.111 On the wedding day, January 16, 1715, the guests were signaled to gather by the firing of cannon. They were to dress in masks and costumes but to conceal themselves under winter cloaks until they reached the wedding venues, presumably to intensify the surprise and delight of the guests when their costumes were revealed later at the wedding. The men gathered in the house of Chancellor Gavriil Ivanovich Golovkin, and the women gathered in the house of Dar’ia Gavriilovna Rzhevskaia, a lady-inwaiting to Peter’s wife, Catherine, and a “princess abbess” in Peter’s Unholy Synod.112 The wedding guests escorted the groom and his bride to the Holy Trinity Cathedral for the church service. There, according to Weber, “they were joined in Matrimony by a priest a hundred Years old, who had lost his Eyesight and memory”—likely exaggerations, but probably not by much.113 After the wedding, the guests boarded themed floats and sleds and traveled over the frozen Neva to Menshikov’s palace—the site of so many Petrine wedding festivities—for the banquet. After the meal, the geriatric groom and his young wife were put to bed with all the traditional fanfare, although no doubt with more than the usual charivari-esque carousing and laughter. The next morning the wedding guests returned via the iced-over Neva to Peter’s

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Winter Palace, where they dined and then roamed the city streets in their costumes. The Zotov wedding was a spectacle, as Weber put it, “the World never having heard, for ought I know, of the like before.”114 Zotov died in 1718, and his position of prince-pope in the Unholy Synod was taken by Peter Ivanovich Buturlin, whose first marriage had taken place in June 1712, as we have seen. Zotov’s widow, Anna Eremeevna, was coerced at length by Peter to marry Buturlin, who was by then himself an eligible widower. Peter evidently believed the prince-pope had to have a wife in order for the mock title to have its full irreverent effect; and he evidently saw Anna Eremeevna as the official bride of whoever was the prince-pope. The bride resisted the indecent urgings of the tsar for perhaps a year—this would be her third marriage—but in the end she “had to obey the will of the tsar,” as Friedrich Wilhelm von Bergholz puts it in his account of the wedding.115 Bergholz had an interest in the marriages he saw in Russia during his stay from 1721 to 1725: a Holstein diplomat, he had accompanied Duke Karl Friedrich of Holstein to Russia in 1721 to help negotiate a marriage between the duke and Peter I’s daughter, Anna Petrovna (vide infra). While there, he observed and described a number of weddings in St. Petersburg, most of which he seems to have witnessed himself.116 Buturlin’s wedding on September 10, 1721, was a grand masquerade. The guests were assigned the widest range of costumes—clothes meant to remind one of Arabic, Dutch, French, German, Turkish, Spanish, Chinese, and other lands and peoples, though the extensive descriptions of the costumes by Bergholz suggest that the tailors exaggerated or embellished the native fashions beyond what was probably authentic.117 Some guests dressed in Catholic and other Western clerical dress, and still others wore traditional Muscovite costumes (presumably, the tailors knew better how to create those), which Bergholz treated as just one of the many varieties of exotic garb on display.118 Summoned by the cannon, the guests assembled in the square in front of the Holy Trinity Cathedral in their masks and costumes, though their clothes were covered by cloaks, just as at the Zotov wedding. They entered the church for the wedding service, keeping their costumes concealed all the while; and when they emerged from the church afterward, Peter furiously banged on a drum to signal that all the guests should drop their cloaks and assume a predetermined position in the square. Then the assembly “began to walk about the large square in procession, slowly and in a predetermined order, for about two hours in order to better see each other”—presumably to marvel and be amused at each other’s exotic costumes.119 The guests then went to the Senate and Colleges building for a banquet, where the groom sat

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with the tsar and “cardinals” and the bride sat “with the ladies.”120 The guests drank vodka and other spirits clearly to excess—including the groom—and the night ended with dancing, which must have been a disturbing sight to see. As the evening’s end approached, a procession formed to escort the bride and groom to a temporary wooden pyramidal structure in front of the Senate building, where the couple would spend their first night together. Hops were strewn about the bed, and there were vats of wine, beer, and vodka, and the bride and groom were given flasks in the shape of male and female genitalia to drink from. After the newlyweds were left alone, their activities—if there were any—could be observed through holes in the outer walls of the wooden pyramid, put there for the prurient amusement of the guests.121 Alerted again by cannon fire after lunch on the next day, the guests assembled to cross the river to the Postal House. The groom was summoned from his home, blessed those outside with a hybrid Orthodox and Catholic bishop’s blessing, then joined a procession that circled the wooded pyramid twice before boarding launches to the other side of the Neva. The dining, dancing, and drinking went on into the early hours. On the third day of the wedding, the guests gathered again after lunch and made their way to Menshikov’s palace on Vasilievskii Island, where the palace and gardens were opened up to the guests into the evening. Masquerades continued for the rest of the week in celebration of the Treaty of Nystadt, ending the Great Northern War. Taken together, these two weddings reveal the development of the later Petrine parodies as well as the way ritual and charismatic authority intertwined to elevate Peter over this dynasty. The Zotov and Buturlin weddings were less about the Muscovite past than the Petrine present. To be sure, there are clear references to Old Russia that made their appearance in 1715 and 1721: the traditional Muscovite costumes; the hops on Buturlin’s and Anna Eremeevna’s bed; the mock titles of many of the guests, including the groom; and the liturgical rites themselves. But these were set beside a range of other images and motifs designed just as much to elicit a laugh. Muscovite costumes were worn on the first day of Buturlin’s first wedding in 1712, then changed out for “their usual dress” on the second and third days specifically to juxtapose the old and new Russias, but Muscovite garb was merely one of many exotic costumes, hardly singled out for special attention or derision, at Buturlin’s wedding in 1721. The same can be said of Zotov’s wedding: by 1715, Peter had found a new use for parodic wedding rites. By the time Peter was proclaimed emperor by the Senate in 1721, both the parodic and newstyle wedding rites were calibrated to work together to display and project the emperor’s charismatic authority.122

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Moreover, there were many missed opportunities for further, even more effective mockery. So far as our limited sources reveal, many of the signature rites of passage of a traditional Muscovite wedding were not mocked during these first parodic weddings. The sprinkling with hops, the braiding of the bride’s hair, the slicing and distributing of cheese and bread, the exchange of gifts, the use of grains and sables as symbols of fertility and prosperity, the purification baths on the second day, the placement and role of in-laws—all were potentially ripe for ribbing. We can only speculate why Peter did not seize on this opportunity, but it may well be that these signature rites of passage had gone away by the time he was born. His father did away with the sprinkling and many of the other rites when he married Peter’s mother in 1671. By the time Peter was old enough to attend a royal wedding (Fedor III’s), the ritual had been radically reduced and simplified.123 It may be that Peter believed that his goal of mocking Muscovy was best achieved by the visual impact of a caftan or the aural oddness of demestvennyi (monophonic) chant, or it may be that he (and those around him) simply did not know much about sprinkling hops because it had not been done at a royal wedding in their lifetime. When hops are mentioned (at Buturlin’s wedding in 1721), they were merely cast about the pyramid-shaped bridal chamber before the couple arrived. Peter’s parodic weddings were not true parodies. Peter did not know the old rites well enough to create a perfect parody of them. Thinking of the parodic and dynastic weddings during Peter’s reign as linked and coordinated leads to three important conclusions. First, the changes in wedding rites during the Petrine era continued the changes in wedding (and other) rites that we identified beginning in the third quarter of the seventeenth century. The decades between Fedor III’s first wedding in 1680 and Peter’s death in 1725 constituted a single period of transition and reinvention in Russian royal weddings. Choreographers found it necessary to reduce and simplify many of the rituals because Fedor III’s poor health denied him the stamina to perform them all in the traditional way. But even before that, change was in the air: Fedor III’s father had already removed many of the traditional non-Christian fertility rituals in his weddings in 1648 and 1671, though the old structural elements had remained. Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich may have been motivated by religious zeal, and Fedor III by physical incapacity, but the changes and reductions in weddings reflected new trends in the political culture. By the time Peter the Great came to the throne, royal weddings no longer emphasized Romanov dynastic legitimacy, which was unassailable by that point, and no longer reflected and maintained the balance of boyar factions in the “game of politics” at court, because that “game” had already been altered by what Robert Crummey called the

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“inflation of honors”—the expansion of the membership of the Boyar Duma and the concomitant reduction in the importance of being a member of it.124 And there was no more precedence. Court rituals—weddings, to be sure, but other court happenings as well—were in flux because the Muscovite political system was in flux.125 The weddings of Peter’s reign reflected those changes. Second, in choreographing the weddings of his reign—both parodic and dynastic—Peter I drew on all available models, including Muscovite models from his father’s generation and before. Peter I understood perfectly well the power of ritual to help him achieve his goal of transforming Russia. Peter was an accomplished choreographer—a “ritual expert,” to borrow again Catherine Bell’s term. He tinkered with wedding rituals to achieve a single, serious goal: establishing his charismatic authority. The dynastic elements in royal wedding rituals already having been muted by the 1680s, Peter reinvigorated them with new meanings and symbols designed now to legitimate him as a reformer and transformer of Russia. In the tired debates over what Peter’s reforms meant—were they “revolutionary” or merely an acceleration and redirection of trends already long in process?—the evidence from Peter’s reworking of royal weddings suggests that he was not exploding old and venerable nuptial traditions but using them to bolster himself as an emperor with the power to exceed the traditional limitations of monarchical power and rewrite the political culture of Russia. While it may be too much to say that Peter was a “conservative,” it may be too little to say that he was merely continuing or accelerating underlying trends. The old Muscovite rites of passage contained too many images of monarchical power to be wholly discarded, and the Western wedding rituals projected too few images of the personal charismatic authority to transfer enough of the focus from the dynasty onto himself. The parodic weddings offered an essential link between the two, placing Peter in an entirely new and audacious ritual setting that matched and legitimized his new and audacious style of rule. Finally, the new Petrine “scenario,” to borrow Richard Wortman’s useful phrase, did much violence to the received notion of dynasty, but it did not completely abandon it. It transfigured it. Peter’s rule and reforms were founded on his personal charisma, not his descent from Romanov ancestors. As Wortman put it, “Peter’s Romanov ancestors were presented and praised, but only as precursors, harbingers of his own greatness.” Peter used ritual and other accoutrements of power to fashion an “image of a monarch without debt to the past.”126 This is why, despite all the ritual focus on himself that we see in the weddings of his reign, he attempted so earnestly to found a new dynasty with his second wife. Lindsey Hughes counted ten children born to Peter I and Catherine between 1704 and 1718, including four boys.127

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To build power and authority around himself for the sake of his vision of a new Russia, Peter strove to construct a monarchy rooted not in his Romanov ancestry but in his own personal charisma. He strove to be the founder of a new imperial house. He failed because his sons by Catherine (two Peters and two Pauls) did not live past the cradle. The Petrine law of succession of 1722 was as much an acknowledgment of that failure as it was a response to the execution of Peter I’s son, Aleksei Petrovich, in 1718. It would be up to Peter’s female heirs to pick up the pieces of his shattered and discarded dynasty after his death.

q Ch ap ter 8 “There Will Not Be Any Direful Reversions” Heirs and Successors

The death of Peter I in 1725 was a dynastic disaster. The Romanov dynasty was in real danger of extinction, and the succession was a mess. Three generations in, the number of descendants of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, the first Romanov, was reduced to eleven: one male and ten females. The lone male was Peter’s grandson, Peter Alekseevich (the future Peter II), and the ten females included Peter’s two wives (Evdokiia/ the nun Elena and Catherine), his three daughters by Catherine (Anna, Elizabeth, and the six-year-old Natal’ia, who died shortly after Peter I’s death), Peter’s granddaughter (Natal’ia Alekseevna, d. 1728); Ivan V’s three daughters (Anna, Ekaterina, and Praskov’ia), and Ekaterina Ioannovna’s daughter Anna (née Elizabeth) Leopol’dovna. Two of these were Romanovs only by marriage (Peter’s two wives). Three others (Anna Ioannovna, Ekaterina Ioannovna, and Anna Petrovna) had married into other dynasties—the houses of Kurland, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and Holstein-Gottorp, respectively. Praskov’ia Ioannovna was evidently married to Ivan Il’ich DmitrievMamonov in 1723 in a private wedding ceremony, which suggests that it was regarded at the time as nondynastic and morganatic, despite Peter’s approval of the match. Anna Leopol’dovna was born in Rostock but raised in Russia and converted to Orthodoxy.1 These eleven Romanovs in 1725 fell into two branches. The senior branch descended from Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s marriage to Mariia Miloslavskaia and included four of the eleven Romanovs 215

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in 1725. The junior line issued from his second marriage to Natal’ia Naryshkina and included the other seven (including Peter I’s two wives). (See appendix C.2.) The dynasty hung on slender threads. Adding to this potential risk of extinction were the destructive effects of Peter’s law of succession of 1722. Russia’s first true law of succession, it rendered custom and familial order in the dynasty (as well as common sense) irrelevant as it gave all authority to the ruler to handpick his successor, something Peter himself ironically failed to do. On his death in 1725, the throne passed to his widow, Catherine I (1725–1727), leaping over his grandson Peter Alekseevich, who would have been the heir in a primogeniturial system, as Russia informally (but regularly) had followed before 1722.2 Catherine was the first to nominate a successor in accordance with that law, and she did pick Peter Alekseevich, who reigned as Peter II (1727–1730).3 The succession afterward would bounce back and forth between the Miloslavskii and Naryshkin branches of the Romanov dynasty for decades. Each time it did, a wedding was celebrated as a way to try to cement the succession in that line.

Figure 8.1.  Engraving by G. A. Kachalov of the fireworks display at the wedding of Peter Fedorovich (Peter III) and Catherine Alekseevna (Catherine II). Wikimedia Commons.

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This chapter examines the weddings in these two branches of the Romanov dynasty from 1725 to 1745. It analyzes the ceremonies held for Peter I’s daughter Anna Petrovna in 1725; his grand-niece Anna Leopol’dovna in 1739; and his grandson Peter Fedorovich (the future Peter III), who married Catherine Alekseevna (the future Catherine II) in 1745. The rituals reveal how the dynasty was reconstructed and how all the old and familiar messages of Muscovite marriage—legitimacy, continuity, fertility, and power—were revived in the eighteenth century, although in new guises and with updated rituals. Anna Petrovna’s wedding was key: it shaped those that would come afterward and serve as a new template for royal weddings in Russia—much as Vasilii III’s had in 1526. By 1745, one great issue in the history of the Romanov dynasty would finally be resolved: the succession would run in the line of Peter I (not Ivan V). And when Paul I, who was born of the marriage celebrated in 1745, married and had a brood of Romanov children of his own, another issue was finally resolved: whether or not the Romanov dynasty would live on or die out.

Anna Petrovna and Karl Friedrich of Holstein-Gottorp The wedding of Anna Petrovna with Duke Karl Friedrich of HolsteinGottorp on May 21, 1725, was the first wedding in the Romanov dynasty after the death of Peter I nearly four months before. It provided the court in St. Petersburg with a prime opportunity to rethink various themes in royal wedding rituals that had developed under Peter’s direction for more than two decades. With Anna’s wedding we already begin to see the assembling of a refurbished dynastic image and message.4 Whereas Peter I needed to deconstruct royal rituals and reconstruct them anew, assigning messages to new and old rites designed to enhance his own charismatic authority and to bolster his power to enact reforms, those needs evaporated essentially immediately on his death. His successors would need again to utilize weddings for their dynasty-legitimizing power—just as the early Romanovs had done. Once Peter destroyed any useful definition of dynasty with the disinheritance (and death) of his son and the promulgation of the new law of succession, his successors found it necessary to rebuild a notion of dynasty. Anna Petrovna’s wedding was a prime opportunity for that rebuilding work. Anna Petrovna’s marriage was long in the making. In March 1721, as the Great Northern War was winding down, Duke Karl Friedrich of HolsteinGottorp, the nephew and potential heir of Russia’s nemesis during the war, the childless King Charles XII of Sweden (1697–1718), arrived in St. Petersburg to begin the marriage negotiations. He was accompanied by Friedrich

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Wilhelm von Bergholz, who wrote many of the best descriptions of Petrineera weddings. Karl Friedrich came to Russia with hopes of securing Peter I’s help in pressing his claims to Schleswig, which he lost to Denmark during the war, and, perhaps, to the throne of Sweden. Though he was well connected and his claims to important thrones and territories were good, this match was nonetheless an odd choice for Peter I, since Karl Friedrich’s prospects on all these fronts were dim. His claims to Schleswig were continually ignored, and the throne of Sweden had slipped out of his hands first to his aunt, Ulrika Eleonora (1718–1720), then to her husband, Frederick I of Hesse-Kassel (1720–1751). Karl Friedrich’s arrival in St. Petersburg was thus in some ways part of a last-ditch effort to reclaim his inheritances. Karl Friedrich may have also been Peter I’s last best hope for a good match for Anna. She had been turned down by other royal houses, despite her acknowledged beauty—perhaps because of her illegitimate birth, perhaps because of the unsettled diplomatic climate as the states of Europe reconfigured their alliances in the wake of the Great Northern War, or perhaps because, for all his claimed willingness to break church rules and customs, Peter I was not eager to have members of his dynasty convert to other religions.5 An itinerant king without a throne and the bastard daughter of a Russian tsar, it seems unlikely that either was the other’s first choice. It was only in November 1724—after the duke had been in Russia for two and a half years—that Peter finally agreed to betroth his daughter to the duke. The French envoy in St. Petersburg, Jacques de Compredon, reports that Peter signed a marriage contract with Karl Friedrich on his daughter’s behalf, promising 300,000 rubles in dowry, and (in secret protocols) Russia’s support for the duke’s various dynastic claims. Compredon then described the Orthodox betrothal in some detail: the service took place in the Great Hall of Peter’s palace with a large audience, including members of the Romanov dynasty and invited guests. Three bishops were present, and the “bishop” of Novgorod blessed the couple. Peter himself placed the rings on the fingers of the future bride and groom—a departure from standing rubrics for a betrothal, where the officiating cleric performs that function— and kissed the couple. The crowd then broke into applause. Anna offered wine to the “principaux de l’assemblée”—another departure from the usual rites—after which the entire company was treated to an impressive fireworks display. Compredon describes the tableaux as composed of the goddess Juno in a chariot being pulled by two swans “representing the duke and the princess” (a swan was a heraldic device for Holstein), being crowned by Fāma (Renommée), and the words “To the Happy Marriage” (à l’heureuse alliance). The fireworks were followed by dinner and dancing.6

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A happy beginning did not presage a happy ending. After Peter I’s death, Karl Friedrich, who was still living in St. Petersburg, played a minor role in Catherine I’s Privy Council but left Russia in the summer of 1727 after he found himself on the wrong side of the realignment of court groupings after her death. He and Anna returned to Kiel, in Holstein, where she died the following spring, after giving birth to her son Karl Peter Ulrich, named, significantly, after the enemies Charles XII and Peter I, and known better as Peter III (ruled 1762), the tragic husband of Catherine II the Great. Anna Petrovna’s fate is best summarized in the opening lines of Catherine II’s memoir, where she writes of Anna Petrovna and her son: “two months after the birth of her son she died of consumption, in the little town of Kiel, in Holstein, a victim of grief at finding herself established in such a place and married so badly.”7 The description of the wedding of Anna Petrovna and Karl Friedrich has long been known to historians. An official description of the wedding text was published in 1725 in St. Petersburg.8 A version of this text, faulty in some of its details, was included in the compilation of wedding documents published by Novikov in DRV at the end of the eighteenth century.9 More important are the two earlier drafts of the wedding ceremonial that survive in heavily marked-up manuscripts.10 These earlier versions show the evolution of the ceremonial, as the editor or editors made adjustments in the ritual, sometimes adopting and sometimes abandoning elements from traditional Muscovite weddings as they attempted to modify the ritual and improve the descriptive quality of the text. Anna Petrovna’s wedding was a large affair, without any reductions in the celebrations that one might expect in a court still in mourning. The wedding took place over the course of three days—a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday—from May 21 to May 23, 1725. On the first day the invited guests assembled just after noon at Catherine I’s Summer Palace, and at one o’clock the bride and groom were conveyed by a large procession to barges on the Neva, which transported them and their company to the Church of the Holy Trinity where the wedding was performed. The wedding service itself began at three o’clock in the afternoon and was celebrated in the normal fashion, “according to the customary church rubrics.” The officiating cleric was Archbishop Feofan of Pskov, and in attendance were “the archbishop of Tver’ and Belgorod, and archimandrites and other leading churchmen in rich liturgical vestments.”11 After the services, the empress bestowed the Order of St. Catherine on the bride—the highest order of chivalry for women in Russia, created by Peter I—and then the assembly returned again by barge to the Summer Palace, all the while being saluted by the cannons of the Peter and Paul Fortress.12

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At the palace, a grand banquet had been prepared. Two canopies (baldakhiny) were constructed opposite each other with tables in between. Guests were seated on both the outer and inner sides of the tables by sex.13 Under one canopy sat the bride; the bride’s mother, Empress Catherine I; her sister Elizabeth Petrovna; her cousin Duchess Ekaterina Ioannovna of Mecklenburg-Schwerin; her aunt Natal’ia Alekseevna; and the first ladies of the court: the wives of Prince Aleksandr Menshikov, Chancellor Count Gavrilo Ivanovich Golovkin, and General Ivan Ivanovich Buturlin. Opposite them, under the other canopy, sat the groom, General-Admiral Count Fedor Matveevich Apraksin, Chancellor Count Golovkin, and General Buturlin. “Between them, on both sides of the table, sat other Russian dignitaries and ministers from foreign lands, and other distinguished persons and ladies who had been invited, down to the seventh class”—a reference to Peter the Great’s Table of Ranks—“as many as four hundred persons.”14 After dining, the guests were invited to stroll about the palace gardens, and after nightfall, they were treated to a fireworks display. At some point in the day, numerous orders of knighthood were distributed, as well as promotions up the ladder of the new Table of Ranks.15 At nine o’clock, the bride and groom were escorted, again by a large procession of carriages and footmen, from the Summer Palace to a “specially prepared house” [vo osobo ugotovannoi im dom] where the newly wedded couple would spend their first night.16 The second and third days of the wedding also featured banquets. On the second day, seating arrangements were much the same as on the first, except that the bride and groom this time sat together under the same canopy.17 On the third day, the banquet moved from the empress’s Summer Palace to “the home of His Royal Highness the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp.”18 The new venue called for new seating arrangements: three separate tables were set up in the main hall of the duke’s residence. At the first was seated the empress, along with the bride and groom and members of the Romanov family: Elizabeth Petrovna, Ekaterina Ioannovna, Natal’ia Alekseevna, and Peter Alekseevich. The ceremonial describes the rest of the seating in the following way: “In the same hall, along the walls, were set up two more tables. At one sat distinguished Russian nobles, and with them were seated the ministers from foreign lands; and at the other were seated distinguished ladies. Other tables were set up for many other nobles in the other rooms [apartamenty].”19 Twice the text of the ceremonial goes out of its way to report that events were arranged according to tradition: once for the secular celebrations, the other for the church service. At the point at which the text lists the names of the courtiers holding honorific posts at the wedding, it reads that “in ranks at the wedding, in accordance with the usual ceremonial rubrics, by Her

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Imperial Majesty’s determination, were the following people . . .” (the list of courters and posts immediately follows).20 Significantly, this line is not part of the basic text of the first or second drafts of the wedding ceremonial but was inserted in the margins of both, with slightly different wording each time— an edit that reveals that conformity to tradition (albeit recent tradition) was a concern of the choreographers. The wedding had two marshals: Aleksandr Menshikov, who, on Peter’s death, had taken over the reins of government; and Pavel Ivanovich Iaguzhinskii, the procurator-general of the Governing Senate and a general. Count Apraksin—a brother of Tsaritsa Marfa Matveevna Apraksina, Tsar Fedor III’s second wife—and Count Golovkin served as proxy fathers. The proxy mothers were Duchess (formerly Tsarevna) Ekaterina Ioannovna of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Dar’ia Menshikova. The proxy brothers and sisters were, respectively, General James Bruce and General Buturlin, and the wives of Golovkin and Buturlin. The ladies-in-waiting were the bride’s sister Tsarevna (and future empress) Elizabeth Petrovna; and her aunt Tsarevna Natal’ia Alekseevna. Also attending to the bride was an unnamed “Colonel-Prince of Hesse-Homburg.” Serving, finally, as groomsmen were twenty-four officers from guards and naval units.21 Thus the wedding continued a practice going back to Anna Ioannovna’s marriage in 1710 of using (in the 1710 case, reviving) traditional honorary positions at the wedding, although with new terminology. As for the church service, again the text of the ceremonial goes out of its way to emphasize that Orthodox rubrics were followed. According to the text, the couple was “married in accordance with the usual church rites” (po obyknovennomu tserkovnomu ustavu venchany).22 The ceremonial, like the texts of ceremonials from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, provides only the skimpiest description of what went on inside the church since the service books provided that information. Still, we know that, unlike the interfaith services for Elena Ivanovna (in 1495), Mariia Staritskaia (in 1573), and the First False Dmitrii (in 1606), Anna Petrovna and Karl Friedrich were married by the archbishop of Pskov, along with other Orthodox clergy in attendance, in a single service. No heterodox clergy and no heterodox rites are mentioned in the official descriptions of the wedding. Karl Friedrich was willing to be married by traditional Orthodox rites and by Orthodox clergy, and the Russians were themselves now willing to let a foreigner deign to enter the nave of one of their churches. The old gift exchanges—or, at least, the goal of them—was also revived. While there were no ceremonial kerchiefs distributed by the bride or her best man, as was the case on the first day (and other days) of traditional royal weddings, the first day saw a large number of guests receiving awards and

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promotions. Catherine I awarded “the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called to General and Major of the Guards Buturlin and to First Minister of His Royal Highness Basevich,”23 and inducted nineteen cavaliers into the newly created Order of St. Alexander Nevskii, a chivalric order awarded for the first time at this wedding. In addition, Aleksandr Menshikov handed out in the empress’s name promotions to five military officers, and Count Golovkin handed out five more to officers and high-ranking civil servants. These investitures and promotions may have served the same purpose as the earlier gift exchanges: establishing and maintaining social solidarity, at least among the highest ranks of the elite. These awards were, after all, gifts of a sort. It was not exactly the same: only the elite received them, not everyone involved with the wedding down to musicians and palace guards. But by 1725, and well before, royal weddings had become much smaller affairs anyhow. What the public saw of them was mostly the fireworks (and, in the case of parodic weddings, strange displays of costumes and revelry). But knighthoods were, as we saw in the case with ceremonial kerchiefs, about linking an elite (or subset of it) to the dynasty. They were about buy in. Finally, choreographers of the betrothal six months before the wedding, among whom may well have been Peter himself, included clear symbols of dynasty and legitimate power. The fireworks tableau was replete with dynastic messaging. Representing the bride and the groom as crowned Holstein swans—perhaps one of the earliest uses of Western heraldic imagery in Russia—broadcast the message that this was a dynastic marriage, a joining of the Romanov and Holstein-Gottorp houses. Binding the bride and the groom together with reins in front of the chariot, like the epitrachelion that bound the couple’s hands together as they performed the Dance of Isaiah at the wedding service, signaled not only the commitments of marriage but the linked futures of Russia and Holstein. Placing Juno—the Roman goddess of marriage and childbirth—in a chariot emphasized the familiar marriage themes of reproduction and succession. And Fāma crowning the swans from above replicated a familiar visual motif of the hero or heroine being trumpeted (sometimes literally), so that their fame and glory will be known far and wide.24 Whereas Peter I altered the messaging of wedding rites away from dynasty and legitimacy and toward himself as the charismatic ruler who stood outside of dynasty, his thoughts may well have been turning back to dynasty, or at least to the succession, in these last months of his life. The coronation of his wife in May 1724 (more than twelve years after he married her publicly) had dynastic implications and may also have signaled a recent change in his thinking about dynasty and legitimacy. The coronation has often been interpreted as a signal to his court that Peter preferred

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Catherine to succeed him, but it may instead have been intended to open a path to the throne for his daughters, Anna and Elizabeth. Crowning their mother, it might have been reasoned, would balance out the stigma of the daughters’ illegitimate birth and establish a new precedent for a female ruler.25 Indeed, the dynastic content of the betrothal tableaux in November 1724 may lend some small credence to the story, reported by H.-F. Bassewitz, that, on his deathbed on January 28, 1725, Peter called for his daughter Anna to come to him, but he expired before he could formally designate her as his heir— dramatically dying midsentence, we are told, as he was scribbling down his nomination, though never reaching her name at the end (“Leave all to . . .”).26

Peter II and Ekaterina Alekseevna Dolgorukova But it was Catherine I, Peter’s wife, not Anna Petrovna, who succeeded to the throne. When Catherine I herself died a little more than two years later, Anna was passed over again, but perhaps for a better reason: in accordance with the Petrine law of succession, Catherine I had nominated Peter Alekseevich, her step-grandson and the last agnatic Romanov, as her heir. The reign of Peter II represented in many ways a return to old ways. The court (and thus the capital) moved back to Moscow, and Peter’s law of succession was suspended by the Privy Council at the outset of Peter II’s reign in the hopes that the new ruler (he was eleven years old when he took the throne) would marry and have issue. Presumably, the handlers of the young emperor reasoned and assumed that the former custom of male primogeniture would click back in if a son were born to Peter II, or that the matter could be revisited later if not.27 (The Petrine law would be reinstituted in December 1731 by Anna Ioannovna once those hopes had not been realized.28) The proposed marriage between Peter II and Princess Ekaterina Alekseevna Dolgorukova was also planned as a return to more traditional ways. The son of the tragic Tsarevich Aleksei Petrovich, Peter Alekseevich had waited in the wings during the reign of his stepmother; but as the last agnatic Romanov, he remained a viable candidate to the throne, even though his ascension was opposed by some members of the court who feared retaliation for their support of the execution in 1718 of Tsarevich Aleksei. One of those opposed to Peter Alekseevich had been Menshikov.29 As Catherine I lay on her deathbed, however, Menshikov began sizing up Peter I’s progeny—his grandson, Peter, and his two daughters, Anna and Elizabeth—guessing which was most likely to succeed. To be sure, Anna was a strong potential heir. She had been called to her father’s side on his deathbed, and her husband had later become a favorite of Catherine’s, who appointed him to the Supreme

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Privy Council. Nonetheless, Menshikov determined that Peter Alekseevich’s chances were best, and so he promptly switched sides, betrayed his old allies, and became an ardent supporter of Peter Alekseevich’s rights to the throne.30 Just before her death, the empress gave her blessing to the betrothal of the young heir to Menshikov’s daughter Mariia. Mariia had been betrothed previously to Peter Ivanovich ( Jan) Sapieha, a Polish-Lithuanian hetman who had offered his service to the Russian ruler.31 This planned union was canceled when Catherine chose instead to pair Sapieha with one of her Skavronskii relatives. Menshikov evidently used this previous betrothal to his advantage in his bid to link his daughter with Peter, reminding Catherine I that his plans for Mariia’s marriage had already been foiled once. The betrothal between Peter and Mariia was celebrated with great splendor; and the royal fiancée assembled a small circle of courtiers.32 This, of course, was the grand stroke in Menshikov’s strategy to secure his own and his family’s high station for generations. Menshikov sought to be more than just a royal favorite; he sought to be a royal in-law. On May 6, 1727, Catherine I died, and Peter Alekseevich became Peter II. Menshikov moved Peter from the Winter Palace to his own, larger palace on Vasilievskii Island where he could monitor the young prince’s education, associations, and movements more closely. In a move almost certainly meant to solidify Menshikov’s headship among Peter’s supporters, he transferred young Peter’s grandmother, Tsaritsa Evdokiia (now the nun Elena), the first wife of Peter the Great, from the harsh Schlüsselburg Fortress, near St. Petersburg, to the Novodevichii Convent near Moscow, where she could live less restrictively and closer to relatives and familiar environs. But Aleksandr Menshikov’s time had come. Peter II never warmed up to him and evidently came to resent more and more Menshikov’s imperious manner. In addition, Peter had become inseparable from the young Prince Ivan Alekseevich Dolgorukov, the son of Prince Aleksei Grigor’evich Dolgorukov, one of the era’s greatest and most powerful political figures and a man who detested the upstart Menshikov. Perhaps because the thought of Menshikov as a royal in-law was unbearable, perhaps because vast storehouses of resentment against the royal favorite had accumulated over years, Menshikov’s opponents (and feigned allies) seized on the first occasion that presented itself, a brief illness in July 1727, to undo him. While Menshikov was bedridden, Peter II was moved out of Menshikov’s palace and into Peter the Great’s summer retreat at Peterhof, outside St. Petersburg. The young emperor and his handlers also began acting more and more independently; and after Menshikov’s recovery and return to court, his opponents found occasions to treat him publicly with disrespect and derision—foretelling, as

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it were, the favorite’s impending fall. By the end of the summer of 1727, the engagement between Peter and Mariia was called off, and Menshikov—and Mariia—were sent away in exile.33 But Peter II’s short reign continued to be dominated by the stronger characters surrounding him. By the end of 1729, Peter II was again engaged to the daughter of a royal favorite—Princess Ekaterina Alekseevna Dolgorukova, the sister of his friend Prince Ivan and the daughter of his principal adviser in the Supreme Privy Council. The wedding would never take place: just fourteen years old, Peter II succumbed to smallpox on January 19, 1730—his wedding day.34 There had been time, however, for a formal betrothal ceremony in December 1729, of which a fragmentary official description survives.35 If the betrothal ceremony is any indication of the manner in which the nuptials were to be celebrated, then Peter’s and Ekaterina’s was to be a very different wedding from those that had taken place in the preceding quarter-century. The Dolgorukovs occupied a central place in the ceremony, not at all unlike that of royal in-laws in royal weddings in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The surviving document describes the formal betrothal and the formal installation of the bride-to-be in her Kremlin apartments— a ceremony that is mentioned in wedding descriptions as early as the first half of the sixteenth century.36 The Dolgorukovs gathered just before the betrothal at the Golovin palace “where princesses of the Dolgorukov family gathered to escort the imperial princess, the bride-to-be [imperatorskaia printsessa nevesta] to the ceremony.”37 The procession to the Kremlin was led by Prince Ivan Alekseevich Dolgorukov and included “royal carriages with the princess’s family, the Dolgorukovs, such that her closest kin were placed in front.”38 The prominence of the Dolgorukovs in the procession is unmistakable: “Behind His Imperial Majesty followed His Excellency Prince Aleksei Grigor’evich Dolgorukov, the chief chamberlain [oberkamerger] GeneralField-Marshal Prince Dolgorukov and other distinguished members of this family; and also Their Excellencies the state chancellor and the vice-chancellor and other distinguished nobles [znateishnia].”39 The document ends with Ekaterina’s entry into her apartments, accompanied “by her kinsmen [s rodniki].”40 Perhaps significantly, the notes by the Spanish ambassador, James Fitz-James Stuart, the Duke of Berwick and of Liria and Xérica, point out that the Dolgorukovs were one of the most ancient houses in Russia, and at this time the most loyal to the sovereign, but they so feared the other houses that, on the day of the betrothal, the guard in the palace

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consisted of a whole battalion—1,200 men—while in ordinary times it would be no more than 150. It was even ordered that a grenadier company, the captain of which was a royal favorite, enter the hall immediately behind the tsar and set sentries to all doors, even ordering them to load their rifles with cartridges, and, if there was any trouble, to shoot at the troublemakers.41 What the rituals of the wedding ceremony itself would have looked like— whether there would have been a revival of old honorific titles and ceremonial duties, whether there would have been a ring-shaped table or a main and side tables, whether there would have been a cutting of cheese and bread and a sprinkling of hops—is unknown. That the wedding was to be held in Moscow, not St. Petersburg, and the very fact of this formal entry ceremony suggests that some parts, at least, of the traditional Muscovite ritual might have been revived. Whatever the case, it is clear enough that, had the wedding taken place, the Dolgorukovs would have benefited from their new ties to the ruler as much as the Streshnevs, Miloslavskiis, and Naryshkins had before them.42 But the untimely death of Peter II prompted the return of the old Petrine law of succession and the return of the new ritual rubrics that had been fashioned at length by the greatest “ritual expert” of his time, Peter the Great.

Anna Leopol’dovna and Anton Ulrich of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel The situation for the dynasty continued to be perilous through the first half of the eighteenth century. Peter II was succeeded by his half-cousin, Anna Ioannovna (1730–1740), whose wedding in 1710 was a key ritual moment in Peter the Great’s fashioning of new-style wedding ritual, as we have seen.43 She was from the senior, Miloslavskii branch of the dynasty, and so her ascension and ten-year reign represented a major shift in court alignments.44 At the time of her death in 1740, the number of Romanovs had been reduced to five: the nun Elena (Evdokiia Lopukhina); Peter I’s daughter Elizabeth Petrovna; Peter I’s grandson Karl Peter Ulrich of Holstein-Gottorp (the future Peter III); Anna Leopol’dovna, the daughter of Ekaterina Ioannovna, and her son, the infant Ivan Antonovich (the future Ivan VI). Anna Ioannovna herself never remarried: she had been a widow since just two months after her marriage to Friedrich Wilhelm of Kurland. Even so, Anna Ioannovna did very much hope to keep the succession in her branch of the Romanov family. In 1739, she arranged the first marriage in the

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dynasty since Anna Petrovna’s in 1725: that of her niece Anna Leopol’dovna to Anton Ulrich of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel.45 Anna Leopol’dovna was born in 1718 as Elisabeth Katharina Christine, the daughter of Karl Leopold of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Ekaterina Ioannovna. She moved to St. Petersburg in 1722, when her parents’ marriage fell apart, and converted to Orthodoxy in May 1733, taking the name by which she is best known. Anton Ulrich had come to St. Petersburg in February 1733 with the express purpose of eventually marrying her. All of Empress Anna Ioannovna’s hopes of keeping the succession in the senior branch of the dynasty rested on this young couple. Even so, this was no love match. Despite years in each other’s proximity, the couple never forged any feelings for each other; in fact there was some thought of other matches for Anna Leopol’dovna, although none of them was ever seriously pursued. The betrothal of Annna Leopol’dovna and Anton Ulrich on July 1, 1739, was choreographed by the vice-chancellor and foreign minister Andrei Ivanovich Osterman, but for all his efforts it did not have a solemn or celebratory air about it. Anna Leopol’dovna was at best resigned to her fate. The service was, as Evgenii Anisimov called it, “more of a funeral than a betrothal.”46 The court gathered first in the throne room of the Winter Palace, where the imperial envoy Antoniotto Botta-Adorno made a grand entrance. As Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel was a constituent part of the Holy Roman Empire, Botta-Adorno was there to represent Emperor Charles VI (1711–1740) and request the hand of Anna Leopol’dovna. (Charles VI was more than just Anton Ulrich’s imperial suzerain: the emperor was himself married to Elisabeth Christine of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, a distant cousin of the groom, whose sister, Charlotte Christine Sophie of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, had married Tsarevich Aleksei Petrovich and was the mother of Peter II.) Empress Anna then formally gave her consent to the marriage, and the small party moved into a gallery, where the prospective bride and groom joined the company and gave their formal (in the case of Anna Leopol’dovna, tearful) approval of the match. The company then moved to the palace chapel, where the betrothal service took place, during which the empress presented the rings to the couple, not the priest—as Peter the Great had done at the betrothal of Anna Petrovna in 1724. The entire event had a sad and sullen feeling to it. Lady Rondeau, whose letters offer the best narrative accounts of these events, reported that the groom “looked like a victim.”47 Anna Leopol’dovna’s wedding is often overshadowed in the historical literature by the Ice Palace wedding of Anna Ioannovna’s jester, Prince Mikhail Alekseevich Golitsyn, and Avdotia Ivanovna Buzhenina—both as an example of her crude Petrine-like sense of humor and of her infamous extravagance—

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but Anna Leopol’dovna’s wedding was the dynastic event of the reign.48 It took place two days after the betrothal, on July 3, in the Kazan Cathedral on Nevskii Prospekt. It was officiated by Bishop Ambrosii (Iushkevich) of Vologda and “celebrated,” according to Lady Rondeau, “with all the pomp possible.”49 The procession of glittering carriages between the palace and the church were only the beginning of several days of festivities designed to celebrate the marriage and dazzle the populace: there were banquets, balls, fireworks displays, and a masquerade that evidently exhausted the empress and many in her court. “And thus ended this grand wedding,” writes Lady Rondeau, “from which I am not yet rested, and what is worse, all this rout has been made to tie two people together, who, I believe, heartily hate one other.”50 In point of fact, Empress Anna’s plan to keep the succession in her own line might well have worked, but for another shift in the pendulum of the succession back to the Naryshkin line just two and a half years later. On Anna Ioannovna’s death on October 17, 1740, the succession passed, as arranged, to Anna Leopol’dovna’s and Anton Ulrich’s first child, Ivan Antonovich, who was proclaimed Ivan VI (1740–1741). Since he was not quite two months old, his mother was made regent. But the child’s reign and life were both short and tragic. Elizabeth Petrovna, the daughter of Peter I and sister of Anna Petrovna, seized the throne from mother and child in November 1741, dispatching both—as well as Anton Ulrich and a newborn daughter—to internal exile in Kholmogory, on the Northern Dvina River, just upstream from Arkhangel’sk, a lonely and forbidding place. Anna Leopold’ovna and Anton Ulrich would go on to have three more children (for a total of five), all of whom would live into adulthood—making this one of the more successful dynastic marriages in the Romanov dynasty. Anna Leopold’ovna would die in childbirth in 1746, and Anton Ulrich would die in exile in 1774. Their four other children (besides Ivan V)—Catherine, Elizabeth, Peter, Aleksei (all good Romanov dynastic names)—would ultimately move to Horsens, Denmark, at the invitation of their aunt, Queen Juliana of Denmark (wife of King Frederik V of Denmark and sister of Anton Ulrich) to live out their years unmarried, the Miloslavskii branch of the Romanov dynasty dying out with them.51 After years of horrific confinement and neglect, Ivan VI was murdered in 1764 during an attempt to free him. His is one of the darkest and most disgraceful chapters in the history of any European dynasty.

Peter III and Catherine II Having seized the throne, Empress Elizabeth’s major dynastic goal was to secure the succession in her own Naryshkin line, and that required a wedding.

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Locking up Ivan VI and his mother and sibling was hardly a guarantee that the pendulum would not one day swing back again to the Miloslavskii branch. Setting aside the reports of her own secret marriage to Aleksei Razumovskii in 1742 or 1744—which, if it occurred at all, was regarded as morganatic and not dynastic—the hopes of the Naryshkin branch of the Romanov dynasty fell on Karl Peter Ulrich of Holstein-Gottorp, the son of Elizabeth’s sister and the lone member of the junior branch of the Romanovs aside from Elizabeth herself.52 If Anna Leopol’dovna’s and Anton Ulrich’s wedding was celebrated with unequaled “pomp” in part as a way to bolster Miloslavskii succession rights, then Karl Peter Ulrich’s would have to outdo it and all other antecedents in living memory to assert Naryshkin rights. And it did. As Irina Ivanovna Domnina has put it, “the wedding of Peter III and Catherine Alekseevna was one of the most memorable and festive weddings in all Russian history.”53 Festivities carried on for more than two weeks and included three masquerades, nearly daily balls, fireworks, and organized celebrations in Moscow, not just St. Petersburg (where the wedding took place).54 The planning for the wedding was unlike anything recorded since the first Romanov wedding in 1624. In 1745, the dynastic concerns were just as great, and Empress Elizabeth and a small committee headed by her senior master of ceremonies (ober-tseremoniimeister) and master of ceremonies (tseremoniimeister) concerned themselves with the smallest details of the event, even attaching swatches of fabric to descriptions of the gowns to be worn at the wedding balls.55 The committee generated a vast trove of documentation as it planned and revised the wedding ceremony.56 But the empress had the last word always and frequently intervened in the planning, either to approve or modify suggestions made by her “ritual experts.”57 The empress and the committee drew mainly on two inspirations: first and foremost, the wedding of Anna Petrovna in 1725 and, second, the weddings of monarchs in contemporary Western Europe. The empress’s edict at the outset of the planning required that “the wedding be based on the ceremony for the wedding of the duke of Holstein and the Tsesarevna Anna Petrovna, of blessed memory, here in St. Petersburg in 1726 [sic],” a requirement likely to have been based on the fact that Anna Petrovna’s wedding had become the standard for new-style royal weddings and its having been the last royal wedding in the Naryshkin branch of the family.58 The wedding of Anna Leopol’dovna only six years before was ignored by planners in 1745. The choreographers also consulted the weddings of royal houses in the Holy Roman Empire, France, Spain, and Prussia.59 Their concern was to make the Russian wedding equal in grandeur and status to those of foreign houses, so that foreigners in attendance would see, though the displays of ceremonies

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and the placement and movement of invited guests, that the Russian monarchy was equal to their own. The intended audience of these wedding rites was in part the West. But only in part. The domestic, dynastic goals of the wedding appear in nearly every decision made about the choreography. The committee originally proposed that the wedding service take place in the chapel of the Summer Palace, but the empress herself overruled that proposal, insisting that the Kazan Cathedral on Nevskii Prospekt be used instead, as it had been for Anna Leopol’dovna, with the balls and banquets taking place in the new Winter Palace.60 The locations allowed, as in no previous royal wedding, for the stunning public display of carriages bearing the empress, bride and groom, ministers, courtiers, and foreigners as they traveled between the church and the palace. The carriages and costumes were designed to display the court’s grandeur and power, which would surely rub off, it was thought, on the young couple. The empress’s fixation on costumes displays not so much frivolous ostentation but an awareness of the power of spectacle. In addition, Peter Fedorovich’s and Catherine Alekseevna’s wedding would feature an element not found in the records for Anna Petrovna’s wedding nor, according to Domnina, in the weddings of subsequent royals: the wedding would be announced to the people of St. Petersburg by two heralds, accompanied by a fanfare played on trumpets and drums, “in all public buildings.”61 Finally, every appearance of the couple and the wedding cortège was to be accompanied by cannonades, music, the display of flags and banners, and dynastic symbols, such as the monograms of the empress and the couple and the imperial coat of arms. The city itself was decorated for the wedding, not just the principal venues of the church and palaces.62 This was to be a public celebration of the marriage of the lone heir to the Russian Empire. The ostentation reflected its seriousness of purpose. With the birth of Paul Petrovich (the future Paul I) in September 1754, the succession in the Naryshkin line finally was secure, no matter what the truth of his paternity was—whether he was the son of Peter Fedorovich and Catherine Alekseevna, or of Catherine Alekseevna and someone else. Peter Fedorovich claimed him as his own; and in an era before paternity tests, that was good enough. Lomonosov’s prediction in the ode he wrote for Peter III and Catherine II’s wedding day that henceforth “there will not be any direful reversions [ne budet strashnyia premeny]”—a reference to the pendulum swinging back and forth between the two branches of the Romanov dynasty—came true.63 The long internal feud inside the Romanov dynasty

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that began in 1671 with the remarriage of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich had come to an end, provided that the children of Anna Leopol’dovna remained confined and unmarried. And they did.64 With Paul Petrovich’s birth, Lomonosov’s prayer in the final stanza of his ode was answered at last: O Almighty Pantocrator, Grant that Thy people may live Under the descendants of the Great Reformer. Remember his deeds, And, with the heavenly hosts bowing, Bless this couple. Send from on high to Elizabeth Thy holy Grace, Vouchsafe that she may, in the coming year, Give a kiss to the first-born son of Peter.65 Lomonosov prayed that the succession would be secure in the line of Peter the Great, the “Great Reformer”; that Heaven would bless the couple with a lasting throne; that the heavenly powers and the Russian people below would bow to God’s merciful plan for the succession; that Elizabeth would live to see and kiss her heir on the forehead: the first-born son of Peter III, Paul Petrovich (the future Paul I). Lomonosov prayed that the dynasty of Peter the Great would live on. The dynasty did live on, but it was not enough to have descendants. It also needed legal heirs and successors. It was the “first-born son of Peter”— Paul I—who would supply both. He gave the dynasty ten children, nine of whom would survive to adulthood and marry. The entire Romanov dynasty, even to this day, descends from him. Paul I would also give the dynasty a proper law of succession. In 1788, while still heir presumptive to the throne, Paul and his second wife, Maria Fedorovna (Sophie Dorothee Auguste Luise of Württemberg), issued together an Akt—a “familial agreement,” in Wortman’s words—in which the couple stipulated how the succession would work if and when they should ever ascend the throne and have a say in the matter.66 They sketched out a system of modified primogeniture (pervorodstvo), in which males succeeded to the throne over females, but females could succeed after the failure of all the male lines. Most important of all, perhaps, Paul precluded the possibility that this law would ever be abrogated by future emperors by declaring in this act that the “Heir should be determined by the law itself [Naslednik byl naznachen vsegda zakonom samim].”67 When Paul

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8

I was crowned on April 5, 1797, he formally issued the act, and Russia had its second law of succession, the first one that actually worked. With a brood of children and a law to order the line of succession among them, the Romanov dynasty was finally on a firm footing.

Conclusion

On July 2, 1839, the Marquis de Custine attended the wedding of Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, daughter of Emperor Nicholas I (1825–1855), and Maximilian de Beauharnais, the third duke of Leuchtenberg and a step-grandson of Napoleon I. It was an odd match: Maximilian was from a family that had only recently been raised to high title by his maternal grandfather, Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria (king, 1806–1825), and Maria was the daughter of a tsar. It was an unequal marriage by the terms of Paul I’s law of succession, which required, after 1820, that Romanovs marry royals.1 Custine seemed aware of the mismatch, remarking in his travelogue published in 1843 (as La Russie en 1839) that the groom “looks more like a smart sub-lieutenant than a prince.”2 But Maria was Nicholas I’s favorite daughter and Maximilian was willing to stay in Russia after the wedding, so the emperor set aside law and custom to approve the marriage. Custine was dazzled by what he saw. “The Russians have a great taste for splendor,” he wrote in his account of the wedding, “and in court ceremonies this taste is more especially displayed.”3 Every aspect of the wedding impressed him: the carriages and coachmen, “more striking and splendid than that of the equipages of the other courts of Europe”; the chapel, “where royal magnificence seemed to challenge the majesty of the God whom it honoured without forgetting its own”; the chanting in the service, 233

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which was “inexpressibly grand” and “absolutely celestial”; and the celebrations afterward, a “fête” which was “one of the most magnificent that I have ever seen.”4 In his typically wry tone, Custine concluded his description of the Leuchtenberg-Romanov marriage with the reflection: “Never have I seen any thing more magnificent or better directed than this fête: but there is nothing so fatiguing as admiration too greatly prolonged, especially if one does not relate to the phenomena of nature, or the works of the higher arts.”5 Admiration, even when sincere, has its limits. Custine must have counted himself lucky to have witnessed a royal wedding in his three-month journey through Russia. It gave him rich subject matter that he knew would captivate his readers back home in France. The wedding also gave him valuable insights into the Russia of his day and of the past. As Daniel Boorstin put it, Custine “somehow sensed features of Russian life and institutions that reached back for millennia before his time and would extend forward for more than a century.”6 On the basis of this one wedding, Custine concluded that marriage and succession intertwined over the length of Russian history: “All this gorgeous display is wonderful, especially to us, if we recall the time, not distant, when the marriage of the daughter of a Czar would have been scarcely heard of in Europe, and when Peter I. declared, that he had a right to leave his crown to whomsoever he pleased. How great a progress for so short a period!”7 Custine was aware of the changes that had been introduced in ritual, dynasty, succession, and the lives of royal women. He saw a Romanov dynasty that in 1839 was firmly entrenched on the throne and growing in size by the year. The “gorgeous display” he witnessed was, to his mind, an indicator of ritual richness and dynastic stability. But the “progress” that he admired did not come about in “so short a period.” Custine clearly attributed that progress to Peter I, whose reign ended less than fifteen years before the Leuchtenberg-Romanov wedding. As this study has shown, however, the wedding rituals and dynastic stability that so impressed Custine were the recent result of processes that stretch back to the early sixteenth century, processes that began before Peter’s reign and continued well after it. It was Anna Petrovna’s wedding more than any choreographed by Peter that established a new model for royal weddings in Russia. The Leuchtenberg-Romanov wedding followed that model closely, as did most royal weddings down to the end of the empire.8 Royal weddings in early modern Russia both reflected and shaped the deepest structures of Muscovite political culture. They were traditional, stable rites that nonetheless allowed for significant change and adaptation, which made them one of the most useful royal rituals for projecting images: about power, dynasty, legitimacy, fertility, and the sacrality of monarchy.

Co n c lu s i o n     235

Royal wedding rituals so closely paralleled trends in the larger religious and political culture that it is hard not to see them as one of the most culturally responsive rituals performed at court. The game of politics was played on a chessboard of symbols and rituals. The early history of the customary wedding rituals used by grand princes and tsars is murky, as we have seen. But when the secretaries in the chanceries began in the first third of the sixteenth century to record wedding rituals in formulaic documents, they created a fairly stable template that lasted until the end of the sixteenth century. That stable template underwent change only during the Time of Troubles, with telling consequences: the First False Dmitrii abused the traditional rites and ended up dead; the Riurikovich Vasilii Shuiskii reverted to older rites to play up his lineage, but it did not take; and the weddings of Mikhail Fedorovich combined continuity and change in a deliberate attempt to paint himself as the heir of the Daniilovich dynasty. Changes that were introduced had enormous symbolic and political meaning. What Peter Burke concluded about seventeenth-century Bourbons in France applies to the Romanovs in Russia: “The rituals were traditional ones, but precisely for this reason, relatively small variations would be perceived— by one section of the public, at least—as carrying a political message.”9 The Romanovs survived where other would-be dynasties did not in large part because of their mastery of the power of ritual. Romanov ritual expertise continued through the seventeenth century. Romanov tsars and their “ritual experts” shifted their focus with each successive wedding as confidence in their own legitimacy grew. By the 1680s, the Romanov dynasty was so entrenched in power—and the underlying political culture by then so turbulent—that royal weddings had lost much of their dynastic messaging and instead became a weapon in the feud between the two branches of the Romanov dynasty, Miloslavskii and Naryshkin. When Peter arrived on the scene, he recognized weddings as a powerful ritual to be exploited for his own purposes. But those purposes were no longer primarily dynastic. Peter manipulated and marshaled them in an effort to establish a legitimacy invested around himself so that he could pursue and enact his reforms and, perhaps, create a new, imperial house. After Peter, his successors began again to exploit royal weddings as vehicles for dynastic messaging rooted in Romanov rule. Weddings were, to quote Burke again, “multimedia events in which words, images, actions and music formed a whole.”10 The Romanov dynasty would have to rebuild itself from its two remaining members, Catherine II and her son, Paul Petrovich. That the dynasty did survive (there were sixty-five Romanovs by blood and marriage in 1917) was a biostatistical achievement rarely equaled in monogamous dynasties.11

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This study of ritual and dynasty in Russian royal weddings leads us to several broad conclusions, each of which shines light on other, related themes and questions. First, wedding rituals were about dynasties and succession, and only incidentally about foreign policy or diplomacy. The royal rites of passage spoke to a domestic audience first and foremost and served a number of overlapping functions: exalting the dynasty, integrating the bride and her family into the court, and forging solidarity between the dynasty and the court elite around the new royal couple. For most of the period investigated here—up to 1710—foreigners were absent from the wedding rituals and only had hearsay access to them. The only ones Muscovites sought to impress were themselves. That changed under Peter I: foreigners attended and even participated in royal weddings in Petrine times and afterward. Grand banquets, decorated streets and buildings, ostentatious processions, and impressive fireworks displays all helped send the message that the Romanovs were equal to any other dynasty in Europe. Even so, weddings throughout the early modern period, including in Peter’s time, had to send an even more vital message at home: one of sacrality and fecundity (the sixteenth century), legitimacy and continuity (the early Romanovs), piety and power (the later Romanovs), personal charismatic authority (Peter I), and dynasty and succession (Peter I’s heirs). Foreigners walked, danced, ate, and marveled at the pyrotechnics alongside Russians at the weddings of Anna Petrovna, Anna Leopol’dovna, and Peter Fedorovich and Catherine Alekseevna—displays of extravagance that must have deeply impressed the foreign audience. But the goal of each of these weddings in fact was to settle the succession, a quintessentially domestic concern. Second, to study royal weddings, dynasty, and succession is also to study royal women. Wedding rites reveal both the misogyny of the court and the agency of royal women in a political system that rested so vitally on marriage and kinship, as Muscovy’s did. Some rites, of course, happened to women: they donned headgear, had their hair rebraided, and endured what must have been humiliating confirmations of their virtue. But royal rites of passage also gave the bride agency: her essential role as gift giver assigned to her an active and essential role in the nuptial rites of passage. To be sure, gift giving built social solidarity, which of course would likely be the only important goal for the men of the court. But gift giving also validated the place of the new tsaritsa at court by making her the sole person whose actions could accomplish this goal. In the language of ritual, the agent is in control of the action. Even if the action is prescribed by tradition, the goal of the rite cannot be achieved without the prescribed person performing it. This was no small consignment of power and responsibility in a world interpreted by

Co n c lu s i o n     237

ritual. That power and responsibility were informal and symbolic but not inconsequential. As Katarzyna Kosior recently put it, royal brides—and the “queens” they became—were the “agents of dynasticism.”12 The agency of women at weddings might therefore prompt us to reevaluate the role of women in other court rituals. A fully gendered history of Russian political rituals may be well past due. Third, royal weddings very directly reveal the interplay between Christian and non-Christian culture, and teasing these out has been one of the necessary goals of this study. Marriage (and the rites that accomplished a marriage) long predated Christianity; and when Christianity did finally come it had to coexist with older beliefs and customs in every culture in which it took root. It seems never to have occurred to Muscovites in the sixteenth century to dichotomize these rites, Christian and non-Christian. They existed happily together for centuries, which in no way diminished the rootedness or conviction of Christian beliefs in the East Slavic spaces. What was, however, dichotomized were the different varieties of Christianity, Orthodox and heterodox. Muscovites viewed Catholic and Protestant rites as dangerous deviations from their orthós dóxa. Pagan symbols and rituals, removed from the conscious worship of the pre-Christian Slavic gods, became harmless cultural artifacts that bound a community together and reinforced local identities. Things got more complex in the mid-seventeenth century, after the Time of Troubles, when confessional lines hardened as a result of the conflicts with Poles and Swedes, who worshipped the “wrong” Trinity. The pre-Christian rites got noticed too, as everything not Orthodox suddenly had a target on it. Their elimination by Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich in the second half of the seventeenth century clearly reflected the changes in religious attitudes that were rapidly enveloping Russia in this time of rapid change. But there is no evidence from the descriptions of royal weddings that there was any tension between Christian and non-Christian rites before that. Rituals require choreography, and choreography requires choreographers. This study has repeatedly confronted the question: who choreographed the rulers’ weddings? The answer, we discovered, changed over time. The secretaries and scribes of the grand-princely chancery and, later, the Ambassadorial Chancery handled the production and preservation of wedding-related documentation in the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries, often with the assistance of the Military Service Chancery; and we know that the heads of these chanceries personally edited the texts of wedding ceremonials and musters. Some of that editing work suggests collaboration with boyars and churchmen, but it also suggests that the head of the Ambassadorial Chancery had a lot of say about many of the rituals. We also know that

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Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich personally directed changes to the wedding rituals (deleting those pre-Christian fertility rites, for instance), and he took responsibility for his second wedding away from the Ambassadorial Chancery and handed it over to a favorite, producing a narrative text unlike anything that came before. And we know that Peter I personally choreographed new-style and parodic weddings during his reign and did so with enormous attention to detail and imagination (and humor), though even he relied on chancery staff to help him. Thus many were involved—from the highest-ranking at court (tsar, patriarch, and boyars) to senior secretaries and scribes in the chanceries. We have only a few marginal scribblings in manuscript sources to go by, but the sum total of that evidence suggests that the role of the chancery staffs in creating and editing these rites (and the documents that described them) may sometimes have been quite significant. Wedding choreography involved not only the rituals but the people who performed them. Our analysis of these appointments revealed two major insights: First, members of the dynasty occupied a unique place in the wedding choreography in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The groom’s relatives were present, sometimes served in the most senior positions, and received gifts that set them apart from everyone else. A royal wedding was a dynastic event, and it was vital that members of the dynasty attend it to show their assent to the marriage. Second, the bulk of the court was at the wedding. In fact, the objective of wedding choreographers appears to have been to get as many servitors as could be spared to come to Moscow and attend the wedding. Being present at the wedding was a public acknowledgment of one’s support for the match and loyalty to the ruler—and the gift the courtiers carried home with them afterward was a lasting reminder and sign of that loyalty. Wedding rituals were also exploited for peacemaking between feuding factions, particularly in the wake of violent dynastic crises. Ritual’s power to reconcile enemies was one of its most important features in the early modern period. But being present at a royal wedding was, for a courtier, a form of service. Consequently, it mattered a great deal where one served and sat. Typically in these centuries, appointments to honorary posts would be governed by the system of precedence. But assignments in wedding rosters could not rigidly follow the hierarchy among the clans at court. Brides in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries most often came from middle-level servitor families. The station of these families in the hierarchy would never have permitted them to attend a wedding in a prominent position, much less sit, eat, march in processions, or pray in the tsar’s presence. Weddings had to become an exemption zone in the precedence system, which they gradually did by the

Co n c lu s i o n     239

turn of the seventeenth century. Neither coronations nor military campaigns were important enough for this exemption, but weddings had to be. All but the most obstinate boyars recognized that the tsar’s new in-laws were going to be instantaneously catapulted to important and influential positions at court after the bride and groom performed the Dance of Isaiah. The wedding exemption in the system of precedence allowed for the injection of new blood into the court elite, though their introduction into that elite was controlled and measured: the first steps of the bride’s father, brothers, and uncles into the Kremlin was at the wedding, limited to performing tasks close to the bride and groom. They would have to wait a generation before they would be running the show. Next, this study of royal weddings raises doubts about the significance of the famed Petrine divide in Russian political culture. Instead this book has portrayed Peter I’s reforms as part of a much longer and larger process of adaptation, borrowing, and improvisation. The wedding ritual was already fundamentally changed and reduced by the time Peter arrived on the scene, and his creation of a new-style ritual was in many ways quite traditional, relying on Muscovite antecedents as much as it did insights that came to him as a result of his experimentation with wedding parodies. One thing was new, however: Peter redesigned much of the dynastic symbolism into a symbolic celebration of his own charismatic rulership. It did not last long. His successors quickly found the need to reinstall the dynastic elements, especially given all the violence he and his law of succession had done to the Romanov dynasty. But if Peter was a revolutionary in anything, it was not in the invention of new ritual but in the repurposing of old ritual. That was another continuity that ran through the Petrine divide: as much as any of his ancestors or predecessors, Peter knew he needed to rule through the power of rituals. We may therefore want to think about a periodization of early modern Russian history that takes us through Peter’s reign up to the turn of the nineteenth century—the way many think periodization works in Western Europe.13 Finally, this book has laid claim to royal weddings as an essential ritual that must be studied alongside other court spectacles like coronations, birthdays, name days, funerals, processions, and diplomatic audiences. The book has approached weddings through the lens of dynasty and succession, which has necessarily led us to many other vital questions along the way and produced a number of venturesome reconsiderations of matters long thought settled in the historiography. Other approaches to weddings may well yield more and different conclusions. Whatever the case, weddings should now be seen as a ritual that is not to be ignored if we want a fuller understanding of the culture of early modern Russia.

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Official wedding documents referred to the ruler’s wedding as the “tsar’s happy occasion” for the first time in 1624—for the wedding of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich—but the usage is much older.14 The expression “tsar’s happy occasion” is a two-word phrase in Russian: gosudareva radost’—literally, the sovereign’s joy. It was the sovereign’s occasion, which made it a dynastic occasion that held out the promise that the dynasty—and therefore the political system—would perpetuate itself. The tsar’s happy occasion was also a wedding, a joyous occasion, where marriage was celebrated in rituals that were ancient and potent. It therefore seems entirely appropriate that the euphemism should appear in a wedding document compiled for the first tsar of the new Romanov dynasty. No ruler had more need to use ritual to prop up his dynasty. And if a three-hundred-year run means anything, then the Romanovs seem to have made the most of the rituals and meanings that lie deeply imbedded in the words “tsar’s happy occasion.”

q A p pen d ix A

Appendix A. Copies of Wedding Documents Made in 1624 The table below lists the currently extant and referenced documents that were copied in 1624 during the process of composing a new wedding ceremonial for Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich. The table also indicates which of these copies were recopied in the early eighteenth century and today reside in the Ceremonial Collection (Istoricheskoe i tseremonial’noe sobranie, fond 156) at RGADA.

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Table A.1  Copies of wedding documents made in 1624 1624 COPIES (RGADA, FOND 135, SEC. IV, RUB. II)

EARLY 18TH-CENTURY COPIES (RGADA, FOND 156, OP. 1)

Vasilii III and Elena Glinskaia (1526) Muster, fragment

No. 8, fols. 4–6

No. 4, fols. 1v–2v

Excerpts from ceremonial and muster

No. 3, fols. 1–2, 2–3

No. 1, fols. 1–2v

Ivan IV and Anastasiia Iur’eva (1547) Muster

[lost, but excerpts from it survive]

Excerpts from muster of Ivan IV’s and Anastasiia’s wedding

No. 3, fols. 3–6

Description of chests (shkatuly) used at Ivan IV’s and ­Anastasiia’s wedding

No. 5, fol. 9

Speech of Pronskii at Ivan IV’s and Anastasiia’s wedding

No. 5, fol. 10

No. 1, fols. 2v–4

Iurii Vasil’evich and Ul’iana Paletskaia (1547) Muster

No. 7, fols. 1–8

No. 3, fols. 1–4v

Excerpt from muster

No. 3, fols. 6–9

No. 1, fols 4–6

Ivan IV and Anna Vasil’chikova (1574) Ceremonial

No. 11, fols. 1–28

No. 5, fols. 1–17v; 18–41

Excerpt from ceremonial

No. 3, fols. 9–10

No. 1, fols. 6–7

Vladimir Staritskii (1555)? Ceremonial

[lost, but mentioned in 1626 inventory]

First False Dmitrii and Marina Mniszech (1606) Ceremonial

No. 12, fols. 1–18

No. 6, fols. 1–7

Vasilii Shuiskii and Ekaterina/Mariia Buinosova-Rostovskaia (1608) Ceremonial

No. 13, fols. 1–12

Excerpts from ceremonial

No. 13, fols. 13–16

No. 7, fols. 1–4

Excerpts (No. 13, fols. 13–16)

1624 Copy (No. 13, fols. 1–12)

1624 Copies (Nos. 5, 6, 7, 11, 12)

1624 “Worksheet” (No. 14)

1624 Wedding Chin (lost)

1626 Wedding Chin

Figure A.1.  Schematic of the relationship between the sixteenth-century originals, 1624 copies, and Mikhail Romanov’s wedding ceremonial

1608 Shuiskii Original (lost)

16th-Century Originals (not all extant)

Excerpts (No.3, fols. 1–2, 2–3, 3–6, 6–9, 9–10)

q A p pen d ix B

“Worksheet” for the First Wedding of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov, 1624 This unique document (the first ten folios of a much larger miscellanea: RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 14) contains the earliest notes for the first wedding in 1624 of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich to Mariia Vladimirovna Dolgorukova. It comprises snippets of the wedding ceremonial, questions and answers about separate rituals, and instructions to secretaries for organizing separate segments of the wedding. Except for the first line of the text (Для свадьбы царя Михаила Федоровича 7134 году), which was inscribed later, perhaps by an archivist in the early eighteenth century, all interpolations are in the hand of Ivan T. Gramotin, who was the chief choreographer of the wedding. His inscriptions reveal the editing work put into the first wedding, and the sources used to revise the text: copies of previous wedding ceremonials, interviews with courtiers with specific knowledge of the wedding rituals, and liturgical manuals. (See chapter 2.) In the text edition below, Gramotin’s inscriptions are shown in italics, while deleted text is in parentheses. (л. 1) Для свадьбы царя Михаила Федоровича (7134) году. Докладывать

245

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Осыпало указал Государь дѣлати в Серебряной полате, 108 пѣнезей золотых и серебреных тонких Kузмѣ Tитову, а платки дѣлать и рѣзать на Казенном дворѣ из участков приказал Государь казеннымъ диаком. Ширинки росписывать Государю самому и Государыне Великой Старице, а к ним, ко Государем, принести роспись подлинную бояром и всяким людем, которым быть в чинѣх. Сидѣть Государю в Золотой полате в шубе в руской на зголовье на бархатном на персидцком, а образом и наряду быти другому. А Большому наряду быти в Грановитой полате. А Государю быть в первой день в кожухе да в шубе в руской золотной на соболях, да в шапке в чорной, а в другой и в третей день в зол в платьях золотных з жемчюжным // (л. 2) кружевом и в шапках в чорных. Чертожному мѣсту в церкве не быти, а быти подножью, сшити вдвое по три аршина, камки куфтерю червчатого, итого 6 аршин. А на нем 40 соболей въ 30 рублев по 20 соболей положити головами вмѣсте. А после венчанья тѣ соболи и камку отдати протопопу Максиму. Ѣхати Государю к церкве и от церкви площедью ко Причистой. A перед ним, Государем, посторонь ѣхать тысецкому, а конюшему итти у Государя пѣшему. (А посторонь тысецкого конюшему. А спросить о том князя Ивана Михайловича Воротынского, как было при царѣ Василье, гдѣ ѣхалъ тысецкой и конюшей.) А поезжаном ѣхать перед Государемъ мимо Пречистой, и стоять на площеди, а в церковь не ходити. (А з) А за Государем итти бояром, которые не в поѣзжанах. // (л. 3) А соболям, которым быть на мѣсте и которыми опахивать, указал Государь положити на мѣсто 2 сорока по 50 рублев, а третей въ 40 рублев чѣм опахивать. А держать их 3-м ч[еловеко]м диаком. А носила и шлеи указал Государь ошить бархатомъ червчатым гладкимъ. А короваи ошивать: государевъ бархатом золотным турскимъ, а Государынинъ отласом золотнымъ. А мѣсту государеву и государынину быть в Грановитой полате, обити бархатом. А Государю сѣсти от Благовещенья, а Государыне от Патриархова двора. А мѣсто приказал Государь дѣлати боярину князю Данилу Ивановичю Мезецкому. // (л. 4) А стол государевъ поставить в Грановитой полате на рундукѣ, гдѣ Госдуарь садитца при послѣх, отодвинув от лавки подале лицом к столпу. А(о) обручанью государскому быть в церкве перед венчаньем, а венчать д[у]ховнику протопопу Максиму.

A p p e n d i c es     247

(О обручанье, гдѣ обручать, на мѣсте ли, или в церкве, посмотрить в Потребнике, какъ о том Государь патриархъ укажет.) Скамейка в церкве поставить и зголовье положити тѣ, которые нести перед Государем у лѣвого крыласа у столпа. Чиновником всѣмъ, которым итти к церкве перед Государемъ и перед Государынею, в первой день ходить и ѣздить тысецкому и поезжаном всѣмъ в золоте, а бояром сидячимъ в шубах в нагольных и в шапках. А на другой день и на третей день в золоте, // (л. 5) а сидячим в шубах в нагольных, а за столом сидѣти бояром сидячим в шубах в нагольных. (На третей день) А поезжаном на другой и на третей день. (А за столом сидѣти сидячим в шубах в нагольных, а поезду в первой день, и в другой день, и в третей день в золоте.) А молитца Государю итти (в один) в Чюдов монастырь и к Вознесенью до венчанья после ранние обѣдни, часу в третьем или в четвертом. А сани, в чем ѣхать Государыне, приказал Государь дѣлати Богдану Глѣбову. (Да спросить ево сколь велики сани, мочно ли против Госдударыни сидѣти) А свахам сидѣть против Государыни всѣм 4 свахам. Свечником, и коровайником, и фонарником итти в кожухах в золотных и в чорных шапках, и кожухи готовы на Казенном дворѣ, а шапки и кушаки будут у них свои. // (л. 6) А к церкве Государю к венчанью итти до вечерни (после вечерни, а вечерня для того рано за четыре часа). В Большой стол сказывати Иван Петров сынъ Шереметев, Григорей Ондрѣевъ сынъ Плещѣевъ. В Кривой стол Борис Петров сынъ Шереметев, (Иван Григорьев сынъ Плещѣев). Вина наряжать Василей Петров сынъ Шереметев. В Китае и в Каменом городе, объѣзжимъ головам быти прежнимъ, а с ними по всѣм воротом стрельцомъ, а ночи быть и стоять у ворот самимъ, и ключем быть у нихъ. A запирать ворота Бѣлого города за час до вечера, а отпирати в часъ дни. О том им приказать имянно, да и ширинки имъ дати. // (л. 7) А от венчанья пришед Государю и з Государынею итти в Грановитую полату, и сѣсти за стол по чину, и з Государынею. И

248    A p p e n d i ces

отдавати Государыню отцу, Ивану Никитичю, после стола у дверей как поидут к постеле, а с образы не благословлять. (А о обручанье, как обручать, в полате ли, или в церкве, посмотреть в Потребнике. Да поговорити и спросити, как Государыню отдает отець, и в тѣ поры образы благословлят ли. Доложити, какъ Государыня пойдет на мѣсто, кому подлѣ еѣ итти боярыням опричь матери.) Как Государыня поидет к мѣсту и околко еѣ (А при царѣ Василье шли) по обе стороны итти той, которая в материно место, да от матери (матери княж Дмитреева княгиня да еѣ мать княж Петрова княгиня). А к Великому Государю святѣйшему патриарху с убрусомъ, и с ширинкою, и с короваем, итти царицыну большому дружке боярину Михаилу Борисовичю Шейну. // (л. 8) А ко Государыне к Великой Старице итти с убрусом, и с ширинкою, и с короваем, и с сыром тому ж дружке Михаилу ж Борисовичю. А к царя Васильеве царице послать убрус, и ширинку, и коровай, и сыр с стольником. А к царице Дарье убрус, и ширинку, и коровай, и сыр послать на завтреѣ того с стольником. А Государю святѣйшему патриарху быти у Государя со властми на завтрее того, после мыльни. И Государю здравствовати и благословлять образы и дарить. А после того, Государю здравствовати и дары нести бояром. А Государя святѣйшего патриарха звать Государю к столу на четвертой день и дарить у стола. А завтраку быти у Государя на другой день в мыльне. А бояр жаловати подавати вина. А поѣзжаном завтрокать (ѣсти) в Столовой избѣ. // (л. 9) А тысецкому на первой день сидѣти против боярынь, а под ним сидячимъ бояром. А в Кривом столѣ сидѣть бояром, которые не в сидячих, под ними поeзжаном. (А поезду сидѣти в Кривом столѣ. А при царѣ Василье сидѣли в Большом столѣ в скамьѣ, сидѣл тысецкой да сидячие бояре. А в Кривом столѣ сидѣли поезжане по тому ж и ныне.

A p p e n d i c es     249

Выбрать стольниковъ, кому перед Государя ѣсть ставить 50 человекъ, ис тѣхъ, которые за поездомъ остались, а поезду не мешать.) Да стольников же, кому ставить перед боярынь, сверстных 20 человекъ, да в столы 10 человекъ. У поставца стоять диаком (5-ти) человеком, суды у бояр збирать диаку Венедикту Махову. Поимати у бояр и у поезду росписи людей их и отдать в Дворец для вѣдома, приказть подьячему. // (л. 10) Приказать в монастырех о лишних людех, чтоб в монастыри и на подворье лишнихъ никого не пускали. // РГАДА, фонд 135, отд. IV, руб. II, д. 14, лл. 1–10.

q A p pen d ix C

251

Mariia m. (1506) Pr. Vas. Sem. Starodubskii 2 1526

Vasilii III d. 1533

1 1505

Solomoniia Iur’evna Saburova, div. 1525, d. 1542

Iurii Dmitri Semen Elena d. 1536 d. 1521 d. 1518 Vasil’evna Glinskaia, d. 1538

Feodosiia Andrei d. 1501 Staritskii m. (1500) d. 1537 Vasilii Dan. m. (1533) Kholmskii Efrosiniia Andreevna Khovanskaia Evdokiia d. 1513 m. (1506) Tsarevich Peter (Kudai Kul)

Dmitrii d. 1591

1606

False-Dmitrii (Grishka Otrepev) tsar, 1605–1606

Figure C.1.  Select genealogy of the Daniilovich dynasty from Ivan III, showing marriages and lines of descent

Boris Fedor I Irina Ivan d. 1598 Fedorovna Fedorovich d. 1581 Godunov, Godunova, 1. m. (1571) tsar, d. 1603 Evdokiia (nun Alexandra) Mikhail 1598–1605 Bogdanova Saburova, d. 1620; 1575 Fedorovich Romanov, 2. m. (1575) Pelageia/Feodosiia (nun Paraskov’ia) Mikhailovna tsar, Fedor II, Petrova-Solovaia, d. 1621; 1613–1645 tsar,1605 3. m. (1580) Elena (nun Leonida) Ivanovna Sheremeteva

Dmitri Vnuk d. 1509

Marina Mnishek d. 1614

Anastasiia Anastasiia m. (1529) Pr. m. (1538) Pr. Evdokiia Evdokiia Vladimir Romanovna Iurii Vas. Vas. Fed. Mikh. Ivan IV m. (1547) Ul’iana Aleksandrovna ex. 1569 Odoevskaia Shuiskii Mstislavskii The Terrible Nagaia Dmitrievna Paletskaia ex. 1569 d. 1584 1 2 married: Pr. Ivan Fed. Marfa 1549 1555 Nitika Altynchach Mstislavskii m. (1554) 2. (1561) 1. (1547) 3. (1571) 4. (1572) 5. (1574) 6. (1579) 7. (1580) Romanovich Anastasiia m. Bekbulat Pr. Iv. Dm. Vasilisa Mariia (nun Mariia Marfa Anna Mariia Iur’ev Romanovna Vasil’evna Anna, of Golden Bel’skii (Kochenei) Alekseevna Grigor’evna Radilova Marfa) m. (1573) Magnus Horde Temriukovna Iur’eva Sobakina Koltovskaia Vasil’chikova Fedorovna “king” of Livonia d. 1560 d. 1571 d. 1577? Nagaia Cherkasskaia repud. Anastasiia Fedor Ivan. Tsar Simeon d. 1569 d. 1611 1574? (nun Alexandra) Mstislavskii Bekbulatovich d. 1626 d. 1607 d. 1622 tsar, 1575–76 Fedor Vasilii Nikitich b. and d. 1563 1575 or 1576 Romanov (Patriarch Filaret)

Ivan Elena Molodoi d. 1513 d. 1490 m. (1495) m. (1482) Alexander Elena Grand Duke of of Moldavia Lithuania d. 1490

Mariia Ivan III Sofiia Borisovna Palaiologina of Tver’ 1 2 1452 1472

Catherine

Elisabeth

Peter

Aleksei

Praskov’ia m. Ivan DmitrievMamonov

Praskov’ia Saltykova

Anna m. Friedrich Wilhelm of Kurland

Anna Leopoldovna m. Anton Ulrich of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel

Ekaterina m. Karl Leopold of MecklenburgSchwerin

Marfa Ivan V Apraksina

2

Evdokiia Lopukhina

Peter II

Natal’ia

Catherine I

Peter III

Elisabeth

Natal’ia

Catherine II (Sophie Auguste Friederike of Anhalt-Zerbst) Paul I

Anna m. Karl Friedrich of HolsteinGottorp

Peter I 2 1

Naryshkin Branch

Aleksei m. Sofie Charlotte of BraunschweigWolfenbüttel

Natal’ia Naryshkina

Evdokiia Streshneva

Figure C.2.  Select genealogy of the House of Romanov, showing the Miloslavskii and Naryshkin lines

Ivan VI

Il’ia

Agaf ’ia Fedor III Sofiia Grushetskaia (Regent) 2 1

Miloslavskii Branch

1

Mikhail

Mariia Aleksei Miloslavskaia 1 2

Mariia Dolgorukova

q Notes Introduction

1.  For the ode, see M. V. Lomonosov, PSS, 8:127–37 (no. 42). On the ode, see A. V. Petrov, Epitalama i brachno-svadebnaia slovesnost’ v prazdnichnoi kul’ture imperatorskoi Rossii: Antologiia, kommentarii, issledovanie, materialy, vyp. 1: Pervaia polovina XVIII veka (forthcoming), 46–59; Petrov, Epitalama v russkoi literature XVIII veka: Ocherki po istoricheskoi poetike zhanra (Magnitogorsk: Magnitogorskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2012), 92–100; Petrov, “ ‘Dinasticheskii brak’ kak kontsept v epitalamicheskikh odakh 1745 g. M. V. Lomonosova i I. K. Golenevskogo,” in Khudozhestvennaia kontseptosfera v proizvedeniiakh russkikh pisatelei:Mezhdunarodyi sbornik nauchnykh statei, vyp. 3 (Magnitogorsk: Magnitogorskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2011), 11–17; and Svetlana Rudakova, Tat’iana Abramzon, and Ol’ga Kolesnikova, “The Epithalamic Verses by M. V. Lomonosov and V. K. Trediakovsky (1730th and 1740th [sic]),” SHS Web of Conferences 55 (2018), https://doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/20185504013. 2. Petrov, Epitalama i brachno-svadebnaia slovesnost’, 69. 3. PSS, 8:127 (lines 1–6). 4. PSS, 8:129 (line 46). See also PSS, 7:353–54 (§ 294); Petrov, Epitalama i brachnosvadebnaia slovesnost’, 58. 5. PSS, 8:130 (line 60). 6. Narcissus: PSS, 8:131 (lines 71–73); Zephyr: 8:131 (lines 71–73); Orpheus: 8:133 (lines 121–23); nymphs: 8:133 (lines 131–36). 7. PSS, 8:129–30 (lines 31–60). 8. Regiment: PSS, 8:132 (line 105); path paved with flowers: 8:132 (line 110). 9. PSS, 8:133–34 (lines 141–55). 10. PSS, 8:135–36 (lines 184–90). 11. V. N. Peretts, Istoriko-literaturnye issledovaniia i materialy, 3 vols. (St. Petersburg: F. Veisberg and P. Gershunin, 1900–1902), 3:135–37 (second pagination). 12. Christian August Crusius and Jacob von Stählin each wrote odes for the 1745 wedding, in Latin and German, respectively. Neither were published. Ivan Kondrat’evich Golenevskii also wrote one, in Russian, which was published at the time and is still available. See Petrov, Epitalama i brachno-svadebnaia slovesnost’, 59–63; Petrov, “ ‘Dinasticheskii brak’ kak kontsept v epitalamicheskikh odakh 1745 g.,” 11–13. 13. Edward L. Keenan, “Muscovite Political Folkways,” Russian Review 45, no. 2 (1986): 144. 14. Nancy Shields Kollmann, Kinship and Politics: The Making of the Muscovite Political System, 1345–1547 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), 126.

255

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TO PAGES 5 – 7

15. For two excellent recent examples on Prussia, see Daniel Schönpflug, Die Heiraten der Hohenzollern: Verwandtschaft, Politik und Ritual in Europa, 1640–1918 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013); and Sara Smart, “Hohenzollern Wives and a Daughter: Definitions of Feminine Dynastic Identity,” German Life and Letters 67, no. 4 (2014): 512–29. 16. Kollmann, Kinship and Politics, xiv, 9, 19, 43, 126, 146–51; Valerie A. Kivelson, Autocracy in the Provinces: The Muscovite Gentry and Political Culture in the Seventeenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 215; Russell E. Martin, A Bride for the Tsar: Bride-Shows and Marriage Politics in Early Modern Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2012), 10, 76, 92, 244. 17. Dominick LaCapra, Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, and Language (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), 65. 18. Robert O. Crummey, “Court Spectacles in Seventeenth-Century Russia: Illusion and Reality,” in Essays in Honor of A. A. Zimin, ed. Daniel Clarke Waugh (Columbus: Slavica Publishers, 1985), 130–58. 19. Paula Sutter Fichtner, “Dynastic Marriage in Sixteenth-Century Habsburg Diplomacy and Statecraft: An Interdisciplinary Approach,” American Historical Review 81, no. 2 (1976): 243. 20. Besides the works cited in the chapters below, some landmark historical studies of royal rituals that served as a model for this one include Robert Giesey, The Royal Funeral Ceremony in Renaissance France (Geneva: E. Droz, 1960); Robert Strong, Splendor at Court: Renaissance Spectacle and the Theater of Power (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973); Norbert Elias, The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983); Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); Geoffrey Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor: Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992); Philippe Buc, The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); and, generally, Franz Theuws and Janet L. Nelson, eds., Rituals of Power: From Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2000); and Sean Wilentz, ed., Rites of Power: Symbolism, Ritual, and Politics since the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985). 21. Crummey, “Court Spectacles,” 131–32. 22. Ivan [Egorovich] Zabelin, Domashnii byt russkikh tsarei v XVI i XVII st., vol. 1, pts. 1 and 2 of Domashnii byt russkogo naroda v XVI i XVII st., reprint from 1918 and 1915 editions (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, 2000–2003); Zabelin, Domashnii byt russkikh tsarits v XVI i XVII st., vol. 2 of Domashnii byt russkogo naroda v XVI i XVII st., reprint from 1901 edition (3rd ed., with additions) (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, 2003); Zabelin, Materialy [accompanying Domashnii byt russkogo naroda v XVI i XVII st. and Domashnii byt russkikh tsarits v XVI i XVII st.], reprint from various editions, with overlapping pagination (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, 2003). 23. Crummey, “Court Spectacles,” 131. 24. In addition to the titles mentioned below, see Michael S. Flier, “Political Ideas and Ritual,” in the Cambridge History of Russia, 3 vols., vol. 1: From Early Rus’ to 1689, ed. Maureen Perrie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 387–408; and Daniel Rowland, “Architecture, Image, and Ritual in the Throne Rooms of Muscovy, 1550–1650: A Preliminary Survey,” in Rude and Barbarous Kingdom Revisited:

NOTES TO PAGES 7 – 8     257

Essays in Russian History and Culture in Honor of Robert O. Crummey, ed. Chester S. L. Dunning, Russell E. Martin, and Daniel Rowland (Bloomington: Slavica Publishers, 2008), 53–71; and 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), 33–57. 25. Sergei Bogatyrev, The Sovereign and His Counsellors: Ritualised Consultations in Muscovite Political Culture, 1350s—1570s (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2000); I. B. Mikhailova, I zdes’ soshlis’ vse tsarstva. . . : Ocherki po istorii gosudareva dvora v Rossii XV v. Povsednevnaia i prazdnichnaia kul’tura, semantika etiketa i obriadnosti (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2010). 26. See, for a start, Boris Uspenskij and Victor Zhivov, “Tsar and God” and Other Essays in Russian Cultural Semiotics, ed. Marcus C. Levitt (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012). 27. Iurii Moiseevich Eskin, Ocherki istorii mestnichestva v Rossii XVI–XVII vv. (Moscow: Kvadriga, 2009); Nancy Shields Kollmann, The Russian Empire, 1450–1801 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 129–59; Kollmann, “Ritual and Social Drama in the Muscovite Court,” Slavic Review 45, no. 3 (1986): 486–502; Kollmann, “Pilgrimage, Procession, and Symbolic Space in Sixteenth-Century Russian Politics,” in Medieval Russian Culture, vol. 2, ed. Michael S. Flier and Daniel Rowland (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 163–81. 28. Isolde Thyrêt, Between God and Tsar: Religious Symbolism and the Royal Women of Muscovite Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001); Gary Marker, Imperial Saint: The Cult of St. Catherine and the Dawn of Female Rule in Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007); Cynthia Hyla Whittaker, Russian Monarchy: Eighteenth-Century Rulers and Writers in Political Dialogue (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003). 29. Ernest A. Zitser, The Transfigured Kingdom: Sacred Parody and Charismatic Authority at the Court of Peter the Great (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004). 30. Jan Hennings, Russia and Courtly Europe: Ritual and the Culture of Diplomacy, 1648–1725 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); O. A. Ageeva, Diplomaticheskii tseremonial imperatorskoi Rossii XVIII vek (Moscow: Novyi Khronograf, 2012). 31. Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995–2000); Wortman, Russian Monarchy: Representation and Rule. Collected Articles (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2013); and Wortman, Visual Texts, Ceremonial Texts, Texts of Exploration: Collected Articles on the Representation of Russian Monarchy (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2014). 32. See Russell E. Martin, “Archival Sleuths and Documentary Transpositions: Notes on the Typology and Textology of Muscovite Royal Wedding Descriptions in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Russian History 30, no. 3 (2003): 253–300. In addition to Novikov’s and Sakharov’s compilations (cited numerous times below), see also Matvei Komarov, ed., Opisanie trinadtsati starinnykh svadeb velikikh rossiiskikh kniazei i tsarei (Moscow: Tipografiia Ponomareva, 1785); Ioann Ternogo-Orlovskoi, ed., Opisanie sed’mi starinnykh svadeb (Moscow: Tipografiia universitetskaia, 1797); and Platon Petrovich Beketov, ed., Opisanie v litsa torzhestva, proiskhodivshogo v 1626

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godu fevralia 5, pri brakosochetanii gosudaria, tsaria, i velikogo kniazia Mikhaila Feodorovicha s gosudaryneiu tsaritseiu Evdokieiu Luk’ianovnoiu iz roda Streshneva (Moscow: Tipografiia Platona Beketova, 1810) (based on RGADA, fond 135, sec. V, rub. III, no. 16). 33. Nikolai Fedorovich Sumtsov, O svadebnykh obriadakh, preimushchestvenno russkikh (Kharkov: Tipografiia I. V. Popova, 1881); Aleksandr Vital’evich Smirnov, Ocherki semeinykh otnoshenii po obychnomu pravu russkogo naroda (Moscow: Tipografiia universitetskaia, 1877), 103–259; Smirnov, “Narodnye sposoby zakliucheniia braka,” Iuridicheskii vestnik 10, no. 5 (1878): 661–93; Smirnov, “Obychai i obriady russkoi narodnoi svad’by,” Iuridicheskii vestnik 10, no. 7 (1878): 981–1015; Pr. V. E-yi, “Opisanie sel’skoi svad’by v Sengileevskom uezde, Simbirskoi gubernii,” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, no. 3 (1899): 108–44; M. E. Mikheev, “Opisanie svadebnykh obychaev i obriadov v Buzulukskom uezde, Samarskoi gubernii,” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, no. 3 (1899): 144–59; P. Dilaktorskii, “Svadebnye obychai i pesni v Totomskom uezde, Vologodskoi gubernii,” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, no. 3 (1899): 160–65; B. Khalat’iants, “O svadebnykh obychaiakh u armian Erivanskoi gubernii,” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, no. 4 (1899): 112–14; M. Moroshkin, “Svadebnye obriady drevnei Rusi,” Syn otechestva, no. 2 (1848): 55–80 (I. Russkaia istoriia); D. Iazykov, “Izyskanie o starinnykh svadebnykh obriadakh u russkikh,” in Biblioteka dlia chteniia, zhurnal slovesnosti, nauk, khudozhestv, promyshlennosti, novostei, i mod, vol. 6 (St. Petersburg: Tipografii vdovy Pliushar s synom, 1834), 1–36 (III. Nauka i khudozhestva). 34. See Aleksandr Vlas’evich Tereshchenko, Byt’ russkogo naroda, 7 vols. (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Ministerstva vnutrennykh del, 1848), especially vol. 2: Svad’by; Grigorii Petrovich Georgievskii, “Drevne-russkie svad’by. I. Narodnye svad’by,” Russkoe obozrenie (December 1894): 846–65; Georgievskii, “Drevne-russkie svad’by. II. Tsarskie svad’by,” Russkoe obozrenie (February 1895): 689–713; Orest Ivanovich Levits’kii, “Semeinye otnosheniia v Iugo-Zapadnoi Rusi v XVI–XVII vv.: Ocherk iz izsledovaniia,” Russkaia starina (November 1880): 549–74; N. I. Ostroumov, Svadebnye obychai v drevnei Rusi. Istoriko-etnograficheskii ocherk (Tula: Tipografiia I. D. Fortunatova, 1095). 35. The literature is extensive, but see for a start, Mikhail Grigor’evich Rabinovich, Ocherki etnografii russkogo feodal’nogo goroda: Gorozhane, ikh obshchestvennyi i domashnii byt (Moscow: Nauka, 1978), 211–43; Ia. N. Shchapov, “Brak i sem’ia v drevnei Rusi,” Voprosy istorii, no. 10 (1979): 216–19; L. N. Semenova, Ocherki istorii byta i kul’turnoi zhizni Rossii: Pervaia polovia XVIII v. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1982), 15–42; K. V. Chistov, “Tipologicheskie problemy izucheniia vostochnoslavianskogo svadebnogo obriada,” in Problemy tipologii v etnografii, ed. Iu. V. Bromlei et al. (Moscow: Nauka, 1979), 223–30; E. G. Kagarova, “Sostav i proiskhozhdenie svadebnoi obriadnosti,” Sbornik Muzeia antropologii i etnografii 7 (1929): 152–95; P. S. Bogoslovskii, K nomenklature, topografii i khronologii svadebnykh chinov (Perm’: Izdatel’stvo Kruzhka po izucheniiu Severnogo kraia pri Permskom universitete, 1927); A. I. Kozachenko, “K istorii velikorusskogo svadebnogo obriada,” Sovetskaia etnografiia, no. 1 (1957): 57–71; G. V. Shirnova, “Russkii gorodskoi svadebnyi obriad kontsa XIX–nachala XX v.,” Sovetskaia etnografiia, no. 1 (1969): 48–58; and Shirnova, “O sovremennom gorodskom svadebnom obriade (po materialam ekspeditsii v malye i srednie goroda tsentral’noi polosy RSFSR),” Sovetskaia etnografiia, no. 3 (1971): 68–78. See also the works published in K. V. Chistov and T. A. Bernshtam, eds., Russkii narodnyi svadebnyi obriad: Issledovaniia i materialy (Leningrad: Nauka, 1978).

NOTES TO PAGES 9 – 1 7     259

36. See Ján Komorovský, Tradicˇná svadba u slovanov (Bratislava: Univerzita Komenského, 1976); and V. M. Gatsak, T. M. Ananicheva, and E. A. Samodelova, eds., Obriady i obriadovyi fol’klor (Moscow: Nasledie, 1997). 37. Vladislav Dmitrievich Nazarov, “O strukture ‘Gosudareva dvora’ v seredine XVI v.,” in Obshchestvo i gosudarstvo feodal’noi Rossii: Sbornik statei posviashchennyi 70-letiiu akademika L’va Vladimirovicha Cherepnina, ed. V. T. Pashuto (Moscow: Nauka, 1975), 40–54; and Nazarov, “Svadebnye dela XVI v.,” Voprosy istorii, no. 10 (1976): 110–23. 38. Daniel H. Kaiser, “Symbol and Ritual in the Marriages of Ivan IV,” Russian History 14, nos. 1–4 (1987): 247–62. 39. The literature is, again, substantial, but these titles are among the most relevant: N. V. Zorin, Russkii svadebnyi ritual (Moscow: Nauka, 2004); A. V. Gura, Brak i svad’ba v slavianskoi narodnoi kul’ture: Semantika i simvolika (Moscow: Indrik, 2012); A. A. Kartashov, “Istoriko-etnograficheskii aspekt izucheniia traditsionnoi svadebnoi kul’tury,” Sotsial’no-ekonomicheskie iavleniia i protsessy, no. 2 (048) (2013): 150–53; Liliia Vadimovna Timofeeva, “Traditsii i novatsii v russkom svadebnom obriade” (Cand. diss., Moscow State University of Service, 2004); Irina Ivanovna Domnina, “Istoriia rossiiskogo imperatorskogo dvora: Formirovanie obriadov zhiznennogo tsikla rossiiskikh imperatorov (pervaia chetvert’ XVIII–seredina XIX vekov)” (Cand. diss., St. Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance, 2001); Ol’ga Arkad’evna Kniaz’kina, “Obriadnost’ kak raznovidnost’ kul’turnoi zhizni obshchestva (na primere istoricheskoi traditsii svadebnogo obriada rossiiskikh tsarei XVI–XVII stoletii)” (Cand. diss., Moscow State Pedagogical University, 1997). 1. “Time to Attend to the Wedding”

1. DRV, 13:5–7 (quotation on 7: vremia tebe gosudariu ittit’ k svoemu delu). 2. The original fragment is RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 2, fols. 1–5. On this document, see Russell E. Martin, “Muscovite Royal Weddings: A Descriptive Inventory of Manuscript Holdings in the Treasure Room of the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, Moscow,” Manuscripta 50, no. 1 (2006): 98–102. 3. On the use of previous wedding documents as models for later weddings, see Nazarov, “Svadebnye dela XVI v.,” 110; Margarita Evgen’evna Bychkova, Sostav klassa feodalov Rossii v XVI v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1986), 104–6; Martin, “Muscovite Royal Weddings,” 3; and Martin, “Archival Sleuths and Documentary Transpositions,” 255–58. 4. Catherine Bell, “Ritual Change and Changing Rituals: The Authority of Ritual Experts,” in Foundations in Ritual Studies: A Reader for Students of Christian Worship, ed. Paul Bradshaw and John Melloh (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007), 166–98. See also Jeroen Duindam, Dynasties: A Global History of Power, 1300–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 255. 5. See the reference to the nuptial candles being lit for “all three days” (DRV, 13:10). 6. Iazykov, “Izyskanie o starinnykh svadebnykh obriadakh u Russkikh,” 1–2. 7. Kozachenko, “K istorii velikorusskogo svadebnogo obriada,” 57, 59. 8. Kaiser, “Symbol and Ritual in the Marriages of Ivan IV,” 247. 9. On Ol’ga, see Andrzej Poppe, “Once Again Concerning the Baptism of Olga, Archontissa of Rus’,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 46 (1992): 271–77.

260    NOTES

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10. PVL, 1:326–61 (lines 54, 16–57, 29); PSRL, 1:54–57; 2:43–46. For Likhachev’s commentary, see Povest’ vremennykh let, ed. V. P. Adrianova-Peretts, ed. and trans. D. S. Likhachev and V. A. Romanova, 2 vols. (Moscow-Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1950), 2:297–98. 11. PSRL, 1:75–76; 2:63; PVL, 533 (lines 75, 30–76, 1). See also Francis Butler, “The ‘Legend of Gorislava’ (not ‘Rogned’ or ‘Rodneda’): An Edition, Commentary, and Translation,” in Dubitando: Studies in History and Culture in Honor of Donald Ostrowski, ed. Brian J. Boeck, Russell E. Martin, and Daniel Rowland (Bloomington: Slavica Publishers, 2012), 340–41. 12. See Sumtsov, O svadebnykh obriadov, 29–31. 13. Samuel Collins, The present State of Russia, in a letter to a friend at London; written by an eminent person residing at the great tzar’s court at Mosco for the space of nine years (London: John Winter, 1667), 8: “The Bridegroom has a Whip in one Boot, and a Jewel or some Money in the other, he bids the Bride pull them off, if she happens upon the Jewel, he counts her lucky, and bestows it upon her; but if she lights upon the Boot with the Whip in it she is reckon’d amongst the unfortunate, and gets a Bride-lash for her pains, which is but the earnest-penny of her future entertainment.” 14. The bride goes unnamed in the chronicle account but is known elsewhere either as Alexandra or Paraskeva. See A. F. Litvina and F. B. Uspenskii, Vybor imeni u russikh kniazei v X–XVI vv. (Moscow: Indrik, 2006), 466–67. 15. PSRL, 3:52. Michell and Forbes translate this passage as: “Knyaz Oleksander, son of Yaroslav, married in Novgorod, he took the daughter of Bryacheslav of Polotsk; and was wedded at Toropets, and the feast was held both in Novgorod and Toropets.” See Robert Michell and Nevill Forbes, eds., The Chronicle of Novgorod, 1016–1471: Translated from the Russian by Robert Michell and Nevill Forbes. With an introduction by C. Raymond Beazley, and an account of the text by A. A. Shakhmatov (London: Offices of the [Camden] Society, 1914), 84. 16. See Kozachenko, “K istorii velikorusskogo svadebnogo obriada,” 60; and Sergei Mikhailovich Solov’ev, Istoriia Rossii s drevneishikh vremen, 15 vols. (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoi literatury, 1959–1966), 2:498. 17. See, for example, DRV, 13:12, 171, 212; and The Domostroi: Rules for Russian Households in the Time of Ivan the Terrible, trans. and ed. Carolyn Johnston Pouncy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 227, 235, 238–39. For vegetables and wine, see DRV, 13:26, 44. 18. Kozachenko, “K istorii velikorusskogo svadebnogo obriada,” 59. 19. For the text, see Edward L. Keenan, Josef Dobrovský and the Origins of the Igor’ Tale (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2003), 435–58. On the wedding imagery, see Kozachenko, “K istorii velikorusskogo svadebnogo obriada,” 59; Robert Mann, The Igor Tales and Their Folkoric Background ( Jupiter: The Birchbark Press of Karacharovo, 2005), 157–88; and Mann, “Svadebnye motivy v Slove o polku Igoreve,” TODRL 38 (1985): 514–19. 20. See N. P. Kolpakova, Lirika russkoi svad’by (Leningrad: Nauka, 1973), see esp. 241–64; V. F. Miller and M. N. Speranskii, eds., Pesni, sobrannye P. V. Kireevskim, novaia seriia, 2 vols. (Moscow: Obshchestvo liubitelei slovesnosti pri Moskovskom imperatorskom universitete, 1911–1929); B. E. Chistova and K. V. Chistov, eds., Prichitan’ia Severnogo kraia, sobrannye E. V. Barsovym, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1997); and Velikoruss v svoikh pesniakh, obriadakh, obychaiakh, verovaniiakh, skazkakh, legendakh

NOTES TO PAGES 1 9 – 2 1     261

i t. p. Materialy, sobrannye i privedennye v poriadok P. V. Sheinom, vol. 1 (part 2) (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Imperatorskogo akademii nauk, 1900). For the Domostroi, see Pouncy, Domostroi, 217, 238. 21. For challenges to the twelfth-century origins of the Slovo, see Keenan, Josef Dobrovský and the Origins of the Igor’ Tale; and A. A. Zimin, Slovo o Polku Igoreve (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2006). For evolving overviews of the debate, see Simon Franklin, “The Igor’ Tale: A Bohemian Rhapsody?,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 6, no. 4 (2005): 833–44. 22. Kolpakova, Lirika russkoi svad’by, 239–40. 23. Marshall T. Poe, “A People Born to Slavery”: Russia in Early Modern European Ethnography, 1476–1748 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 5. 24. Poe, “People Born to Slavery,” 202. 25. Marshall T. Poe, Foreign Descriptions of Muscovy: An Analytic Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources (Columbus: Slavica Publishers, 1995), 9. 26. Sigismund von Herberstein, Notes upon Russia, being a translation of the earliest account of that country, entitled Rerum Moscoviticarum commentarii, 2 vols., trans. and ed., with notes and an introduction, by R. H. Major (London: Hakluyt Society, 1856–1857), 91–95. 27. Poe, “People Born to Slavery,” 144. 28. Poe, “People Born to Slavery,” 42. 29. Lloyd E. Berry and Robert O. Crummey, eds., Rude and Barbarous Kingdom: Russia in the Accounts of Sixteenth-Century English Voyagers (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), 87. 30. Berry and Crummey, Rude and Barbarous Kingdom, 229–32. See also Giles Fletcher, Of the Rus Commonwealth by Giles Fletcher, ed. Albert J. Schmidt (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966), 135–38. 31. Poe, “People Born to Slavery,” 42. 32. Adam Olearius, The Travels of Olearius in 17th-Century Russia, ed. and trans. Samuel H. Baron (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), 165–72. 33. Olearius, Travels, 165. 34. Edward Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, 2d ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 93–111, quote at 109. 35. Olearius, Travels, 166, 167. 36. The three inventories are in BAN: the wedding of Elena Ivanovna and Grand Duke Alexander of Lithuania (BAN, 16.15.15, fols. 1–26v; BAN, 32.4.21, fols. 6–23v); the wedding of Evdokiia Ivanovna and Tsarevich Peter (Kudai Kul) (BAN, 16.15.15, fols. 30v–47; BAN, 32.4.21, fols. 27–37v); and the wedding of Mariia Saburova and Prince Vasilii Semenovich Starodubskii (BAN, 16.15.15, fols. 47v–63v; BAN, 32.4.21, fols. 38–48). On the dowry inventories, see Russell E. Martin, “Gifts for the Bride: Dowries, Diplomacy, and Marriage Politics in Muscovy,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 38, no. 1 (2008): 119–45. A fragmentary original of the dowry inventory of Elena Ivanovna and Alexander survives in RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 1, and was published in A. L. Khoroshkevich, “Iz istorii dvortsovogo deloproizvodstva kontsa XV v.,” Sovetskie arkhivy, no. 5 (1980): 29–34. 37. On the development of chancery practice in this period, see S. M. Kashtanov, Issledovaniia po istorii kniazheskikh kantseliarii srednevekovoi Rusi (Moscow: Nauka, 2014); Russell E. Martin, “Royal Weddings and Crimean Diplomacy: New Sources

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on Muscovite Chancery Practice during the reign of Vasilii III,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 19 (1995): 389–427; S. O. Shmidt, Rossiiskoe gosudarstvo v seredine XVI stoletiia (Moscow: Nauka, 1984), 5–86; and A. K. Leont’ev, Obrazovanie prikaznoi sistemy upravleniia v russkom gosudarstve (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1961). 38. Martin, “Archival Sleuths and Documentary Transpositions,” 265–67. 39. On Military Muster Books, see Marshall T. Poe, “Muscovite Personnel Records, 1475–1550: New Light on the Early Evolution of Russian Bureaucracy,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte osteuropas 45, no. 3 (1997): 361–78; Poe, “Elite Service Registry in Muscovy, 1500–1700,” Russian History 21 (1994): 251–88; Iu. V. Ankhimiuk, Chastnye Razriadnye knigi s zapisami za posledniuiu chetvert’ XV–nachalo XVII vekov (Moscow: Drevlekhranilishche, 2005); V. I. Buganov, Razriadnye knigi poslednei cherverti XV–nachala XVII v. (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1962); and N. P. Likhachev, Razriadnye d’iaki XVI veka: Opyt istoricheskogo issledovaniia (St. Petersburg: V. S. Belashev, 1888). 40. On the ceremonial, see Martin, “Archival Sleuths and Documentary Transpositions,” 262–65. 41. On the Ambassadorial Chancery as the scriptorium and archive for the grand princes, see Martin, “Royal Weddings and Crimean Diplomacy,” 402–6; Shmidt, Rossiiskoe gosudarstvo v seredine XVI stoletiia, 5–86; Opisi tsarskogo arkhiva XVI veka i arkhiva Posol’skogo prikaza 1614 goda, ed. S. O. Shmidt (Moscow: Izdatel’sto vostochnoi literatury, 1960), 5–14; and Leont’ev, Obrazovanie prikaznoi sistemy upravleniia v Russkom gosudarstve, 136–52. 42. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 2, fols. 1–5. 43. Opis’ arkhiva Posol’skogo prikaza 1626 goda, ed. V. I. Gal’tsov, 2 pts. (Moscow: Glavnoe arkhivnoe upravlenie pri SM SSSR, 1977), 1:313; Opisi arkhiva razriadnogo prikaza XVII v., ed. K. V. Petrova (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2001), 32. 44. See, e.g., BAN, 16.15.15, fol. 87v; BAN, 32.4.21, fol. 67; and DRV, 13:29. 45. BAN, 16.15.15, fols. 161–71; BAN, 32.4.21, fols. 119v–27. 46. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 14, fols. 12–23. 47. See Russell E. Martin, “Choreographing the ‘Tsar’s Happy Occasion’: Tradition, Change, and Dynastic Continuity in the Weddings of Tsar Mikhail Romanov,” Slavic Review 63, no. 4 (2004): 794–817. 48. Ivan Petrovich Sakharov, ed., Skazaniia russkogo naroda, vol. 2, book 6 (St. Petersburg: Guttenburgovaia tipografiia, 1849), 20. 49. Sakharov, Skazaniia russkogo naroda, 40. 50. Sakharov, Skazaniia russkogo naroda, 44. 51. Kozachenko, “K istorii velikorusskogo svadebnogo obriada,” 66–67. 52. Kozachenko, “K istorii velikorusskogo svadebnogo obriada,” 60. 53. This, despite Sakharov’s claim to have used a 1624 manuscript as his source (Skazaniia russkogo naroda, 30). 54. A. N. Pypin, Poddelki rukopisei i narodnykh pesen (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia M. M. Stasiulevicha, 1898), 22–33; I. P. Smirnov, “O poddelkakh A. I. Sulakadzevym drevnerusskikh pamiatnikov (mesto mistifikatsii v istorii kul’tury),” TODRL 34 (1979): 200–219; V. P. Kozlov, Tainy fal’sifikatsii: Analiz poddelok istoricheskikh istochnikov XVIII–XIX vekov, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Aspekt Press, 1996), 199–207; Russell E. Martin, “Dynastic Marriage in Muscovy, 1500–1729,” 2 vols. (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1996), 2:499–507.

NOTES TO PAGES 2 4 – 2 7     263

55. PSRL 5:264–65; 6:148; 8:97. 56. Besides Ivan IV, Simeon was the only ruler of Muscovy to marry more than twice. Both rulers caused scandals because of their remarriages. On Simeon’s marriages, see PSRL, 7:24; 7:209, 23:107; 24:118 (first marriage); 7:209, 210; 10:216, 217, 23:107; 24:118 (second marriage); and 7:210; 10:218; 23:108; 24:119 (third marriage); L. V. Cherepnin, Russkie feodal’nye arkhivy XIV–XV vekov, 2 vols. (Moscow-Leningrad: Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1948–1951), 1:20–27; Solov’ev, Istoriia Rossii, 2:499; N. S. Borisov, “Moskovskie kniaz’ia i russkie mitropolity XIV veka,” Voprosy istorii, no. 8 (1986): 30–43; N. M. Karamzin, Istoriia gosudarstva rossiiskogo, 5th ed., reprint from 1842–1843 ed., 12 vols. in 4 books (Moscow: Kniga, 1988), 4:169–70 and nn. 364 and 365. On remarriage, see John Meyendorff, “Christian Marriage in Byzantium: The Canonical and Liturgical Tradition,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 44 (1990): 99–107. 57. In addition to Kozachenko’s “K istorii velikorusskogo svadebnogo obriada,” see Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 31–37; and Martin, “Gifts for the Bride.” 58. Kozachenko, “K istorii velikorusskogo svadebnogo obriada,” 66. 59. Martin, “Gifts for the Bride,” 122–31. 60. Kozachenko, “K istorii velikorusskogo svadebnogo obriada,” 66–69. 61. DRV, 13:2–3 (groom’s cortège), 3–5 (Sofiia’s cortège). 62. DRV, 13:3–4; RK 1475–1598, 16; A. A. Zimin, Formirovanie boiarskoi aristokratii v Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XV–pervoi treti XVI v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1988), 273–74. 63. DRV, 13:5. 64. On the succession crisis, see Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 38–43; Nancy Shields Kollmann, “Consensus Politics: The Dynastic Crisis of the 1490s Reconsidered,” Russian Review 45, no. 3 (1986): 235–67; Gustav Alef, “Was Grand Prince Dmitrii Ivanovich Ivan III’s ‘King of the Romans’?,” in Essays in Honor of A. A. Zimin, ed. Daniel Clarke Waugh (Columbus: Slavica Publishers, 1985): 89–101; George P. Majeska, “The Moscow Coronation of 1498 Reconsidered,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 26 (1978): 353–61; and John V. A. Fine, Jr., “The Muscovite Dynastic Crisis of 1497–1502,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 7 (1966): 198–215. 65. See Martin, “Royal Weddings and Crimean Diplomacy”; and Martin, “Archival Sleuths and Documentary Transpositions.” 66. See A. M. Pentkovskii, “Retseptsiia konstantinopl’skogo chinoposledovanie braka v iuzhnoi Italii, na Balkanakh, i na Rusi v X–XIV vekakh,” in Rossiia—Italiia: Etiko-kul’turnye tsennosti v istorii, ed. M. G. Talalai (St. Petersburg: Aleteiia, 2016), 125–39. For general histories of marriage and families, start with the classics: G. Robina Quale, A History of Marriage Systems (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988); Lucy P. Mair, Marriage, 2nd ed. (London: Scolar Press, 1977); Robin Fox, Kinship and Marriage: An Anthropological Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967); Margaret Cole, Marriage Past and Present (London: J. M. Dent, 1939); and Edward Alexander Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage (London: Macmillan, 1903). 67. Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 11. 68. Gennep, Rites of Passage, 116. 69. Gennep, Rites of Passage, 11. 70. John H. Oakley and Rebecca H. Sinos, The Wedding in Ancient Athens (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), 3. See also James Redfield, “Notes on the

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Greek Wedding,” Arethusa 15 (1982): 181–201; Jean-Pierre Vernant, “Le mariage en Grèce antique,” Parola del passato 28 (1973): 63–80; Victor Magnien, “Le marriage chez les grecs,” Annuaire de l’Institut de philologie et d’histoire orientales et slaves 4 (1936): 305–20; Magnien, “Le mariage chez les grecs anciens: L’initiation nuptiale,” L’antiquité classique 5 (1936): 115–38; and Maxime Collignon, “Cérémonies du marriage,” Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines d’après des textes et des monuments, 4 vols. (Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1873–1919), 3 (pt. 2):1637–54. 71. Oakley and Sinos, Wedding in Ancient Athens, 9–10. See also Cynthia B. Patterson, “Marriage and Married Women in Athenian Law,” in Women’s History and Ancient History, ed. Sarah B. Pomeroy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 48–72; and Douglas M. MacDowell, The Law in Classical Athens (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978), 86–89. 72. Oakley and Sinos, Wedding in Ancient Athens, 12. See also Redfield, “Notes on the Greek Wedding,” 182–83. 73. Oakley and Sinos, Wedding in Ancient Athens, 15. See also Redfield, “Notes on the Greek Wedding,” 191. 74. Oakley and Sinos, Wedding in Ancient Athens, 16–19. 75. Oakley and Sinos, Wedding in Ancient Athens, 10, 21. 76. Oakley and Sinos, Wedding in Ancient Athens, 22. 77. Oakley and Sinos, Wedding in Ancient Athens, 25. See also Redfield, “Notes on the Greek Wedding,” 192. 78. Oakley and Sinos, Wedding in Ancient Athens, 26. 79. Oakley and Sinos, Wedding in Ancient Athens, 26–29. 80. Oakley and Sinos, Wedding in Ancient Athens, 34. See also Redfield, “Notes on the Greek Wedding,” 187–88. 81. Oakley and Sinos, Wedding in Ancient Athens, 35. 82. Oakley and Sinos, Wedding in Ancient Athens, 35. 83. Oakley and Sinos, Wedding in Ancient Athens, 42. 84. On the Roman weddings, see Karen K. Hersch, The Roman Wedding: Ritual and Meaning in Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Nicole BoëlsJanssen, La vie religieuse des matrones dans la Rome archaïque (Rome: École française de Rome, 1993); Susan Treggiari, Roman Marriage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); August Rossbach, Untersuchengen über die römische Ehe (Stuttgart: C. Machen, 1853); and Rossbach, Römische Hochzeits- und Ehedenkmäler (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1871). 85. See Hersch, Roman Wedding, 39–43, who speculates that “wedding bands worn in modern times may have their origin in the engagement rings of Romans” (41). 86. Hersch, Roman Wedding, 62. 87. Hersch, Roman Wedding, 65–72. 88. Hersch, Roman Wedding, 73–84. 89. Hersch, Roman Wedding, 85–119. See also, for a later period, Maria Parani, “Byzantine Bridal Costume,” in Dōrēma: A Tribute to the A. G. Leventis Foundation on the Occasion of Its 20th Anniversary, ed. Anastasia Serghidou (Nicosia: A. G. Leventis Foundation, 2000), 185–216. 90. Hersch, Roman Wedding, 119–22; 227–88.

NOTES TO PAGES 2 9 – 3 2     265

91. Hersch, Roman Wedding, 140–41, 164–65, 167–75, 222, 223, 225 (quote at 222). 92. Hersch, Roman Wedding, 156–58 (quote at 157). 93. Hersch, Roman Wedding, 176–87 (see especially 185n217). 94. Hersch, Roman Wedding, 212–22. 95. The standard English edition of the De ceremoniis is now Constantine Porphyrogennetos, The Book of Ceremonies, with the Greek edition of the Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae (Bonn, 1829), ed. and trans. by Ann Moffatt and Maxeme Tall, 2 vols. (Canberra: Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, 2012). On the De ceremoniis, see “De ceremoniis,” in ODB, 1:595–97; Avery Cameron, “The Construction of Court Ritual: The Byzantine Book of Ceremonies,” in Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies, ed. David Cannadine and Simon Price (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 106–36; and J. B. Bury, “The Ceremonial Book of Constantine Porphyrogennetos,” English Historical Review, part 1 (April 1907): 209–27; part 2 ( July 1907): 417–39 (esp. 428–31). 96. Gilbert Dagron, Emperor and Priest: The Imperial Office at Byzantium, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 55. 97. The two chapters appear in Moffatt and Tall, Book of Ceremonies, 196–216 (chapter 39) and 207–16 (chapter 41). 98. Bury, “Ceremonial Book,” Part 2, 430–31. 99. On the wedding of Empress Irene as the archetype for this ritual, see “De ceremoniis,” ODB, 1:596. 100. Bury, “Ceremonial Book,” Part 2, 429. 101. Moffatt and Tall, Book of Ceremonies, 196–97. 102. Moffatt and Tall, Book of Ceremonies, 197. 103. Moffatt and Tall, Book of Ceremonies, 197–200. 104. Moffatt and Tall, Book of Ceremonies, 200–202. 105. Moffatt and Tall, Book of Ceremonies, 207–16. 106. Moffatt and Tall, Book of Ceremonies, 214–26 (quotation 214). On the baths, see Paul Mandalino, “The Bath of Leo the Wise and the ‘Macedonian Renaissance’ Revisited: Topography, Iconography, Ceremonial, and Ideology,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 42 (1988): 97–118. 107. Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 23–31. 108. On the role of Byzantine Greeks in Muscovite court culture, see Donald Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier, 1304–1589 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Robert Croskey, “Byzantine Greeks in Late Fifteenth- and Early Sixteenth-Century Russia,” in The Byzantine Legacy in Eastern Europe, ed. Lowell Clucas (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1988), 35–56; Boris Nikolaevich Floria, “Greki-emigranty v russkom gosudarstve vtoroi poloviny XV–nachala XVI v.: Politicheskaia i kul’turnaia deiatel’nost’,” in RuskoBalkanski kulturni vruzki prez srednovekovieto, ed. N. Dragova et al. (Sofia: Izd-vo na Bulgarskata Akademiiana naukite, 1982), 123–43; and Majeska, “Moscow Coronation of 1498 Reconsidered.” 109. Fletcher, Of the Rus Commonwealth, 135. 110. DRV, 13:7. On Anastasiia (“Nastas’ia” in DRV), see Kollmann, Kinship and Politics, 164, 281n83.

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111. DRV, 13:7–8. See also Konstantin Nikol’skii, O sluzhbakh russkoi tserkvi byvshikh v prezhnikh pechatnykh bogosluzhevnykh knigakh (St. Petersburg: Obshchestvennaia pol’za, 1885), 356–70. 112. On the betrothal as binding in Orthodox culture, see Eve Levin, Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900–1700 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 89–95; K. T. Nikol’skii, Posobie k izucheniiu ustava bogosluzheniia pravoslavnoi tserkvi, 7th ed. (St. Petersburg: Gosudarstvennaia tipografiia, 1907), 724–27; I. S. Bernikov, Kratkii kurs tserkovnogo prava: Pravoslavnoi Greko-rossiiskoi Tserkvi, s ukazaniem glavneishikh osobennostei katolicheskago i protestanskago tserkovnago prava (Kazan: Tipografiia Imperskogo universiteta, 1888), 64; A. S. Pavlov, 50-aia glava Kormchei knigi kak istoricheskii i prakticheskii istochnik russkogo brachnogo prava (Moscow: [s. n.], 1887), 71–74. See also Jean Dauvillier and Carlo de Clercq, Le mariage en droit canonique oriental (Paris: Sirey, 1936), 35. On Roman betrothals, see Hersch, Roman Wedding, 39–43; and Jean Gaudemet, Sociétés et mariage (Strasbourg: Cerdic, 1980), 15–45. On Greek betrothals, see Oakley and Sinos, Wedding in Ancient Athens, 9–10. 113. DRV, 13:8–9. 114. DRV, 13:10. 115. See Tova Forti, “Bee’s Honey—From Realia to Metaphor in Biblical Wisdom Literature,” Vetus Testamentum 56, no. 3 (2006): 327–41, which discusses the wedding of Samson in Judges 14 (especially on 329–31). The association between wedding banquets, gift giving, and honey in this biblical story is even more closely linked in the account of it in Flavius Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews, in The Complete Works of Flavius Josephus, trans. William Whiston (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1981), Book V, Chapter VIII, 119. See also Tessell M. Jonquière, “Of Valour and Strength: The Samson Cycle in Josephus’ Work: Jewish Antiquities 5.276–317,” in Samson: Hero or Fool? The Many Faces of Samson, ed. Erik Eynikel and Tobias Nicklas (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 119–28. 116. DRV, 13:10–11. 117. DRV, 13:11. 118. DRV, 13:11. 119. DRV, 13:11–12. 120. DRV, 13:12. 121. DRV, 13:12. 122. DRV, 13:12–13. 123. Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 204. 124. Gennep, Rites of Passage, 11, 138. The term was further developed in productive ways by Victor Turner in the chapter “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage,” in his The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 93–111; and, generally, Turner, The Ritual Process (Chicago: Aldine, 1969). 125. Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 87–93. The bride’s father also sometimes changed his name, as happened three times, that we know of, between 1616 and 1689. 126. Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 89, 169–85. 127. Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 190–96.

NOTES TO PAGES 3 6 – 4 3     267

128. Gennep, Rites of Passage, 130. 129. See DRV, 13:12, 25, 40. 76, 99. See also Cornelia Soldat, “Die Erzählungen über Empfängnis und Geburt russischer Herrscher in der Stepennaja kniga carskogo rodoslovija und ihr Zusammenhang mit alten slavischen Fruchtbarkeitsriten,” Weiner slavistisches Jahrbuch 50 (2004): 139–52; Oakley and Sinos, Wedding in Ancient Athens, 34; and Hersch, Roman Wedding, 141, 157. 130. The anthropologist Aafke Komter called ritual gift giving the “cement of social relations,” and Marcel Mauss called it one of the “archaic forms of contract.” See Aafke E. Komter, Social Solidarity and the Gift (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 123; and Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. W. D. Halls, foreword by Mary Douglas (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), vii–xviii, 5. 131. See Levin, Sex and Society, 89. 132. Pouncy, Domostroi, 219. 133. Grigorij Kotošixin, O Rossii v carstvovanie Alekseja Mixajloviča, ed. and trans. Anne E. Pennington (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980) (hereafter Pennington, O Rossii v carstvovanie Alekseja Mixajloviča), 21 (chap. 1, para. 9). 134. John Meyendorff, Marriage: An Orthodox Perspective (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminar Press, 1984), 24–42. 135. BAN, 16.15.15, fols. 175–78v; BAN, 32.4.21, fols. 129v–32. See also Russell E. Martin, “Ritual and Religion in the Foreign Marriages of Three Muscovite Princesses,” Russian History 35, nos. 3–4 (2008): 366–71. 136. See B. A. Uspenskii, “Svad’ba Lzhedmitriia,” TODRL 50 (1997): 407. 137. DRV, 13:9. 138. DRV, 13:8, 9. 139. Gennep, Rites of Passage, 20. 140. Gennep, Rites of Passage, 132. 141. See Bell, Ritual, 202–5; and Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 118–42. 2. “A Canonical Marriage for the Uninterrupted Succession to Your Royal Dynasty”

1. Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, 281, 282. 2. Kevin Sharpe, Rebranding Rule: The Restoration and Revolution Monarchy, 1660– 1714 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 148. 3. Among the best general treatments of the Time of Troubles are S. F. Platonov, Ocherki po istorii smuty v Moskovskom gosudarstve XVI–XVII vv.: Opyt izucheniia obshchestvennogo stroia i soslovnykh otnoshenii v Smutnoe vremia (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoe izdatel’stvo, 1937); and Chester S. L. Dunning, Russia’s First Civil War: The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001). The works of Viacheslav Kozliakov also merit inclusion in any list of the best treatments of the period. See for example Kozliakov, Geroi Smuty (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2012); and Kozliakov, Smuta v Rossii XVII veka (Moscow: Omega, 2007).

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4. N. N. Selifontov, Sbornik materialov po istorii predkov tsaria Mikhaila Feodorovicha Romanova: Genealogicheskii i istoricheskii material po pechatannym istochnikam, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: Kostromskaia gubernskaia uchenaia arkhivnaia komissiia, 1889– 1901). See also the extensive bibliography of genealogical studies of the Romanovs in T. A. Lobashkova, Dom Romanovykh: Biobibliograficheskii illiustrirovannyi ukazatel’ (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Reka vremen, 2008), esp. 643–62. 5. See E. V. Pchelov, “Genealogicheskie sviazi Romanovykh do nachala XVII v. i ikh znachenie v istorii roda,” Vestnik arkhivista, no. 4 (2013): 192–201; L. M. Savelov, “Boiare Romanovy i ikh rodstvennyia sviazi,” Drevnosti: Trudy Imperatorskogo moskovskogo arkheologicheskogo obshchestva 24 (1914): 233–43. 6. The best treatment of Russian pretenderism remains Maureen Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism in Early Modern Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). See also B. A. Uspenskii, “Tsar and Pretender: Samozvanchestvo or Royal Imposture in Russia as a Cultural-Historical Phenomenon,” in “Tsar and God,” 113–52; and Chester S. L. Dunning, “Who Was Tsar Dmitrii?” Slavic Review 60, no. 4 (2001): 704–29. 7. Robert O. Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors: The Boyar Elite in Russia, 1613– 1689 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 27. 8. Crummey, “Court Spectacles in Seventeenth-Century Russia,” 130–58. 9. David B. Miller, “Creating Legitimacy: Ritual, Ideology, and Power in Sixteenth-Century Russia,” Russian History 21, no. 3 (1994): 314. 10. David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 42. 11. See Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 169–86; Zabelin, Domashnii byt russkikh tsarits, 219–42; and Oleg Viacheslavovich Shcherbachev, “O rodstve Saltykovykh s Mikhailom Fedorovichem Romanovym,” Letopis’ Istoriko-rodoslovnogo obshchestva v Moskve, no. 3 (1995): 62–67. 12. DRV, 13:137. 13. Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 186–89; Paul Bushkovitch, “Shvedskie istochniki o Rossii,” Arkhiv russkoi istorii 8 (2007): 370; Grigorii A. Miloradovich, “Tsaritsa Mariia Dolgorukova,” Russkii arkhiv, bk. 3 (1897): 5–32. 14. DRV, 13:145. 15. Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 188–89. 16. See Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 231–33; and A. P. Golubtsov, Preniia o vere, vyzvannyia delom korolevicha Val’demara i tsarevny Iriny Mikhailovny (Moscow: [n. p.], 1891). 17. Martin, “Muscovite Royal Weddings,” 91 (unpaginated). 18. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 14, fols. 1–25 (published in appendix B). On this source, see Martin, “Muscovite Royal Weddings,” 133–36. 19. Martin, “Muscovite Royal Weddings,” 91–92 (unpaginated). 20. DRV, 13:148. 21. See RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 14, fol. 115 (bear trainers and keepers of bear cages); and fols. 116–22 (musicians). See Claudia R. Jensen, Musical Cultures in Seventeenth-Century Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 77–78, 87–89, 94–95; DR, 1: cols. 779–80, 785. 22. Pennington, O Rossii v carstvovanie Alekseja Mixajloviča, 27; Benjamin Phillip Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1970), 49–50, 328–39; Poe, Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich, 39.

NOTES TO PAGES 4 7 – 4 9     269

23. For proxy parents for the bride at Mikhail Fedorovich’s first wedding (1624), see DRV, 13:137–38; and at the wedding of Mikhail Kaibulin and Mariia Liapunova, see DRV, 13:128–29. 24. Opis’ arkhiva Posol’skogo prikaza 1626 goda, 1:314–15. 25. Vasilii III and Glinskaia (RGADA fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 8, fols. 4–6 [fragment]); Iurii Vasil’evich and Paletskaia (RGADA fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 7); Ivan IV and Vasil’chikova (RGADA fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 11); Vasilii Shuiskii and Buinosova-Rostovskaia (RGADA fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 13). 26. No original documents survive for Vladimir Staritskii’s first wedding (to Evdokiia Nagaia, in 1549), but a small, one-folio fragment of the wedding ceremonial for his second (to Evdokiia Odoevskaia, in 1555) does (RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 9). It was copied in the eighteenth century (RGADA fond 156, op. 1, no. 4, fols. 1–1v). Long redactions of the ceremonials for both of Vladimir Staritskii’s weddings survive in later copies: BAN 16.15.15, fols. 103–7; BAN 32.4.21, fols. 79–88 (Nagaia); and BAN 16.15.15, fols. 134–42v; BAN 32.4.21, fols. 100v–106v (Odoevskaia). 27. Opis’ arkhiva Posol’skogo prikaza 1626 goda, 1:322. 28. RGADA fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 3. 29. RGADA fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 7, fol. 2. 30. RGADA fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 11, fols. 6, 12, 18–19, 19a, and 20. 31. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 13, fols 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11. 32. RGADA fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 13, fols. 13–16. 33. Opis’ arkhiva Posol’skogo prikaza 1626 goda, 1:404; RGADA fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 16, fols. 9v, 19; DRV, 13:155. 34. Paleographic features of these copies confirm that they were made in the 1620s. See Martin, “Muscovite Royal Weddings,” 102–52; and L. V. Cherepnin, ed., Gosudarstvennoe drevlekhranilishche khartii i rukopisei: Opis’ dokumental’nykh materialov fonda 135, comp. V. N. Shumilov (Moscow: [Vneshtorgizdat], 1971), 129. Known examples of Gramotin’s hand: RGADA, fond 396, op. 1, no. 1061, fol. 4 (signature only); no. 947, fol. 1; no. 948, fol. 1; and no. 933, fol. 1; no. 1267, fol. 2 (best likeness). For examples of Gramotin’s hand in wedding documentation, see, e.g., RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, nos. 3, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, and 19. 35. Gramotin still awaits a modern biographical study. See, for now, G. Edward Orchard, “Ivan Taras’evich Gramotin,” MERSH, 55 vols., plus six supplemental volumes (Gulf Breeze: Academic International Press, 1976–1995), 13:92–94; S. B. Veselovskii, D’iaki i pod’iachie XV–XVII vv. (Moscow: Nauka, 1975), 129–31; and M. P. Pitsullo, Dumnyi d’iak Ivan Taras’evich Gramotin (1606–1638) (St. Petersburg: V. Gratsianskii, 1878); also published in Drevniaia i novaia Rossiia, no. 6 (1878): 123–26. 36. Opis’ arkhiva Posol’skogo prikaza 1626 goda, 1:404; RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 16, fols. 15, 21; DRV, 13:142, 152, 157. See also Veselovskii, D’iaki i pod’iachie, 296–97. 37. See, e.g., DRV, 13:141, 142, 143, 155, 157, and elsewhere. 38. For the chancery system generally during the Time of Troubles, see N. V. Rybalko, Rossiiskaia prikaznaia biurokratiia v Smutnoe vremia (Moscow: Kvadriga MBA, 2011); D. V. Liseitsev, Prikaznaia sistema Moskovskogo gosudarstva v epokhu Smuty (Tula: Grif i K, 2009); and, generally, Marshall Poe, “The Central Government and Its Institutions,” in Cambridge History of Russia, vol. 1: From Early Rus to 1689, 435–63. 39. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 14, fols. 4 and 7.

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40. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 14, fol. 4. Compare the way this moment is treated in the ceremonial for the wedding of Vasilii III (DRV, 13:7). On Fr. Maksim, see S. Smirnov, Drevne-russkii dukhovnik (Moscow: Sinodal’naia tipografiia, 1913), 252. 41. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 14, fol. 5. Compare the way this moment is treated in the ceremonial for the wedding of Vasilii III (DRV, 13:9). 42. Marshall T. Poe, with Ol’ga Kosheleva, Russell Martin, and Boris Morozov, The Russian Elite in the Seventeenth Century, vol. 1: The Consular and Ceremonial Ranks of the Russian “Sovereign’s Court,” 1613–1713 (Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 2004), 104–9. 43. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 14, fol. 2. 44. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 14, fol. 7. 45. See the following wedding ceremonials: Vasilii III and Elena Glinskaia (1526) (DRV, 13:12); Andrei Staritskii and Efrosiniia Khovanskaia (1533) (DRV, 13:25); Iurii Vasil’evich and Ul’iana Paletskaia (1547) (DRV, 13:43); Vladimir Staritskii and Evdokiia Nagaia (1549) (DRV, 13:52); and Tsarevich Mikhail Kaibulin and Mariia Liapunova (1623) (DRV, 13:66). 46. DRV, 13:167. 47. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 14, fol. 7. 48. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 13, fol. 10. 49. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 14, fol. 7. 50. DRV, 152–53. 51. For Andrei Staritskii (1533), see RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 4, fols. 1–1v; Martin, “Royal Weddings and Crimean Diplomacy,” 414; and DRV, 13:19. Four other ceremonials describe the ritual: Prince Iurii Vasil’evich, brother of Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible (1547) (DRV, 13:36); Vladimir Staritskii (1549) (BAN, 32.4.21, fols. 79–79v, and BAN, 16.15.15, f. 103v [long redaction], but compare with DRV, 13:46–47 [short redaction]); Vladimir Staritskii (1555) (BAN, 32.4.21, fols. 106v–7, and BAN, 16.15.15, fol. 143 [long redaction], but compare with DRV, 13:80 [short redaction]); and Simeon Kasaevich (Iadgar-Mukhammed ibn Kasim) (1552) (DRV, 13:57–58). On Simeon Kasaevich, see A. V. Beliakov, Chingisidy v Rossii XV–XVII vekov: Prosopograficheskoe issledovanie (Riazan: Riazan Mir, 2011), 65, 108, 121; Beliakov, “Chingisidy v Rossii XV–XVI vekov,” Arkhiv russkoi istorii 8 (2007): 47; and Zimin, Formirovanie boiarskoi aristokratii, 202n11, 260. On the wedding, see also PSRL, 13:235 (7062); RK 1475–1598, 12–13; RK 1475–1605, 1.3:457–61; Ankhimiuk, Chastnye razriadnye knigi, 111–13; and Bychkova, Sostav klassa feodalov Rossii, 116–21. 52. Pennington, O Rossii v carstvovanie Alekseja Mixajloviča, 22 (fol. 10v); Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 40; and Grigorii Karpovich Kotoshikhin, Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich, trans. Benjamin Phillip Uroff, ed. Marshall Poe (Warsaw: De Gruyter Open, 2014), 34 (hereafter cited as Poe, Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich). 53. The literature on Patriarch Filaret is substantial. See A. P. Bogdanov, Russkie patriarkhi (1589–1700), 2 vols. (Moscow: Respublika, 1999), 1:280–352; V. V. Malandin, “Patriarkh Filaret,” in Velikie gosudarstvennye deiateli Rossii, ed. V. V. Malandin, R. M. Vvedenskii, L. M. Liashenko, and V. E. Voronin (Moscow: Vlados, 1996), 147–73; V. G. Vovina, “Patriarkh Filaret (Fedor Nikitich Romanov),” Voprosy istorii, no. 7–8 (1991): 53–74; S. V. Bakhrushin, “Politicheskie tolki v tsarstvovanie Mikhaila Fedorovicha,”

NOTES TO PAGES 5 3 – 5 6     271

in S. V. Bakhrushin: Trudy po istochnikovedeniiu, istoriografii i istorii Rossii epokhi feodalizma (nauchnoe nasledie), ed. B. V. Levshin (Moscow: Nauka, 1987), 87–118; and J. H. L. Keep, “The Régime of Filaret 1619–1633,” Slavonic and East European Review 38, no. 91 (1960): 334–60. 54. DRV, 13:144. 55. We know, however, that there was one. See Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 185–96. 56. DRV, 13:146. 57. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 16, fols. 7–8; DRV, 13:146–47. 58. For the contemporary text of the prayer, see, for example, the first printed Sluzhebnik of 1602 (Moscow: Andronik Timofeev Nevezha, April 25, 1602 [I7.03.7109– 25.04.7110]), fols. 428–29 (second pagination). 59. 1 Samuel 8–10, 15:10–16:13; 2 Samuel 2. 60. See Rowland, “Moscow—The Third Rome or the New Israel?” Russian Review 55, no. 4 (1996): 591–614. 61. DRV, 13:147–48. See Vera Shevzov, “Imperial Miracles: The Romanovs and Russia’s Icon of the Mother of God,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 32/33 (2016/2017): 1–42. 62. On the nun Marfa, see S. M. Shamin, “Zhalovannaia gramota sviashchenniku Ermolaiu i ego potomkam za pomoshch’ materi tsaria Mikhaila Fedorovicha inokine Marfe v gody godunovskikh gonenii,” Vestnik tserkovnoi istorii, nos. 1–2 (21–22) (2011): 246–48; V. Korsakova, “Romanova-Iur’eva, Kseniia Ivanovna (v inochestve Marfa),” Russkii biograficheskii slovar’, vol. 17 (Petrograd: Tipografiia Akts. O-va “Kadima,” 1918), 1–7; N. S. Shaidin, Zaonezhskaia zatochnitsa, velikaia gosudarynia inokina Marfa Ivanovna, v mire boiarynia Kseniia Ivanovna Romanova, mat’ tsaria Mikhaila Fedorovicha: K 300-letemu iubileiu Tsarstvennogo Doma Romanovykh (Petrozavodsk: Olonetskaia gubernskaia tipografiia, 1912). 63. On the wedding of Ivan Molodoi, see Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 38–39; and N. de Baumgarten, “Généalogies des branches régnantes de Rurikides du XIIIe au XVIe siècle,” Orientalia Christiana 35, no. 94 (1934), 22n18. On the first wedding of Vasilii III, see Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 43–54; and Baumgarten, “Généalogies des branches régnantes de Rurikides,” 22n21. On the wedding of Elena Ivanovna, see Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 31–38; and Baumgarten, “Généalogies des branches régnantes de Rurikides,” 22n20. On the wedding of Feodosiia Ivanovna, see Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 40–43; and Baumgarten, “Généalogies des branches régnantes de Rurikides,” 23n25. 64. On the weddings of Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich, see Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 55, 70, 86, 88, 89, 126, 132–37, 160 (first marriage); 55, 86, 89, 90, 148, 160 (second marriage); 56, 86, 158–59, 160 (third marriage); and Baumgarten, “Généalogies des branches régnantes de Rurikides,” 26n43. On the wedding of Fedor Ivanovich, see Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 55, 86, 148–49, 160; and Baumgarten, “Généalogies des branches régnantes de Rurikides,” 26n45. The date of Fedor Ivanovich’s wedding is disputed between 1575 and 1580. See Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 148–49, 303n94. 65. For the weddings of Prince Vladimir Staritskii, see Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 55, 64, 119, 156–57; and Baumgarten, “Généalogies des branches régnantes de Rurikides,” 25n38. For the wedding of the First False Dmitrii, see Uspenskii, “Svad’ba Lzhedmitriia,” 404–25; and Jensen, Musical Cultures in Seventeenth-Century Russia, 17–20, 94, 235n30. For the first wedding of Peter I, see chapter 3.

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66. DRV, 13:12. 67. DRV, 13:25. The text of the speech may have been much older than the Staritskii wedding. A version of it appears in the instructions given to Muscovite emissaries negotiating the wedding of Ivan III’s daughter, Elena Ivanovna, with Alexander of Poland-Lithuania in 1495, in SbIRIO, 35:166 (no. 31, X). The text reads: “It is God’s will, and so God has commanded, that our daughter should marry you; and you, our brother and son-in-law, shall keep our daughter and our grand princess as her husband, as God has ordained.” 68. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 5, fol. 10; DRV, 13:31. 69. Martin, “Muscovite Royal Weddings,” 114. 70. DRV, 13:43. 71. DRV, 13:52 (first wedding); BAN 16.15.15, fol. 85; BAN 32.4. 21, fol. 64v (second wedding). 72. DRV, 13:66. 73. DRV, 13:166–67. 74. Vasilii III (1526) (DRV, 13:11); Andrei Staritskii (1533) (RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 4, fol. 7; Martin, “Royal Weddings and Crimean Diplomacy,” 418); Iurii Vasil’evich (1547) (DRV, 13:42); Vladimir Staritskii (1549) (DRV, 13:51); Vladimir Staritskii (1555) (BAN, 16.15.15, fol. 151; BAN, 32.4.21, fol. 112); Ivan IV’s son Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich (BAN, 16.15.15, fol. 167v; BAN, 32.4.21, fol. 124). 75. DRV, 13:147. 76. BAN, 16.15.15, fol. 167v; BAN, 32.4.21, fol. 124. For the identification of “kh Troitse chto na dvore,” I thank Michael Flier and Carolyn Pouncy. On the Annunciation Cathedral, see A. K. Levykin, ed., Tsarskii khram: Blagoveshchenskii sobor Moskovskogo kremlia v istorii Russkoi kul’tury (Moscow, IPP Kuna, 2008); and I. Ia. Kachalova, N. A. Maiasova, and L. A. Shchennikova, Blagoveshchenskii Sobor Moskovskogo kremlia: K 500-letiiu unikal’nogo pamiatnika russkoi kul’tury (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1990). 77. On Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery’s links to the Moscow dynasty, see David B. Miller, Saint Sergius of Radonezh, His Trinity Monastery, and the Formation of the Russian Identity (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010), 63–68, 70–75, 79–84, 88–104, and elsewhere. 78. On the resting places of Muscovite dynasts and their consorts, see T. D. Panova, Kremlevskie usypal’nitsy: Istoriia, sud’ba, taina (Moscow: Indrik, 2003). On Metropolitan Aleksei, see A. A. Turilov and R. A. Sedova, “Aleksei,” Pravoslavnaia entsyklopediia (Moscow: Tserkovno-nauchnyi tsentr “Pravoslavnaia entsiklopediia,” 2007), 1:637–48. 79. Pennington, O Rossii v carstvovanie Alekseja Mixajloviča, 22; Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Alexis Mikhailovich,” 4o; Poe, Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich, 34. 80. Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 190–96; Russell E. Martin, “Political Folkways and Praying for the Dead in Muscovy: Reconsidering Edward Keenan’s ‘Slight’ against the Church,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 48, nos. 3–4 (2006): 283–305; Zabelin, Domashnii byt russkikh tsarits, 245–51. 81. PSRL, 37:202; Collins, Present State of Russia, 103–4; Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 195; Zabelin, Domashnii byt russkikh tsarits, 251.

NOTES TO PAGES 6 1 – 6 3     273

82. Actually, the scribes, undersecretaries, and secretaries had even less time: between February 4 and February 12. The wedding was scheduled for February 14, but it seems that the wedding was called off two days before that. See Zabelin, Domashnii byt russkikh tsarits, 247. 83. On Nazarii Chistyi and Mikhail Volosheninov, see RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 21, fols. 4v, 30, 77, 147; no. 22, fols. 26, 35, 75, 81; no. 23, fols. 6, 45; and no. 24, fol. 6v, no. 25, fol. 14. See also Veselovskii, D’iaki i pod’iachie, 106–7, 569. 84. The two Vsevolozhskaia musters are in RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 22, fols. 39–46 (second draft); and fols. 63–77 (first draft). For the two Vsevolozhskaia ceremonials, see RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 21, fols. 1–71 (first draft); and RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 21, fols. 72–130 (second draft). 85. The muster (short redaction) of the 1573 wedding of Mariia Staritskaia and Magnus is in RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 10. 86. A 1647 copy of the 1626 ceremonial is in RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 17, fols. 3–52. For a table of names of courtiers who were to be assigned to positions at the Vsevolozhskaia wedding, see RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 22, fol. 62. See also a copy of the 1624 “worksheet” in RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 22, fols. 1–8; and other copies of materials from 1624 and 1626 in RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 22, fols. 9, 10, 14–19. 87. These ceremonials and musters for the Vsevolozhskaia (probably just the first draft of each) are mentioned in the inventory of the archive of the Ambassadorial Chancery. See Opis’ arkhiva Posol’skogo prikaza 1673 goda, ed. V. I. Gal’tsov, 2 pts. (Moscow: Glavnoe arkhivnoe upravlenie pri SM SSSR, 1990), 1:36. Efimiia’s name has been carefully removed on fols. 79 and 85 (and perhaps elsewhere) in RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 21 (the second draft of the Vsevolozhskaia ceremonial). On the 1647 copies, see Martin, “Muscovite Royal Weddings,” 124–25, 144–46, 153–65. 88. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 24, fols. 146v–47v. 89. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 24, fols. 14v–15; DRV, 13:148, 188. See also Zabelin, Domashnii byt russkikh tsarei, 447–49; and N. Sosnina and I. Shangina, eds., Russkii traditsionnyi kostium: Illiustrirovannaia entsiklopediia (St. Petersburg: Iskusstvo—SPB, 2006), 371. 90. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 24, 46v–49. See Sosnina and Shangina, Russkii traditsionnyi kostium, 200, 357–59, 367–76. 91. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 24, 57–60v. 92. Michael Cherniavsky, Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myths (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), 63. 93. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 23, fols. 71v–72; no. 24, fol. 41v. 94. Compare RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 21, fols. 9, 33, 34, and 59 (first draft), with fols. 81, 99–100, 123 (second draft). 95. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 21, fols. 81, 99. 96. See Smirnov, Drevne-russkii dukhovnik, 253; Jensen, Musical Cultures in Seventeenth-Century Russia, 77–78; and Phillip Longworth, Alexis, Tsar of All the Russias (New York: Franklin Watts, 1984), 31–32. 97. See RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 21, fol. 64 (first draft), and RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 21, fol. 128 (second draft). 98. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 24, fols. 46–46v. See also DRV, 13:214.

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99. Musicians are mentioned in the documentation for several previous weddings: Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich and Evdokiia Saburova (BAN, 16.15.15, fol. 171v); Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii (RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 13, fol. 12); and both of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich’s weddings (to Mariia Dolgorukova, RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 14, fols. 121–22; no. 15, fols. 15, 28; to Evdokiia Streshneva, RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 16, fol. 40v). Aleksei evidently intervened at a point late in the formulation of the wedding texts. Some idea of the sort of entertainment that was offered at previous weddings is suggested by the roster for the first wedding of Mikhail Romanov, which contains bear trainers and keepers of bear cages (medvedniki and storozhi u strubov dikikh medvedei), and a roster of 101 musicians who performed at the wedding. See RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 14, fol. 115 (bear trainers and keepers of bear cages); and fols. 116–22 (musicians). 100. Olearius, Travels, 204. 101. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 24, fols. 1–1v; DRV, 13:177–78. 102. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 21, fols. 15–16. 103. DRV, 13:185–86. 104. DRV, 13:186–87. The changes were stylistic: “I blagoslovit vas blagosloveniem poslednim” (DRV, 13:147) becomes “I blagoslovit vas blagosloveniem krainim” (DRV, 13:186). 105. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 21, fols. 16–17. 106. DRV, 13:187. 107. Pennington, “Introduction,” to O Rossii v carstvovanie Alekseja Mixajloviča, 1–7. 108. On the biography of Grigorii Kotoshikhin, sketchy as it is, see, in addition to Pennington, O Rossii v carstvovanie Alekseja Mixajloviča, 1–7: Anne E. Pennington, “An Unpublished Letter by Grigory Kotoshikhin,” Slavonic and East European Review 46, no. 114 (1971): 113–24; A. N. Pypin, “Grigorii Kotoshikhin,” Vestnik Evropy (September 1896): 245–95; A. I. Markevich, G. K. Kotoshikhin i ego sochinenie o Moskovskom gosudarstve v polovine XVII v. (Odessa: Tipografiia Shtaba okruga, 1895), 19–20; and A. Barsukov, ed., O Rossii v tsarstvovanie Alekseia Mikhailovicha, sochinenie Grigoriia Kotoshikhina, 4th ed. (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Glavnogo upravleniia udelov, 1906), xiv–xix. 109. Pennington, O Rossii v carstvovanie Alekseja Mixajloviča, 1–3. 110. Pennington, “Unpublished Letter by Grigory Kotoshikhin,” 117. 111. Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 5. 112. Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 5. For published editions of On Russia in the original language, see Pennington’s O Rossii v carstvovanie Alekseja Mixajloviča and the titles she lists on 763. For a brief description of the other (earlier) editions, see Barsukov, O Rossii, i–xxxvi. 113. For the English translation, see Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich”; and Poe, Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich. 114. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 22, fols. 1–8, 9–13, 14–19, 20, 49–51. See also Martin, “Muscovite Royal Weddings,” 155–65. 115. Markevich, Kotoshikhin i ego sochinenie, 106–7. 116. Markevich, Kotoshikhin i ego sochinenie, 107. 117. Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 321–22n45. 118. Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 321–29 (notes 45–84).

NOTES TO PAGES 6 8 – 7 1     275

119. Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 44, 326n66; Poe, Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich, 36. 120. The Vsevolozhskaia wedding is omitted from the compilations of wedding texts—both manuscript and published—that were produced starting in the first half of the seventeenth century. See Martin, “Archival Sleuths and Documentary Transpositions,” 270–81. 121. Pennington, O Rossii v carstvovanie Alekseja Mixajloviča, 19 (fols. 7–7v); Poe, Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich, 32–33; Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 36–37. 122. See Martin, “Political Folkways and Praying for the Dead in Muscovy,” 292– 98. 123. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, nos. 21 and 22. 124. Pennington, O Rossii v carstvovanie Alekseja Mixajloviča, 160. Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 268; Poe, Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich, 161. 125. Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 272, 273 (quotation at 273). 126. Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 271. 127. Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 271–72. 128. Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 277. On consanguinity, both by blood and spiritual kinship, see George G. Weickhardt, “Canon Law Prohibitions on Marriage to Kin in Rus’ and Muscovy,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 50, no. 2 (2016): 123–41. 129. Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 278. Olearius notes the same custom for remarriages (Travels, 167). 130. Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 278. The expression byvaet molitvu is essentially the same euphemism—imal molitvu—used to describe the sixth wedding of Ivan IV (to Vasilisa Radilova, or “Melent’eva,” who, like the tsar, had been previously married). See Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 151–56. 131. Pouncy, Domostroi, 1. 132. Carolyn Johnston Pouncy, “The Origins of the Domostroi: A Study in Manuscript History,” Russian Review 46, no. 4 (1987): 357–73; Kaiser, “Symbol and Ritual,” 250. 133. The first concentrates on the first day and provides details on the number and contents of several platters that were to be prepared beforehand for use at various ceremonial moments: platters with sweet bread and cheese, hops and coins, ceremonial kerchiefs, the bride’s headdress, and so on (Pouncy, Domostroi, 204–8). The second text briefly describes the rites of transition before the church wedding: the combing and braiding of the hair, the veiling of the bride, the sprinkling of the bridal pair, and so on (Pouncy, Domostroi, 208–9). The fourth text is a short redaction of the boyar wedding ceremonial, modified for use by those who “cannot afford a wedding appropriate to their rank” (Pouncy, Domostroi, 233–37, quotation 233). The fifth text is not a ceremonial at all but just a list of assorted notes and instructions—on the candles, the wedding loaves, the betrothal rite and the bedding ceremony—cobbled together into a single text (Pouncy, Domostroi, 237–39). 134. Pouncy, Domostroi, 209–33. 135. D. S. Likhachev et al., eds., Biblioteka literatury drevnei Rusi, 19 vols. to date (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1997–2015), 10:216–39 (and notes at 587–89); Domostroi, ed.

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and commentary by V. V. Kolesov (Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1990), 179–98 (and notes at 292–93). 136. Pouncy, Domostroi, 217. 137. Pouncy, Domostroi, 222; Poe, Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich, 37. 138. Pouncy, Domostroi, 226–27. 139. Pouncy, Domostroi, 232. 140. DRV, 13:164 (Mikhail Feodorovich, 1626) and 13:206 (Aleksei Mikhailovich, 1648); RGADA, fond 136, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 21, fols. 49, 115, 117. 141. Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 45. 142. Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Alexis Mikhailovich,” 327 (n68); Domostroi, ed. Kolesov, 60, 146; and “Domostroi po spisku Imperatorskogo Obshchestva istorii i drevnostei Rossiiskikh,” ed. I. E. Zabelin, ChIOIDR, bk. 2 (1881), 85. This passage is in chapter 29 of Pouncy’s edition of the Domostroi (see 124). 143. DRV, 13:170 (Mikhail Feodorovich) and 13:211 (Aleksei Mikhailovich). 144. Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 47. 145. Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Alexis Mikhailovich,” 327–38n71. 146. The scribes in the chanceries also produced private copies of Military Muster Books (Razriadnye knigi) and Genealogical Books (Rodoslovnye knigi) for various clients at court, which turns out to be fortuitous since official copies of both of these important registers were burned with the abolition of the system of precedence, or mestnichestvo, in 1682. See Ankhimiuk, Chastnye razriadnye knigi; Buganov, Razriadnye knigi poslednei chetverti XV–nachale XVII v.; and M. E. Bychkova, Rodoslovnye knigi XVI–XVII vv. kak istoricheskii istochnik (Moscow: Nauka, 1975). 147. BAN, 16.15.15; 32.4.21; 21.10.25; 31.6.40; 32.5.11; 31.7.20; IaOB, RK319031V. 148. DRV, 13:1–247; 14:5–15; Komarov, Opisanie trinadtsati starinnykh svadeb velikikh rossiiskikh kniazei i gosudarei; Sakharov, Skazaniia russkogo naroda. 149. RGADA, fond 135, sec. V, rub. III, no. 8; Beketov, Opisanie v litsakh. 150. See, generally, Keenan, “Muscovite Political Folkways,” in its entirety. 151. Pennington, O Rossii v carstvovanie Alekseja Mixajloviča, 19, 20, 29, 654. 3. “And Unlike Previous Royal Weddings, There Was Not the Usual Royal Ritual”

1. The Order of Holy Matrimony, 2nd ed. ( Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2011), 26; Sluzhebnik of 1602, fol. 433. 2. See, generally, Paul Meyendorff, Russia, Ritual and Reform: The Liturgical Reforms of Nikon in the 17th Century (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1991). 3. Georg B. Michels, “The Patriarch’s Rivals: Local Strongmen and the Limits of Church Reform in the Seventeenth Century,” in Modernizing Muscovy: Reform and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century Russia, ed. Jarmo Kotilaine and Marshall Poe (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), 311; and Michels, At War with the Church: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Russia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 21–45. 4. P. V. Sedov, Zakat Moskovskogo tsarstva: Tsarskii dvor kontsa XVII veka (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2006), 113; Longworth, Alexis, 197–98; V. N. Berkh, Tsarstvovanie Tsaria Alekseia Mikhailovicha vsei Velikoi, Maloi, i Beloi Rossii samoderzhtsa, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: I. Slenin, 1831), 1:248–50.

NOTES TO PAGES 7 8 – 8 2     277

5. E. V. Pchelov, Genealogiia Romanovykh, 1613–2001 (Moscow: Ekslibris Press, 2001), 17, 19, 21; G. I. Studenkin, ed., “Romanovy, tsarstvuiushchii dom Rossiiskoi imperii s 1613 g.,” Supplement to Russkaia starina (1878, no. 4): i–xxxii. 6. On the Beliaeva Affair, see Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 196–201; and Paul Bushkovitch, Peter the Great: The Struggle for Power, 1671–1725 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 61–63. 7. See Lindsey Hughes, The Romanovs: Ruling Russia, 1613–1917 (London: Continuum, 2008), 45–48; Hughes, Sophia: Regent of Russia, 1657–1704 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 37–38; Natalia Pushkareva, Women in Russian History from the Tenth to the Twentieth Century, trans. Eve Levin (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), 83, 122; and Longworth, Alexis, 199–200, 203–28. 8. See I. M. Kudriavtsev, ed., Artakserksovo deistvo: Pervaia p’esa Russkogo teatra XVII v. (Moscow-Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1957). 9. Jensen, Musical Cultures, 163–211; W. Bruce Lincoln, The Romanovs: Autocrats of All the Russias (New York: Dial Press, 1981), 55–58. 10. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 30, fols. 12v–13. 11. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 28 (stolbets); nos. 29, 30 (books). On these manuscripts, see Martin, “Muscovite Royal Weddings,” 180–84. 12. See Sedov, Zakat Moskovskogo tsarstva, 113–49; Bushkovitch, Peter the Great, 51–58, 64, 98, 116. 13. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fols. 5v; no. 30, fols. 5v–6v. 14. On Matveev, see N. M. Rogozhin, “Artamon Sergeevich Matveev,” in “Oko vsei velikoi Rossii”: Ob istorii russkoi diplomaticheskoi sluzhby XVI–XVII vekov, ed. E. V. Chistiakova (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1989), 146–79 (esp. 173–75); I. M. Kudriatsev, “Izdatel’skaia deiatel’nost’ Posol’skogo prikaza (k istorii russkoi rukopisnoi knigi vo vtoroi polovine XVII veka),” Kniga: Issledovaniia i materialy, no. 8 (1963): 179–244; and Hennings, Russia and Courtly Europe, 71–72. 15. RGADA, fond 27, op. 1, no. 287, fol. 5v. The document is published in Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 250–53 (see 251); P. P. Pekarskii, “Spisok devits, iz kotorykh v 1670 i 1671 godakh vybiral sebe suprugu tsar’ Aleksei Mihailovich,” in Izvestiia imperatorskogo Arkheologicheskogo obshchestva 5, no. 6 (1865): 469–72; and Zabelin, Domashnii byt russkikh tsarits, 252–53. 16. RGADA, fond 27, op. 1, no. 287, fol. 8. 17. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 2v; no. 30, fol. 3v. 18. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 2v; no. 30, fol. 3v. 19. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 3; no. 30, fol. 4. 20. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 4; no. 30, fol. 5. 21. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 4v; no. 30, fol. 5v. 22. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 5; no. 30, fol. 6. 23. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 5v; no. 30, fol. 6v. On Illarion Ivanov, see Veselovskii, D’iaki i pod’iachie, 208. 24. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 12v; no. 30, fols. 12v–13. 25. Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 89. 26. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 13; no. 30, fols. 12v–13v. 27. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 13; no. 30, fols. 12v–13v. 28. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 13v–14v; no. 30, fols. 14–14v.

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29. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 15; no. 30, fol. 15. 30. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 15; no. 30, fol. 15v. 31. Meyendorff, Marriage, 44. 32. On the pastoral origins of that embarrassment, see the still classic treatment in Levin, Sex and Society, 79–135. See also Paul Evdokimov, The Sacrament of Love: The Nuptial Mystery in Light of Orthodox Tradition, trans. Anthony P. Gythiel and Victoria Steadman (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985), 181–92 (esp. 185–86). 33. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 20; no. 30, fol. 20. 34. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fols. 20–20v; no. 30, fols. 20–20v. 35. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fols. 20v–21v; no. 30, fols. 20v–21v. 36. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 16, fols. 21v–27v; DRV, 13:159–62. 37. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 24, fols. 28v–33; DRV, 13:200–3. 38. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fols. 22; no. 30, fols. 21v–22; Smirnov, Drevne-russkii dukhovnik, 253. 39. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 22; no. 30, fol. 22. 40. The biblical reference is to Matt. 25:40. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 22v; no. 30, fol. 22v. 41. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fols. 23–23v; no. 30, fol. 23. 42. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fols. 22v–23; no. 30, fols. 23v–24. 43. See N. I. Subbotin, Materialy dlia istorii raskola za pervoe vremia ego sushchestvovaniia, 9 vols. (Moscow: Bratstvo sv. Petra Metropolita, 1875–1894), 1.1:272. 44. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 39; no. 30, fol. 38v. 45. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fols. 33v–36v; no. 30, fols. 32v–36. 46. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 37v–38; no. 30, fols. 36–37v. 47. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fols. 38–38v; no. 30, fol. 38. 48. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 39v; no. 30, fol. 39. Both documents mistakenly name the day “January 23,” but that is clearly a scribal error. The mistake does not appear in the manuscript roll. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 28, fol. 60. 49. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fols. 39v–40; no. 30, fols. 39–39v. I borrow Nancy Shields Kollmann’s translation here (By Honor Bound: State and Society in Early Modern Russia [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999], 189). 50. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 40; no. 30, fol. 40. 51. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fols. 41–49v; no. 30, fols. 40v–51. 52. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fols. 49v–50v (folios in the manuscript are out of order); no. 30, fols. 51v–52v. 53. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fols. 53–53v; no. 30, fols. 53–53v. 54. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 53v; no. 30, fol. 53v. 55. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 53; no. 30, fols. 54–54v. 56. Sluzhebnik of 1602, fols. 428–29. 57. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 16, fols. 7–8; DRV, 13:146–47. 58. Talmud Mas. Megilah 14a, 15a. See Jon D. Levenson, “1 Samuel 25 as Literature and History,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 40 (1978): 11–28; and Levenson and Baruch Halpern, “The Political Import of David’s Marriages,” Journal of Biblical Literature 99, no. 4 (1980): 508–18. 59. The expression veren dom is translated variously: “sure house” (KJV and RSV), “enduring house” (NKJV), and “lasting dynasty” (NIV). The translation used here is according to the NJB.

NOTES TO PAGES 8 8 – 9 2     279

60. On the book of Esther in Muscovy, see Horace G. Lunt and Moshe Taube, The Slavonic Book of Esther: Text, Lexicon, Linguistic Analysis, Problems of Translation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1998). 61. Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews, in The Complete Works of Flavius Josephus, Book XI, Chapter VI, 237. On honor and dishonor in the biblical text, see Lillian R. Klein, “Honor and Shame in Esther,” in A Feminist Companion to Esther, Judith, and Susanna, ed. Athalya Brenner (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 149–75. 62. On Esther and the bride-show, see Kristin De Troyer, “An Oriental Beauty Parlour: An Analysis of Esther 2.8–18 in the Hebrew, The Septuagint and the Second Greek Text,” in Feminist Companion to Esther, Judith, and Susanna, 47–70; and Levenson, Esther, 42–63. 63. Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 196–97, 250–53; RGADA, fond 27, op. 1, no. 287, fols. 2–8. 64. For the play, see Johann Gottfried Gregorii, “The Comedy of Artaxerxes (1672),” trans. Yvette Louria, with the editorial assistance of John A. Stone, Bulletin of the New York Public Library 72, no. 3 (1968): 139–210; and Kudriavtsev, Artakserksovo deistvo. 65. On the play, see Claudia Jensen and Ingrid Maier [Klaudiia Dzhensen, Ingrid Maier], Pridvornyi teatr v Rossii XVII veka: Novye istochniki (Moscow: Indrik, 2016); Russell E. Martin, “Muscovite Esther: Bride Shows, Queenship, and Power in The Comedy of Artaxerxes,” in The New Muscovite Cultural History: A Collection in Honor of Daniel Rowland, ed. Valerie Kivelson, Karen Petrone, Nancy Shields Kollmann, and Michael S. Flier (Bloomington: Slavica Publishers, 2009), 21–42; Marina Swoboda, “The Old Testament ‘Apocrypha’ in Early Russian Drama,” in Old Testament Apocrypha in the Slavonic Tradition: Continuity and Diversity, ed. Lorenzo DiTommaso and Christfried Böttrich, with the assistance of Swoboda (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 429–52; Crummey, “Court Spectacles,” 139–41; and John A. Stone, “The Pastor and the Tzar: A Comment on The Comedy of Artaxerxes,” Bulletin of the New York Public Library 72, no. 4 (1968): 215–51. 66. On Metropolitan Pavel, see “Pavel (v mire Petr),” Russkii biograficheskii slovar’, vol. 13 (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia I. N. Skorokhodova, 1902), 73–75. 67. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fols. 56–57; no. 30, fols. 56–56v. 68. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fols. 57–61v; no. 30, fols. 57–61v. 69. Novikov published only a truncated muster for the wedding, which was then republished by others: See DRV, 13:233–34; Sakharov, Skazaniia russkogo naroda, 99; and Komarov, Opisanie trinadtsati starinnykh svadeb velikikh rossiiskikh kniazei i tsarei, 156–59. 70. Flier, “Political Ideas and Ritual,” 387–408; Nancy Shields Kollmann, “Society, Identity and Modernity in Seventeenth-Century Muscovy,” in Modernizing Muscovy, 406–20. 71. Bushkovitch, Peter the Great, 22; see also Paul Bushkovitch, Religion and Society in Russia: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 128–72. 72. Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, 299. 73. Among the best recent treatments of this period remain Bushkovitch, Peter the Great, 49–124; Sedov, Zakat Moskovskogo tsarstva; and Hughes, Sophia. 74. Hughes, Sophia, 43. 75. DR 3:973–81; P. M. Stroev, ed., Vykhody gosudarei tsarei i velikikh kniazei, Mikhaila Fedorovicha, Alekseia Mikhailovicha, Fedora Alekseevicha vseia Rusi samoderzhtsev s 1632

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po 1682 god (Moscow: Tipografiia Avgusta Semena, 1844), 581–82; Sedov, Zakat Moskovskogo tsarstva, 138; Hughes, Sophia, 39. The ritual is first attested in 1642, when Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich “presented” his son Aleksei. Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich himself used the ritual to present first his son Aleksei Alekseevich—in 1667, 1668, and 1669—and again in 1674, for Fedor Alekseevich. On this ritual, see Russell E. Martin, “Anticipatory Association of the Heir in Early Modern Russia: Primogeniture and Succession in Russia’s Ruling Dynasties,” in The Routledge History of Monarchy, ed. Elena Woodacre, Lucinda H. S. Dean, Chris Jones, Russell E. Martin, and Zita Eva Rohr (New York: Routledge, 2019), 435–37. 76. Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 206–11; Bushkovitch, Peter the Great, 112–18; Sedov, Zakat Moskovskogo tsarstva, 350–54. 77. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 31; Martin, “Muscovite Royal Weddings,” 184–86. 78. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 31, fols. 3, 10, 15, 17 (blanks); fols. 7, 11 (“p”). 79. The dates in the ceremonial suggest that some of the audiences after Tsar Fedor Alekseevich’s wedding might have taken place on different days from those at Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s wedding. See Martin, “Muscovite Royal Weddings,” 184–86; and Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 211–12, 321n44. 80. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 32, fols. 4–4v. 81. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 32, fol. 5v. 82. See Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 89. 83. Boyars: Prince Nikita Ivanovich Odoevskii, Prince Iakov Nikitich Odoevskii, Prince Iurii Alekseevich Dolgorukov, Prince Mikhailo Iur’evich Dolgorukov, Prince Fedor Fedorovich Kurakin, Ivan Bogdanovich Khitrovo. Okol’nichii: Ivan Timofeevich Kondyrev. Postel’nichii dumnoi: Ivan Maksimovich Iazykov. Striapchii s kliuchem: Mikhailo Timofeevich Likhachev. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 32, fols. 8–8v. 84. Archpriest Nikita [Vasil’evich] of the Annunciation Cathedral (see Smirnov, Drevne-russkii dukhovnik, 253), Archpriest Ivan Lazarev of the Church of the Savior in the tsar’s palace (u velikogo gosudaria na seniakh), Fr. Iakov and Peter of the Dormition Cathedral (kliuchari), the deacon Fedor, and two singers (gosudarevy pevchie), Pavel Mikhailov and Petr Pokrovets (RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 32, fols. 9–9v). 85. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 32, fol. 9. 86. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 32, fol. 10v. Or, “the most radiant eyes of the Great Sovereign” (svoi velikogo gosudaria presvetlye ochi), fol. 11. 87. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 32, fol. 8. 88. Pavel Sedov argued on the basis of a chance chronicle entry (M. N. Tikhomirov, “Zapiski prikaznykh liudei kontsa XVII v.,” TODRL 12 [1956]: 448; PSRL, 31:173) that the ritual at Fedor Alekseevich’s wedding was not pared down at all and, furthermore, that both the charred draft ceremonial (no. 31) and the pared-down final version (no. 32) actually describe the same wedding ritual, not entirely different versions of it (Sedov, Zakat Moskovskogo tsarstva, 388). I have a different view, expressed in Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 213–16. 89. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 32, fols. 5, 6 (“his royal rubrics”), 8, 10 (quote at fol. 10). 90. Sedov, Zakat Moskovskogo tsarstva, 354; Kniaz’kina, “Obriadnost’ kak raznovidnost’ kul’turnoi zhizni obshchestva,” 151–52.

NOTES TO PAGES 9 4 – 9 8     281

91. PSRL, 31:186; DRV, 11:192–93; Pchelov, Genealogiia Romanovykh, 20, 24; Studenkin, “Romanovy, tsarstvuiushchii dom Rossiiskoi imperii,” x, xiii. 92. Pchelov, Genealogiia Romanovykh, 20; Studenkin, “Romanovy, tsarstvuiushchii dom Rossiiskoi imperii,” x. On royal women being sent to convents, see Isolde Thyrêt, “The Royal Women of Ivan IV’s Family and the Meaning of Forced Tonsure,” in Servants of the Dynasty: Palace Women in World History, ed. Anne Walthall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 159–71. Marina Mniszech, the wife of the First False Dmitrii, also outlived her husband without accepting monastic tonsure. See Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 183–227. 93. The draft of the ceremonial: RGADA, fond 210, Moskovskii stol, no. 621, fols. 238–43. The “Muster without Precedence” (Razriad bez mest tsaria i velikogo kniazia Feodora Alekseevicha vsea Velikiia i Malyia i Belyia Rossi samoderzhtsa 190 godu) is published in Solov’ev, Istoriia Rossii, 7:311–20. The original is at RGADA, fond 156, no. 147, fols. 1–16. 94. Solov’ev, Istoriia Rossii, 7:314. 95. RGADA, fond 210, Moskovskii stol, no. 621, fol. 242; Solov’ev, Istoriia Rossii, 7:314. 96. Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 89. 97. Zabelin, Domashnii byt russkikh tsarits, 259. 98. RGADA, fond 210, Moskovskii stol, no. 621, fols. 238v (blessing of fatherconfessor to serve, and other adjustments to the ceremony), 239–41v (24 courtiers in the procession, 4 more names listed on 241v), 242 (banquet), 243 (audiences). 99. Solov’ev, Istoriia Rossii, 7:314. See also V. N. Berkh, Tsarstvovanie tsaria Feodor Alekseevicha i istoriia pervogo Streletskogo bunta, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Kh. Gintse, 1834–1835), 85. 100. Solov’ev, Istoriia Rossii, 7:314. 101. DRV, 11:192. 102. Zabelin, Domashnii byt russkikh tsarits, 259–60. 103. Bushkovitch, Peter the Great, 80. 104. Bushkovitch, Peter the Great, 125–69; Hughes, Sophia, 52–88; Russell E. Martin, “Law, Succession, and the Eighteenth-Century Refounding of the Romanov Dynasty,” in Dubitando: Studies in History and Culture in Honor of Donald Ostrowski, ed. Brian Boeck, Russell E. Martin, and Daniel Rowland (Bloomington: Slavica Publishers, 2012), 225–42; and John P. LeDonne, “Ruling Families in the Russian Political Order, 1689–1825,” Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique 28, nos. 3–4 (1987): 233–58. 105. Bushkovitch, Peter the Great, 125–33. 106. Hughes, Sophia, 52–88. 107. Hughes, Sophia, 96; Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 219–27. 108. Pchelov, Genealogiia Romanovykh, 33–34; Studenkin, “Romanovy, tsarstvuiushchii dom Rossiiskoi imperii,” xiii, xvi–xvii, xviii; Leonid Levin, Rossiiskii generalissimus gertsog Anton Ul’rikh (istoriia “Braunshveigskogo semeistva v Rossii) (St. Petersburg: Blits, 2000), 238–74. 109. Pchelov, Genealogiia Romanovykh, 26. 110. DRV, 11:196. 111. DRV, 11:196–97. 112. Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 89, 90–93. 113. M. I. Semevskii, Tsaritsa Praskov’ia, 1664–1723: Ocherk iz russkoi istorii XVIII veka (1883; repr., Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1991), 9.

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114. Quotations from wedding descriptions appear in Semevskii, Tsaritsa Praskov’ia, 9–10. 115. Semevskii’s uncited sources conflict with Patrick Gordon’s quip about the wedding, which reads “the Emperor Johan Alexevitz was privately (as usuall) marryed to Praskovia Feodorvna Sultikov [in] 1684” (RGADA, fond 180, op. 1, no. 3, fol. 37). Very likely, Gordon was referring to the church service, not the accompanying rituals before and after it, to which he had not been privy. 116. Bushkovitch, Peter the Great, 156–57; Hughes, Sophia, 223; Lindsey Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 393–94; Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 222–28. See also A. S. Lavrov, “Tsarskie nevesty: Eshche raz k voprosu ob interpretatsii svidetel’stv inostrantsev o petrovskoi Rossii,” Trudy SanktPeterburgskogo instituta istorii RAN, no. 5 (21) (2019): 80–106. 117. Lindsey Hughes, “Peter the Great’s Two Weddings: Changing Images of Women in a Transitional Age,” in Women in Russia and Ukraine, ed. and trans. Rosalind Marsh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 31–44 (esp. 31–34); M. M. Bogoslovskii, Petr I: Materialy dlia biografii, 5 vols. (Moscow: Sotsekgiz, 1940– 1948), 1:66; PSZ, series 1, 3:10–11, no. 1333. 118. DRV, 11:194. This source also claims that the wedding took place between 1:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m. (vo vtorom chasu noshchi), which is improbable and a likely result of a copyist or transcription error. 119. Smirnov’s register of royal father-confessors does not include an Archpriest Merkurii in his list of Peter I’s father’s confessors, but he does list one for Tsar Fedor III as the rector of the Annunciation Cathedral in the Kremlin. This Archpriest Merkurii was a royal confessor from 1685 to 1692, ten years after Fedor’s death. The first father-confessor listed under Peter’s name in Smirnov’s register began his duties in 1693, the year after Archpriest Merkurii disappears from the list. See Smirnov, Drevne-russkii dukhovnik, 253–54. 120. DRV, 11:194. 121. Sedov, Zakat Moskovskogo tsarstva, 354, 388–91; Zabelin, Domashnii byt russkikh tsarits, 259–60. 122. Michael S. Flier, “Court Ceremony in an Age of Reform: Patriarch Nikon and the Palm Sunday Ritual,” in Religion and Culture in Early Modern Russia and Ukraine, ed. Samuel H. Baron and Nancy Shields Kollmann (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1997), 73–95; Flier, “Breaking the Code: The Image of the Tsar in the Muscovite Palm Sunday Ritual,” in Medieval Russian Culture, ed. Michael S. Flier and Daniel Rowland, vol. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994): 213–42; Flier, “The Iconography of Royal Procession: Ivan the Terrible and the Palm Sunday Ritual,” in European Monarchy: Its Evolution and Practice from Roman Antiquity to Modern Times, ed. Heinz Duchhardt, Richard A. Jackson, and David Sturdy (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1992), 109–25; Paul Bushkovitch, “The Epiphany Ceremony of the Russian Court in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Russian Review 49, no. 1 (1990): 1–17; Crummey, “Court Spectacles,” 132–36; Georg Ostrogorsky, “Zum Stratordienst des Herrschers in der byzantinisch-slawischen Welt,” in Byzanz und die Welt der Slawen: Beiträge zur Geschichte der byzantinisch-slawischen Beziehungen, ed. Ostrogorsky (Darmstadt: Wissenschaft, 1974), 101–21. 123. Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors, 32–33; D. V. Liseitsev, N. M. Rogozhin, and Iu. M. Eskin, Prikazy Moskovskogo goudarstva XVI–XVII vv.: Slovar’-spravochnik

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(Moscow: IRI RAN, 2015); Peter B. Brown, “Muscovite Government Bureaus,” Russian History 10, no. 3 (1983): 269–330. 124. The most recent study of precedence is the best: Eskin, Ocherki istorii mestnichestva v Rossii XVI–XVII vv., esp. 233–39. See also Iu. M. Eskin, Mestnichestvo v Rossii XVI–XVII vv.: Khronologicheskii reestr (Moscow: Arkheograficheskii tsentr, 1994); and Kollmann, By Honor Bound. 125. Edward L. Keenan, “The Stepennaia kniga and the Godunovian Renaissance,” in The Book of Royal Degrees and the Genesis of Russian Historical Consciousness, ed. Gail Lenhoff and Ann Kleimola (Bloomington: Slavica Publishers, 2011), 69–79. 4. “To Live Together in Holy Matrimony”

1. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 21, fols. 81, 99; quotation no. 24, fols. 146v–47v. 2. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 22. 3. Kaiser, “Symbol and Ritual,” 248. 4. Kaiser, “Symbol and Ritual,” 261. 5. Kaiser, “Symbol and Ritual,” 261–62. 6. Kaiser, “Symbol and Ritual,” 262. 7. Eve Levin, “Dvoeverie and Popular Religion,” in Seeking God: The Recovery of Religious Identity in Orthodox Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia, ed. Stephen K. Batalden (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1993), 31. The definition of dvoeverie offered by Stella Rock (which she translates as “double-belief ” and “dual faith”) has a slightly different hue: “the preservation of pagan elements within Christian communities.” See Stella Rock, “What’s in a Word? A Historical Study of the Concept of Dvoeverie,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 35, no. 1 (2001): 19. 8. The literature is vast, but see these titles for pointers to the rest: N. M. Gal’kovskii, Bor’ba Khristianstva s ostatkami izychestva v drevnei Rusi, 2 vols. (1916 and 1913; repr., Moscow: Indrik, 2000); Stella Rock, Popular Religion in Russia: “Double Belief ” and the Making of an Academic Myth (New York: Routledge, 2007); Gregory L. Freeze, “The Rechristianization of Russia: The Church and Popular Religion, 1750–1850,” Studia Slavica Finlandensia 7 (1990): 101–36; Dimitri Obolensky, “Popular Religion in Medieval Russia,” in The Religious World of Russian Culture, vol. 2 of Russia and Orthodoxy: Essays in Honor of Georges Florovsky, ed. Andrew Blane (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), 43–54; Iurii M. Lotman and Boris A. Uspensky, “Binary Models in the Dynamics of Russian Culture (to the End of the Eighteenth Century),” in The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History, ed. Alexander D. Nakhimovsky and Alice Stone Nakhimovsky (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 30–66; Georges Florovsky, “The Problem of Old Russian Culture,” Slavic Review 21, no. 1 (March 1962): 1–15; and Nikolay Andreyev, “Pagan and Christian Elements in Old Russia,” Slavic Review 21, no. 1 (March 1962): 16–23. 9. Levin, “Dvoeverie and Popular Religion,” 36. 10. Levin, “Dvoeverie and Popular Religion,” 46. 11. Kenneth Stevenson, Nuptial Blessing: A Study of Christian Marriage Rites (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 97. 12. Stevenson, Nuptial Blessing, 5. 13. Stevenson, Nuptial Blessing, 8; Kaiser, “Symbol and Ritual,” 262.

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14. Bushkovitch, Religion and Society in Russia, 53. 15. The Book of Needs (here called the potrebnik) is specifically referred to in the preliminary notes for the 1624 wedding of Tsar Mikhail Romanov and Mariia Dolgorukova, as a source to be consulted for information about the wedding service itself (RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 14, fols. 4 and 7). 16. See Pouncy, Domostroi, 204–39. 17. See, generally, Anthony Roeber, Mixed Marriages: An Orthodox History (Yonkers: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2018), 23–66, 146–56. 18. Levin, “Dvoeverie and Popular Religion,” 46. 19. SbIRIO, 35:157–59 (no. 30). 20. On the war, see Carol B. Stevens, Russia’s Wars of Emergence, 1460–1730 (New York: Pearson Longman, 2007), 50–61; M. M. Krom, Mezh Rus’iu i Litvoi: Pogranichnye zemli v sisteme russko-litovskikh otnoshenii kontsa XV–pervoi treti XVI v. (Moscow: Kvadriga, 2010); Krom, “Changing Allegiances in the Age of State Building: The Border between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Grand Principality of Muscovy,” in Imagined, Negotiated, Remembered: Constructing European Borders and Borderlands, ed. Kimmo Katajala and Maria Lähteenmäki (Zurich: Lit, 2012), 15–30; A. A. Zimin, Rossiia na rubezhe XV–XVI stoletii (ocherki sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii) (Moscow: Mysl’, 1982), 73–75, 93–109; and K. V. Basilevich, Vneshniaia politika russkogo tsentralizovannogo gosudarstva vtoraia polovina XV veka (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1952), chaps. 5–7. 21. Basilevich, Vneshniaia politika, 326–29. 22. On the title, see A. L. Khoroshkevich, Russkoe gosudarstvo v sisteme mezhdunarodnogo otnoshenii kontsa XV–nachala XVI v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), 85; and A. I. Filiushkin, Tituly russkikh gosudarei (Moscow: Al’ians-Arkheo, 2006), 65. 23. His first trip was in 1486 and semiofficial. According to Poppel’s own account, the boyars in Moscow questioned his credentials, and he was subjected to a handwriting test to make sure he had not forged his letters of introduction from the emperor. See Joseph Fiedler, Nikolaus Poppel: Erster Gesandter ostereichs in Russland. Historischbiographische Skizze (Vienna: K. K. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1856), 25–36; PDS, 1:5; R. H. Major, “Introduction,” in Sigismund von Herberstein, Notes upon Russia, being a Translation of the Earlier Account of that Country, entitled Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii, trans. and ed. Major, 2 vols. (repr. of 1851–1852 ed.; London: Hakluyt Society, n.d.), 1:lxxvi–lxxx; J. L. I. Fennell, Ivan the Great of Moscow (New York: St. Martin’s, 1963), 118–27 (quotation 118); Basilevich, Vneshniaia politika, 256–64 and 256n1; and Karamzin, Istoriia gosudarstva rossiiskogo, 6:130–32. 24. Johann Christian Sachs, Einleitung in die Geschichte der Marggravschaft und des marggrävlichen altfürstlichen Hauses Baden (Carlsruhe: Verlegts Wilhelm Fridrich Lotter, 1764), 621–26. 25. Karamzin, Istoriia gosudarstva rossiiskogo, 6:131. The official record renders it as “it is not our custom in this land to present our daughters in advance” (PDS, 1:10). 26. Karamzin, Istoriia gosudarstva rossiiskogo, 6:132. 27. PDS, 1:12. The translation, which can hardly be improved upon, is Fennell’s (Ivan the Great, 121). 28. Gustav Alef, “The Adoption of the Muscovite Two-Headed Eagle: A Discordant View,” Speculum 41, no. 1 (1966): 5–9; Fennell, Ivan the Great, 121; Karamzin, Istoriia gosudarstva rossiiskogo, 6:130–32.

NOTES TO PAGES 1 0 8 – 1 1 3     285

29. Fennell, Ivan the Great, 122. 30. Fennell, Ivan the Great, 120–22. 31. Fennell, Ivan the Great, 122–29; Major, “Introduction,” lxxx–lxxxiii. 32. On Maximilian, see, for a start, Manfred Hollegger, Maximilian I., 1459–1519, Herrscher und Mensch einer Zeitenwende (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 2005); Hermann Wiesflecker, Kaiser Maximilian I.: Das Reich, Österreich und Europa an der Wende zur Neuzeit, 5 vols. (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1971–1986); and Paula Sutter Fichtner, The Habsburgs: Dynasty, Culture, Politics (London: Reaktion Books, 2014), 54–74. 33. The best analysis of these events is Bushkovitch, “Sofia Palaiologina in Life and Legend,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 52, nos. 2–3 (2018): 158–80. 34. Fennell, Ivan the Great, 125; Karamzin, Istoriia gosudarstva rossiiskogo, 6:133– 34. 35. Karamzin, Istoriia gosudarstva rossiiskogo, 6:134. 36. Fennell, Ivan the Great, 126; Major, “Introduction,” lxxxii. 37. Fennell, Ivan the Great, 126–29; Major, “Introduction,” lxxxii–lxxxiii. 38. SbIRIO, 35:89–102 (no. 21). 39. SbIRIO, 35:89–102 (no. 21, I–VII). 40. SbIRIO, 35:68–72 (no. 17). 41. The Lithuanian mission to Moscow in November is in SbIRIO, 35:72–80 (no. 18), and the Muscovite mission to Vilnius in January in SbIRIO, 35:80–85 (no. 19). 42. The Lithuanian mission to Moscow in June 1493 is in SbIRIO, 35:103–8 (no. 22); another in September 1493 in SbIRIO, 35:108–11 (no. 23); and a third in January– February 1494 in SbIRIO, 35:111–37 (no. 24). For the betrothal, see SbIRIO, 35:124 (no. 24, XV). 43. SbIRIO, 35: 123–24 (no. 24). 44. SbIRIO, 35:124 (no. 24, XV). On Peter Janowicz, see F. G. Toll, Nastol’nyi slovar’ dlia spravok po vsem otrasliam znaniia (spravochnyi entsiklopedicheskii leksikon), 3 vols. (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia i litografiia I. Paul’sona i komp., 1863), 1:375. 45. See Martin, “Gifts for the Bride,” 124. 46. For the Muscovite mission to Vilnius in March, see SbIRIO 35:138–44 (no. 25); and for the correspondence in August, SbIRIO, 145–56 (no. 28). 47. SbIRIO 35:159 (no. 30, V). 48. SbIRIO, 35:162 (no. 31, III and V); 172–73 (no. 32). 49. SbIRIO, 35:162 (no. 31, III). The Orthodox elements of the wedding were officiated by Archimandrite Makarii of Holy Trinity Monastery in Vilnius, the metropolitan-designate of Kiev, and by the priest Foma, Ivan III’s own father-confessor. See S. Mirnov, Drevne-russkii dukhovnik, 250. 50. Martin, “Gifts for the Bride,” 123–27. 51. Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 31–37; Kozachenko, “K istorii velikorusskogo svadebnogo obriada,” 63–65; Fennell, Ivan the Great, 157–63. 52. See the many reminders Ivan III sent his son-in-law to respect his pledge concerning Elena’s religion in SbIRIO, 35:239–41 (no. 49); 273–74 (no. 57); 278–80 (no. 60); and 289–92 (no. 62). 53. Martin, “Gifts for the Bride,” 126–27. 54. Alexander Filjushkin, Ivan the Terrible: A Military History (London: Frontline Books, 2008), 259–60. The wars included the Russo-Swedish War (1555–1557), the Livonian War “proper” (1556–1561), the Russian-Lithuanian War (1561–1570),

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the Swedish-Danish War (1563–1570), the “Moscow War” between Moscow and the Rzeczpospolita (1578–1582), and two more Russo-Swedish Wars (1579–1583 and 1589–1595). 55. See Filjushkin, Ivan the Terrible, 137, 166–201, 261–64; and Robert I. Frost, The Northern Wars: War, State and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558–1721 (New York: Routledge, 2000), 25–38. 56. Frost, Northern Wars, 25. 57. See Magnus’s own account of these events in Frede P. Jensen, ed., “Hertug Magnus af Holstens forsvarsskift af 1579 om hans forhold til tsar Ivan den Grusomme,” Danske Magazin, series 8, vol. 4, part 1 (1976): 54–83. 58. Isabel de Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 254–55; R. G. Skrynnikov, Oprichnyi terror (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Leningradskogo universiteta, 1969), 399. 59. On her death, see Karamzin, Istoriia gosudarstva rossiiskogo, 9:101 and n. 335, and 9:105 and n. 344. 60. See Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 142–45. 61. See D. V. Tsvetaev, “Mariia Vladimirovna i Magnus datskii,” Zhurnal Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia 196 (March 1879): 77–85; Baumgarten, “Généalogies des branches régnantes de Rurikides,” 27; and E. E. Golubinskii, Prepodobnyi Sergii Radonezhskii i sozdannaia im Troitskaia lavra (Moscow: Sinodal’naia tipografiia, 1909), 208–9. 62. Manuscripts: BAN, 16.15.15, fols. 178v–83; BAN, 32.4.21, fols. 133–37; BAN, 21.10.25, fols. 81–87; BAN, 31.7.20, fols. 50v–53; BAN, 31.6.40, fols. 49–52v; BAN, 32.5.11, fols. 61–65v; RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 10, fols. 1–3. Publications: DRV, 13:97–103; Sakharov, Skazaniia russkogo naroda, 92–95; RK 1475–1605, 2:329–35. 63. On the Shchelkalov brothers, see Sergei Bogatyrev, “Klan d’iakov Shchelkalovykh/The Clan of the Diaks Shchelkalov,” Istoricheskaia genealogiia/Historical Genealogy 5 (1995): 60–70; Likhachev, Razriadnye d’iaki XVI veka, 191–226; D. F. Kobeko, “D’iaki Shchelkalovy,” Izvestiia Russkogo genealogicheskogo obshchestva, no. 3 (1909): 78–87; and Kobeko, “Shchelkalovy i Chepchugovy,” Russkaia starina (March 1901): 711–16. 64. See Likhachev, Razriadnye d’iaki XVI veka, 206–8; Russell E. Martin, “ ‘To Serve Without Regard to Place’: Precedence and Royal In-Laws at the Weddings of Russia’s Rulers, 1525–1671,” in Seeing Muscovy Anew: Politics, Institutions, Culture. Essays in Honor of Nancy Shields Kollmann, ed. Michael S. Flier, Valerie Kivelson, Erika Monahan, and Daniel Rowland (Bloomington: Slavica Publishers, 2017), 90–92. 65. Likhachev, Razriadnye d’iaki XVI veka, 208. 66. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 10, fol. 1; DRV, 13:97–98; RK 1475–1605, 2:329–30. 67. BAN, 16.15.15, fols. 175–78v; BAN, 32.4.21, fols. 129v–32. On these texts, see Bychkova, Sostav, 107–12. 68. On the prospective (and retrospective) formats in which musters and the ceremonials can appear, see Martin, “Archival Sleuths and Documentary Transpositions.” 69. According to the Piskarevskii Chronicle, Vasilii Vladimirovich’s wife was a Mezetskaia princess (though it does not mention a first name). See PSRL, 34:572. That claim has been disputed, however, by S. I. Khazanova, “Oprichnina v

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Piskarevskom letopistse i letopisanie XVII veka,” Arkhiv russkoi istorii 8 (2007): 58; M. N. Tikhomirov, “Piskarevskii letopisets kak istoricheskii istochnik o sobytiiakh XVI–nachala XVII v.,” in Russkoe letopisanie, ed. S. O. Shmidt (Moscow: Nauka, 1979), 238; and Materialy po istorii SSSR, vol. 2 (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1955), 78, 161, notes 64, 67 (commentary by O. A. Iakovleva). 70. See DRV, 13:98, 101, 103. See also Tsvetaev, “Mariia Vladimirovna i Magnus datskii,” 65. 71. See E. A. Gordienko, Vladychnaia palata Novgorodskogo kremlia (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1991). 72. DRV, 13:99. 73. On gift exchanges at weddings, see Martin, “Gifts for Kith and Kin: Gift Exchanges and Social Integration in Muscovite Royal Weddings,” in The Rude and Barbarous Kingdom Revisited: Essays in Russian History and Culture in Honor of Robert O. Crummey, ed. Chester S. L. Dunning, Russell E. Martin, Daniel Rowland (Bloomington: Slavica Publishers, 2008), 89–108. 74. BAN, 16.15.15, fols. 177–77v; BAN, 32.4.21, fol. 131v. 75. BAN, 16.15.15, fol. 177v; BAN, 32.4.21, fol. 132. 76. BAN, 16.15.15, fols. 175–78v; BAN, 32.4.21, fols. 129v–32. 77. Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 17–22. 78. Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 37–50 (quotation 50). See also Platonov, Ocherki po istorii smuty, 186–87. For a different view, see Dunning, “Who Was Tsar Dmitrii?” 79. Edward Opalin´ski, “Jerzy Mniszech,” Polski Słownik Biograficzny, 51 vols. to date (Cracow: Skład główny w księg, and other publishers, 1935–2014), 21:465–68; Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 40. On Marina, see Kozliakov, Smuta v Rossii, 163–70. 80. Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 41. 81. See Isaiah Gruber, Orthodox Russia in Crisis: Church and Nation in the Time of Troubles (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2012), 117–28; Dunning, Russia’s First Civil War, 212–14; and N. Levitskii, “Ignatii, patriarch moskovskii,” Khristianskoe chteniia, nos. 1–2 (1887): 20–53. For an accessible example of Patriarch Ignatii omitted in a sinodik, see G. A. Romanov, ed., Russkii sinodik: Pomiannik Moskovskogo Sretenskogo monasteria. Istoricheskii spravochnik (Moscow: Moskovskoe podvor’e Pskovo-Pecherskogo Sviato-Uspenskogo monastyria, 1995), 61. 82. The date of the wedding is given as November 22 in A. A. Titov, ed., “Istoriia Dimitriia, tsaria Moskovskogo, i Mariny Mnishek, docheri Sendomirskogo voevody, tsaritsy Moskovskoi, Martina Stadnitskogo,” part 1, Russkii arkhiv, no. 5 (1906): 137, which contradicts other sources. A description of the wedding (with the date November 29) also appears in J. U. Niemcewicz, Dzieje Panowania Zygmunta III, króla polskiego, wielkiego księcia litewskiego, 3 vols. (Cracow: Nakładem Wydawnictwa Biblioteki Polskiej, 1860), 2:286–92; which is repeated, with additions and along with a Russian translation, in RIB, 1:51–80 (see also the relevant notes on 777–78, 780, 782). The description here draws on all three sources, but particularly on the Russian and Polish accounts in RIB. See also I. O. Tiumentsev, Smutnoe vremia v Rossii nachala XVII stoletiia: Dvizhenie Lzhedmitriia II (Moscow: Nauka, 2008), 59; and Viacheslav Koziakov, Lzhedmitrii I (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2009), 183–217.

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83. On the First False Dmitrii’s conversion to Catholicism, see Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 41, 50, 103. On Vlas’ev, see D. V. Liseitsev, Posol’skii prikaz v epokhu Smuty, 2 vols. (Moscow: IRI RAN, 2003), 1:56–75; Rybalko, Rossiiskaia prikaznaia biurokratiia, 130–31; and Veselovskii, D’iaki i pod’iachie, 98. 84. The source does not identify precisely whose mansion this is, but it may well have belonged to Fr. Henryk Firlej, the future bishop of Łuck, archbishop of Gniezno, and vice-chancellor (Podkanclerzy koronny) of Poland-Lithuania. See Władyslaw Czapliński, “Henryk Firlej,” in Polski słownik biograficzny, 51 vols. to date (Cracow: Skład główny w księg, Gebethnera i Wolffa, 1935–2017), 6:477. 85. RIB, 1:52; Niemcewicz, Dzieje Panowania Zygmunta III, 286; Titov, “Istoriia Dimitriia i Mariny,” 137. 86. RIB, 1:53; Niemcewicz, Dzieje Panowania Zygmunta III, 287; Titov, “Istoriia Dimitriia i Mariny,” 138. 87. RIB, 1:55–56; Niemcewicz, Dzieje Panowania Zygmunta III, 288; Titov, “Istoriia Dimitriia i Mariny,” 138. 88. See “Veni Creator,” in Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, 3rd rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1698 (and the sources cited in this entry); Geoffrey Chew, “The Early Cyclic Mass as an Expression of Royal and Papal Supremacy,” Music and Letters 53, no. 3 (1972): 254–69; and Charles S. Nutter and Wilbur F. Tillett, The Hymns and Hymn Writers of the Church (New York: The Methodist Book Concern, 1911), 108 (no. 194). 89. RIB, 1:56; Niemcewicz, Dzieje Panowania Zygmunta III, 288; Titov, “Istoriia Dimitriia i Mariny,” 138. 90. RIB, 1:57; Niemcewicz, Dzieje Panowania Zygmunta III, 288–89; Titov, “Istoriia Dimitriia i Mariny,” 138. 91. RIB, 1:57. 92. RIB, 1:57. 93. RIB, 1:58. 94. RIB, 1:58–59. 95. See the diagram in RIB, 1:59, 776n3. 96. RIB, 1:61–62. 97. RIB, 1:64. 98. For the gifts, see RIB, 1:72–80, 776–77n4; Niemcewicz, Dzieje Panowania Zygmunta III, 292–96; Titov, “Istoriia Dimitriia i Mariny,” 141–42. 99. RIB, 1:59–60; Niemcewicz, Dzieje Panowania Zygmunta III, 289. 100. RIB, 1:61. 101. RIB, 1:61, 71. 102. RIB, 1:62–63. 103. RIB, 1:64–65. 104. RIB, 1:66–67. 105. RIB, 1:67–68. 106. RIB, 1:70. 107. RIB, 1:69. 108. RIB, 1:69. 109. See Nancy Shields Kollmann, “The Seclusion of Elite Muscovite Women,” Russian History 10, pt. 2 (1983): 170–87; and Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols, 64–84.

NOTES TO PAGES 1 2 6 – 1 2 8     289

110. Culture and manners is a sprawling topic. See, e.g., Gary Marker, Joan Neuberger, Marshall Poe, and Susan Rupp, eds., Everyday Life in Russian History: Quotidian Studies in Honor of Daniel Kaiser (Bloomington: Slavica Publishers, 2010); Irena Grudzinska Gross, “The Tangled Tradition: Custine, Herberstein, Karamzin, and the Critique of Russia,” Slavic Review 50, no. 4 (1991): 989–98; and the classic Anatole G. Mazour, “Curtains in the Past,” Journal of Modern History 20, no. 3 (1948): 212–22. 111. Although the setting and period are different, see nonetheless the useful treatment in Barbara Skinner, The Western Front of the Eastern Church: Uniate and Orthodox Conflict in 18th-century Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009). 112. RIB, 1:51. 113. Uspenskii, “Svad’ba Lzhedmitriia,” 406, who cites references to Jan Żabczyc, Neri Giraldi, an anonymous author (published by Barezzo Barezzi), and the Jesuit Jan Velevicki. For Margaret, see Jacques Margeret, The Russian Empire and Grand Duchy of Muscovy: A 17th-Century French Account, trans. and ed. Chester S. L. Dunning (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1983), 69, 72. See also Stanisław Żółkiewski, Zapiski Getmana Zholkevskogo o Moskovskoi voine, ed. P. A. Mukhanov, 2nd ed. (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Edvarda Pratsa, 1871), 11 (cf. the note ***, where the editor uses the word obruchenie instead of brak, as in the main text). 114. Levin, Sex and Society, 89–95; Nikol’skii, Posobie k izucheniiu ustava, 724–27. 115. SGGD, 2:229 (no. 105). 116. Conrad Bussov, The Disturbed State of the Russian Realm, trans. and ed. G. Edward Orchard (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994), 53. 117. SGGD, 2:236 (no. 109). 118. SGGD, 2:254 (no. 118), 281 (no. 131), 182 (no. 132). 119. SGGD, 2:241 (no. 112), 248 (no. 113). 120. Uspenskii, “Svad’ba Lzhedmitriia,” 404. 121. Dunning, Russia’s First Civil War, 226. Dunning here calls Marina Dmitrii’s “fiancée.” See also Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 97. 122. See accounts in Bussov, Disturbed State of the Russian Realm, 57–60; Isaac Massa, A Short History of the Beginnings and Origins of These Present Wars in Moscow under the Reign of Various Sovereigns down to the Year 1610, trans. G. Edward Orchard (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 127–28; and Margeret, Russian Empire and the Grand Duchy of Muscovy, 72. See also the potent description in Kozliakov, Smuta v Rossii, 169–71. On the symbols and meaning of the entry of royal brides into capital cities, see Abby E. Zanger, Scenes from the Marriage of Louis XIV: Nuptial Fictions and the Making of Absolutist Power (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 136–63. 123. On these rituals and ceremonies, see Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 87–93. 124. Karazmin, Istoriia gosudarstva rossiiskogo, 11:153, 157. 125. Uspenskii, “Svad’ba Lzhedmitriia,” 408n7. 126. SGGD, 2:290 (no. 138); Uspenskii, “Svad’ba Lzhedmitriia,” 418–20. 127. Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 87–93; Zabelin, Domashnii byt russkikh tsarits, 216, 221, 243–49. 128. DRV, 13:116–22; SGGD, 2:289–92 (no. 138). 129. Kozliakov, Smuta v Rossii, 170–75; Dunning, Russia’s First Civil War, 227–31; Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 98. 130. Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 98.

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131. DRV, 13:5, 29. The more common day for a wedding was Sunday. 132. See S. V. Bulgakov, Nastol’naia kniga dlia sviashchenno-tserkovno-sluzhitelei, 2 vols. (repr., Moscow: Izdatel’skii otdel Moskovskogo Patriarkhata, 1993), 2:1235; and Nikol’skii, Posobie k izucheniiu ustava, 723. 133. See, e.g., O. B. Alekseev, et al., eds., Istoricheskie pesni XVII veka (MoscowLeningrad: Nauka, 1966), 27–45 (nos. 4–25). 134. SGGD, 2:289 (no. 138). 135. Uspenskii, “Svad’ba Lzhedmitriia,” 407. 136. SGGD, 2:290. 137. See Uspenskii, “Svad’ba Lzhedmitriia,” 418; A. [A.] Dmitrievskii, Arkhiepiskop Elassonskii Arsenii i memuary ego iz russkoi istorii (Kiev: Tipografiia Imperatorskogo universiteta sv. Vladimira, 1899), 104–5. 138. Uspenskii, “Svad’ba Lzhedmitriia,” 418. 139. See Slovar’ russkogo iazyka X–XVII vv., 10:324. 140. The term velikaia gosudarynia would be used in reference to the nun Marfa Ivanovna Shestova, the mother of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov, after 1613, and then by Marfa’s great-granddaughter, Sofiia Alekseevna (d. 1704), the effective ruler of Russia during much of the minority of Ivan V and Peter I. Use of gosudarynia (without the addition of velikaia) dates back to Ivan IV’s time. See Sergei Bogatyrev, “Ivan IV (1533–1584),” in The Cambridge History of Russia, ed. Maureen Perrie, vol. 1: Early Rus’ to 1689 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 240. On the male form of the title (gosudar’), the best treatment remains Marc Szeftel, “The Title of the Muscovite Monarch up to the End of the Seventeenth Century,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 13, nos. 1–2 (1979): 59–81. 141. Uspenskii, “Svad’ba Lzhedmitriia,” 409. 142. See Mikhailova, I zdes’ soshlis’ vse tsarstva, 9–78; and the still essential Majeska, “Moscow Coronation of 1498 Reconsidered.” 143. See Andrei V. Psarev, “The 19th Canonical Answer of Timothy of Alexandria: On the History of Sacramental Oikonomia,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 51, nos. 2–3 (2007): 297–320. Uspenskii argues that there are three liturgical moments when anointing happens: baptism, coronation, and chrismation, but baptism and chrismation are performed at the same time, one immediately after the other. It seems more reasonable to think of two, rather than three, liturgical occasions when the “Seal of the Holy Spirit” is bestowed. 144. Uspenskii, “Svad’ba Lzhedmitriia,” 404, 412. 145. Uspenskii, “Svad’ba Lzhedmitriia,” 412. 146. Uspenskii, “Svad’ba Lzhedmitriia,” 413. 147. SGGD, 2:292; Uspenskii, “Svad’ba Lzhedmitriia,” 414. 148. Dmitrievskii, Arkhiepiskop Elassonskii Arsenii, 111–12. Patriarch Filaret, who attended the wedding and coronation, later insisted that the couple did commune. But this claim is almost certainly false, designed after the fact to discredit the First False Dmitrii as a defiler of the “Holy Things for the holy.” See Uspenskii, “Svad’ba Lzhedmitriia,” 412–15. The Piskarevskii Chronicle splits the difference, reporting that the First False Dmitrii communed but Marina/Mariia did not (PSRL, 24:207). 149. DRV reports that Patriarch Ignatii performed the wedding as well as the coronation of Marina/Mariia, but that is likely to be a scribal error in the source. See DRV, 13:116; RIB, 13:743; Uspenskii, “Svad’ba Lzhedmitriia,” 408n6.

NOTES TO PAGES 1 3 2 – 1 3 9     291

150. Uspenskii, “Svad’ba Lzhedmitriia,” 414n27. 151. Victor Turner, Schism and Continuity in an African Society: A Study of Ndembu Village Life (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1957), 303. 152. See Kollmann, Russian Empire, 149; and Sergei Bogatyrev, “Ivan the Terrible Discovers the West: The Cultural Transformation of Autocracy during the Early Northern Wars,” Russian History 32, nos. 1–4 (2007): 161–88. See also the useful Richard A. Jackson, Vive le Roi: A History of the French Coronation from Charles V to Charles X (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), esp. the introduction and chaps. 11 and 13. 5. “To Serve without Regard for Place”

1. DR, 1:630, 641–42. 2. DR, 1:631–33; DRV, 13:140; RGADA, fond 181, no. 123, fols. 14–14v. 3. DR, 1:631–33; DRV, 13:140. 4. Eskin, Ocherki istorii mestnichestva, 237. 5. Eskin, Mestnichestvo v Rossii, 157 (no. 1187). 6. See the Boyar Book for 1616/17 in Akty Moskovskogo gosudarstva, izdannye Imperatorskoiu Akademieiu nauk, 3 vols. (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Imperatorskoi akademii nauk, 1890–1901), 1:138 (no. 108); and the reconstruction of the lists of boyars between 1616 and 1624 in Poe et al., Russian Elite, 1:90–105. 7. DR, 1:640, 641. 8. DR, 1:1219; DRV, 13:140; Eskin, Mestnichestvo v Rossii, 157 (nos. 1187–90). 9. DR, 1:642. 10. Eskin, Ocherki istorii mestnichestva, 237; A. I. Markevich, Istoriia mestnichestva v Moskovskom gosudarstve v XV–XVII veke (Odessa: Tipografiia “Odesskogo vestnika,” 1888), 338–41, 479–80, 525; Markevich, O mestnichestve (Kiev: Tipografiia M. P. Fritza, 1879), 115–16, 521, 809; Markevich, Grigorii Karpovich Kotoshikhin, 153; Solov’ev, Istoriia Rossii, 5:266; and N. N. Golitsyn, Rod kniazei Golitsynykh, vol. 1: Materialy rodoslovnye (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia I. N. Skorokhodova, 1892), 116, 340, 343, 413. 11. See Buganov, Razriadnye knigi; Poe, “Muscovite Personnel Records, 1475– 1550”; Martin, “Archival Sleuths and Documentary Transpositions”; B. N. Morozov, “Deloproizvodstvo i arkhiv v krupnoi boiarskoi votchine XVII veka,” in Istochnikovedcheskie issledovaniia po istorii feodal’noi Rossii: Sbornik statei, ed. V. I. Buganov (Moscow: Institut istorii, AN SSSR, 1981), 116–49; and Morozov, “Chastnye arkhivy russkikh feodalov XVII” (Cand. diss., Institut istorii, AN SSSR, 1984). For remnants of the Golitsyn archive, see A. V. Antonov, “Chastnye arkhivy russkikh feodalov XV– nachala XVII vekov,” Russkii diplomatarii 8 (2002): 91–92. 12. Pennington, O Rossii v carstvovanie Alekseja Mixajloviča, 20; Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Alexis Mikhailovich,” 37–38, Poe, Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich, 33. 13. See Pennington, O Rossii v carstvovanie Alekseja Mixajloviča, 20 (fols. 8v–9); Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 38 and 322–23 (n. 44); and Poe, Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich, 33. 14. Sakharov, Skazaniia russkogo naroda, 8. 15. Sakharov, Skazaniia russkogo naroda, 8–10. 16. Sakharov, Skazaniia russkogo naroda, 10.

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17. Sakharov, Skazaniia russkogo naroda, 10–12. 18. Bychkova, Sostav, 104–43. 19. Bychkova, Sostav, 114–15; 137–39. 20. Bychkova, Sostav, 137. 21. Bychkova, Sostav, 138. 22. Bychkova, Sostav, 115. 23. Bychkova, Sostav, 115. 24. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 15, fols. 1–2, 17–18. 25. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 25, fols. 43–56v. 26. On both gift ledgers, see Martin, “Muscovite Royal Weddings,” 138–41 (no. 14) and 167–71 (no. 25). 27. See BAN, 16.15.15, fol 30; DRV, 13:5. See also Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 40–43. 28. BAN, 16.15.15, fols. 42–42v. See Martin, “Gifts for the Bride,” 133–36. 29. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 4, fols. 2 and 3; DRV, 13:21. 30. BAN, 32.4.21, fol. 79v–81; DRV, 13:47, 48. 31. DRV, 13:80. 32. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 24, 26v–27. 33. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 30, fols. 52v–55. 34. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 31, fols. 22–28. 35. DRV has both Iurii and Dmitrii “in the Great Place” (DRV, 13:7, 15), whereas RK 1475–1605 has Iurii listed as proxy father and omits Dmitrii altogether (RK 1475– 1605, 1:192). Bychkova follows DRV’s arrangement of the two brothers (Sostav, 118). A better copy of the Vasilii III-Glinskaia ceremonial (BAN, 16.15.15) confirms Prince Iurii’s seating (BAN 16.15.15, fol. 64). 36. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 5, fol. 18; RK 1475–1605, 1:322; DRV, 13:29–30. 37. BAN, 32.4.21, fol. 72v; DRV, 13:36. 38. Vladimir Staritskii’s first wedding is in BAN, 32.4.21, fols. 79v–80; RK 1475– 1605, 1:367; and DRV, 13:46–47. For his second, see BAN, 16.15.15, 143v; RK 1475– 1605, 1:485; and DRV, 13:80. 39. For the Sobakina wedding, see BAN, 16.15.15, fols. 154v–55; RK 1475–1605, 2:285; and DRV, 13:86–87, 92. For the Vasil’chikova wedding, see RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 11, fols. 6–7; and Bychkova, Sostav, 133. For the Nagaia wedding, see BAN, 21.10.25, fols. 88–88v; RK 1475–1605, 3:169; and DRV, 13:112. 40. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 13, fol. 1; S. A. Belokurov, ed., Razriadnyia zapisi za Smutnoe vremia (7113–7121 gg.) (Moscow: Tipografiia Shtaba Moskovskogo voennogo okruga, 1907), 95, 119–20, 160, 175, 249, 269; DRV, 13:122. 41. Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich’s first wedding is in RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 15, fol. 3; and DRV, 13:137–38. His second is in RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 18, fol. 1. 42. Nikita Ivanovich’s absence is conspicuous. He had earlier played a leading role at the tsar’s coronation in 1645. See Archimandrite Leonid, Chin postavleniia na tsarstvo tsaria i velikogo kniazia Alekseia Mikhailovicha, published as a special edition of Pamiatniki drevnei pis’mennosti i isskustva (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia I. Voshchinskogo, 1882), 33–34, 35. See also Valerie A. Kivelson, “The Devil Stole His Mind: The Tsar and the 1648 Moscow Uprising,” American Historical Review 98, no. 3 (1993): 733–56; and Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors, 85–86, 186.

NOTES TO PAGES 1 4 3 – 1 4 5     293

43. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 24, fol. 2v; DRV, 13:178. See also Viacheslav Kozliakov, Tsar’ Aleksei Tishaishii: Letopis’ vlasti (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2018), 45–49. 44. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 30, fol. 7. Nikita Ivanovich Odoevskii may have also been originally appointed proxy father at the first wedding of Tsar Fedor Alekseevich in 1680, until the wedding celebrations were dramatically reduced and the old positions abolished. He is mentioned in the charred fragment of the first draft of the wedding ceremonial (RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 31, fol. 32). 45. BAN, 21.10.25, fol. 92; DRV, 13:116. 46. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 5, fol. 18; RK 1475–1605, 1:322; DRV, 13:30. 47. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 5, fol. 18; DRV, 13: 29–30; and Bychkova, Sostav, 139. 48. BAN, 21.10.25, fols. 88–88v; RK 1475–1605, 3:169; DRV, 13:112. 49. For the False Dmitrii, see BAN, 21.10.25, fol. 92; DRV, 13:116. For Vasilii Shuiskii, see RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 13, fol. 1; Belokurov, Razriadnyia zapisi za Smutnoe vremia, 95, 119–20, 160, 175, 249, 269; and DRV, 13:122. 50. Mikhail Fedorovich’s first wedding is in RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 15, fol. 3; and DRV, 13:38; his second in RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 18, fol. 1. 51. Aleksei Mikhailovich’s first wedding is in RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 24, fol. 2v; and DRV, 13:178; his second in RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 30, fol. 7. 52. DRV, 13:128–29. See also Beliakov, Chingisidy v Rossii, 105–22; and Beliakov, “Chingisidy v Rossii XV–XVI vekov,” 38 (no. 32). 53. Simeon Bekbulatovich (Sain Bulat) married Anastasiia Ivanovna Mstislavskaia, a scion of the dynasty, in late 1575 or early 1576. See PSRL, 34:192 (Piskarevskii Chronicle), and 226 (Moskovskii Chronicle); Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 149–51; and Beliakov, “Chingisidy v Rossii XV–XVI vekov,” 42 (no. 46). Marfa Vasil’evna Shuiskaia, a great-granddaughter of Ivan III, married Ivan Dmitrievich Bel’skii in 1554. See DRV, 13:73–79; and Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 150. 54. DRV, 13:138. 55. On the tysiatskii as a rank in Kievan Rus’ and Muscovy, see Kollmann, “Tysiatskii,” MERSH, 40:129–31; and B. A. Vorontsov-Vel’iaminov, “K istorii rostovosuzdal’skikh i moskovskikh tysiatskikh,” in Istoriia i genealogiia: S. B. Veselovskii i problemy istoriko-genealogicheskikh issledovanii, ed. B. A. Rybakov, N. I. Pavlenko, et al. (Moscow: Nauka, 1977), 124–39; and Sakharov, Skazaniia russkogo naroda, 8–9. On weddings (particularly Ivan IV’s first) as familial, dynastic events, see Sergei Bogatyrev, “Reinventing the Russian Monarchy in the 1550s: Ivan the Terrible, the Dynasty, and the Church,” Slavonic and East European Review 85, no. 2 (April 2007): 277–82. 56. RK 1475–1605, 1:192; DRV, 13:5. 57. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 4, fol. 1; RK 1475–1605, 1:233; DRV, 13:20. 58. Ivan IV’s wedding is in RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 5, fol. 18; RK 1475–1605, 1:322; and DRV, 13:30. Iurii Vasil’evich’s wedding is in BAN, 32.4.21, fol. 72v; DRV, 13:36. 59. BAN, 16.15.15, fols. 154v–55; RK 1475–1605, 2:285; DRV, 87, 92 (Sobakina); RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 11, fol. 7; Bychkova, Sostav, 133 (Vasil’chikova); BAN, 21.10.25, fols. 88–88v; RK 1475–1605, 3:169; DRV, 112 (Nagaia).

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60. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 15, fol. 3 (first); RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 16, fol. 10 (second). 61. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 24, fol. 2v. On Prince Ivan Borisovich’s death, see Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors, 180. 62. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 30, fol. 7. 63. DRV, 13:123. 64. Ivan’s best men were D. F. Bel’skii and I. M. Iur’ev (the bride’s first cousin). Anastasiia’s first best man was I. I. Pronskii. See DRV, 13:30; and BAN, 32.4.21, fol. 67v. Anastasiia’s second best man was M. Ia. Morozov (DRV, 13:30). 65. I. M. Shuiskii summoned the groom; D. D. Pronskii attended Prince Iurii; Iu. V. Glinskii arranged the wedding bed and bathed with the groom; M. V. Glinskii served as master of the horse; and I. I. Khoborov carried the wine (DRV, 13: 30, 31, 32, 33, 34). On the number and identity of boyars in 1547, see Ann M. Kleimola, “Patterns of Duma Recruitment, 1505–1550,” in Essays in Honor of A. A. Zimin, 250–56; A. A. Zimin, “Sostav boiarskoi dumy XV–XVI vekakh,” Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik za 1957 (Moscow: Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1958), 51–63; and Kollmann, Kinship and Politics, appendix 2: “Clan Biographies.” 66. DRV, 13:31. 67. Daniil Romanovich Iur’ev, the bride’s brother, walked before the groom in the procession to the church (RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 5, fol. 20; Bychkova, Sostav, 140; DRV, 13:31). Ivan Ivanovich Bezzubtsov assembled the deti boiarskie (RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 5, fol. 19; Bychkova, Sostav, 140; DRV, 13:31 [Bezzubtsov’s rank is omitted]). On the number and identity of okol’nichie in 1547, see Kleimola, “Patterns of Duma Recruitment,” 250–56; Zimin, “Sostav boiarskoi dumy,” 82; and Kollmann, Kinship and Politics, appendix 2. 68. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 16. The boyars were I. N. Romanov, I. B. Cherkasskii, I. I. Shuiskii, V. P. Morozov, M. B. Shein, F. I. Sheremetev, B. M. Lykov, D. M. Pozharskii, I. M. Odoevskii, Iu. Ia. Suleshev, A. Iu. Sitskii, D. I. Mezetskii, D. M. Cherkasskii, I. I. Odoevskii, A. V. Sitskii, and A. V. Khilkov. 69. Boris Mikhailovich Saltykov had been demoted to dumnyi dvorianin before the wedding in connection with the Khlopova affair. See Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 169–85. Prince Ivan Vasil’evich Golitsyn had been exiled to Perm’, as we have seen. Prince Ivan Mikhailovich Vorotynskii died on January 8, 1627, and presumably was too ill or old to attend. See Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors, 178, 180–81. Other boyars not listed include I. S. Kurakin, M. M. Godunov, A. V. Lobanov-Rostovskii, P. P. Golovin, G. P. Romodanovskii, and S. V. Golovin. Vladimir Timofeevich Dolgorukov, the father of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich’s first wife, was also not listed. He was clearly not in favor by February 1626 and had been appointed governor (voevoda) of Vologda in that year, a form of internal exile. See Miloradovich, “Tsaritsa Mariia Vladimirovna,” 32. 70. The okol’nichie listed are A. V. Izmailov, Prince G. K. Volkonskii, F. L. Buturlin, and L. I. Dolmatov-Karpov. Mikhail Mikhailovich Saltykov was in disgrace with his brother Boris over the Khlopova affair. Prince F. I. Lykov died in 1627/28. See Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors, 182, 183. 71. The cupbearer (kravchii) was Prince V. la. Suleshev; the majordomo (dvoretskii) Prince A. M. L’vov; the chamberlain (postel’nichii) K. I. Mikhalkov; the council

NOTES TO PAGES 1 4 6 – 1 5 2     295

secretaries (dumnye d’iaki) T. I. Lugovskii, F. F. Likhachev, and I. T. Gramotin; and the equerry (iasel’nichii) B. M. Glebov. 72. The reconciliatory nature of these weddings was noted also by Kollmann, Kinship and Politics, 168–80. 73. Bychkova, Sostav, 140. 74. BAN, 32.4.21, fol. 67v; DRV, 13:30. 75. Bychkova, Sostav, 122–25, 139–43; RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 5, fols. 13–31 (version l), fols. 32–42 (version 2), and fols. 43–54 (version 3). 76. The wedding of Mikhail Fedorovich and Evdokiia Streshneva is described in RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 14, fols. 27, 31; no 18, fols. 31, 38, 39, 40, 43, and elsewhere. 77. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 18, fol. 1. 78. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 21, fols. 1–71 (ceremonial); no. 22, fols. 63–77 (muster). 79. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 22, fol. 63 (Vsevolozhskii wedding); fol. 78 (Miloslavskii wedding). 80. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 22, fol. 65 (Vsevolozhskii wedding); fols. 81–82 (Miloslavskii wedding). 81. See Martin, “Political Folkways and Praying for the Dead in Muscovy”; and Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 190–96. 82. Compare RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 22, fols. 67–71, 76 (Vsevolozhskii wedding); fols. 83–88; and RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 24, fols. 2v, 4v, 5v, 29v–31v, 43–44v (Miloslavskii wedding). 83. On Golitsyn and Trubetskoi as candidates in 1613, see L. E. Morozova, Rossiia na puti iz Smuty: Izbranie na tsarstvo Mikhaila Fedorovicha (Moscow: Nauka, 2005), 138–41; Dunning, Russia’s First Civil War, 441; and Platonov, Ocherki po istorii smuty, 423–29. See also Iu. M. Eskin, Dmitrii Mikhailovich Pozharskii (Moscow: Kvadriga, 2013), 103–10. 84. On Shuiskii, see G. V. Abramovich, Kniaz’ia Shuiskie i rossiiskii tron (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Leningradskogo universiteta, 1991), 173. 85. His uncle. Ivan Vasil’evich, had married Efimiia Nikitichna, the aunt of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich. 86. Raf/Fedor Rodionovich Vsevolozhskii—the father of Efimiia, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s first betrothed—served as one of the bearers of the bride’s ceremonial bread (korovai) in 1626, at the wedding of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich and Evdokiia Streshneva (RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 16, fol. 14v). At the same wedding, Il’ia Daniilovich Miloslavskii—the father of Tsar Aleksei’s first bride, Mariia—served food to the tsar’s table at one of the banquets, and one other Miloslavskii, Bogdan, was to serve in some unspecified capacity. Daniilo Ivanovich Miloslavskii, the future tsaritsa’s grandfather, was first inscribed between the lines of a wedding roster (without any indication of his duties), then later crossed out. (See RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 14, fols. 55, 39, and 41.) 87. Levin, Sex and Society, 87, 168; Kaiser, “Symbol and Ritual,” 255. 88. DRV, 6. But compare Bychkova, Sostav, 120; and M. E. Bychkova, “Rodoslovie Glinskikh iz Rumiantsevskogo sobraniia,” Zapisi Otdela rukopisei GBL 38 (1977): 122–23.

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89. See RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 5, fols. 18–31; Bychkova, Sostav, 140–43; and DRV, 13:29–35. 90. DRV, 13:46–57. 91. DRV, 13:73–77, 78–79. 92. DRV, 13:86–92, 92–97. 93. For the Vasil’chikova wedding, see RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 11; and A. A. Vasil’chikov, ed., “Chin brakosochetaniia tsaria Ivana Vasil’evicha s tsaritseiu Annoiu Vasil’chikovykh (7083/1575 g.),” Izvestiia russkogo genealogicheskogo obshchestva, no. 1, sect. 3 (St. Petersburg, 1900): 1–13. The Nagaia wedding is described in DRV, 13:112–16. 94. Jerzy Mniszech, the bride’s father, is referred to as the “governor of Sandomierz” (voevoda sendomirskii). See RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 12, fols. 2 and 8; and “Otryvok brachnogo obriada, pri Lzhedimitrievoi svad’be s Marinoiu Sendomirskoiu proiskhodivshago,” in SGGD, pt. 2 (Moscow: Tipografiia N. S. Vsevolozhskogo, 1819): 290, 291 (no. 138). 95. DRV, 13:116–22. 96. DRV, 13:122–27. 97. DRV, 13:137–44. 98. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, nos. 16, 17. 99. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, nos. 21–24. 100. Anna, the wife of Prince Vasilii L’vovich Glinskii, and Kseniia, the wife of Prince Iurii Vasil’evich Glinskii, were assigned to sit at the main banquet table (za stolom). Kseniia, the wife of Prince Mikhail Vasil’evich Glinskii, was assigned to the bedchamber. The boyar Prince Iurii Vasil’evich Glinskii attended the groom in the baths, and the boyar Prince Mikhail Vasil’evich was the master of the horse (DRV, 13:30, 32, 34; Bychova, Sostav, 140, 141, 142). 101. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 29, fol. 10 (Matvei Bogdanovich Miloslavskii, who walked in the cortège), fol. 35v (okol’nichii Ivan Mikhailovich Miloslavskii, who sat at the main banquet table), fol. 36 (Ivan Bogdanovich Miloslavskii, who tended to the benches for the church wedding), and fol. 48 (Il’ia Daniilovich Miloslavskii, the tsar’s first father-in-law, who, with five others, manned the stairway leading out of the palace). 102. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 30, fols. 8v, 21, 21v; Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 196–201; Sedov, Zakat Moskovskogo tsarstva, 354–58. On Matveev, see André Berelowitch, “A Different Use of Literacy: The 1676 Witchcraft Allegations against A. S. Matveev,” Russian History 40, nos. 3–4 (2013): 331–51. 103. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 32. 104. RGADA, fond 210, Moskovskii stol, no 621, fols. 238–42, at fols. 240, 241v. See also Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 216–19, 323n84; and Sedov, Zakat Moskovskogo tsarstva, 383–91. 105. See Eskin, Ocherki istorii mestnichestva, 233–39; Robert O. Crummey, “Reflections on Mestnichestvo in the 17th Century,” Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte 27 (1980): 275; and E. A. Vasil’evskaia, “Terminologiia mestnichestva i rodstva,” Trudy Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo istoriko-arkhivnogo instituta 2 (1946): 155–79. 106. On the wedding, see PSRL, 24:232; Kollmann, Kinship und Politics, 133, 135, 267n76, 271n53; and Karamzin, Istoriia gosudarstva rossiiskogo, bk. 2, vol. 5, chapter 2, n. 254, col. 109. The bride’s name is reported differently in sources: as Mariia or

NOTES TO PAGES 1 5 4 – 1 5 8     297

Anna. See Baumgarten, “Généalogies des branches régnantes de Rurikides,” 20n8; and Kollmann, Kinship and Politics, 131. There is also disagreement over parentage: whether Mariia/Anna was the daughter of Dmitrii Donskoi or Vasilii I (Baumgarten, “Généalogies des branches régnantes de Rurikides,” 20n8). I follow Kollmann’s lead that the bride’s name is Anna, the daughter of Vasilii I. 107. On the Patrikeev and Saburov clans, see Kollmann, Kinship and Politics, 225– 26, 232–34; and Zimin, Formirovanie boiarskoi aristokratii, 29–35, 191–95. 108. For the account, see M. [A.] Korkunov, ed., Pamiatniki XV veka: Akty iz dela o mestnichestve Saburova s Zabolotskim (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi akademii nauk, 1857), 27; and S. B. Veselovskii, Issledovaniia po istorii klassa sluzhilykh zemlevladel’tsev (Moscow: Nauka, 1969), 24. On the expression “God in your kika,” see S. M. Solov’ev, “Neskol’ko ob”iasnitel’nykh slov po povodu drevneishego mestnichestogo dela,” Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 54 (1847): 239. 109. On the “Kika Tale,” see Kollmann, By Honor Bound, 148. A. A. Zimin expressed doubts about its provenance in “Istochniki po istorii mestnichestva v XV–pervoi treti XVI v.,” Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik za 1968 god (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1970), 114. Markevich seems to accept it as authentic (O mestnichestve, 783); as do Veselovskii, Issledovaniia po istorii klassa sluzhilykh zemlevladel’tsev, 25; and Korkunov, Pamiatniki, 20–21. 110. Kollmann, By Honor Bound, 148. 111. DRV, 13:1–5. “Angelov” is rendered “Anchelov” (DRV, 13:2; BAN, 31.6.40, fols. 3–3v), “An’elov” (BAN, 16.15.15, fols. 27–30v), “An’illov” (BAN, 32.4.21, fols. 23v–26), and “Anuchellov” (BAN, 21.10.25, fols. 1–1v). On Angelov, see Zimin, Rossiia na rubezhe, 101, 185; and S. B. Veselovskii, Onomastikon (Moscow: Nauka, 1971), 14. 112. DRV, 13:81–82. 113. The two sets of muster books are described in V. I. Buganov, Razriadnye knigi; and Ankhimiuk, Chastnye razriadnye knigi. GR is cited here as RK 1475–1598, and PR as RK 1475–1605. 114. Kollmann, Kinship and Politics, 124. 115. The text of this document has been published previously: VIMOIDR, bk. 14 (1852), II: 1–18; and Likhachev, Razriadnye d’iaki XVI veka, 206–8. See also Martin, “ ‘To Serve without Regard to Place’ ”; Martin, “Ritual and Religion”; Eskin, Mestnichestvo v Rossii, 91–92 (no. 512); and Markevich, O mestnichestve, 345–47. 116. DRV, 13:98; Martin, “Ritual and Religion,” 368–69. The details of this case also reveal that all extant copies of Magnus’s wedding muster today are copies of Shchelkalov’s forgery inasmuch as they all contain the falsified lines (the omission of Trubetskoi and the insertion of Vasilii Shchelkalov). 117. On the case, see Eskin, Mestnichestvo v Rossii, 162 (no. 1231). 118. VIMOIDR, book 14, sect. 2 (1852): 69, 105–6; Eskin, Ocherki istorii mestnichestva, 233–34n. 265. 119. Shmidt, Opisi, 41. The ceremonial includes a genealogy of the bride: “In the year 1554, the eighth day of November, Tsar and Grand Prince Ivan Vasil’evich of all Russia married Prince Ivan Dmitrievich Bel’skii to Princess Marfa, the daughter of Vasilii Vasil’evich Shuiskii, and the maternal granddaughter of Tsarevich Peter” (DRV, 13:73; BAN, 16.15.15, fol. 134; PSRL, 13:253). 120. Compare DRV, 13:74 (short redaction), and, e.g., BAN, 16.15.15, fols. 134v– 35 (long redaction).

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121. See Bychkova, Sostav, 106–14; Martin, “Archival Sleuths and Documentary Transpositions.” 122. See DRV, 13:115; BAN, 21.10.25, fol. 91. See also Iu. M. Eskin, “Smuta i mestnichestvo,” Arkhiv russkoi istorii 3 (1993): 63–124. 123. DRV, 13: 83–85, 112–16; RK 1475–1605, 3:173, 174. See also Ankhimiuk, Chastnye razriadnye knigi, 104–18. 124. Markevich, O mestnichestve, 118–19. See also Eskin, Ocherki istorii mestnichestva, 234–35. 125. The sources do not indicate that Andrei Fedorovich Nagoi, who sat fourth in the okol’nichii’s place, was included in the suit. See DRV, 84,113; and Eskin, Mestnichestvo v Rossii, no. 313. 126. DRV, 13:117. 127. Belokurov, Razriadnye zapisi, 160 (see also 120). 128. Dolgorukova: DR, 1:763; RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 16, fols. 5v–6. 129. Vsevolozhskaia (RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 21, fols. 1v, 2v); Miloslavskaia (RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 24, fols. 1v–2); Naryshkina (RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 30, fol. 6). 130. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 24, fols. 1v–2. 131. Markevich listed only four weddings that were bez mest: Bel’skii-Shuiskaia, the First False Dmitrii, Mikhail Romanov and Evdokiia Streshneva, and Aleksei Mikhailovich and Mariia Miloslavskaia (O mestnichestve, 115–16). 132. Iu. M. Eskin, “Vstrecha liudei Srednevekov’ia na poroge veka Prosveshcheniia (kniaz’ Kurakin i gertsov Sen-Simon),” Vivliofika: E-Journal of Eighteenth-Century Russian Studies, no. 3 (2015): 11. 133. Arkhiv kn. F. A. Kurakina, ed. M. I. Semevskii, 10 vols. (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia V. S. Balasheva, 1890–1902), 3:310–11. 134. See Eskin, Mestnichestvo v Rossii: Ivan IV and Mariia Nagaia, 70–71 (nos. 310– 13); Vasilii Shuiskii and Ekaterina/Mariia Buinosova-Rostovskaia, 133 (nos. 943–45); Mikhail Kaibulin and Mariia Liapunova, 144 (nos. 1060–62); and Mikhail Fedorovich and Mariia Dolgorukova, 157 (nos. 1185–90). 135. According to Eskin (Mestnichestvo v Rossii), in 1580, the year of the Nagaia wedding, all the other twenty-four nonwedding related suits pertained to military commands or governorships (nos. 290–309, 314–17). In 1608, the year of Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii’s wedding, disputes over military-related appointments constituted twelve of the eighteen suits—a full two-thirds (nos. 941, 947–53, 955–58); one case involved an audience (vstrecha, no. 940); and two are unidentified (nos. 938 and 954). In 1623, the year Kaibulin was married, eight suits (or 47 percent) pertained to military matters (nos. 1163–70); three to postings in the tsar’s body guard (rynda, nos. 1171–73); one to an audience (no. 1174); one to an investigation (syska, no. 1175); and one to unknown causes (no. 59). In 1624, when Mikhail Romanov married, seven of the seventeen cases (or 41 percent) pertained to military matters (nos. 1176–78, 1180–83); one to banquet seating (no. 1179); and three unknown (nos. 1191–93). See DR, 1:1221; and Eskin, Mestnichestvo v Rossii, no. 1188. 136. See DR, 1:1221; and Eskin, Mestnichestvo v Rossii, no. 1188. 137. Crummey, “Reflections on Mestnichestvo,” 137. 138. Kollmann, Kinship and Politics, 175.

NOTES TO PAGES 1 6 3 – 1 6 7     299

6. “To See Your Royal Children on the Thrones”

1. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 14, fols. 7–8; Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 141. The task of sending these gifts to the nun Dar’ia from Tsar Mikhail’s first wedding was originally given to her kinsman, Dmitrii Koltovskii, whose name appears on one extant gift list (RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 15, fol. 2). Koltovskii’s name is crossed out and replaced with Gagarin’s. 2. See Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 186–87, 324n78; and Zabelin, Domashnii byt russkikh tsarits, 241–42. 3. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 19, fols. 1, 2–3. Both ex-tsaritsy died within months of Tsar Mikhail’s second wedding: Dar’ia in April 1626 (Baumgarten, “Généalogies des branches régnantes de Rurikides,” 18–19 [Table III], 24); and Elena in July 1626 (Petr Dolgorukov, ed., Rossiiskaia rodoslovnaia kniga, 4 vols. [St. Petersburg, 1854–1857], 4:308). 4. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 19, fol. 2. 5. A source-based fictional account appears in Russell E. Martin, “Anna Koltovskaia: A Russian Tsaritsa,” in Portraits of Old Russia: Imagined Lives of Ordinary People, 1300–1725, ed. Donald Ostrowski and Marshall T. Poe (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2011), 3–13. 6. Inscriptions in many of the gift-related documents for Tsar Mikhail’s and Tsar Aleksei’s weddings indicate that the letters to and from the tsars were to be read aloud: “napisano v doklad,” “chtenie v stolp,” “v stolp,” and so on. See, e.g., RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 15, fols. 39v, 40v; no. 19, fol. 9v. 7. Mauss, Gift, 39. 8. See Claude Lévi-Strauss, Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss, trans. Felicity Baker (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987); Annette Weiner, Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-while-Giving (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Maurice Godelier, The Enigma of the Gift, trans. Nora Scott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Natalie Zemon Davis, The Gift in SixteenthCentury France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Arnoud-Jan A. Bijsterveld, “The Medieval Gift as Agent of Social Bonding and Political Power: A Comparative Approach,” in Medieval Transformations: Texts, Power, and Gifts in Context, ed. Esther Cohen and Mayke B. de Jong (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 123–56; and Komter, Social Solidarity and the Gift. 9. Douglas, “Foreword: No Free Gifts,” in Mauss, Gift, vii. 10. Ilana F. Silber, “Gifts in Rites of Passage or Gifts as Rites of Passage? Standing at the Threshold between Van Gennep and Marcel Mauss,” Journal of Classical Sociology 18, no. 4 (2018): 351. 11. Bjørn Thomassen, “The Hidden Battle That Shaped the History of Sociology: Arnold van Gennep contra Emile Durkheim,” Journal of Classical Sociology 16, no. 2 (2016): 2173–95; and Silber, “Gifts in Rites of Passage.” 12. Silber, “Gifts in Rites of Passage,” 356. 13. Silber, “Gifts in Rites of Passage,” 353. 14. Florin Curta, “Merovingian and Carolingian Gift Giving,” Speculum 81, no. 3 (2006): 677. 15. Curta, “Merovingian and Carolingian Gift Giving,” 698. 16. Curta, “Merovingian and Carolingian Gift Giving,” 698–99.

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17. Curta, “Merovingian and Carolingian Gift Giving,” 677–78. 18. The inventories are preserved in later copies, part of two manuscript compilations of wedding-related texts. Evdokiia Ivanovna and Tsarevich Peter (BAN, 16.15.15, fols. 30v–47; BAN 32.4.21, fols. 27–37v); Mariia Saburova and Starodubskii (BAN 16.15.15, fols. 47v–63v; BAN 32.3.21, fols. 38–48). On these compilations, see Martin, “Muscovite Royal Weddings,” 81–86; Martin, “Archival Sleuths and Documentary Transpositions,” 253–300; and Bychkova, Sostav, 107–12. 19. BAN, 16.15.15, fol. 42v. 20. PSRL, 4:460, 466; Donald Ostrowski, “The Extraordinary Career of Tsarevich Kudai Kul/Peter in the Context of Relations between Muscovy and Kazan’,” in States, Societies, Cultures East and West: Essays in Honor of Jaroslaw Pelenski, ed. Janusz Duzinkiewicz (New York: Ross Publishing, 2004), 697. 21. BAN, 16.15.15, fols. 43–47. 22. Prince Andrei would be the only brother permitted to marry, and then only in 1533, after Vasilii III had secured the succession with the births of his sons Ivan (the future Ivan IV) and Iurii in 1530 and 1533, respectively. On Andrei’s wedding, see Martin, “Royal Weddings and Crimean Diplomacy”; and DRV, 13:19–29. 23. Most sources report Anastasiia as the name for both daughters, but we might agree with the later, though exceedingly reliable, Piskarevskii Chronicle, which reports that one of the two daughters was named Anna (PSRL, 34:178; Materialy po istorii SSSR, 2:21, 157n21). See also Russell E. Martin, “Gifts for the Dead: Death, Kinship, and Commemoration in Muscovy (The Case of the Mstislavskii Princely Clan),” Russian History 26 (Summer 1999): 171–202. 24. One of the daughters married Fedor Mikhailovich Mstislavskii. Their son, Ivan Fedorovich, and grandson, Fedor Ivanovich, were prominent boyars through to the extinction of the line in 1622. In 1575 or 1576, Fedor’s sister, Anastasiia, married Grand Prince Simeon Bekbulatovich, to whom Ivan IV temporarily abdicated his throne. A fragment of the wedding muster survives (PSRL, 34:226). The other daughter of Tsarevich Peter and Evdokiia married Vasilii Vasil’evich Shuiskii. Their daughter, Marfa, married Prince Ivan Dmitreevich Bel’skii in 1554. A complete wedding muster survives for their wedding (BAN, 16.15.15, fols. 134–42v; BAN, 32.4.21, fols. 100v–106v; DRV, 13:73–79; RK 1475–1605, 1:479–83; and Shmidt, ed., Opisi, 41 [fols. 341–341v]). 25. A. A. Zimin, “Ivan Groznyi i Simeon Bekbulatovich v 1575 g.,” in Iz istorii Tatarii, ed. N. M. Mun’kov et al., 4 vols. to date (Kazan’: Kazanskii gosudarstvennyi pedagogicheskii institut, 1965–), 4:146–47; Zimin, Rossiia na poroge novogo vremeni (Ocherki politicheskoi istorii Rossii pervoi treti XVI v.) (Moscow: Mysl’, 1972), 99; Zimin, V kanun groznykh potriasenii: Predposylki pervoi Krest’ianskoi voiny v Rossii (Moscow: Mysl’, 1986), 25. See also Ostrowski, “Extraordinary Career of Tsarevich Kudai Kul/ Peter,” 712n7; and Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 110, 116, 150. 26. BAN, 16.15.15, fols. 61r–61v. 27. BAN, 16.15.15, fols. 61v–62. 28. DRV, 13:41. 29. DRV, 13:23, 50, 64. 30. Bel’skii (BAN, 16.15.15, fol. 137v); Mikhail Fedorovich (RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 14, fols. 7–8 [first wedding]; DRV, 13:157 [second wedding]); Aleksei

NOTES TO PAGES 1 7 2 – 1 7 7     301

Mikhailovich (DRV, 13:197–98 [first wedding]; RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 30, fols. 23–23v, 36–36v [second wedding]). 31. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 15, fol. 30. The total includes 397 kerchiefs of taffeta with gold fringe given to the metropolitans, bishops, proxy parents, thousandman, best men, seated boyars and boyars’ wives, boyars and boyars’ wives at the nuptial bed or attending the bride, servitors who walked in procession, the officiating priest, and other officiating clergy and ranks of servitors holding high honorific posts at the wedding. Another 116 kerchiefs of taffeta with fringe of gold silk were given to chancery scribes who held honorific posts at the wedding and to commanders of guards at doors, portcullises, and gates; 191 kerchiefs of calico, muslin, or linen with fringe of gold silk went to zhil’tsy who served food and drink, cupbearers, chancery scribes and clerks, artisans in the tsar’s workshops, clergy, commanders of musketeer units, and guards at portcullises and gates. Last, 114 kerchiefs of muslin or linen, with fringe of silk without gold were given to clergy, chancery clerks, artisans in the tsar’s workshops, singers, and performing musicians. 32. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 25, fols. 43–51. 33. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 25, fol. 50. 34. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 4, fol. 5; DRV, 13:23. 35. The exception is the Bel’skii-Shuiskaia wedding, which merely reports that “the bride’s best men gave out [podali] ceremonial kerchiefs” without specifying to whom (DRV, 13:72). 36. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 16, fols. 22–23. 37. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 24, fols. 26v–27v. 38. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 15, fol. 18. 39. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 25, fol. 40. 40. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 15, fols. 2, 3, 18, 25–28, 31–41; no. 19; no. 25, fols. 1–2, 39, 44, 50; no. 26. 41. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 15, fol. 29. 42. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 15, fols. 31–33. 43. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 25, fol. 33. 44. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 25, fol. 33v. On the identification of Chistyi’s hand, see fol. 55. The petition was evidently made on January 26, the date it was acted on by the tsar (fol. 55). 45. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 25, fols. 34–35. 46. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 25, fols. 53–53v. 47. A summary of the entire episode up to this point is provided in a brief memorandum: RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 25, fols. 55–56v. Other petitions are extant as well, such as one from Borisko Fedorov syn Sukochev, a hundredman (sotnik) of the Moscow musketeers, who had manned Kolymazhnyi Gate during the wedding (RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 25, fols. 54–54v). 48. Pouncy, Domostroi, 205, 205n4, 206, 206n14, 209–11, 213, 220, 225–28, 230–33, 235–38; Pennington, O Rossii v carstvovanie Alekseja Mixajloviča, 23; Uroff, “On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 43, 326n63; Poe, Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich, 36. 49. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 4, fol. 10. 50. DRV, 13:44.

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51. On the state of the royal treasury, see Morozova, Rossiia na puti iz Smuty, 152–210. 52. Hierarchs not present got gifts sent to them (RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 15, fol. 1–16). 53. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 16, fols. 41v–43v. 54. For Tsar Aleksei’s first wedding, see RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 24, fols. 56–61; for his second, see RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 30, fols. 39v–41, 49–49v, 51v–61v. 55. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 30, fol. 61. 56. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 27, fol. 1. 57. Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich and his bride received gifts from the following (listed in the order they appear in the ledger): Patriarch Iosif, Metropolitan Varlam of Rostov, Metropolitan Serapion of Krutitsa, Archbishop Serapion of Suzdal’, Archbishop Moisei of Riazan’, Archbishop Iona of Tver’, Bishop Rafael of Kolomna; and the “authorities” of Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery, Nativity Monastery in Vladimir, Simonov Monastery, New Savior Monastery, Chudov Monastery, Kirillov Monastery, Savior Monastery in Yaroslavl’, Pafnut’ev Monastery in Borovsk, Solovetskii Monastery, Bogoiavlenskii Monastery in Kolomna, Savior-St. Evfimii Monastery in Suzdal’, Iosif-Volokolamskii Monastery, Znamenskii Monastery, Andronnikov Monastery, Savior Khutynia Monastery, Tikvin Monastery, Holy Trinity-St. Paul Monastery, Makar’ev Monastery in Galitskii district, and Nikol Ugreshskii Monastery (RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 27). 58. These ducats, or gold coins, were common gifts at weddings. According to Jacques Margeret, “Ducats become very valuable when an emperor is crowned or marries and [when there is an imperial] baptism, for everyone comes to offer him presents . . . Among these presents there are customarily a number of ducats.” See Margeret, Russian Empire and Grand Duchy of Muscovy, 40. 59. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 27, fols. 1–3. 60. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 27, fol. 17. 61. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 27, fol. 19. 62. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 27, fols. 8–12, 19. 63. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 15, fols. 34–41. 64. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 19. 65. While no such memoranda survived for either of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich’s weddings, they do survive for the courtiers performing these same courier tasks at the time of the first wedding of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich. See RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 26, fols. 14, 24, and 72. 66. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 19, fols. 4–5. 67. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 19, fol. 6. 68. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 19, fol. 9. 69. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 26, fols. 17, 39–40, 41–42. 70. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 26, fols. 25, 34–35, 36–37 (Moisei of Rostov); fols. 62–63, 64 (Simon of Kazan’); fols. 69–70, 71 (Pafnutii of Astrakhan’). 71. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 26, fols. 2 and 5. 72. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 26, fols. 47–48 (Romodanovskii), 60–61 (Saltykov).

NOTES TO PAGES 1 8 5 – 1 9 3     303

73. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 26, fols. 47–48. 74. See, for example, Donald Ostrowski, “Redating the Life of Alexander Nevskii,” in Rude  and Barbarous Kingdom Revisited, 23–39; Norman Ingham, “The Limits of Secular Biography in Medieval Slavic Literature, Particularly Old Russian,” in American Contributions to the Sixth International Congress of Slavists, Prague, 1968, August 7–13, 2 vols., ed. William E. Harkins (The Hague: Mouton, 1968) 1:193–94; and N[ikolai] Serebrianskii, Drevne-russkie kniazheskie zhitiia: Obzor redaktsii i teksty (Moscow: Sinodal’naia tipografiia, 1915). 75. See Boris N. Morozov, “Biblioteka-arkhiv gosudarevykh pevchikh d’iakov kontsa XVI–pervoi poloviny XVII veka,” in Levykin, Tsarskii khram, 428–45; Nikolaos Chrissidis, “Whoever Does Not Drink to the End, He Wishes Evil: Ritual Drinking and Politics in Early Modern Russia,” in New Muscovite Cultural History, 107–24. 76. On these fertility customs, see Kozachenko, “K istorii velikorusskogo svadebnogo obriada,” 64–65; and Pouncy, Domostroi, 204–39. 77. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 26, fols. 39–40. 78. RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 26, fols. 65–66. 79. Silber, “Gifts in Rites of Passage,” 349. 7. “Delight in Exposing the Old Methods of the Country”

1. PZh, 1712, 14, and note (a). On Menshikov, see N. I. Pavlenko, Menshikov: Poluderzhavnyi vlastelen, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2005); Pavlenko, Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov (Moscow: Nauka, 1981); and Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, 432–41. 2. “Diplomaticheskaia perepiska angliiskikh poslannikov pri russkom dvore,” in SbIRIO, 61:214 (no. 54). On the cup—possibly an early specimen of, and model for, later similar cups—see Marina Briukhanova, “Kubok Bol’shogo orla,” Nashe nasledie, no. 120 (2017): 138–41. 3. PZh, 1712, 14. On Buturlin’s title, see Zitser, Transfigured Kingdom, 188. 4. SbIRIO, 61:215–16. 5. Zitser, Transfigured Kingdom, 123. 6. See Richard H. Warner, “The KoŽukhovo Campaign of 1694, or The Conquest of Moscow by PreobraŽenskoe,” JGO 13, no. 4 (1965): 487–96; N. V. Ponyrko, “Russkie sviatki XVII v.,” TODRL 32 (1977): 84–99; Zitser, Transfigured Kingdom, 2–3, 70, 112, 129. 7. I. A. Zheliabuzhskii, “Zapiski Ivana Afanas’evicha Zheliabuzhskogo,” in Rossiiu podnial na dyby, ed. N. I. Pavlenko, 2 vols. (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1987), 1:413–14. On the question of authorship, compare Bushkovitch, Peter the Great, 35n47; and A. V. Zakharov, “ ‘Gosudarev dvor’ i ‘tsaredvortsy’ Petra I: Problemy terminologii i rekonstruktsii sluzhby,” in Praviashchie elity i dvorianstvo Rossii vo vremia i posle petrovskikh reform (1682–1750), ed. N. N. Petrukhintsev and Lorenz Erren (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2013), 36 (and n. 1). 8. Zheliabuzhskii, “Zapiski,” 413–14. 9. On the list of guests, see RGADA, fond 210, op. 22, no. 207, fols. 1–6v; and A. V. Zakharov, Gosudarev dvor Petra I: Publikatsiia i issledovanie massovykh istochnikov razriadnogo deloproizvodstva (Cheliabinsk: Izdatel’stvo Cheliabinskogo gosudarstvennogo

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universiteta, 2009), 28. See also Cornelius de Bruyn, Travels into Muscovy, Persia, and Part of the East Indies; Containing an Accurate Description of What is Most Remarkable in Those Countries, 2 vols. (London, 1737), 1:26–28; and John Perry, The State of Russia under the Present Czar (London, 1716), 237–41. On Perry, see Poe, “People Born to Slavery,” 192–95. 10. Perry identifies the bride merely as “a very pretty woman” (State of Russia, 238), but de Bruyn names her “Maria Surjovena Schorkofskaja, sister of Prince Fedder Surewits Schorkofskaja” (Travels, 26). The editor of the Russian version of de Bruyn’s text, identifies her as Mariia Ivanovna Shakhovskaia (Kornilii de Bruin, Puteshestvie cherez Moskoviiu Koriliia de Bruina, trans. P. P. Barsov, ed. O. M. Bodianskii [Moscow: Universitetskaia tipografiia, 1873], 47n15). The later editor of the Court Journal identifies her as the sister of Prince Iurii Fedorovich Shakhovskoi (PZh, 1713, 53n[c]). See Zitser, Transfigured Kingdom, 113n13. 11. M. A. Alekseeva, Graviura petrovskogo vremeni (Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1990), 34. 12. Perry, State of Russia, 237. 13. De Bruyn, Travels, 28. 14. De Bruyn, Travels, 27. 15. Perry, State of Russia, 238. See also de Bruyn, Travels, 26. 16. Perry, State of Russia, 239. 17. PSZ, series 1, 4:1, no. 1741 ( January 4, 1700); and PSZ, series 1, 4:182, no. 1887 (1701). 18. De Bruyn, Travels, 28. 19. Alekseeva, Graviura petrovskogo vremeni, 31, 32. 20. Perry, State of Russia, 240. See also de Bruyn, Travels, 27. 21. De Bruyn, Travels, 27. 22. Perry, State of Russia, 241. 23. De Bruyn, Travels, 28. 24. De Bruyn, Travels, 28. 25. The parodic wedding in February 1704 of Ivan Mikhailov syn Kokoshkin and the daughter of a merchant featured the same use of costumes to mock the Muscovite past. Zheliabuzhskii called it a masquerade (svad’ba byla ubornaia), with guests dressed in caftans of various kinds (v fereziakh, v okhabniakh), but offered no other description “Zapiski,” 342). See also A. P. Bogdanov, ed., Rossiia pri tsarevne Sof ’e i Petre I: Zapiski russkikh liudei (Moscow: Sovremennik, 1990), 307. 26. I. I. Golikov, Deianiia Petra Velikogo, mudrogo preobrazitelia Rossii, sobrannyia iz dostovernykh istochnikov i raspolozhennyia po godam, 2nd ed., 15 vols. (Moscow: Tipografiia N. Stepanova, 1837–1843), 2:54. 27. Golikov, Deianiia, 2:76–77. 28. Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, 258. 29. See Stevens, Russia’s Wars of Emergence, 219–95; and Frost, Northern Wars, 226–96. 30. PSZ, series 1, 4:494–97, no. 2272 ( June 10, 1710). 31. PSZ, series 1, 5:190–93, no. 2984 ( January 22, 1716); and 5:453–54, no. 3007 (April 7/18, 1716). 32. PSZ, series 1, 4:669–73, no. 2354 (April 19/May 10, 1711); RGADA, fond 156, op. 1, no. 14.

NOTES TO PAGES 1 9 6 – 2 0 1     305

33. Lindsey Hughes, Peter the Great: A Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 90. For descriptions of the wedding, see Joost Juel [Iust Iul’], “Zapiski Iusta Iulia,” ed. and trans. Iu. N. Shcherbachev, Russkii arkhiv, bk. 3, no. 9 (1892): 33–38; Friedrich Christian Weber [Fridrikh Khristian Veber], “Zapiski Vebera o Petre Velikom i ob ego preobrazovaniiakh,” ed. P. P. Barsov, Russkii arkhiv (1872), no. 9, cols. 1682–90 (no. 473); PZh, 1710, 22–23; Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, 261–62; Semevskii, Tsaritsa Praskov’ia, 46–50. See also Paul Keenan, St. Petersburg and the Russian Court, 1703–1761 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 76–81. 34. O. G. Ageeva, “Novye iavleniia v obshchestvennoi zhizni i bytu Peterburga pervoi chetverti XVIII v.: Na primere tsarskikh svadeb,” Russkaia kul’tura v perekhodnyi period ot srednevekov’ia k novomu vremeni (Moscow: IRI RAN, 1992), 100–101. 35. Ageeva, “Novye iavleniia,” 95. 36. Juel, “Zapiski,” bk. 3, no. 9 (1892): 35–36. 37. There is some disagreement between Joost Juel and Weber on the composition of the cortège. According to Juel, first came musicians, then the groomsmen, then the groom (“Zapiski,” bk. 3, no. 9 (1892): 35). Weber (“Zapiski Vebera,” 1684) says the cortège was led by ladies and lords (znatnye gospoda) and ministers; then the groom, escorted by Menshikov and Peter ( Juel adds Cruys here); the bride, escorted by Apraksin and Golovkin; and the dowager, her daughters (the bride’s sisters), and then the rest of the court. 38. Juel, “Zapiski,” bk. 3, no. 9 (1892): 35. 39. Juel, “Zapiski,” bk. 3, no. 9 (1892): 33. See also Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 233– 35; and Hughes, Peter the Great, 90. 40. Juel, “Zapiski,” bk. 3, no. 9 (1892): 36. 41. Weber, “Zapiski Vebera,” 1686; Juel, “Zapiski,” bk. 3, no. 9 (1892): 36. 42. Weber, until 11:00 p.m. (“Zapiski Vebera,” 1687); Juel, until 2:00 a.m. (“Zapiski,” bk. 3, no. 9 [1892]: 36). See also Ageeva, “Novye iavleniia,” 98–99. 43. Weber, “Zapiski Vebera,” 1688; Ageeva, “Novye iavleniia,” 99. The text, despite the classical motif, is a clear allusion to Gen. 2:24 and Eph. 5:31. See also V. I. Vasil’ev, Starinnye feierverki v Rossii (XVII–pervaia chetvert’ XVIII v.) (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha, 1960), 51. 44. Probably from a version of the Psalms that followed the numbering of the Vulgate and Septuagint: “[5] Lest at any time my enemy say: I have prevailed against him. They that trouble me will rejoice when I am moved: [6] But I have trusted in thy mercy. My heart shall rejoice in thy salvation: I will sing to the Lord, who giveth me good things: yea I will sing to the name of the Lord the most high.” 45. Weber, “Zapiski Vebera,” 1689. 46. For descriptions of the wedding, see Juel, “Zapiski,” bk. 3, no. 9 (1892): 39–41; Weber, “Zapiski Vebera,” 1678–1682 (no. 472); PZh, 1710, 23; and Exakte Relation von der von Sr. Csarischen Majestät Petro Alexiowitz an dem großen Newa Strom und der Ost/ See neuerbauten Festung und Stadt St. Petersburg (Leipzig 1713), 79–85. 47. Juel says at least sixty-two dwarfs (“Zapiski,” bk. 3, no. 9 [1892]: 39), but Weber says seventy-two (“Zapiski Vebera,” 1678). See also PZh, 1710, 23; PiB, 10:271–72. 48. Hughes, Peter the Great, 91. 49. Zitser, Transfigured Kingdom, 111 (on Turgenev, see 111n7).

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50. For Peter I’s law of succession, see PSZ, series 1, 6:496–97, no. 3593 (February 5, 1722); Martin, “Law, Succession, and the Eighteenth-Century Refounding of the Romanov Dynasty,” 225–31. 51. Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 222–25; S. V. Efimov, “Evdokiia Lopukhina— posledniaia russkaia tsaritsa XVII veka,” in Srednevekovaia Rus’: Sbornik nauchnykh statei k 65-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia professora R. G. Skrynnikova, ed. S. V. Lobachev and A. S. Lavrov (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Sankt-Peterburgskogo universiteta, 1995), 137. For an alternative view on Evdokiia’s selection as Peter I’s bride, see Viacheslav Kozliakov, Tsaritsa Evdokiia, ili plach po moskovskomu tsarstvu (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2014), 41–43. 52. Kozliakov, Tsaritsa Evdokiia, 66–101. 53. Bushkovitch, Peter the Great, 178n24; Kozliakov, Tsaritsa Evdokiia, 99. 54. Bushkovitch, Peter the Great, 178n24; Kozliakov, Tsaritsa Evdokiia, 99; M. I. Semevskii, Tsaritsa Katerina Alekseevna, Anna i Villem Mons, 1692–1724, 2nd ed. (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia V. S. Balasheva, 1884), 21. 55. Bushkovitch, Peter the Great, 197–98. 56. G. V. Esipov, “Tsaritsa Evdokiia Feodorovna,” Russkiia dostopamiatnosti, no. 6 (1883): 1–39; N. G. Ustrialov, Istoriia tsarstvovaniia Petra Velikogo, 5 vols. in 6, plus 2 supplemental vols. (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia II-go Otdeleniia Sobstvennoi Ego Imperatorskogo Velichestva Kantseliarii, 1858–1863), 3:188–89. 57. Ustrialov, Istoriia, 3:189n22. 58. Ustrialov, Istoriia, 3:189. 59. Bushkovitch, Peter the Great, 208; Efimov, “Evdokiia Lopukhina,” 141; Ustrialov, Istoriia, 3:630. 60. Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, 394; Ustrialov, Istoriia, 3:189. 61. Bushkovitch, Peter the Great, 201. 62. Bushkovitch, Peter the Great, 237–38 (and n. 49). 63. The best scholarly treatment of Catherine I’s origins remains Lindsey Hughes, “Catherine I of Russia: Consort to Peter the Great,” in Queenship in Europe, 1660–1815: The Role of the Consort, ed. Clarissa Campbell Orr (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 131–54. See also N. A. Belozerskaia, “Proiskhozhdenie Ekateriny Pervoi,” ed. S. N. Shubinskii, Istoricheskii vestnik, no. 1 (1902): 56–90; K. Fetterlein [Feggerlijn], “K voprosu o proiskhozhdenii imperatritsy Ekateriny I,” in Vestnik Evropy, no. 9 (1896): 383–92; Ia. K. Trot, “Proiskhozhdenie Ekateriny I,” Sbornik otdeleniia russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti Imperatorskoi akademii nauk 18 (1878): 7–32; and N. I. Kostomarov, “Ekaterina Alekseevna, pervaia russkaia imperatritsa,” Drevniaia i novaia Rossiia, no. 2 (1872): 129–70. An excellent reassessment of all these theories appears in Oleg Igorevich Khoruzhenko, “O proiskhozhdenii Ekateriny I,” in Evropeiskie monarkhii v proshlom i nastoiashchim, XVIII–XX vv., ed. E. V. Kotova (St. Petersburg: Aleteiia, 2002), 142–46. 64. On these doubts, see Khoruzhenko, “O proiskhozhdenii Ekateriny I.” 65. On her birth name and Orthodox name, see Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, 394–95. 66. Some have argued that Peter and Marta/Catherine were married in secret in 1707. See Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, 396; G. A. Mikhailov, “Graviura A. Zubova ‘Svad’ba Petra I’: Real’nost’ i vysysel,” in Panorama iskusstv, vol. 11

NOTES TO PAGES 2 0 3 – 2 0 4     307

(Moscow, 1988), 42–44, 51; V. Borisov, “O brakosochetanii Petra Velikogo s Ekaterinoi 1712 goda, fevralia 19 dnia,” ChIOIDR, no. 2 (1861), 196–97 (smes’); Golikov, Deianiia, 4:67–68; and I. I. Golikov, Dopolneniia k “Deianiiam Petra Velikogo,” 18 vols. (Moscow, 1790–97), 9:189. But others have more plausibly argued for 1711 (Zitser, Transfigured Kingdom, 119). See also PiB 12 (1), 360–61 (note to no. 5093). 67. Hughes, “Catherine I of Russia,” 132. 68. PZh, 1712, 1. 69. Charles Whitworth [Ch. Vitvort], “Doneseniia Ch. Vitvorta,” SbIRIO, 61:143– 56 (no. 41). 70. Mikhailov, “Graviura.” The engraving appears in numerous books from the eighteenth century on; it is clearly one of the most popular—and according to some, artistically best—engravings from this period. Mikhailov’s publication is best, showing both the full engraving and several close-up sections (24–25, 36, 37, 40, 41, 43, 46–47, 49). See also Alekseeva, Graviura petrovskogo vremeni, 122–24. 71. PiB, 1712 (1):83. 72. PZh, 1712, 1–7. 73. Secondary sources describing the wedding include L. I. Sazonova, Literaturnaia kul’tura Rossii: Rannee Novoe vremia (Moscow: Iazyki slavianskikh kul’tur, 2006), 284–311, 784–95; Zitser, Transfigured Kingdom, 119–25; Hughes, Peter the Great, 101–4; Hughes, Russian in the Age of Peter the Great, 396–97; Hughes, “Peter the Great’s Two Weddings,” 31–44; Bushkovitch, Peter the Great, 309; Mikhailov, “Graviura”; and A. F. Bychkov, “O svad’be imperatora Petra Velikogo s Ekaterinoi Alekseevnoi,” Drevniaia i novaia Rossiia, no. 3 (1877), 323–24. 74. Whitworth, “Doneseniia Ch. Vitvorta,” SbIRIO, 61:144 (no. 41). 75. PZh, 1712, 3; Bychkov, “O svad’be,” 323. 76. PiB, 12 (1):83 (no. 5093); PZh, 1712, 3; Bychkov, “O svad’be,” 323. Whitworth mistakenly reports that the groom had two proxy fathers and the bride two proxy mothers (“Doneseniia Ch. Vitvorta,” SbIRIO, 61:144 [no. 41]). 77. PiB, 12 (1):83, 361 (no. 5093); PZh, 1712, 3; Bychkov, “O svad’be,” 323. 78. Whitworth, “Doneseniia Ch. Vitvorta,” SbIRIO, 61:145 (no. 41). 79. The two exceptions are Aleksei Vasil’evich Makarov (the author of the wedding description in PZh, 1712, 1–7), and Pavel Ivanovich Iaguzhinskii. The other groomsmen were Aleksandr Vasil’evich Kikin (see Obshchii morskoi spisok, vol. 1 [St. Petersburg: Tipografiia V. Demakova, 1885), 174]); Hendrick Hellma (who is identified merely as “Elma” in PZh, 1712, 1, but whose full name is listed in Obshchii morskoi spisok, 1:95—all remaining page references in this note are to this source); Martyn Petrovich Gosseler (1:112); Jan Popegaia (1:304); Ipat Kalinich Мukhanov (1:263); François Guillemot de Villebois (Nikita Petrovich Vil’boa; 1:76); Zakharii Danilovich Mishukov (1:247); Ermolai Skvortsov (1:347); Naum Akimovich Siniavin (1:341); Semen Muravin (1:261); Ivan Kochet (1:188); and Tikhon Lukin (1:227). 80. Whitworth, “Doneseniia Ch. Vitvorta,” SbIRIO, 61:144 (no. 41). See also Zitser, Transfigured Kingdom, 119. 81. See, e.g., DR, 1:630, 641–42. 82. PZh, 1712, 3–7; Mikhailov, “Graviura.” 83. PZh, 1712, 6; Zitser, Transfigured Kingdom, 121. 84. Mikhailov, “Graviura,” 50.

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85. PiB, 1711 (2), 65, 382 (no. 4638); 233, 543 (no. 4863); 269, 587 (no. 4919). 86. E. V. Pchelov, “Petr Velikii i dinasticheskaia politika Romanovykh v XIII– XX vekakh,” in Petr Velikii—Reformator Rossii, ed. N. S. Vladimirskaia, et al. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennyi istoriko-kul’turnyi muzei-zapovednik “Moskovskii kreml’,” 2001), 48–50. Four half-sisters: Evdokiia Alekseevna (d. 1712), Ekaterina Alekseevna (d. 1718), Mariia Alekseevna (d. 1723), Feodosiia Alekseevna (d. 1713). Full sister: Natal’ia Alekseevna. Ivan V’s widow: Tsaritsa Praskov’ia Fedorovna (d. 1723). Fedor III’s widow: Marfa Matveevna Apraksina (d. 1715). Peter I’s nieces: Ekaterina Ioannovna (d. 1733), Anna Ioannovna (d. 1740), Praskov’ia Ioannovna (d. 1731). Peter I’s daughters: Anna Petrovna (d. 1728) and Elizabeth Petrovna (d. 1761). Peter I’s son: Aleksei Petrovich (d. 1718). Peter I’s daughter-in-law: Charlotte Christine Sophie of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (m. 1711; d. 1715). 87. Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, 392–93; Mikhailov, “Graviura,” 39, 55n29. 88. Juel, bk. 3, no. 9 (1892): 133. 89. The exact time and place of the wedding service is reported variously. According to Charles Whitworth, the wedding took place at seven o’clock in the morning (“Doneseniia Ch. Vitvorta,” SbIRIO, 61:145 [no. 41]). Notes taken by Aleksei Makarov record that the wedding took place at nine o’clock in the morning (PZh, 1712, 1). Whitworth reports that the wedding took place in the chapel in Menshikov’s palace (Church of the Resurrection of Christ), but Makarov has it at the Church of the St. Isaac of Dalmatia. Mikhailov believes that Makarov’s account is more accurate (see “Graviura,” 39–42). 90. Whitworth, “Doneseniia Ch. Vitvorta,” SbIRIO, 61:145 (no. 41). 91. Mikhailov, “Graviura,” 30–38; PZh, 1712, 5. 92. Mikhailov, “Graviura,” 52. 93. PZh, 1712, 5–6. See also Mikhailov, “Graviura,” 35. 94. PZh, 1712, 6–7. See also Ernst Zitser, “A Mason-Tsar? Freemasonry and Fraternalism in the Court of Peter the Great,” in Freemasonry and Fraternalism in Eighteenth-Century Russia, ed. Andreas Önnerfors and Robert Collis (Sheffield: Centre for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism, 2009), 7–32. 95. PZh, 1712, 7. 96. PZh, 1712, 7. 97. Vasil’ev, Starinnye feierverki v Rossii, 51. 98. PZh, 1712, 7; Whitworth, “Doneseniia Ch. Vitvorta,” SbIRIO, 61:146 (no. 41). 99. See DRV, 13:6, 7, 22, 32, 40, 49, 83, 153, 192, DR, 3:874; RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 15, fol. 4; no. 21, fols. 24, 92, 98; fond 181, no. 123, fol. 58. 100. James Cracraft, The Church Reforms of Peter the Great (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971), 20–21. Cracraft’s view evolved little in subsequent works. See his The Revolution in Russian Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); and The Revolution of Peter the Great (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). 101. Zitser, Transfigured Kingdom, 5. 102. Zitser, Transfigured Kingdom, 16, 17. 103. Zitser, Transfigured Kingdom, 128–29. 104. Weddings before the founding of the chancery in the mid-sixteenth century were arranged by secretaries in the grand-princely scriptorium. Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich handed the job over to the Chancery of the Great Court. See Martin,

NOTES TO PAGES 2 0 9 – 2 1 3     309

“Dynastic Marriage and Crimean Diplomacy”; Zitser, Transfigured Kingdom, 129; and chapter 3. 105. RGADA, fond 156, op. 1, no. 129, fols. 1–95. A fragment of the final draft was published in Golikov’s Dopolneniia k deianiiam, 10:232–52; and in M. I. Semevskii, Slovo i delo, 1700–1725 (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia V. S. Balasheva, 1884), 318–27. 106. PZh, 1715, 9, 33, 47. 107. Friedrich Christian Weber, The Present State of Russia, 2 vols. (London, 1722– 1723), 1:89–91. See also the letter of Jacob de Bie, the Dutch resident in St. Petersburg and a participant in the Zotov wedding, reporting in February 1715 to the States General that the whole affair was “very burlesque,” as quoted in Thomas Eekman, “Seven Years with Peter the Great: The Dutchman Jacob de Bie’s Observations,” in Peter the Great and the West: New Perspectives, ed. Lindsey Hughes (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 218–19. 108. See Zitser, Transfigured Kingdom, 125–39. 109. Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, 253; Semevskii, Slovo i delo, 319–20. 110. Weber, Present State of Russia, 1:89. 111. Zitser, Transfigured Kingdom, 130–31; Weber, Present State of Russia, 1:89; RGADA, fond 156, op. 1, no. 129, fols. 57–62, 67–72v, 754r–v, 787r–v, 90r–v. 112. Zitser, Transfigured Kingdom, 188. 113. Weber, Present State of Russia, 1:90. 114. Weber, Present State of Russia, 1:89. 115. Friedrich Wilhelm von Bergholz, Dnevnik kamer-iukera F. V. Berkhgol’tsa, vedennyi im v Rossii v tsarstvovanie Petra Velikogo, s 1721-go po 1725-i god, trans. I. F. Ammon, 4 pts. (Moscow: tipografiia universitetskaia, 1902–1903), 1:115–23 (quote at 115). 116. Much of Bergholz’s account is confirmed by Vasilii Aleksandrovich Nashchokin, Zapiski Vasiliia Aleksandrovicha Nashchokina, ed. D. I. Iazykov (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi akademii nauk, 1842), 9. See also PZh, 1721, 74 and 74n(a). On Bergholz, see Elizabeth Clara Sander, Social Dancing in Peter the Great’s Russia: Observations by Holstein Nobleman Friedrich Wilhelm von Bergholz, 1721 to 1725 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2007); and Sander, “Music, Drinking, and Dance at Aristocratic Russian Weddings under Peter the First as Witnessed by Friedrich Wilhelm von Bergholz,” Intersections 26, no. 1 (2005): 34–61. 117. See Bergholz, Dnevnik, 1:116, 117–18, 119. 118. Bergholz, Dnevnik, 1:117. 119. Bergholz, Dnevnik, 1:116. 120. Bergholz, Dnevnik, 1:120. 121. Bergholz, Dnevnik, 1:120. 122. PSZ, series 1, 6:444–46, no. 3840 (October 22, 1721). 123. Peter is mentioned in the draft ceremonial for Fedor III’s first wedding (RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 31, fol. 26) but is absent from the brief official description (RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 32). 124. Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors, 8, 31–33. 125. See Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 225–26; and Flier, “Political Ideas and Ritual.” 126. Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 1:48, 63. 127. Hughes, “A Note on the Children of Peter the Great,” Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia Newsletter 21 (1993): 10–16.

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8. “There Will Not Be Any Direful Reversions”

1. See Pchelov, “Petr Velikii i dinasticheskaia politika Romanovykh,” 44. 2. On primogeniture in Russia, see Martin, “Anticipatory Association of the Heir,” 420–42. 3. The nomination came in the form of a will, which charted out the succession first to Peter II, then to other descendants of Natal’ia Naryshkina (ignoring the descendants and potential heirs of Mariia Miloslavskaia). See RGADA, fond 2, no. 21; PSZ, series 1, 8:790, no 5070 (May 7, 1727). There is some doubt as to whether Catherine wrote it herself. See O. A. Omel’chenko, “Stanovlenie zakonodatel’nogo regulirovaniia prestolonaslediia v Rossiiskoi imperii,” Themis: Yearbook of the History of Law and Jurisprudence 7 (2006): 36–38; and Martin, “Law, Succession, and the Eighteenth-Century Refounding of the Romanov Dynasty,” 225–28. 4. Hughes points to sources that suggest that some of the choreography was handled by James Bruce (Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, 552n214). 5. On Anna Petrovna, see P. N. Petrov, “Tsesarevna Anna Petrovna, 1707–1728 (Biograficheskii ocherk),” in Pamiatniki novoi russkoi istorii: Sbornik istoricheskikh statei i materialov, izdavaemykh V. Kashpirevym, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Maikova, 1871), 49–89 (otdel pervyi). On other suitors for Anna Petrovna’s hand, see SbIRIO, 15:211–13; 49:53, 247; and Bushkovitch, Peter the Great, 432. On Peter I’s religious attachments, see, for a start, Hughes, Peter the Great, 150–52. 6. See Jacques de Compredon [Zhak de Kampredon], “Diplomaticheskaia perepiska frantsuzskogo polnomochnogo ministra pri russkom dvore, Kampredona, s frantsuzskim dvorom i frantsuzskim poslannikom pri Ottomanskoi Porte, markizom de-Bonakom, s 1723 g. po mart mes. 1725 g,” SbIRIO 52:357–58 (no. 95). See also PZh, 1724, 24; and Hughes, Russia in the Era of Peter the Great, 413–15. 7. Memoirs of the Empress Catherine II written by herself, with a Preface by A. Herzen (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1859), 18. For the original (“La mère du premier, fille de Pierre I, mourut deux mois après l’avoir mis au monde, de phtisie, dans la petite ville de Kiel en Holstein, du chagrin de s’y voir établie et d’être aussie mal mariée”), see Мémoires de l’impératrice Catherine II: Écrits par elle-même, et précédés d’une préface par A. Herzen (London: Trübner and Co., 1859), 2. 8. RGADA, fond 156, op. 1, no. 14, fols. 1–4v. 9. DRV, 13:235–47. 10. RGADA, fond. 156, op. 1, no. 14, fols. 57–70 (first draft); and fols. 39–56 (second draft). The collection also contains a description of the formal audience of Empress Catherine I with Karl Friedrich (fols. 36–38v) and a number of edited lists of groomsmen and other ranks at the wedding (fols. 5–27). 11. DRV, 13:240. 12. On the Order of St. Catherine and Anna Petrovna’s elevation to it, see Marker, Imperial Saint, 125–44. 13. DRV, 13:241. 14. DRV, 13:241. 15. DRV, 13:243–45, 247. 16. DRV, 13:243. What “house” was prepared in unspecified. 17. DRV, 13:245. 18. DRV, 13:246. 19. DRV, 13:246.

NOTES TO PAGES 2 2 1 – 2 2 6     311

20. DRV, 13:236. 21. DRV, 13:236–37. 22. DRV, 13:240. As with the previous declaration that the rituals conformed to custom, this line was not part of the base text of the first or second drafts but was inscribed later in the margins in two slightly different versions. 23. DRV, 13:243–45, 247. 24. The motif may ultimately derive from Virgil’s Aeneid (Book IV), where Fāma is the “messenger of truth” (not just rumor). It is still worth referring to Arthur L. Keith, “Vergil’s Allegory of Fama,” Classical Journal 16, no. 5 (1921): 298–301 (quotation 300). 25. On the coronation of Catherine I and the succession, see Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, 398. 26. H.-F. Bassewitz, “Zapiski grafa Bassevicha, sluzhashchie k poiasneniiu nekotorykh sobytii iz vremeni tsarstvovaniia Petra Velikogo (1713–1725),” Russkii arkhiv, no. 3 (1865): 93–274, quotation 259. See also Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, 446. 27. Pchelov, “Petr Velikii i dinasticheskaia politika Romanovykh,” 44. 28. PSZ, series 1, 8:601–3, no. 5909 (December 17, 1731). 29. See Brenda Meehan-Waters, Autocracy and Aristocracy: The Russian Service Elite of 1730 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1982), 150–52. 30. Some of these calculations must have included a survey of Skavronskii relatives of Catherine I in 1727. The Ceremonial Collection of the Archive of Ancient Acts includes a single folio prepared for Menshikov listing all her kinsmen living in Petersburg at the time of her death. See RGADA, fond 156, op. 1, no. 197, fol. 1. 31. A brief description of the betrothal ceremonial of Princess Mariia Aleksandrovna Menshikova and Peter Ivanovich ( Jan) Sapieha survives. See RGADA, fond 156, op. 1, no. 131, fols. 1–2. 32. A list of courtiers attached to Mariia survives in RGADA, fond 156, op. 1, no. 15, fols. 1–3. 33. Bushkovitch, Peter the Great, 432–34; Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, 440–41; Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 1:84–85. 34. On Ekaterina’s reaction to Peter II’s death, see Meehan-Waters, Autocracy and Aristocracy, 111. 35. RGADA, fond 156, op. 1, no. 16, fols. 1–10. 36. See Martin, Bride for the Tsar, 87–93. 37. RGADA, fond 156, op. 1, no. 16, fol. 6. 38. RGADA, fond 156, op. 1, no. 16, fol. 7. 39. RGADA, fond 156, op. 1, no. 16, fol. 8. 40. RGADA, fond 156, op. 1, no. 16, fol. 9. 41. Quoted in Iu. A. Limonova, ed., Rossiia XVIII v. glazami inostrantsev (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1989), 223–24 (quotation 224). 42. The enduring benefits of being a royal in-law in the eighteenth century are charted in LeDonne, “Ruling Families in the Russian Political Order.” 43. On Anna Ioannovna’s succession, see I. V. Kurukin and A. B. Plotnikov, 19 ianvaria–25 fevralia 1730 goda: Sobytiia, liudi, dokumenty (Moscow: Kvadriga, 2010); and D. A. Korsakov, Votsarenie imperatritsy Anny Ioannovny (Kazan: Tipografiia Imperatorskogo universiteta, 1880).

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44. See the magisterial N. N. Petrukhintsev, Vnutrenniaia politika Anny Ioannovny (1730–1740) (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2014). 45. See Levin, Rossiiskii generalissimus gertsov Anton Ul’rikh. 46. Evgenii Viktorovich Anisimov, Ivan VI Antonovich (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2008), 39. 47. The Letters from a Lady, who resided some years in Russia, to her Friend in England: With historical notes, 2nd ed. (London: Printed for J. Dodsley in Pall Mall, 1775), 191– 94 (letter 37). See also SbIRIO, 80: 509 (no. 251); 509–10 (no. 252). On the letters, see Leo Loewenson, “Lady Rondeau’s Letters from Russia (1727–1739),” Slavonic and East European Review 39, no. 85 (1957): 399–408. 48. On the Ice Palace wedding, see Elena Pogosian, “ ‘O nevozmozhnoe vozmozhno’: Svad’ba shutov v Ledianom dome kak fakt ofitsial’noi kul’tury,” Trudy po russkoi i slavianskoi filologii: Literaturovedenie, new series, vol. 4 (2001): 80–109; and Georg Wolfgang Kraft [Georg, Volfgang Kraft], Podlinnoe i obstoiatel’noe opisanie postroeno v Sankt-Peterburge v genvare mesiatse 1740 goda Ledianogo doma (St. Petersburg: Imperatorskaia akademiia nauk, 1741). 49. Archimandrite Avgustin (Nikitin), Khramy Nevskogo prospekta: Iz istorii inoslavnykh i pravoslavnoi obshchin Peterburga (St. Petersburg: Tsentrpoligraf, 2015), 300–302; I. Savvaitov, “O predike Vologodskogo episkopa Amvrosiia (Iushkevicha) na brakosochetanii printsessy Anny Leopol’dovny s gertsogom Antonom Ul’rikhom 3 iiulia 1739 goda,” Russkii arkhiv, no. 2 (1871): 193; “Slovo Amvrosiia, episkopa vologodskogo, na brakosochetanie Eia Vysochestva Printsessy Anny s Ego Svetlostiiu kniazem Antonom Ul’rikhom, gertsogom Braunshveigskim i Liuneburgskim,” Vologodskie eparkhial’nye vedomosti, no. 14 (1870): 485. For the quotation, see Letters from a Lady, 188. 50. Letters from a Lady, 205. 51. See M. A. Korf, Braunshveigskoe semestvo (Moscow: Prometei, 1993). 52. Pchelov, “Petr Velikii i dinasticheskaia politika Romanovykh,” 51–52; Evgenii Viktorovich Anisimov, Elizaveta Petrovna (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1999), 197– 99; Douglas Smith, “Did Catherine the Great and Grigorii Potemkin Wed? Some Myths, Facts, and Observations on Secret Royal Marriages,” in Russian and Soviet History: From the Time of Troubles to the Collapse of the Soviet Union, ed. William Benton Whisenhunt and Steven A. Usitalo (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), 84–85. 53. Domnina, “Istoriia rossiiskogo imperatorskogo dvora,” 91. 54. Domnina, “Istoriia rossiiskogo imperatorskogo dvora,” 102–17; Iz”iasnenie i izobrazhenie velikago feierverka, kotoroi po okanchanie torzhestv vysokago kniazia Petra Feodorovicha i gosudaryni velikiia kniagini Ekateriny Alekseevny vseia Rossii v Sanktpeterburga na Neve reke pred imperatorskim zimnim domom predstavleni byl avgusta 1745 (St. Petersburg: Imperatorskaia akademiia nauk, 1745). See also James von Geldern, “The Ode as a Performative Art,” Slavic Review 50, no. 4 (1991): 927–39. 55. Domnina, “Istoriia rossiiskogo imperatorskogo dvora,” 86–88. 56. RGIA, fond 473, op. 1, no. 188; RGADA, fond 156, op. 1. nos. 19, 20. 57. Domnina, “Istoriia rossiiskogo imperatorskogo dvora,” 88–91. 58. RGIA, fond 473, op. 1, no. 188, fol. 1; Domnina, “Istoriia rossiiskogo imperatorskogo dvora,” 88. 59. RGIA, fond 473, op. 1, no. 188, fols. 38v, 41v, 42v; Domnina, “Istoriia rossiiskogo imperatorskogo dvora,” 88–90.

NOTES TO PAGES 2 3 0 – 2 3 7     313

60. Domnina, “Istoriia rossiiskogo imperatorskogo dvora,” 90. 61. Domnina, “Istoriia rossiiskogo imperatorskogo dvora,” 91; RGIA, fond 473, op. 1, no. 188, fol. 51v. 62. Domnina, “Istoriia rossiiskogo imperatorskogo dvora,” 91–117. 63. PSS, 8:134 (line 157); Petrov, Epitalama i brachno-svadebnaia slovesnost’, 58; and PSS, 8:917n9. 64. Legitimacy would remain a major concern for Catherine Alekseevna, once she took the throne as Catherine II in 1762. Her own questionable legitimacy required unique arguments in her favor, which are explored by Elena Teibenbacher, “Catherine the Great: How the Question of Legitimacy Influenced Her Politics,” in Dynastic Change: Legitimacy and Gender in Medieval and Early Modern Monarchy, ed. Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues, Manuela Santos Silva, and Jonathan Spangler (New York: Routledge, 2020), 255–74. 65. PSS, 8:136 (lines 191–200). 66. Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 1:117. The document is in PSZ, first series, 24:487–89 (no. 17.910). Christine Roll argues that “dynasty” remained a muted concept throughout the eighteenth century. See her “Dynastie und dynastische Politik im Zarenreich: Befunde und Überlegungen zur Heiratspolitik der Romanovs im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert,” Jahrbuch für Europäische Geschichte 8 (2007): 77–102. 67. PSZ, first series, 24:488 (no. 17.910). Conclusion

1. On the marriage regulations introduced into the Pauline Law of Succession, see PSZ, series 1, 37:529, no. 28.208 (March 20, 1820); and Russell E. Martin, “ ‘For the Firm Maintenance of the Dignity and Tranquility of the Imperial Family’: Law and Familial Order in the Romanov Dynasty.” Russian History 37, no. 4 (2010): 405–11. 2. Astolphe, Marquis de Custine, Empire of the Czar: A Journey through Eternal Russia, by the Marquis de Custine, with a foreword by Daniel J. Boorstin and introduction by George Kennan (New York: Doubleday, 1989), 135–87 (quotation 146). 3. Custine, Empire of the Czar, 140. 4. Custine, Empire of the Czar, 140, 143–44, 148, 161. 5. Custine, Empire of the Czar, 187. 6. Daniel J. Boorstin, “Foreword,” to Custine, Empire of the Czar, xi. 7. Custine, Empire of the Czar, 144. 8. See S. M. Liubetskii, Brakosochetaniia russkikh velikikh kniazei: Tseremonialy, prazdnestva i uveseleniia v Peterburge i Moskve (Moscow: Universitetskaia tipografiia, 1866). 9. Burke, Fabrication of Louis XIV, 41. 10. Burke, Fabrication of Louis XIV, 17. 11. The dynasty is again today reduced to two, mother and child: Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna and Grand Duke George Mikhailovich. See Stanislav Dumin, Romanovy: Imperatorskii dom v izgnanii. Semeinaia khronika (Moscow: Zakharov AST, 1998). On monogamy and dynasties, see Duindam, Dynasties, 108–27. 12. Katarzyna Kosior, Becoming a Queen in Early Modern Europe: East and West (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 23–59 (quotation 23).

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TO PAGES 2 3 9 – 2 4 0

13. It is an argument I have made before. See Russell E. Martin, “The Petrine Divide and the Periodization of Early Modern Russian History,” Slavic Review 69, no. 2 (2010): 410–25. See also Ostrowski, “The End of Muscovy: The Case of Circa 1800,” Slavic Review 69, no. 2 (2010): 426–38; and Nancy Shields Kollmann, “Comment: Divides and Ends—The Problem of Periodization,” Slavic Review 69, no. 2 (2010): 439–47. 14. See RGADA, fond 135, sec. IV, rub. II, no. 15, fol. 1; no. 17, fol. 1; no. 18, fol. 1; and Opisi arkhiva Razriadnogo prikaza, 38. The expression was used as early as 1570, though not in wedding musters or ceremonials. See Slovar’ russkogo iazyka XI–XVII vv., 21:125 (radost’), which cites SbIRIO, 71:684.

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q In dex

Page numbers accompanied by t or f refer to tables and figures, respectively Abigail (wife of King David), 86, 87t, 87 – 88, 90 Abram (Abraham), biblical patriarch, 54, 86 – 87, 87t, 90, 121 – 22 Aeneid, 311n24 Ageeva, O. G., 7, 196 – 97 Ahasuerus. See Artaxerxes Albrecht of Baden, 105 – 6, 107f Aleksandr Petrovich (son of Peter I), 201 Alekseeva, M. A., 193 Aleksei, St., metropolitan of Moscow, 58, 64, 80 Aleksei Alekseevich (son of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich), 75, 78, 280n75 Aleksei Antonovich (brother of Ivan VI), 228, 229, 231, 253f Aleksei Mikhailovich, tsar, 10 – 11, 46, 60 – 64, 66, 79, 83, 91, 96, 100, 104 – 5, 150, 160, 184 – 87, 207, 212 – 13, 238, 274n99 elimination of pre-Christian weddings rites by, 62, 75, 76, 84, 90 – 91, 101 – 2, 133, 212, 237, 238 first failed planned wedding of (Efimiia Vsevolozhskaia), 60 – 64, 66 – 68, 68t, 75, 147 – 51, 149t, 153, 159 first wedding of (Mariia Miloslavskaia), 60 – 64, 66 – 68, 68t, 76 – 81, 101, 141, 142, 144 – 53, 159 – 60, 172, 173t, 176 – 79, 183 – 87, 207, 212, 215 – 16, 295n86, 296n101 second failed planned wedding of (Ovdot’ia Beliaeva), 78 – 80 second wedding of (Natal’ia Naryshkina), 75 – 91, 96 – 97, 142, 144, 153, 159, 172, 173t, 175 – 80, 191, 207, 212, 216, 230 – 31 Aleksei Petrovich (son of Peter I), 4, 160, 196, 201 – 3, 205, 214, 217, 223, 227, 253f

Alexander, grand duke of Lithuania, 11, 21, 24 – 25, 105 – 13, 107f, 115, 118, 252f, 261n36, 272n67 Alexander Nevskii, St., 18 – 19 Alexander Nevskii, St., Order of, 222 Alfer’ev, Roman Vasil’evich, 159, 161 Ambassadorial Chancery (Posol’skii prikaz), 22 – 23, 47, 49, 61, 65 – 69, 75, 79, 81, 91, 134, 181, 184, 209, 237 – 38, 262n41 archival inventory of, 22, 47 – 49, 273n87 Ambrosii (Iushkevich), bishop of Vologda Andrew the First-Called, St., Order of, 222 Angelov, Mikula, 155 Anisimov, E. V., 227 Anna (mother of the Prophet Samuel), 54, 55, 87t Anna (née Elizabeth Katharina Christine) Leopol’dovna (daughter of Ekaterina Ioannovna), regent, 215, 226, 253f wedding of (Anton Ulrich of BraunschweigWolfenbüttel), 217, 226 – 30, 236 Anna Ioannovna, empress (daughter of Ivan V), 97, 204 – 7, 215, 221, 223, 226 – 28, 253f wedding of (Friedrich Wilhelm of Kurland) 195 – 201, 226 Anna Mikhailovna (daughter of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich), 46, 86, 141, 142, 173t, 186 Anna Petrovna (daughter of Peter I), 4, 12, 204 – 5, 210, 215, 219, 223, 228, 253f, 310n5, 310n7, 311n22 wedding of (Karl Friedrich of Holstein), 215, 217 – 23, 227, 229, 230, 234, 236 Anna Vasa (sister of Sigismund III Vasa), 120 – 25 Anna Vasil’evna (daughter of Vasilii I), 154, 297n106

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Annunciation Cathedral, 49, 59, 62, 64, 68t, 83, 95, 98, 129, 132, 282n119 Antonii, archbishop of Riazan’ and Murom, 181 Anton Ulrich of BraunschweigWolfenbüttel (husband of Anna Leopol’dovna), 227, 228, 229, 253f Apraksin, Fedor Matveevich, 197, 220 – 21, 305n37 Apraksina, Marfa Matveevna (wife of Fedor III), 94 – 95, 160, 205, 221, 253f Apraksin clan, 153 Archangel Michael, Cathedral of, 58 – 60, 64, 83, 130 Arsenius of Elasson, 130, 132 Artaxerxes, 86, 87t, 88 – 90 Ascension Convent, 48 – 60, 64, 83, 127, 163, 175 Asenath (wife of Joseph), 54, 87, 87t Assembly of the Land (Zemskii sobor), 44 – 45, 150 Attendants of the bride (forshindery, Petrineera wedding role), 204, 206, 207 banquets, 18 – 19, 21, 29, 34, 39, 46, 48, 58, 68, 68t, 70, 85 – 86, 97, 116, 126, 128, 132, 154, 160, 168 – 70, 172, 175, 185, 188, 193 – 95, 228, 230, 234, 236 at ancient Greek and Roman weddings, 27, 29, 31 dancing at, 124, 126, 194 – 99, 206 – 7, 211, 218, 228 – 30, 236 food at, 198 – 200, 260n17 at Petrine-era weddings, 198 – 99, 200, 203, 204 – 11, 220, 236 seating arrangements at, 34, 85, 117, 123, 133 – 34, 138, 140, 142, 151, 152, 154, 159, 194, 195, 203, 205 – 7, 220, 226, 238, 307n70 See also fireworks Barshov, Ivan Ivanov syn, 155 Bassewitz (Basevich), H.-F. von, 222, 223 Basil I, Byzantine emperor, 30 bath, nuptial, 18 – 19, 24, 34, 61, 63, 70 – 71, 73, 85, 98, 132 – 33, 139, 146, 149, 151 – 52, 212, 296n100 at ancient Greek and Byzantine weddings, 27, 31 new clothes for groom after, 61, 71, 112, 133, 168 See also wedding costumes; wedding rituals Beauharnais, Maximilian de, duke of Leuchtenberg, 233 – 34 Beliaeva, Ovdot’ia Ivanovna, 78 – 80

Bell, Catherine, 16, 35, 49, 213 Bel’skii, Dmitrii Fedorovich, 294n64 Bel’skii, Ivan Dmitreevich, 152, 158 – 59, 169, 172, 173t, 177, 252f, 293n53, 297n119, 298n131, 300n24, 301n35 Bel’skii, Ivan Fedorovich, 145 Bel’skii princely clan, 146, 152, 252f, 293n53, 297n119, 300n24 Bergholz, Friedrich Wilhelm von, 210, 217 – 18, 309n116 best men (druzhki), 22, 32 – 34, 73, 116 – 17, 128 – 29, 138 – 39, 145, 147 – 48, 151 – 52, 171 – 72, 175, 197, 301n35 See also brothers (brat’ia) betrothal rite, 4, 22, 28, 32, 35 – 37, 68, 71, 171, 176, 266n112, 275n133, 311n31 at ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine weddings, 27 – 28, 36 – 37, 266n112 and crowning rite, 36 – 37, 49, 68, 68t, 129, 198 of Anna Leopol’dovna and Anton Ulrich, 227 – 28 of Anna Petrovna and Karl Friedrich, 218, 222 – 23, 227, 228 of Elena Ivanovna and Alexander, 110 – 12 of First False Dmitrii and Marina Mniszech, 37, 126 – 27, 129 – 32 of Mariia Staritskaia and Magnus, 117 of Peter Petrovich (Peter II) and Ekaterina Dolgorukova, 224 – 26 ring exchange at, 28, 32, 36 – 37, 49, 111, 117, 123, 129, 218, 227, 264n85 of Vasilii III and Elena Glinskaia, 32, 37, 129 bezmest’e. See precedence (mestnichestvo) biblical prophets and patriarchs. See prayers; speeches Bie, Jacob de, 309n37 blessing to wed ritual, 52 – 56, 58, 63 – 64, 68, 68t, 81, 93, 95 Bogatyrev, Sergei, 7 Book of Needs (Trebnik), 22 – 23, 37, 49, 104, 284n15 Boorstin, Daniel, 234 Boris Fedorovich Godunov, tsar, 43, 44, 53, 55, 79, 100, 115, 118 – 19, 121, 144, 146, 252f Botsis, Ivan Fedorovich, 203, 206 Botta-Adorno, Antoniotto, 227 Bourbon dynasty, 7, 235 boyars’ wives (boiaryni), 14, 48, 51, 153, 174t, 301n31 boyar weddings, 10, 20 – 21, 46, 66, 69 – 74, 103, 158, 169, 275n133 braiding. See hair braiding bread, 116, 138, 175, 2275n133 at ancient Greek and Roman weddings, 28

i n d e x     347 in the bridal chamber, 33 sliced and distributed at weddings, 36, 85, 116, 117, 128, 129, 172, 175, 186, 212, 226, 295n86 See also betrothal; cheese bridal chamber. See sennik brides, 6, 31, 36, 38, 151 – 52, 170, 171 – 88,  236 as agents of dynasticism, 90, 168, 188, 236 – 37 gifts and, 12, 21, 32, 84 – 85, 117, 128, 129, 142, 167 – 71, 174, 236 installation in the Terem, 35 – 36, 81, 93, 95, 127, 225 new names of, 35 – 36, 95, 127, 151, 266n125 new title of (tsarevna, tsesarevna), 36, 69, 81, 93, 95, 127, 130 social backgrounds of, 11, 12, 151, 238 See also hair braiding; hair combing; gifts; and entries for individual brides bride-shows, 14, 31, 35, 45, 53, 60 – 61, 78 – 80, 89 – 90, 92, 97, 98, 153, 201 brothers (brat’ia; Petrine-era wedding role), 197, 204, 206, 207, 221 Bruce, James, 160, 204, 221, 310n4 Bruyn, Cornelius de, 193 – 94, 304n10 Buinosova-Rostovskaia, Ekaterina/Mariia, nun Elena (wife of Vasilii IV Shuiskii), 43, 47, 48, 50 – 52, 141, 152, 159, 161, 163, 175, 242t, 299n3 Buinosov-Rostovskii princely clan, 152 Burke, Peter, 235 Bury, J. B., 30 Bushkovitch, Paul, 91, 96, 104, 201, 202 Bussov, Conrad, 126 Buturlin, Fedor Levont’evich, 134, 294n70 Buturlin, Ivan Ivanovich, 220, 221, 222 Buturlin, Peter Ivanovich, 190 – 91, 204, 206, 208, 210 – 11, 212 Buzhenina, Avdotia Ivanovna, 227 – 28 Bychkova, M. E., 139 – 41, 292n35 Byzantine weddings, 10, 16, 27, 29 – 31, 36 – 37 candles, nuptial, 33, 62, 116 – 17, 139 – 40, 151, 198, 259n5, 275n133 cannonades, 198 – 200, 203, 206, 209 – 11, 219, 230 Casimir IV, king of Poland, 106, 107f, 109 Catherine, St., Order of, 219 Catherine Antonovna (sister of Ivan VI), 228, 229, 231, 253f Catherine I (wife of Peter I), 189, 190, 201 – 7, 213 – 14, 215 – 16, 219, 220 – 21, 223, 253f, 310n3, 310n10

coronation of, 222 – 23 name of, 201 – 3, 306n65 origins of, 202 – 3 wedding of (Peter I), 203 – 7, 306n66 Catherine II (Catherine Alekseevna), 96, 216f, 219, 230, 235, 253f, 313n64 wedding of (Peter III), 1 – 4, 12 – 13, 217, 228 – 32, 236 Catholicism, 104, 123, 126, 108, 109, 111, 120, 129, 133, 200, 210, 288n83 Catholic wedding rites, 11, 111 – 12, 120, 121, 126, 200, 211, 237 First False Dmitrii and, 120, 131, 288n83 Marina Mniszech and, 37, 119, 129, 131, 132 Cephissus, 2 charivari, 21, 62 – 63, 209 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, 130 Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, 227 Charles XI, king of Sweden, 66 Charles XII, king of Sweden, 217, 219 Charlotte Christine Sophie of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (wife of Tsarevich Aleksei Petrovich), 4, 196, 205, 227, 253f cheese, 116, 275n133 sliced and distributed at weddings, 32, 36, 84 – 85, 116, 128 – 29, 172, 175, 186, 212, 226 See also betrothal; bread Cherkasskaia, Irina Mikhailovna, 189 – 90,  191 Cherkasskaia, Mariia Temriukovna (wife of Ivan IV), 252f Cherkasskii, Dmitrii Mamstriukovich, 175, 294n68 Cherkasskii, Iakov Kudenetovich, 65, 145, 148 Cherkasskii, Ivan Borisovich, 145, 294n68 Cherniavsky, Michael, 62 Chistyi, Nazarii Ivanovich, 61, 66, 69, 79, 176, 200, 301n44 Chudov monastery, 58, 64, 302n57 clergy, 12, 104, 131, 198, 200 gifts and, 86, 90, 95, 165, 173t, 174t, 175, 178, 180 – 87, 301n31, 302n52, 302n57 heterodox at weddings, 110 – 12, 116 – 18, 120 – 32, 197 – 200, 288n84 officiants at weddings, 49, 62, 83 – 84, 95, 98 – 99, 129, 132, 179, 198, 280n84, 282n119, 285n49 roles at weddings, 23, 32 – 33, 37 – 38, 49, 51, 72 – 73, 111 – 12, 117, 209, 227 coats of arms, 199, 218, 222, 230 Collins, Samuel, 18

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Comedy of Artaxerxes, 79, 90 common cup (from which bride and groom drink), 24, 33, 71, 112, 124, 139, 198, 218 Cup of the Double-Headed Eagle, 189, 303n2 smashed at weddings, 33, 71, 112 Compredon, Jacque de, 218 Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos, Byzantine emperor, 29 Constantine XII, Byzantine emperor, 25 Constantinople, 30, 31 coronations, 5, 26, 30, 43, 45, 114, 119, 132, 222 – 23, 232, 239, 290n143, 290n148, 292n42 Byzantine, 30 of Catherine I, 222 – 23 of Marina Mniszech, 127 – 33, 290n143, 290n148 – 49 cortège (poezd), 3, 17 – 18, 20, 22, 25, 32 – 34, 38, 48, 50 – 51, 71, 76, 83, 93, 95, 116 – 18, 131, 138 – 39, 146, 148 – 49, 151, 153, 156, 158 – 60, 174, 197, 228, 230, 236 at ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine weddings, 28, 29, 30, 31 at Petrine-era weddings, 192, 197, 199, 211, 225, 230, 305n37 costumes. See wedding costumes Cracraft, James, 208, 308n100 crowning (wedding rite), 22, 30, 32 – 33, 39, 54, 58, 70, 72, 87, 126, 129, 131 – 32, 176, 198 at ancient Greek and Roman weddings, 27, 29, 30, 36 – 37 and betrothal, 36 – 37, 49, 68t, 129, 198 Dance of Isaiah, 76, 83, 94, 97, 112, 117, 198, 222, 239 Crummey, Robert O., 6 – 8, 100, 161 – 62, 212 – 13 Crusius, Christian August, 255n12 Cruys, Cornelius, 197, 203 – 4, 206, 305n37 Cupid, 199 Curta, Florin, 167, 187 Custine, Astolphe-Louis-Léonor, Marquis de, 233 – 34 Dagron, Gilbert, 29, 30 Daniilovich dynasty, 5, 17, 40 – 44, 58 – 60, 113 – 14, 118, 122, 141, 143, 151, 164, 169 – 70, 235, 252f See also Riurikovich dynasty; succession David, biblical king, 55, 86, 87t, 87 – 88, 90 Davidic dynasty, 87 – 88

De ceremoniis aulae byzantinae, 29 – 32 Dining Pavilion (Brusiannaia izba stolovaia), 14, 32, 128, 129 Dmitriev-Mamonov, Ivan Il’ich, 97, 215, 253f Dmitrii, First False, 11, 37, 43, 44, 53, 56, 118 – 19, 126 – 27, 132 – 33, 235, 252f, 281n92 wedding of (Marina Mniszech), 11, 37, 43, 56, 105, 118 – 33, 143, 152, 159, 221, 235, 242t, 290n148, 298n131 See also Catholicism Dmitrii, Second False, 53, 146 Dmitrii Donskoi, grand prince, 297n106 Dmitrii Ivanovich (son of Ivan III), 142, 143, 168 – 70, 252f Dmitrii Ivanovich (son of Ivan IV), 56, 118, 143, 152, 252f Dmitrii Ivanovich Vnuk (grandson of Ivan III), 25, 142, 252f Dolgorukov, Aleksei Grigor’evich, 224, 225 Dolgorukov, Daniil Ivanovich, 147 Dolgorukov, Iakov Fedorovich, 189 – 90, 191, 204, 208 Dolgorukov, Iurii Alekseevich, 65, 280n83 Dolgorukov, Ivan Alekseevich, 224, 225 Dolgorukov, Vasilii Lukich, 160 Dolgorukov, Vladimir Timofeevich, 152 – 53, 161, 294n69 Dolgorukova, Ekaterina Alekseevna, 223, 225 Dolgorukova, Mariia Vladimirovna (wife of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich), 16, 17, 45, 75, 144, 152, 159, 161, 163, 245, 253f, 284n15 Dolgorukov princely clan, 152, 161, 191, 225 – 26, 280n83 Domnina, I. I., 229, 230 Domostroi, 10, 18, 19, 37, 65, 71 – 74, 104, 177, 275n133 Dormition cathedral, 32, 38, 59 – 60, 64, 68t, 76, 81, 83, 93, 95, 97 – 98, 128, 130 – 32 Douglas, Mary, 166 dowries, 20 – 21, 70 – 71, 112 – 13, 196, 218 dowry inventories. See wedding documentary sources Drevniaia rossiiskaia vivliofika (DRV), 158 – 59, 219, 279n69, 282n149, 290n149, 292n35 See also Novikov, N. [I.] drinking, drunkenness at weddings, 189, 192, 194 – 95, 200. 211 See also common cup; vodka Dunning, Chester, 127, 289n121

i n d e x     349 Durkheim, Emile, 166 dvoeverie (dual belief ), 103 – 5, 133, 283n7 dwarfs, 196 – 99, 200, 207, 305n47 dynasty, 1, 5 – 6, 7, 11 – 12, 55 – 60, 64, 88, 90, 114, 122, 141, 145, 150 – 51, 153, 158, 162, 165, 177, 181, 185 – 88, 191 – 92, 201, 208, 213 – 14, 227, 236, 239 – 40, 313n66 collateral members of, 11, 57 – 58, 153, 169, 172, 177, 180, 188, 218, 238 continuity of, 5, 12, 42 – 43, 45, 52, 55 – 56, 60, 64, 137, 151, 165, 181, 187, 217, 231, 235 – 36 legitimacy of, 4, 5, 43 – 45, 48, 52 – 55, 56 – 58, 60, 63 – 64, 82, 151, 154, 162, 187, 222, 236 Peter I  and, 3 – 4, 12 – 13, 96 – 98, 200 – 201, 203, 205, 208, 211 – 18, 222, 231, 234 – 36, 239 St. Sergius of Radonezh and, 59, 60, 80 See also brides; royal in-laws; and entries for individual dynasties Ekaterina Alekseevna (daughter of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich), 79, 87, 142, 205, 308n86 Ekaterina Ioannovna (daughter of Ivan V), 97, 196, 198, 204 – 5, 215, 220 – 21, 226 – 27, 253f Elena Ivanovna (daughter of Ivan III), 11, 21, 23 – 25, 56, 105 – 13, 107f, 115, 118, 133, 252f wedding rituals of (Alexander of Lithuania), 115 – 18, 221, 272n67 Elena Stepanovna of Moldavia (wife of Ivan Ivanovich Molodoi), 25, 55 – 56, 142, 252f Elisabeth Christine of BraunschweigWolfenbüttel, 227 Elizabeth (mother of St. John the Forerunner), 54, 87, 87t Elizabeth, empress (Elizabeth Petrovna), 1 – 4, 204 – 5, 215, 220, 221, 223, 226, 228 – 29, 231, 253f Elizabeth Antonovna (sister of Ivan VI), 228, 229, 231, 253f Elkanah (father of the Prophet Samuel), 54, 55, 87t epithalamia (odes), 1 – 4, 12, 230, 255n12 equerry (iasel’nichii), 33, 34, 50, 138, 139, 146 Eskin, Iu. M., 7, 160 Esther, 86, 87t, 88 – 90 Evdokiia Alekseevna (daughter of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich), 79, 87, 142, 205, 308n86

Evdokiia Ivanovna (daughter of Ivan III), 21, 106, 142, 158, 168 – 71, 252f Fāma, Roman goddess, 218, 222, 311n24 Fedor I, 41, 42, 44, 56, 118 – 19, 130, 144, 252f Fedor II, 252f Fedor III, 11, 78, 86 – 87, 91 – 96, 100, 130, 142, 143, 205, 212, 220, 253f first wedding of (Agaf ’ia Grushetskaia), 92 – 94, 100, 142, 153, 160, 191, 207, 212, 293n44, 309n123 second wedding of (Marfa Matveevna Apraksina), 92, 94 – 95, 100, 144, 153, 160, 191, 207, 212 Feodosii, Fr. (Ianovskii), 198 Feodosiia Alekseevna (daughter of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich), 79, 87, 142, 205, 308n86 Feodosiia Ivanovna (daughter of Ivan III), 21, 23 – 24, 25, 56, 106, 141 – 42, 154 – 55 Feofan, archbishop of Pskov, 219, 221 Fennell, J. L. I., 105, 108, 284n27 fertility symbols, 33, 37, 62, 152, 172, 217, 234 arrows, 33, 84, 102 grains (sheaves of rye), 18, 20, 33, 62, 84, 102, 133, 186, 212 honey, 33, 84, 85, 194, 195, 266n115 hops, 39, 101, 133, 211, 212, 275n133 rugs, 22, 33, 124, 133, 139, 140, 155 sables, 32 – 33, 71, 84, 102, 112, 116, 124, 139, 152, 168, 170, 179, 180, 212 See also sprinkling Fichtner, Paula Sutter, 6 Filaret, patriarch, 49, 53 – 56, 57 – 58, 59, 63 – 64, 87, 87t, 133 – 34, 179, 252f, 290n148 Filjushkin, Alexander, 113 False Dmitrii. See Dmitrii, First False; Dmitrii, Second False Filipp, St., metropolitan of Moscow, 80 fireworks, 197, 199, 203, 206 – 7, 218, 220, 222, 228 – 29, 236. See also banquets Firljei, Henryk, Fr., 120, 288n84 flags, 230 Fletcher, Giles, 20, 21, 31 – 32 Flier, Michael, 7, 272n76 Frederick I of Hesse-Kassel, king of Sweden, 218 Frederick II, king of Denmark, 113 – 14 Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, 105 – 6, 107f Frederick III, elector of Saxony, 106, 107f

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Frederick V, king of Denmark, 228 Friedrich Wilhelm, duke of Kurland, 195 – 201, 204, 226, 253f Frost, Robert, 113, 114 Gagarin, Daniil Grigor’evich, 163 – 64, 299n1 Gagin princely clan, 193 Gedymin dynasty, 135, 107f Gedyminas, 107f, 154 Genealogical Books (Rodoslovnye knigi), 276n146 Gennep, Arnold van, 10, 16, 26 – 28, 30, 35 – 40, 71, 166 – 67, 171, 187, 299n10 See also rites of passage George Mikhailovich, tsesarevich and grand duke, heir of the current Head of the House of Romanoff, 313n11 Gerasim, archbishop of Sibir’ and Tobol’sk, 186 gifts, 21, 32, 34, 39, 85 – 86, 90, 93, 95, 97, 108, 112, 117, 123 – 24, 126, 128 – 29, 132, 139, 142, 162, 163 – 65, 168 – 71, 177, 183, 188, 199, 212, 266n115 at ancient Greek weddings, 28 brides and, 12, 36, 40, 142, 165, 171 – 81, 187, 221, 236 church hierarchs and, 86, 90, 95 – 99, 165, 173t, 175, 178 – 86 knighthoods and promotions as, 221 – 22 Merovingian and Carolingian, 167 and monarchical power, 167 – 71, 177, 187 – 88, 222 shirinka, 32, 85, 128, 141, 163 – 65, 172 – 77, 173t, 174t, 181 – 86, 221 – 22, 301n31 shortages of, 175 – 76 social integration and, 40, 85, 165 – 67, 171 – 81, 187, 221 – 22, 236, 238, 267n130 ubrusets, 140 – 41, 163 – 65, 172, 174t, 238 Glinskaia, Anastasiia (sister of Elena Glinskaia), 32, 152 Glinskaia, Elena (wife of Vasilii III), 10, 14 – 16, 15f, 23, 25, 32 – 37, 47 – 48, 51 – 52, 56, 74 – 75, 102, 129, 152, 172, 174, 177, 242t, 252f Glinskii princely clan, 152, 153, 294n65, 296n100 Glück, Ernst, 202 – 3 Godelier, Maurice, 166 gods, Greek and Roman, 2 – 3, 4, 27 – 29, 199, 206 – 7, 218, 222, 311n24 Godunov, Boris Fedorovich, tsar. See Boris Fedorovich Godunov Godunov clan, 43, 294n69

Godunov dynasty, 43, 44, 45, 121, 252f. See also Boris Fedorovich Godunov Godunova, Ekaterina Grigor’evna (née Skuratova), 144 Godunova, Irina Fedorovna (wife of Fedor I), 144, 252f Godunova, Mariia Grigor’evna (née Skuratova; wife of Tsar Boris Godunov), 144 Golikov, I. I., 195 Golitsyn, Ivan Vasil’evich, 134 – 37, 138, 150, 154, 204, 294n69 Golitsyn, Mikhail Alekseevich, 227 – 28 Golitsyn, Vasilii Iur’evich, 115, 156 Golitsyn, Vasilii Vasil’evich, 150, 295n83 Golitsyn princely clan, 115, 135, 150, 154, 156 – 60, 193, 227 Golenevskii, Ivan Kondrat’evich, 255n12 Golovin, Ivan Mikhailovich, 204, 206 Golovin clan, 294n69 Golovin Palace, 225 Golovkin, Gavriil Ivanovich, 160, 197, 204, 209, 220 – 22, 305n37 Golovkin, Mikhail Gavriilovich, 204, 206 – 7 Gorbatyi, Aleksandr Borisovich, 147 Gorbatyi princely clan, 146, 147 Gordon, Patrick, 282n115 Gramotin, Ivan Taras’evich, 48 – 52, 56, 61, 74, 79, 134 – 36, 164, 181, 200, 204, 245, 295n71 See also wedding choreographers Great Court, Chancery of the (Prikaz Bol’shogo dvora), 79, 81, 91, 175, 308n104 Great Northern War, 196, 202 – 3, 211, 217 – 18 Greek (ancient) weddings, 10, 16, 27 – 28, 31 groomsmen (shafery; Petrine-era wedding role), 197 – 98, 204, 221, 305n37, 307n79, 310n10 Grushetskaia, Agaf ’ia Simeonovna (wife of Fedor III), 92, 94, 153, 160, 253f Habsburg dynasty, 6, 107f, 108 hair braiding, 36, 39, 40, 83, 116, 172, 176, 186, 188, 212, 236, 275n133 at ancient Greek and Roman weddings, 27, 29 hair combing, 32, 36, 83, 139, 172, 186, 188, 199 Hennings, Jan, 7 Herberstein, Sigismund, 20

i n d e x     351 Holstein (Holstein-Gottorp), House of, 113 – 14, 210, 215, 217 – 26, 229, 253f, 310n7 Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery, 59 – 60, 115, 180, 302n57 Horsens, Denmark, 228 Hughes, Lindsey, 92, 199, 196, 201, 203, 213, 310n4 Iaguzhinskii, Pavel Ivanovich, 204, 221, 307n79 Iazykov, D. I., 17 Iazykov, Ivan Maksimovich, 92, 280n83 Iazykov, Semen Ivanovich, 202 Ice Palace, 227 Ignatii, patriarch, 118 – 19, 130 – 31, 287n81, 190n149 Igor, prince of Kyiv, 17 Igor Tale (Slovo o polku Igoreve), 19, 24 Il’ia Fedorovich (son of Fedor III), 94, 96, 253f in-laws. See royal in-laws Ioakim, patriarch, 92 – 94, 97 Ioasaf, patriarch, 80, 81, 86 Iona, St., metropolitan of Kyiv and all Rus’, 80 Iosif, patriarch, 63, 64, 141, 173t, 174t, 179 – 80, 184, 302n57 Irina Mikhailovna (daughter of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich), 46, 86, 141, 142, 173t, 186 Isaac, biblical patriarch, 54, 86 – 87, 87t, 90 Iur’ev, Nikita Romanovich, 45 Iur’eva, Anastasiia Romanovna (wife of Ivan IV), 23, 44 – 45, 48, 56 – 57, 142, 145 – 48, 152, 153, 157, 172, 177, 242t, 252f Iur’eva, Anna Romanovna, 148 Iur’ev clan, 44 – 45, 145, 146, 148, 152, 153, 294n64, 294n67 See also Romanov dynasty Iurii Ivanovich (son of Ivan III), 14 – 15, 33, 34, 142 – 43, 168 – 70, 174, 252f Iurii Vasil’evich (brother of Ivan IV), 47, 48, 57, 128, 142, 143, 144, 146, 153, 172, 173t, 177, 242t, 252f, 270n51 Ivan Ivanovich, tsarevich (son of Ivan IV), 23, 26, 36, 40, 56, 58 – 59, 64, 116, 145, 252f Ivan Ivanovich Molodoi (son of Ivan III), 25, 55 – 56, 252f Ivan III, 11, 21, 23, 25 – 26, 31, 55 – 56, 105 – 12, 107f, 141 – 42, 158, 168, 252f, 285n52, 293n53

Ivan IV, the Terrible, 9, 11, 17, 37, 40, 41, 55, 57, 102 – 3, 105, 113 – 18, 130, 142, 148, 153, 172, 177, 252f, 263n56, 290n140 first wedding of (Anastasiia Iur’eva), 23, 44, 48, 56 – 57, 116, 128, 143, 144, 145 – 47, 152, 157 – 58, 242t, 252f, 293n55 second wedding of (Mariia Cherkasskaia), 252f third wedding of (Marfa Sobakina), 26, 116, 143, 144, 145, 152, 252f fourth wedding of (Anna Koltovskaia), 141, 163, 252f fifth wedding of (Anna Vasil’chikova), 48, 143, 144, 145, 152, 242t, 252f sixth wedding of (Vasilisa Radilova), 70, 252f, 275n130 seventh wedding of (Mariia Nagaia), 56, 116, 143, 145, 152, 158 – 61, 252f Ivan V, 3 – 4, 12, 78, 86 – 87, 91, 96 – 97, 100, 142, 143, 196, 197, 204, 205, 215, 253f, 290n140 wedding of (Praskov’ia Saltykova), 11, 92, 95 – 98, 100, 207 Ivan VI, 97, 226, 228, 229, 253f Ivanov, Illarion (Larion) Ivanovich, 80 – 81, 86, 91 Izvol’skii, Stepan, 181 Jacob, biblical patriarch, 54, 86 – 87, 87t, 90 Jagiellonian dynasty, 107f, 109 Jan I Olbrecht, king of Poland, 109 Janowicz, Peter, 111, 285n44 Janowicz, Stanislaw, 111 jesters, 12, 191 – 95, 199, 227 Joseph, biblical patriarch, 54, 87, 87t Josephus, 88, 266n115 Juel, Joost, 197 – 98, 305n37 Juliana, queen of Denmark, 228 Juno, Roman goddess, 218, 222 Kaiser, Daniel, 9, 17, 102 – 3 Karamzin, N. M., 106 Karl-Filip, son of Charles IX of Sweden, 44, 146 Karl Friedrich of Holstein-Gottorp, 210, 218, 219, 223, 253f, 310n10 wedding of (Anna Petrovna), 217 – 23, 229 Karl Leopold of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, 196, 227, 253f Karl Peter Ulrich, of Holstein-Gottorp. See Peter III Kazan’, 113, 181 – 83 Kazan Cathedral (St. Petersburg), 228, 230

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Keenan, Edward L., 5, 100 Kertzer, David, 45 Kharlamov, Levontii, 183 Khitrovo, Bogdan Matveevich, 79 – 81, 90 – 91 Khitrovo, Ivan Bogdanovich, 280n83 Khlopova, Mariia Ivanovna, 45, 294n69 – 70 Khoborov, Ivan Ivanovich, 294n65 Kholmskii, Vasilii Daniilovich, 21, 23 – 25, 56, 141 – 42, 154 – 55 Kholmogory, 228 Kiel, 219, 310n7 kika (bridal headgear), 24, 32, 36, 112, 116 – 17, 139, 154, 177, 236 Kika Tale, 154, 297n108 – 9 Kikin, Aleksandr Vasil’evich, 204, 307n79 Kleopina-Kutuzova, Mariia Andreevna (wife of Simeon Kasaevich), 57, 173t Kokoshkin, Ivan Mikhailov syn, 304n25 Kollmann, Nancy Shields, 5, 7, 154, 155, 162, 297n106 Koltovskaia, Anna Alekseevna, nun Dar’ia (wife of Ivan IV), 141, 163 – 64, 252f, 299n1, 299n3 Komarov, Matvei, 74 Komter, Aafke, 267n130 Konrad III, “the Red,” 107f, 109 – 10 Kornilii, archbishop of Vologda, 181 Kosior, Katarzyna, 237 Kotoshikhin (Kotošixin), Grigorii Karpovich, 10, 18, 37, 46 – 47, 52 – 53, 60, 65 – 74, 68t, 69 – 74, 137 – 38, 177 Kozachenko, A. I., 17, 23 – 25 Kurakin, Boris Ivanovich, 160 Kurakin, Grigorii Andreevich, 115 – 16, 155 – 57 Kurakin princely clan, 115, 156 – 57, 280n83, 294n69 Kurland, 195 – 96, 200, 204, 215, 226 Kurland, House of (Kettler dynasty), 215 Kyiv, 17 Kyivan Rus’, 16, 17 LaCapra, Dominick, 6, 51 ladies-in-waiting (blizhnie devitsy; Petrineera wedding role), 204, 209, 221 Lefort, Franz, 193 Lefort Palace (Moscow), 193 – 94 “Legend of Rogned,” 18 Leo VI, Byzantine emperor, 30 Levin, Eve, 103 – 5, 133 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 166 Levkei, archbishop of Pskov and Izborsk, 183, 186

Liapunova, Mariia Grigor’evna (wife of Tsarevich Mikhail Kaibulin), 47, 144, 161 Likhachev, D. S., 18 Likhachev, Fedor Fedorovich, 49, 134, 176, 294n71 Likhachev, Mikhail Timofeevich, 92, 280n83 Litvinova-Mosal’skaia, Uliana Fedorovna, 144 Livonia, kingdom of, 37, 113 – 15, 118, 156 Livonian War, 113 – 14, 196, 285n54 Lomonosov, M. V., 1 – 4, 12 – 13, 230 – 31 Lopukhin, Fedor Avramovich, 202 Lopukhin, Sergei Avramovich, 202 Lopukhin, Vasilii Avramovich, 202 Lopukhina, Evdokiia Fedorovna, nun Elena (wife of Peter I), 11, 56, 98 – 99, 160, 201 – 2, 215 – 16, 224, 226, 253f Lopukhina, Kseniia Fedorovna, 160 L’vov, Aleksei Mikhailovich, 179, 294n71 Maciejowski, Bernard Cardinal, 120 – 25 Magnus of Denmark, 11, 37, 105, 113 – 18, 129, 132, 156 – 58, 252f, 297n116 Makarii, metropolitan of Novgorod, 181 Makarov, Aleksei Vasil’evich, 203, 204, 207, 209, 307n79, 308n89 Mal, prince of the Drevlianians, 17 – 18 Marfa Alekseevna (daughter of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich), 79, 87, 142, 308n86 Margaret, Jacques, 126, 302n58 Maria Fedorovna (née Sophie Dorothee Auguste Luise of Württemberg; wife of Paul I), 231 Maria Nikolaevna (daughter of Nicholas I), 233 – 34 Maria Vladimirovna, current Head of the House of Romanoff, 313n11 Mariia Alekseevna (daughter of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich), 79, 87, 142, 205, 308n86 Mariia of Tver’ (wife of Ivan III), 25, 142, 252f Marker, Gary, 7 Markevich, A. I., 67 – 68, 297n109, 298n131 marriage, 185, 233, 313n1 birth of children and, 186 – 87 Christian marriage, 39, 62, 70, 94, 101 – 5, 121 – 23, 237 heterodox rites of, 199 – 200, 221 with non-Orthodox spouses, 37, 46, 128 – 29, 133, 199, 221 pre-Christian rites of, 133, 186, 237

i n d e x     353 marriage politics, 4, 5, 44 – 46, 74, 96, 137, 140, 145 – 47, 167 – 71, 212 – 13, 224, 226, 228, 234, 236 See also brides; monarchical power marshal (Petrine-era wedding role), 189, 197, 203, 221 masquerades, 191 – 94, 209 – 11, 228 – 29, 304n25 master of the horse (koniushii), 22, 48, 50, 139, 146, 148, 149t, 188 matchmakers (svakhi), 18, 22, 34, 38, 50, 71, 116, 128, 138, 139, 195 Matveev, Artamon Sergeevich, 78 – 80, 153 Matvei, metropolitan of Kazan’ and Siiazhsk, 181, 182 – 83 Mauss, Marcel, 165 – 67, 177, 267n130 Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, 106, 107f, 108 – 9 Maximilian I Joseph, king of Bavaria, 233 Mecklenburg-Schwerin, House of, 215 Melent’eva, Vasilisa (wife of Ivan IV). See Radilova, Vasilisa Menshikov, Aleksandr Danilovich, 197 – 98, 203, 207, 220 – 25, 305n37, 311n30 Menshikova, Dar’ia Mikhailovna, 203 – 4, 206, 221, 224 Menshikova, Mariia Aleksandrovna, 224 – 25 Menshikov Palace (St. Petersburg), 197 – 98, 200, 205, 207, 209, 211, 224, 308n89 merchants (urban middle classes), 46, 86, 95, 179 Meyendorff, John, [Fr.], 82 – 83 Mezetskii princely clan, 286n69, 294n68 Michels, Georg, 78 Middle Golden Palace (Sredniaia palata), 14, 32, 34, 36, 38 – 39, 46, 51, 83, 85, 188 Mikhail Fedorovich, tsar, 16, 44 – 55, 60 – 61, 67, 74, 215, 241, 252f, 253f first failed planned wedding of (Maria Khlopova), 45, 53, 63, 294n69 first wedding of (Mariia Dolgorukova), 16, 23, 26, 45, 46 – 52, 53, 58 – 60, 75, 141, 143 – 45, 147, 150, 152, 159, 161, 163, 172, 175, 177 – 78, 181 – 84, 207, 229, 235, 240, 245, 252f, 284n15 second wedding of (Evdokiia Streshneva), 26, 45 – 55, 57 – 60, 63 – 64, 67 – 68, 68t, 74 – 75, 79, 83, 134 – 36, 143 – 47, 153, 159, 164, 172, 173t, 175, 178 – 79, 181 – 84, 207, 235, 252f, 295n86 second wedding used model, 61, 68, 74, 75, 273n86 – 87 Mikhail Kaibulin, tsarevich (Kutlu-Girei ibn Aslan-Ali), 47, 144, 161, 298n135

Mikhail Kaibulovich, tsarevich (Murtaza-Ali), 116 Mikhailov, G. V., 204, 206, 304n70, 307n70, 308n89 Mikhailova, I. B., 7 Military Service Chancery (Razriadnyi prikaz), 22, 49, 61, 79 – 81, 134, 157 – 58, 237 Miloslavskaia, Anna Il’ichna, 61, 148 Miloslavskaia, Mariia Il’ichna, 60 – 61, 68, 75, 78 – 80, 82, 91, 148, 173t, 179 – 80, 184 – 87, 215, 253f Miloslavskii, Il’ia Daniilovich, 69, 148 – 49, 149t, 295n86, 296n101 Miloslavskii clan, 96 – 97, 148 – 49, 149t, 151, 153, 226, 295n86, 296n101 Miller, David, 45 Minin, Kuz’ma, 150 Mitau, 196, 200 Mniszech, Jerzy, 119 – 20, 122 – 24, 126 – 27, 152, 296n94 Mniszech, Marina (wife of First False Dmitrii), 11, 37, 43, 118 – 33, 152, 159, 242t, 252f, 281n92 See also Catholicism; Dmitrii, First False Moisei, archbishop of Rostov and Murom, 183 monarchical power, 4, 6, 7, 9, 12, 26, 137, 213 – 14, 217, 222, 234, 236 See also brides; marriage politics monogram, 199, 206, 230 Mons, Anna, 201 Morozov, Boris Ivanovich, 61, 143 – 44, 147 – 49, 149t Morozov, Gleb Ivanovich, 144, 148, 149t Morozov, Ivan Vasil’evich, 148, 149t Morozov, Mikhail Iakovlevich, 147, 149t, 155, 294n64 Morozova, Ovdot’ia Alekseevna (née Sitskaia), 144, 148, 149t Morozova, Stefanida Semenovna (née Pogozheva?), 148, 149t Morozov clan, 148 – 50, 149t, 294n68 Moscow, 9 – 15, 24, 43, 47 – 53, 63, 66, 69, 74,  80 – 81, 85 – 86, 105, 108 – 20, 126 – 28, 132, 136, 142, 150, 154 – 55, 164, 168, 179 – 84, 187, 191 – 92, 200 – 205, 223 – 29, 238 churches of, 48, 52, 55, 59, 64, 95, 193, 205 German Quarter of, 193, 201 – 2 Kremlin of, 14, 52, 64, 55, 59, 64, 68, 86, 95, 97, 163, 165 See also entries for individual churches and cathedrals

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Mstislavskii, Fedor Ivanovich, 117, 143, 152, 169, 252f, 300n24 Mstislavskii princely clan, 146, 252f, 300n24, 252f Muir, Edward, 21, 42, 91 music, musicians, 2, 3, 18 – 19, 23 – 24, 27 – 28, 31, 46, 62 – 63, 68, 68t, 71, 79, 98, 82, 171, 172, 194 – 95, 197, 198 – 99, 204, 209, 212, 230, 235, 274n99, 301n31 at ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine weddings, 27, 28, 31 brides’ wedding songs of lament, 19, 27, 28, 71 liturgical replaces secular, 62 – 63, 82, 85, 101, 212 at Petrine-era weddings, 191, 195, 197 – 99, 222, 230, 235, 305n37 Musin-Pushkin, Ivan Alekseevich, 204 Muster Books (Razriadnye knigi), 26, 137, 155, 158, 176n146 GR (Gosudarev razriad), 155 PR (Prostrannaia redaktsiia), 155, 158 – 59 See also wedding documentary sources Nabal (first husband of Abigail), 88 Nagaia, Evdokiia Aleksandrovna, 142, 152, 173t, 252f, 262n26 Nagaia, Mariia Fedorovna (wife of Ivan IV), 56, 118, 143 – 44, 152, 158 – 61, 252f, 298n134 – 35 Nagaia, Praskov’ia Ivanovna, 143, 144, 152 Nagoi, Afanasii Fedorovich, 159 Nagoi, Fedor Fedorovich, 159 Nagoi, Semen Fedorovich, 159 Nagoi clan, 152, 159, 298n125 Napoleon I, 233 Narcissus, 2 Naryshkin, Kirill Poluekhtovich, 80 Naryshkin, Lev Kirillovich, 202 Naryshkina, Natal’ia Kirillovna (wife of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich), 10 – 11, 56, 76, 79 – 81, 84, 86 – 87, 89 – 91, 93, 96 – 97, 153, 173t, 179, 201, 205, 216, 253f, 310n3 Naryshkin clan, 96 – 98, 153, 226, 229 Natal’ia Alekseevna (daughter of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich), 96, 142, 198, 202 – 6, 220 – 21, 253f Natal’ia Alekseevna (daughter of Tsarevich Aleksei Petrovich), 215, 253f Natal’ia Petrovna (daughter of Peter I), 215 Nativity Monastery (Vladimir), 180 Nazarov, V. D., 9 Neva River, 197, 199, 205, 209, 211, 219

Nicholas, St., of Myra in Lycia, 80, 128 Nicholas I, emperor, 233 Nikula Davydovich, Georgian tsarevich, 145 Novikov, N. [I.], 74, 158, 219, 257n32, 279n69 Novgorod, 18, 111, 116, 118, 181, 218, 260n15 Novodevichii Convent (Moscow), 85, 224 nymphs, 2 – 3 Nystadt, Treaty of, 211. See also Great Northern War Oakley, John, 27 – 28 Odoevskaia, Evdokiia Romanovna, 48, 155, 252f, 262n26 Odoevskaia, Ovdot’ia Fedorovna, 144 Odoevskii, Ivan Ivanovich, 134, 150, 294n68 Odoevskii, Nikita Ivanovich, 80, 91, 143, 144, 280n83, 293n44 Odoevskii princely clan, 280n83, 294n68 Ofrosimov, Ivan Mikhailov syn, 183 Olearius, Adam, 20 – 21, 63, 275n129 Ol’ga of Kyiv, 17 – 18 On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich. See Kotoshikhin (Kotošixin), Grigorii Karpovich Opukhin, Ivan, 182 – 83 Ordin-Nashchokin, Afanasii Lavrent’evich, 79 Orpheus, 2 Osterman, Andrei Ivanovich, 227 Otrep’ev, Grisha. See Dmitrii, First False pagan (pre-Christian) wedding rites, 6, 8, 11, 29, 37, 62, 75, 85, 90, 101 – 4, 126, 133, 186, 212, 237 – 38, 283n7 See also wedding rituals Pafnutii, archbishop of Tver’ and Kashin, 181 Pakhomii, archbishop of Astrakhan’, 183 Palace of Facets (Granovitaia palata), 46, 50, 83, 85 – 86, 90, 128 – 30, 172, 179, 188 Paletskaia, Ul’iana Dmitreevna (wife of Iurii Vasil’evich), 47 – 48, 57, 146, 153, 173t, 242t, 252f, 270n51 Paletskii, Dmitrii Fedorovich, 147 Paletskii princely clan, 146, 147, 252f, 297n107 Patrikeev, Fedor Patrikeevich, 154 Patrikeev, Iurii Patrikeevich, 154 Pavel, archbishop of Pskov and Izborsk, 181 Pavel, archbishop of Tver’, 181 Pavel, metropolitan of Sarai and the Don Region, 86 – 90, 142

i n d e x     355 Pennington, Anne, 66 Perm’, 111, 136, 150, 294n69 Perrie, Maureen, 119 Paul I, emperor (Paul Petrovich), 217, 230, 231, 233, 235, 253f Paus, Johann Werner, 4 Perry, John, 193 – 94, 304n10 Peter (Kudai Kul), tsarevich, 21, 142, 158, 168 – 71, 252f Peter, St. metropolitan of Kyiv and all Rus’, 80 Peter Antonovich (brother of Ivan VI), 228, 229, 231, 253f Peter I, 2 – 7, 11 – 13, 56, 77f, 79, 91 – 92, 96 – 97, 100, 129, 160, 188 – 89, 190f, 191 – 98, 201 – 14, 215 – 27, 231, 234 – 39, 253f, 282n119, 290n140, 305n37, 306n51, 306n66, 309n123, 310n5 charismatic authority of, 12, 191, 201, 211, 213 – 14, 217, 222, 236, 239 dynasty and, 3 – 4, 12 – 13, 96 – 98, 200 – 201, 203, 205, 208, 211 – 18, 222, 231, 234 – 36, 239 first wedding of (Evdokiia Lopukhina), 11, 56, 92, 96, 98 – 99, 100, 196 Grand Embassy of, 201 – 2 reforms of, 92, 100, 188, 191 – 93, 208, 213, 217, 235, 239 second wedding of (Catherine I), 47, 196, 201 – 7, 306n66 as wedding choreographer, 196, 198, 200 – 201, 207, 208 – 9, 213, 217, 222, 226, 234, 238, 239 Peter II (Peter Alekseevich), 3, 215, 216, 216f, 220, 223 – 26, 227, 253f, 310n3 Peter III (Peter Fedorovich), 4, 219, 226, 229, 230, 231, 253f wedding of (Catherine II), 1 – 4, 12 – 13, 217, 228 – 36 Peter and Paul Fortress, 219 Peterhof, 190 – 91, 224 Piast dynasty, 107f, 109 Pleshcheev, Andrei Osipovich, 157 – 58 Poe, Marshall T., 19 – 20 Poppel, Nikolaus, 105 – 8, 110, 284n23 portal ritual, 34, 37, 38 – 39, 50 – 51, 52, 56 – 58, 62, 199 Pouncy, Carolyn Johnston, 71. See also Domostroi Povest’ vremennnykh let. See wedding documentary sources Pozharskii, Dmitrii Mikhailovich, 150, 294n68 Pozharskii, Roman Petrovich, 175

Praskov’ia Ioannovna (daughter of Ivan V), 97, 196, 198, 204, 205, 215, 253f prayers, 12, 53 – 55, 165 biblical prophets and patriarchs in, 53 – 54, 86 – 90 succession and, 12, 53, 181 – 88, 231 precedence (mestnichestvo), 7, 11, 94 – 95, 100, 135, 140, 154 – 55, 158 – 60, 213, 276n146 wedding exemption to (bezmest’e, bez mest), 11 – 12, 80, 85, 136 – 37, 155, 157 – 61, 238 – 39, 298n131 weddings and, 11, 80 – 81, 85, 115 – 16, 135 – 36, 138, 140, 150, 154 – 62, 238 – 39, 298n135 Preobrazhenskii Regiment, 192, 193, 197, 208 pretenders to the throne, 41, 119, 132, 144. See also Dmitrii, First False; Dmitrii, Second False Privy Council, 219, 223 – 25 procession to monasteries and churches (mini-pilgrimages), 33 – 34, 43f, 48, 52, 55, 58 – 60, 63 – 64, 68, 68t, 83, 93, 102, 146 processions. See cortège (poezd) Protestantism (Lutheranism), 46, 70, 104, 114, 121, 196, 200 Protestant wedding rites, 11, 116 – 17, 126, 133, 199 – 200, 237 Pronskii, Daniil Dmitreevich, 56 – 57, 242t, 294n65 Pronskii, Ivan Ivanovich, 147, 294n64 proxy parents, 22, 47, 56, 57, 116, 139, 142 – 44, 147 – 48, 152, 175, 197, 203 – 4, 206, 207, 220, 307n76 Pruth campaign, 205 Pushkin, Vasilii Nikitich, 156 – 57 Rachel (wife of Jacob), 54, 86 – 87, 87t, 90 Radilov, Larka, 186 – 87 Radilova (Melent’eva), Vasilisa (wife of Ivan IV), 70, 252f, 275n130 Rafail, bishop of Kolomna and Koshira, 181, 184 Razumovskii, Aleksei Grigor’evich, 229 Rebecca (wife of Isaac), 54, 86 – 87, 87t, 90 religion. See wedding rituals rites of passage, 10, 12, 16, 26, 35 – 40, 83, 127, 165 – 67, 171, 177 – 78, 187 – 88, 196, 200, 208, 212, 236 in ancient Greek and Roman weddings, 28 – 30 gifts and, 165 – 71 rites of incorporation, 10, 26, 28, 29, 35, 39 – 40, 166

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rites of passage (continued) rites of separation, 10, 26, 28, 30, 35 – 37, 40, 83, 85, 129, 166, 171, 275n133 rites of transition, 10, 26, 28, 35, 37 – 39, 71, 166, 275n133 See also Gennep, Arnold van ritual reconciliation. See wedding rituals rituals, 99 – 100, 104 – 5, 132, 167, 179, 188, 192, 202, 208, 213, 234 – 37, 239 See also brides; bride-shows; wedding rituals Riurikovich dynasty, 17, 44, 235. See also Daniilovich dynasty; succession Roman (ancient) weddings, 10, 16, 28 – 29 Romanos II, Byzantine emperor, 30 Romanov dynasty, 2 – 5, 10, 41, 42 – 45, 47, 52, 53, 55, 60, 63 – 64, 79, 86 – 87, 94, 102, 119, 141, 146 – 47, 150 – 51, 177, 180 – 83, 190, 196, 201, 203 – 5, 211 – 15, 217 – 18, 222, 226 – 28, 230, 232 – 33, 235, 239 – 40, 308n86, 313n11 Miloslavskii line of, 12 – 13, 96 – 98, 215 – 17, 226 – 29, 235, 253f Naryshkin line of, 12 – 13, 96 – 98, 215 – 17, 228 – 30, 235, 253f See also Iur’ev clan; individual entries for members of the clan and dynasty Romanov, Fedor Nikitich. See Filaret Romanov, Ivan Nikitich, 50 – 51, 57 – 58, 143 – 44, 294n68 Romanov, Nikita Ivanovich, 143, 175, 292n42 Romodanovskii, Vasilii Grigor’evich, 184 – 86 Romodanovskii princely clan, 294n69 Rondeau, Lady ( Jane Vigor, Jane Ward), 227 – 28 Rowland, Daniel, 7 royal in-laws, 5, 11, 44, 96, 137 – 38, 147, 150, 151 – 54, 161 – 62, 178, 212, 224 – 25, 236, 239, 311n42 Russian Church schism (raskol), 77 – 78 Rzhevskaia, Dar’ia Gavriilovna, 209 Sabur, Fedor Ivanovich, 154, 162 Saburov, Iurii Konstantinovich, 170 Saburova, Evdokiia Bogdanova, nun Alexandra (wife of Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich), 36, 252f Saburova, Mariia Iur’evna, 21, 168 – 71, 252f Saburova, Solomoniia Iur’evna (wife of Vasilii III), 168 – 70, 201, 252f Sakharov, Ivan Petrovich, 23 – 24, 74, 139 – 40, 262n53

Saltykov clan, 45, 98, 294n69 – 70 Saltykov, Lavrentii Dmitreevich, 184 – 86 Saltykova, Praskov’ia Fedorovna (wife of Ivan V), 97 – 98, 197 – 98, 204 – 7, 253f Samuel, biblical prophet, 54 – 55, 87, 87t Sapieh, Lev, 120 Sapieha, Peter Ivanovich ( Jan), 224, 311n31 Sarah (wife of Abraham), 54, 86 – 87, 90, 87t Saul, biblical king, 55 schism (raskol). See Russian Church schism, 77 – 78 Schleswig, 218 Schlüsselberg Fortress, 224 Schoonebeek, Adriaan, 194 Semen Ivanovich (son of Ivan III), 142, 168 – 70, 252f Semenovskii Regiment, 193 Senate, 189, 210 – 11, 221 sennik (bridal chamber), 33, 34, 37, 38, 71, 148, 149t, 153 at ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine weddings, 28 – 30 at Petrine-era weddings, 198, 211, 212, 220 Sergius, of Radonezh, St., 59 – 60, 80 sermons, 72, 84, 93, 121 – 22, 124 – 25, 199 – 200 Shakhovskaia, Mariia Ivanovna, 304n10 Shakhovskoi, Iurii Fedorovich, 204, 206, 304n10 Shakhovskoi princely clan, 193, 304n10 Shanskii, Feofilakt (Filat) Pimenovich, 193 – 95, 200, 207 Sharpe, Kevin, 43 Shchelkalov, Andrei Iakovlevich, 115 – 16, 156 – 57 Shchelkalov, Vasilii Iakovlevich, 115 – 16, 156 – 57, 297n116 Sheidiakov, Petr Tutaevich, 156 Sheremetev, Boris Petrovich, 203 Sheremetev, Fedor Ivanovich, 161, 175, 294n68 Sheremetev clan, 193 Shestova, Kseniia Ivanovna, nun Marfa (mother of tsar Mikhail Fedorovich), 26, 45, 53 – 55, 58, 59, 63, 290n140 shirinka. See gifts Shishkin, Stepan, 186 – 87 Shuiskaia, Marfa Vasil’evna, 152, 158 – 59, 169, 172, 173t, 177, 252f, 297n119, 293n53, 300n24, 301n35 Shuiskii, Dmitrii Ivanovich, 144 Shuiskii, Ivan Ivanovich, 134 – 35, 143, 150, 294n68

i n d e x     357 Shuiskii, Ivan Mikhailovich, 147, 294n65 Shuiskii princely clan, 43, 145, 146, 152, 300n24. See also Vasilii IV Shuiskii Skavronskii clan, 224, 311n30. See also Catherine I Skliaev, Fedosei Moiseevich, 204, 206 Siegmund of Brandenburg, 106, 107f Sigismund III Vasa, king of Poland, 120 – 25 Silber, Ilana F., 166 – 67, 187 Simeon Alekseevich (son of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich), 78 Simeon Bekbulatovich (Sain Bulat), 252f, 293n53, 300n24 Simeon Ivanovich, grand prince, 23 – 25, 163n56 Simeon Kasaevich (Iadgar-Mukhammed ibn Kasim), 57, 59, 172, 173t Simon, metropolitan of Kazan’ and Sviiazhsk, 183 Sinos, Rebecca, 27 – 28 sisters (sestry; Petrine-era wedding role), 204, 206 – 7, 221 Sitskii, Aleksei Iur’evich, 134, 150, 294n68 Sitskii princely clan, 294n68 Skopin-Shuiskii, Mikhail Vasil’evich, 145 Slovo o polku Igoreve. See Igor Tale Sobakin clan, 151, 152 Sobakina, Marfa Vasil’evna (wife of Ivan IV), 26, 143, 145, 252f Sofiia Alekseevna (daughter of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich), regent, 78, 86 – 87, 96 – 97, 140, 142, 253f, 290n140 Sofiia Palaiologina, 31, 56, 106, 108 – 9, 127, 155, 252f at wedding of Feodosiia Ivanovna, 25 – 26, 56, 141 – 42, 155 Sophie Auguste Friederike of AnhaltZerbst. See Catherine II speeches, 54 – 55, 56 – 58, 64, 72, 76, 81 – 82, 93, 120 – 21, 125, 129 – 31, 142, 152, 172, 188, 199 biblical prophets and patriarchs in, 53 – 55, 87, 87t See also sermons; prayers sprinkling (osypali khmelem), 24, 32 – 38, 50, 52, 112, 117, 133, 139, 152, 172, 186, 188, 199, 211 – 12, 226 at ancient Greek and Roman weddings, 27, 28, 29, 31, 36 eliminated by Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, 62, 75, 76, 84 – 85, 101, 102, 212, 237, 238

symbolizing a rite of passage, 24, 39 – 40, 62, 83, 186, 275n133 See also fertility symbols Stählin, Jacob von, 255n12 Staritskaia, Efimiia Vladimirovna, 114 Staritskaia, Efrosiniia Andreevna (née Khovanskaia), 23, 25 – 26, 36, 52 – 53, 56, 142 – 44, 173t, 252f Staritskaia, Mariia Vladimirovna, 11, 37, 105, 113 – 18, 133, 156 – 58, 221, 252f Staritskii, Andrei Ivanovich (brother of Vasilii III), 23, 26, 36, 52, 56, 57, 116, 142, 143 – 45, 168 – 70, 171, 172 – 74, 173t, 177, 252f, 300n22 Staritskii, Vasilii Vladimirovich, 116, 117, 286n69 Staritskii, Vladimir Andreevich (cousin of Ivan IV), 56, 57, 114, 145, 173t first wedding of (Evdokiia Nagaia), 26, 56, 57, 142 – 43, 152, 172, 173t, 177, 252f, 262n26 second wedding of (Evdokiia Odoevskaia), 26, 47 – 48, 56 – 57, 142 – 43, 155, 158, 172, 242t, 252f, 262n26 Starodubskii, Vasilii Semenovich, 21, 168 – 71, 252f Stevenson, Kenneth, 103 – 4, 107, 133 St. Petersburg, 10, 198, 217 – 19, 224 weddings in, 189 – 91, 196, 200, 203, 205, 210, 226 – 30 Stremoukhova, Anna Eremeevna (née Pashkova), 208, 210 Streshnev, Tikhon Nikitich, 202 Streshneva, Evdokiia Luk’ianovna (wife of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich), 17, 45 – 46, 53 – 55, 58, 68, 74 – 75, 83, 145 – 46, 153, 159, 164, 164f, 173t, 182 – 83, 253f, 295n86, 298n131 Streshnev clan, 151, 226 Stuart, James Fitz-James, duke of Berwick and of Liria and Xérica, 225 – 26 succession, 11, 12, 13, 41 – 44, 58, 92, 169, 216, 222 – 23, 226, 228 – 32, 234, 236, 239, 280n75, 310n3 crisis of 1497 – 1502, 25 crisis of 1680s, 96 – 99 Pauline law of, 217, 231 – 32, 233, 313n1 Petrine law of, 12, 201, 214, 216 – 17, 223, 226, 234, 239 prayers and, 53 – 55, 88, 181 – 88 speeches and, 53 – 58, 81 – 82, 86 – 90, 93 See also Time of Troubles; and entries on individual dynasties

358    i n d e x

Table of Ranks, 220 Tanakh, 33, 88 Tat’iana Mikhailovna (daughter of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich), 46, 86, 141, 142, 173t, 186 Terem, 14, 33, 35, 39 – 40, 45, 79, 81, 83, 84, 127, 132, 148, 202 See also brides Theophano, Byzantine empress, 30 thousandman (tysiatskii), 22, 32, 34, 36, 38, 50, 73, 128, 138 – 40, 144 – 45, 148, 152, 171, 175, 190 Thurn, Georg von (Giorgio della Torre), 108 – 10 Thyrêt, Isolde, 7 Tikhvin Convent, 163 – 64 Time of Troubles, 10, 41 – 45, 102, 118, 145 – 46, 150, 235, 237 Titov, Semen Stepanovich, 80 – 81, 91 toasts, toasting, 38, 84, 124, 185, 198 – 200, 206. See also banquets; drinking, drunkenness Trakhaniotov, Dmitrii, 25 Trakhaniotov, Iurii the Elder, 25 Trakhaniotov, Iurii the Younger, 25, 31, 105 – 9 Trubetskoi, Dmitrii Timofeevich, 133, 150, 295n83 Trubetskoi, Fedor Mikhailovich, 156 Trubetskoi, Iurii Iur’evich, 160 Trubetskoi, Timofei Romanovich, 115 – 16, 156 – 57 Trubetskoi princely clan, 115, 134 – 35, 150, 156 – 57, 160, 192 Tuchkov, Vasilii Mikhailovich, 147 Turgenev, Iakov Fedorovich, 192 – 93, 195, 200, 207 Turner, Victor, 132, 166

Valdemar, of Denmark, 46 Varlaam, metropolitan of Rostov, 181 Vashti (wife of Artaxerxes), 88 – 89 Vasil’chikova, Anna Grigor’evna (wife of Ivan IV), 48, 143, 145, 152, 242t, 252f Vasil’chikov clan, 151, 152 Vasilii I, 107f, 154, 297n106 Vasilii II, 23, 24 Vasilii III, 21, 25 – 26, 52, 56 – 57, 142, 168 – 70, 177, 201, 252f ceremonial used as a model, 10, 16, 23, 26, 32 – 35, 47, 57, 74, 92, 243f first wife of (Solomoniia Saburova), 56, 168, 170, 201, 252f second wedding of (Elena Glinskaia), 10, 14 – 16, 22, 23, 25, 32 – 36, 37, 47, 48, 51 – 52, 102, 116, 129, 142 – 43, 144, 152, 217, 242t Vasilii IV Shuiskii, 43, 44, 45, 129 – 30, 141, 146, 163, 174t wedding of (Ekaterina BuinosovaRostovskaia), 43, 47 – 52, 141, 143 – 44, 152, 159, 161, 235, 242t, 274n99 veiling of the bride, 32, 36, 38, 139, 177, 188, 199 at ancient Greek and Roman weddings, 27, 29 as a rite of passage, 24, 32, 36, 29 – 40, 83, 117, 172, 188, 199, 275n133 Vladimir, St., 18 Vlas’ev, Afanasii Ivanovich, 120 – 26 vodka, 84, 85, 211 Volkov, Iakim, 196, 200 – 201 Volosheninov, Mikhail Iur’evich, 61 Vonifant’ev, Stefan, archpriest, 62 Vorontsov, Iurii Mikhailovich, 155 Vorotynskii, Ivan Alekseevich, 253 Vorotynskii, Ivan Mikhailovich, 50, 175, 294n69 Vsevolozhskii clan, 148 – 49, 149t, 153, 295n86 Vsevolozhskaia, Efimiia Fedorovna (Rafovna), 60 – 64, 68 – 69, 147 – 51, 153, 149t, 273n87, 275n120, 295n86 Vsevolozhskii, Raf Rodionovich, 149t, 295n86

ubrusets. See gifts Uglev, Grigorii, 184 Ul’ianov, Denis Timofeev syn, 176 Ulrika Eleonora, queen of Sweden, 218 Unholy Synod, 190, 204 – 6, 207, 208 – 10 unshoeing ceremony, 18, 20, 260n13 Uroff, Benjamin, 66 – 68, 72 Uspenskii, B. A., 7, 127, 129, 130, 131, 290n43

Weber, Friedrich Christian, 198 – 99, 209, 210, 305n37 wedding choreographers, 5, 10, 11 – 12, 16, 21, 35, 37, 46 – 52, 56, 61 – 66, 72 – 74, 79, 80 – 81, 84, 90, 101, 116 – 18, 131, 138, 147, 154 – 55, 158, 162, 193 – 94, 207 – 9, 212 – 13, 219, 221 – 22, 227 – 30, 235, 237 – 39, 245, 273n82, 308n104, 310n4. See also Peter I

Summer Palace (St. Petersburg), 219 – 20, 230 Suzdal’, 44, 202 swan, 19 as heraldic device, 218, 222 meal at weddings, 71

i n d e x     359 wedding contracts, 20, 70, 71, 196, 218, 267n130 wedding costumes, 14, 24, 31, 69, 82, 98, 112, 116, 132 – 33, 168, 170, 179, 188, 190, 193 – 95, 199, 222, 230 at weddings of Aleksei Mikhailovich, 61 – 62, 82 at weddings in the Petrine era, 190 – 95, 197, 200, 206, 209 – 11, 212, 222, 304n25 See also kika; masquerades wedding documentary sources, 6, 8 – 10, 24, 26, 46 – 52, 73, 96 – 97, 100, 104, 203, 235, 240 ceremonial (svadebnyi chin), 16, 19, 22 – 23, 26, 35, 46 – 53, 56, 61 – 71, 79 – 80, 85, 90 – 92, 94 – 95, 98, 101, 104, 116, 118, 129, 131, 133, 142, 147 – 48, 160, 171 – 75, 188, 237 – 38, 314n14 chronicles, 10, 17 – 19, 24, 95, 260n14, 280n88, 286n69, 290n148, 300n23 copied as models, 47 – 49, 51, 57, 61, 67, 68, 74 – 75, 242t, 243f Court Journal (Pokhodnyi zhurnal), 189 – 90, 205 – 9, 304n10 dowry inventories (spisok pridannykh), 21, 23 – 26, 46, 113, 168 – 70, 171, 261n36, 300n18 foreigners’ accounts, 10, 19 – 21, 31 – 32, 198, 204 gift ledgers, 140 – 41, 179 – 80 letters and memoranda, 181 – 87, 299n6, 302n65 muster (svadebnyi razriad), 21 – 26, 46 – 49, 61, 68, 79, 91, 94 – 95, 97 – 98, 104, 115 – 16, 132, 137 – 41, 146 – 52, 155, 157 – 58, 237, 297n116, 314n14 Petrine and post-Petrine wedding rosters, 203, 209, 219, 221, 229, 310n10, 311n32 1624 “worksheet,” 49 – 52, 56, 61, 243f, 245 – 49 wedding songs, 18 – 19, 24, 71 See also music, musicians; Muster Books (Razriadnye knigi) weddings, 234, 239 clergy at, 280n84, 282n119, 285n49, 302n52, 302n57 [add] entertainment at, 190, 198 – 99 foreigners at, 190 – 91, 197 – 99, 205 – 6, 220, 229 – 30, 236 parodic, 7, 12, 191 – 200, 207 – 13, 222, 238, 239, 304n25 Western European, used as models, 229 – 30 See also betrothal; brides; clergy; crowning; dwarfs; jesters; music,

musicians; masquerades; rites of passage wedding rituals, 4 – 6, 8 – 10, 17, 31, 217 dynastic legitimacy and, 5, 42 – 43, 45, 48, 52 – 56, 60, 79, 82, 88, 95 – 96, 100, 151, 162, 165, 187, 212, 217, 222, 230, 234 – 38, 313n64 gifts at, 12, 21, 32, 46, 84, 90, 97, 168 – 72, 222 Greek (ancient), 10, 16 installation of the bride in the Terem, 35 – 36, 81, 93, 98, 127, 225 marriage politics and, 4 – 5, 44 – 46, 137, 145 – 47, 212 – 13, 162, 212, 226, 230, 234, 236 new title for bride (tsarevna or tsesarevna), 36, 81, 93 origins of, 8 – 10, 16 – 32, 40 – 41, 235 reconciliation and, 11, 25 – 26, 145 – 51, 153, 158, 162, 166, 238 renaming the bride, 35, 98 Roman (ancient), 10, 16 religion and, 8 – 9, 11, 165 – 66, 218, 234 – 35, 237 wedding bed and, 151, 153, 175 See also betrothal; brides; bride-shows; crowning; portal ritual; rites of passage Weiner, Annette, 166 Whittaker, Cynthia, Hyla, 7 Whitworth, Charles, 189 – 91, 203 – 5, 307n76, 308n89 Winter Palace (St. Petersburg), 205, 207, 210, 224, 227, 230 Władysław IV Vasa (son of Sigismund III Vasa), king of Poland, 44, 49, 53, 120 – 25, 146 Wortman, Richard, 7, 213 Zabelin, I. E., 7, 95 Zachariah (father of St. John the Forerunner), 54, 87, 87t Zakhari’in-Iur’ev, Roman, 44. See also Iur’ev clan Zephyr, 2 Zheliabuzhskii, Ivan Afanas’evich, 192, 304n25 Zimin, A. A., 169, 297n109 Zitser, Ernest, 7, 191, 201, 208 Zoё Palaiologina (Paleologue). See Sofiia Palaiologina Zotov, Nikita Moiseevich, 204, 206, 208 – 10, 211, 309n107 Zubov, Aleksei, engraver, 190f, 203 – 6