Oleg F. Kudrjavcev: Evropejskoe vozroždenie i russkaja kul’tura XV – serediny XVII v. Kontakty i vzaimnoe vosprijatie. Otv. red. Oleg F. Kudrjavcev. Moskva: Rosspėn, 2013. 335 S., Abb. = Kul’tura Vozroždenija. ISBN: 978-5-8243-1829-6

Oleg F. Kudrjavcev: Evropejskoe vozroždenie i russkaja kul’tura XV – serediny XVII v. Kontakty i vzaimnoe vosprijatie. Otv. red. Oleg F. Kudrjavcev. Moskva: Rosspėn, 2013. 335 S., Abb. = Kul’tura Vozroždenija. ISBN: 978-5-8243-1829-6.

This collection of papers, part of a series inaugurated in 2003 by Nauka and resumed since 2012 by Rosspen, is far from symmetrical. Granted that Western Europe had scant information about Muscovy and moreover was prejudiced against it, a fact that several authors endeavour to make clear, Russia knew next to nothing about the West. This explains, up to a point, why eleven articles deal with the Western vision of Muscovy, and only four with the Russian side of the question. The remaining five papers examine problems of western influence and comparison.

Articles of a purely descriptive nature do not invite any special comment. Thus, Anna Khoroshkevich, under the title Trade relations between Rus’, Russia and “Europe” during 15th–16th centuries. A case study of ideologema of mutual prejudices, actually draws a charming portrait of Martin Grüneweg (1562 – ca. 1618) (pp. 68–75). Tatiana Matasova shows how Muscovite diplomacy, despite occasional mistakes (pope Clemens IV instead of VII, “Callistos” instead of Sextius IV), could find its way among the labyrinth of Italian states in the XVIth century (pp. 76–91).

Georgii Mel’nikov’s paper deserves special credit for considering the image of Russia as the result of a political context. Harsh judgements passed on Muscovy first by Czech chroniclers, then humanists, are notably softened when the emperor seeks Russian alliance (p. 103–116). Andrei Doronin explores the “mental map” of German humanists (Hartmann Schedel, Conrad Celtis, Willibald Pirkheimer, Albert Krantz, Johannes Cochlæus, Johannes Aventinus, Beatus Rhenanus) between 1490 and 1530 to ascertain their views on the origins of “the Russian nation”. Since Russians are the heirs of the Sarmatians and the Scythians, could they be related in some way to the Germans? (pp. 117–128).

Elena Karpenko gives a meticulous account of the sections devoted to Muscovy and Siberia in André Thévet’s Cosmographie universelle (publ. Paris, 1575), a work which is hardly original. Its principal source is Herberstein, including the map by the Danzig cartographer Anton Wied. Thévet reproduces Herberstein’s text, often literally, without any reference to its author. He borrows also from maps by Ptolemy, Sebastian Münster, Jenkinson and from the Tractatus de duabus Sarmatiis by Maciej of Miechow (pp. 238–251).

N. Boldyreva’s paper is about the Russian translation of William Camden, the celebrated author of Britannia (first Latin edition 1586). Joan Blaeu (1596–1673) inserted Camden’s text in his Theatrum orbis terrarum sive atlas novus (not the Atlas maior !), published in 1640–1645. This sum of the geographic and cartographic knowledge of the mid-XVIIth century was translated from Latin, in Moscow, by Epifanii Slavineckii (vol. I and part of vol. II), Arsenii Satanovskii (end of vol. II) and “Isaia, a collaborator of Epifanii” (vol. III and IV) – perhaps one of the convent elders who moved from the Don to the Moscow Andreevskii convent in 1651 (p. 289). The manuscript of vol. IV (described p. 288), which contains the Russian version of Britannia, was donated by patriarch Nikon to the library of Novo-Ierusalimskii monastery in 1661 (pp. 283–294).

Among the French authors who, at the time of civil wars (“guerres de religion”), wrote on Muscovy, Irina El’fond chooses to analyse one of Etienne Pasquier’s Letters – actually meant for publication – devoted to Ivan the Terrible. The Russian tsar personifies, better than Caligula or Commodus, the figure of the tyrant. She conscientiously lists the crimes Ivan IV is accused of, exposes Pasquier’s errors and scolds him for “obviously not checking his informations” (p. 261). How could he? Thus she writes: “It’s doubtful that Ivan the Terrible killed his brother [Iurii], although he did order his widow to be drowned in 1569” (p. 258). Elsewhere, she corrects Pasquier for misnaming “Michel Viskoul” a figure whose horrible death points actually at chancellor Viskovatyi (p. 256). She wonders why Pasquier omitted the impaling of Sheverev and Tulupov. She sums up: “Extremely tendentious judgements [she means: on Ivan the Terrible!] were motivated by the needs of political propaganda.” (pp. 252–266)

Other papers are more ambitious, and therefore more controversial. The article by S. Solov’ev comes as a pleasant surprise. After five centuries of denunciations, by Russian believers and unbelievers alike, of the villain representing Muscovy at the Florence-Ferrara council in 1439, a remarkable Byzantine scholar is at last vindicated. Isidor began as a monk in Monembasia, his native place. Because of his brilliant literary and oratorical talents, he was welcomed at the court of emperor Manuel II Paleologue. He shared the interest in classical antiquity of Italian humanists, with whom he kept a regular correspondence. As early as 1434, he made a speech in Basel, advocating a union between Oriental and Western Churches – the only way, he was sincerely convinced, to protect the empire from the Ottoman Turks. Appointed metropolitan for Russia in 1437, he achieved his goal at the Ferrara council two years later, but to no avail. When he came back to Moscow in 1441, he was imprisoned, escaped to Constantinople, witnessed the fall of the Second Rome, escaped again, and reached Rome (the first) in 1454. In striking contrast to Isidor’s failure in Russia, another Byzantine intellectual, who perhaps had been Isidor’s teacher, Manuel Chrysoloras, was welcomed with a triumph in Florence in 1396 (pp. 18–30).

Liudmila Alekseevna Chernaia’s article deals with a crucial problem: how and when did “the West” come to mean “Latin heresy” in Russian eyes? She analyses the successive perceptions of “zapad” from polite indifference (Xith – XIIIth) to declared hostility (Xvth – XVIIth centuries). The result is somewhat disappointing. The all-important word analysis, very thorough regarding Kievan Rus’, becomes shallow and sporadic for the later period. The historical context could sometimes be taken from textbooks, e. g. Chernaia writes as if Nina Sinytsina had never touched the Third Rome topic. However, even if the answer is not entirely satisfactory, we should keep the author’s question in mind (pp. 5–17).

When Russian ambassador Iakov Molvianinov arrived in Rome (September 1582), he was escorted by Antonio Possevino, who showed him the sights and curiosities of the Eternal Town. According to Possevino’s Moscovia, the diplomat was shocked to see statues of pagan gods, Cupids and Venuses, and naked bodies, which Romans apparently preferred to symbols of Christian faith. O. Rusakovskii investigates this curious episode, first its factual, then its mental side. Although he finds no confirmation of Possevino’s narrative in other sources, he concludes that the story is probably true, but that Possevino, who himself disapproved of collecting pagan gods, made use of the stereotypes attached to Muscovy to express his own ideas. These, again, must be understood in the context of Counter-Reformation art polemic (pp. 199–216).

After a cursory review of French authors of the XVIth century who wrote, however briefly, about Muscovy, Dmitrii Samotovinskii concentrates on Loys Le Roy, and how he describes Russia in his historical and political works (some of which Samotovinskii has translated into Russian). Le Roy is more indulgent to Muscovy than most of the others: admittedly its inhabitants are barbarians, but they are not subservient. Because of the extreme cold, no kind of political regime would suit them, but tyranny. Now if one is writing at a time (1568–1576) when France is torn by civil war, absolute monarchy, as in Persia, Ethiopia, the Ottoman empire and Muscovy, does have some attractions, namely power, a huge territory, a strong army (he puts the Russian forces at 700 000 men!). It is vain, writes Le Roy, to try to convert Russians to Catholicism: only God can bring the Christians together. Samotovinskii is the only author in this volume who not only pays attention to the picture of Russia but also at the treatment, by the Western writers, of other countries (pp. 217–237).

With commendable accuracy, T. Sonina puts together three types of data: the only known portraits of five Russian ambassadors of the XVIIth century by Western painters (plate facing p. 161), which she expertly comments, Muscovite diplomatic archives about these embassies, and various documents from the receiving Western countries. She thereby provides historians with very useful material (p. 314–332). Some minor points, though, are puzzling. On pp. 324–325, the author resents the similarity between the French engraving depicting Potemkin’s audience with Louis XIV and another engraving about the Siamese embassy: “Russian envoys ranked with exotic Oriental figures, on whom one could bestow anything, except equality in civilization.” Further on, she takes offence at John Evelyn’s diary, who describes Potemkin, Russian ambassador in London (November 20th, 1681). The following is part of T. Sonina’s quotation, retranslated by me in English: “[…] but the most remarkable and exotic was the ambassador himself”, which she understands as directed at Russians in general. In fact, this is a misreading. Evelyn wrote: “[…] but nothing was so splendid & exotick, as the Ambassador Who came soone after his Majesties restauration.” (The Diary of John Evelyn. Vol. IV. Oxford, 1955, p. 262) She was probably misled by the capital letter in “Who”, which seems to begin a new sentence, but not with the haphazard spelling of the time. Actually, Evelyn compares Potemkin, to his disadvantage, to the previous amabassador, kniaz’ Petr Semenovich Prozorovskij, whose “Enterance” Evelyn also witnessed: with his attendants, he “rendered a very exotic and magnificent show” (The Diary of John Evelyn. Vol. III. Oxford, 1955, p. 344). It was November 27th 1662, “soon after” the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. Evelyn makes fun of Potemkin not because he is a “barbarous Russian”, as T. Sonina supposes, but because he is unbelievably fussy. In Versailles, he threatened to kill himself if the titles of the tsar were not fully quoted in Louis XIV’s answering letter. In London, when not permitted to enter the court in his coach, he demands an attestation by the Master of Ceremonies that the same rule applies to diplomats from other countries, “being it seemes afraid he should offend his Master if he omitted the least puntillo”. (The Diary of John Evelyn. Vol. IV. Oxford, 1955, pp. 262–263) Still more surprising is T. Sonina’s conclusion: none of the painters, she writes, deliberately added negative features to stress the “barbarism” of their models. They honestly tried to capture the image of these unusual Christians, speaking a strange language and clad in the Oriental manner (p. 328). Why shouldn’t they?

Nor is she, in this volume, the only one preoccupied with the alleged Muscovite “barbarism”. It is a commonplace in Western writings of the XVIth – VIIth centuries. One may deplore it, but it certainly doesn’t make sense, and good history neither, to judge people of the past for their narrow and unscientific point of view – “Were they pro- or anti-Russian?”. Yet Tat’iana Ruiatkina, having perused English narratives on Muscovy (as found in Russian translation in Angliiskie puteshestvenniki v Moskovskom gosudarstve v XVI veke. Leningrad, 1938) comes to the foregone conclusion that all these writers saw Russia through stereotypes. She painstakingly analyses the informations they supply, correcting meanwhile their mistakes, and rebuking them for their ignorance of Russian ways (e. g. p. 169). She doesn’t understand, she says, how people coming from the country of Henry VIII, Bloody Mary and Elizabeth could pay attention to the cruelties of Ivan the Terrible (p. 175) – a perfectly legitimate subject for a bona fide inquiry, but here, I suspect, a purely rhetorical question. No wonder she entitles her paper, after Mtt 7,3, Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? (pp. 167–191).

Oleg Kudriavtsev, whose erudition and knowledge of Renaissance Europe are widely recognized, returns to his previous publication, Rossiia v pervoi polovine XVI v.: vzgliad iz Evropy [Russia in the first half of XVIth century: a view from Europe], Moscow, 1997, to add and to comment. His first article in this volume deals with writers of the first half of XVth century providing information on Russia, chiefly on Novgorod: Johannes Schiltberger, Pero Tafur, Ulrich von Richental, author of the Chronik des Consilium zu Konstanz (publ. Augsburg, 1483) and the memoirs of the Burgundian nobleman Ghilbert de Lannoy.

He tries to solve some of the enigmas proposed by these early texts. What is the town called “ad Auream Vettullam”, according to Richental? Probably the reference is to a pagan golden idol, in Russian “Zolotaia baba”, worshipped by Northern Finno-Ugric tribes, which is mentioned in a Russian chronicle of the beginning of XVIth century and presumably in Icelandic sagas (pp. 34–36). Did Novgorod really have a public market where women were sold and bought? It seems unlikely, although slavery existed, of course, and therefore women were sold, as Kudriavtsev points out, but not auctioned. Then he quotes de Lannoy: “[…] for them, it [i. e. to offer women for sale] is legal, but we, true Christians, wouldn’t dare to do it, not on our life.” Comment by Kudriavtsev: “So the Russians are ‘convicted’ of being false Christians and barbarians, in sharp contrast to the true Christians”, viz. the Western world. “However, if in Russia one could sell personally dependent people, similar social categories subsisted in many parts of catholic Europe in the XVth century, and above all [slave traders from Venice and Genoa] grew rich [by selling] Christians from the Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean regions.” (p. 48) This is true, there is no question about it, and Kudriavtsev could have adduced more convincing proof than reference to Iosafat Barbaro (Cf. note 119, p. 66; for a documentary source (XIIIth century), see for instance: Notae et acta notarii Thomasini de Savere, 1278–1282. Ed. by G. Čremošnik. Zagreb, 1951. = Notae et acta cancellariae Ragusinae, 1). But what is unusual in scholarly history-writing is his acrimonious tone, as if he wanted to settle accounts, for offence to Russia, with a man who died 554 years ago (pp. 31–67).

The second article is an analysis in depth of Fabri’s Moscovitarum Religio (publ. Tübingen, 1526), which Kudriavtsev edited in 1997 (cf. supra). Fabri never went to Russia, but had several interviews with grand prince Vasilii III’s ambassadors. The compliments he pays, on hearsay, to the Muscovites are reminiscent, writes Kudriavtsev, of Tacitus’ Germania. If Fabri depicts the Russians as true believers in the pristine Christian faith and strict observants of the rituals, it is because he hopes to secure their help to fight the recent heresy of Luther. At the same time, he makes no secret of their rudeness, cruelty, even brutishness, thus conforming to a deep-rooted tradition going back to the Middle Ages (pp. 129–166).

The papers about western influence and comparison begin with a question mark: was Ivan IV a Renaissance prince, as Cherniavskii would have it? Mark Iusim delivers a balanced answer (given some reservations, he was a renaissance prince), but apparently ignores a further complication introduced by Daniel Rowland: was he perhaps a “Carolingian Renaissance prince” (Daniel Rowland: Ivan the Terrible as a Carolingian Renaissance prince, in: Harvard Ukrainian Studies 19 [1995], pp. 594–606)? (pp. 192–199). Engelina Smirnova tries to connect certain particularities of Russian XVIth century icon painting with orthodox refutation of Lutheranism, but her arguments are not entirely convincing (pp. 295–307). S. Kir’ianova is more successful in identifying western landscape patterns in Muscovite icons of the XVIIth century (pp. 308–313).

An interesting paper by Ovanes Akopian explores the sources of Maksim the Greek’s (Michael Trivolis) epistle against astrology. Having lived in Italy (1492–1506) before coming to Moscow, Maksim was probably acquainted with Pico della Mirandola’s monumental treaty on the subject (publ. 1496), since the Dominican worked for some time as secretary to Pico’s nephew. He had almost certainly also read Savonarola’s Contro gli astrologi (1497). Contrary to Nina Sinytsina’s opinion, Akopian thinks that Maksim drew inspiration not from Pico, who invoked natural philosophy, but from the fiery preacher, who censured astrology as blasphemous (pp. 92–102).

Studying the impact in XVIIth century Muscovy of Erasmus’ famous De civilitate morum puerilium (publ. 1526), I. Grigor’eva begins unexpectedly with an enthusiastic encomium (pp. 265–274) of old Russian, pre-Petrine clerical culture. The only observable connection with the article’s announced purpose is Epifanii Slavinetskii, a champion, against Simeon of Polotsk, of old ways and Greek language, and translator of Erasmus at the same time. What he put in Russian was not the original work, but an adaptation, by Reinhard Hadamar, which takes the form of a catechist dialogue (pp. 265–283).

Evropeiskoe Vozrozhdenie i Russkaia Kul’tura offers the reader a rich, if sometimes one-sided, harvest of facts and ideas. In order to achieve a more balanced picture of Russian-Western relations, it certainly invites complements. Except Ludmila Chernaia, nobody in this volume tried to plumb Russian feelings at the time about Western Europe. It would be helpful also to explain, without useless polemics, why Westerners considered Russians as barbarians, while practising themselves slavery, torture, etc. And finally, we could understand better the whole phenomenon of mutual perception if we knew more about reactions, Russian and Western alike, to third countries and peoples.

André Berelowitch, Paris