1.  What are Kurbskii's main accusations against Ivan?

2.  How does Kurbskii describe his service to Ivan, and what does he expect in return for it?  What has he gotten instead?

3.  How does Ivan answer Kurbskii?   What does he say about his former servitor's loyalty?

4.  Both Kurbskii and Ivan wrap their personal differences in religion.  What kinds of arguments do they make, and why do you think they make them?

Prince Andrei Kurbskii, First Epistle Written To the Tsar And Grand Prince of Moscow In Consequence of His Fierce Persecution

To the Tsar, exalted above all by God:  You formerly appeared most illustrious, particularly in the Orthodox faith, but have now (in consequence of your sins) been found to be quite the opposite.  If you have understanding, may you understand this with your leprous conscience -- a conscience whose equal cannot be found even among the heathen peoples.  So far, I have not let my tongue utter more than this on any matters.  But because of the bitter persecution from your power, with much sadness in my heart I now hasten to tell you a little more.

O Tsar, why have you destroyed the strong in Israel? (1)   Why have you put the military leaders God has given you to various kinds of deaths?  Why have you spilled their righteous, holy blood during ceremonies in God's churches?  Why have you stained the doorways of the churches with their martyrs' blood?  Why have you initiated unprecedented torments against your well-wishers and against those who lay down their lives for you?  Why have you falsely accused the Orthodox of treachery, magic, and other abuses?  Why have you tried zealously to turn light into darkness, and to call what is sweet, bitter?

O Tsar, what guilt did they commit before you?  In what way did these champions of Christianity anger you?  Have they not destroyed proud kingdoms?  (2)  By their heroic bravery, have they not turned those whose slaves our forefathers once were into your complete and utter subjects?  Was it not through their sharp-wittedness that the strong German towns (3) were given to you by God?  Is this your benevolence for the poor?  Our destruction by whole families? 

O Tsar, do you think you yourself immortal?  Or have you been tempted into unheard-of heresy, no longer wishing to stand before the impartial judge Jesus?  The Begotten of God will judge the universe justly -- especially its vainglorious tormentors.  He will question them unhesitatingly, "by the hairs of their chins" (as the saying goes). (4)   My Christ sits on the throne of the Cherubim, (5)  at the right hand of the power of the Almighty in the highest.   He is the judge between you and me.

What evil and persecution have I suffered from you!   What ills and misfortunes have you brought upon me!  What iniquitous webs of lies have you woven against me!   On account of their multitude, I cannot now recount all the various misfortunes at your hands which have beset me (moreover I am still too full of grief in my heart).  But I will conclude by summarizing them as follows:

I have been deprived of everything.  Hounded by you, I have been driven from the land of God without guilt.  I did not ask you for mercy, or beseech you for it with tears.  Neither did I win any from you through the intercession of the angelic hierarchy. (6)  You have repaid my good with evil, my love with implacable hatred.  My blood, which has been spilled for you like water, cries out against you to the Lord.  Though God alone knows our souls, I have passionately reflected in my mind on what I have done.  With my conscience as my witness, I have sought out my thoughts and pried into them.  Having examined myself, I do not now recognize -- nor have I ever found -- my guilt in anything before you.   Again and again, I have marched in front of your army.  I have brought no dishonor on you, only brilliant victories.  With the help of the Angel of the Lord, I have won battles for your glory.  Never have I turned the backs of your regiments to the foe.  Far from this; I achieved these glorious conquests to increase your renown.   I have toiled with much sweat and patience, not just for one or two years but for many.  I have been separated from my fatherland constantly.  Little have I seen of my parents; I have not known my wife.  I have stood in arms against your enemies in distant towns.  I have suffered many deprivations and natural illnesses, of which my Lord Jesus Christ is witness.  Still more, barbarian hands have inflicted wounds on me in various battles.  My whole body is still afflicted with sores.  O Tsar, was all this nothing to you?  Why do you show us your intolerable wrath and bitterest hatred?  Why do you give us red-hot ovens? (7)

I thought about setting down all my military deeds in order, accomplished for your glory by the strength of my Christ.  I have not recounted them here for the reason that God knows better than anyone what I have done.  He rewards all such things (and not only them, but also a simple cup of cold water to a thirsty man).  I know that you yourself are not unaware of them.  O Tsar, may this also be known to you.   I think you will not see my face again in this world, not until the glorious coming of my Christ.  But do not think that I will remain silent before you in these matters.  To my dying day I will cry out against you to the everlasting Trinity in which I believe.  I call to my aid the Mother of the Lord of the Cherubim, my hope and protectress, Our Lady the Mother of God and of all the Saints (the elect of God).  I call on my lord master and forefather, Prince Fedor Rostislavich, (8) whose corpse remains imperishable, preserved throughout the ages, and emits from the grave sweet odours, sweeter than aromatics, and, by the grave of the Holy Ghost, pours forth miraculous healing streams (as you, O Tsar, know well)..

Do not think irrational thoughts about us.  Do not think that we have perished, massacred by you in our innocence, without justice.  Do not think that we have been banished and driven out by you without justice.  Do not rejoice, or glory in vain victory.  Standing at the throne of our Lord, those whom you have massacred ask vengeance against you.  We who have been banished and driven from the land by you cry out day and night to God.  We do so however much you may boast in this temporal, fleeting life, devising instruments of torture against the Christian race.  We do so however much you abuse and trample on the Angelic Form, with the approbation of your flatterers and comrades of the table, your quarrelsome boiars.   They are the destroyers of your soul and body, who urge you on to erotic deeds and who, along with their offspring, act more [viciously] than the priests of Cronus. (9)

So much for now.  I will order this letter to be put into my grave with me, soaked in my tears.  I will have it when I come with you before the judgment of my God, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Written in Wolmar, (10) the town of my master, King Augustus Sigismund. (11)  From him I hope to receive much reward and comfort for all my sorrow, by his sovereign grace and still more with God's help.  I have heard from sacred writings that the Devil will send a destroyer against the human race, a destroyer conceived in fornication: the Antichrist, hostile to God.  Now I have seen a counsellor, known to all, who was born in adultery and who whispers falsehoods today in the ears of the Tsar.  Shedding Christian blood like water, he has already destroyed the strong and noble in Israel.   He is in league with the Antichrist in what he does.  O Tsar, it is not fitting to show indulgence to such men!  In the first law of the Lord it is written. "A Moabite and an Ammonite and a bastard to the tenth generation shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord." (12)

Notes:

(1) i.e. the "new Israel," or the "Third Rome."

(2) An allusion to the conquests of the Tatar khanates of Kazan (1552) and Astrakhan (1556).

(3) Narva, Dorpal, and other "German" (i.e. Livonian/Lithuanian) settlements captured in military campaigns of 1558-1560.

(4) i.e. by their Orthodox piety, of which uncut beards were an outward manifestation.  The notion survives in contemporary English in the tale of the Three Little Pigs, who respond to the demands of the Big Bad Wolf with the expression "Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!"

(5) Cherubim = A term used in the Bible's Old Testament to decribe certain heavenly spirits (angels) serving in close proximity to God.  Since roughly 400 CE the Church has included them in the ranks of the angels. 

(6) The notion of angelic ranks derives in particular from the New Testament writings of Paul, who enumerates seven.  By roughly 400 CE the Church had added the cherubim and seraphim to the top of Paul's list, making for what was generally accepted as a nine-fold hierarchy.  Angels at the top of the ranks were thought to be particularly close to God.  Therefore they frequently were the subjects of intercessory prayers.

(7)  Something on the order of "burning stoves" in the original, apparently an allusion to Carthaginian human sacrifices.  See note (9) below.

(8) Prince Fedor Rostislavich was one of several Muscovite princes who fought in the Caucasus in 1278 with the Tatar armies of Mengu-Timur, and who sacked Periaslavl' (present-day Riazan) in 1281.  Apparently he was what the Church calls an "incorruptible," i.e. someone whose body does not decompose after death and therefore is held to have been a vessel for heroic virtue and piety.   For a typical West European example see the brief description of St. Catherine of Bologna at http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/saintc26.htm.

(9)  Greeks and Romans associated the name Cronus (Saturn) with one of the two principal Carthaginan gods: Hammon-Baal, to whom human sacrifices were made.   According to Diodorus of Sicily, Carthage suffered a severe drought in 310 BC.   To propitiate Baal, its priests organized a holocaust in which some 500 noble children were fed in a blood frenzy to fires kindled within a giant statue of the god (after which it rained).  Flaubert describes the event in his novel Salambo; in his account the god and statue are known by an ancient Hebrew name for them that passed into the Punic language as "Moloch."

(10) Wolmar = the city of Valmeria in present-day Latvia.

(11) Sigismund III Augustus ((1548-1572).   Polish King of Lithuanian extraction, after the Union of Lublin in 1569 simultaneously Grand Prince of Lithuania.  There was no official "state" religion while he ruled, hence an unusual degree of freedom of worship.

(12) The references are to Deuteronomy 23:2 (King James version-- "A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD") and 23:3 ("An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the LORD for ever").  According to the Bible's Old Testament, the Ammonites and Moabites were Palestinian peoples who were disgraced for their wickedness and therefore were not permitted to hold office among the Israelites.   It is not clear whom Kurbskii is slandering.

Ivan IV, excerpts from Epistle of the Tsar and Sovereign to All His Russian Tsardom Against Those Who Have Broken the Pledge of Allegiance, Against Prince Andrei Kurbskii and His Comrades, Concerning Their Treacheries

Our God has existed since time immemorial.  The Trinity -- the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost -- has neither beginning nor end.  Through Him we live and breathe; through Him kings rule and the mighty write laws.  By our Lord Jesus Christ, the victorious standard of God's Word and the blessed Cross has never been vanquished.  Insofar as the Word of God has been fulfilled, it has been given to Emperor Constantine, the first in piety, and to all the Orthodox Tsars and protectors of Orthodoxy.  They flown like eagles with the Heavenly Servants of God, and the light of their piety has fallen on the Russian realm.  By God's will the autocracy originated with Grand Prince Vladimir, who enlightened all Russia through holy baptism.  The line passed through the great Tsar Vladiinir Monomakh, who received memorable honours from the Greeks; through the valiant Tsar Alexander Nevskii, who obtained a great victory over the godless Germans; and through the praiseworthy Tsar Dmitrii, who gained a great victory over the sons of Hagar beyond the Don.  It then passed to that avenger of wrongs, our great ancestor Tsar Ivan (who gathered together the Russian lands from ancestral possessions), and to our great father Tsar Vasilii (of blessed memory) until it reached us, the humble scepter-bearer of the Russian Empire.

We praise God for the great favour He has shown Us, not letting Our hands be stained by a bloody lineage.  We have not snatched the realm from anyone.  By the will of God and the blessing of Our ancestors and parents, We were born in the realm, were brought up here, and were enthroned here.  By the will of God and the blessing of Our ancestors and parents, We took what belonged to Us.  We did not seize what was not Ours.  Here follows the will of the Orthodox and truly Christian Autocrat, the possessor of many kingdoms.  It is Our humble Christian reply to someone who once was an Orthodox, true Christian and a boiar of Our realm, a councillor and a general, but now is a criminal before the blessed, vivifying cross of the Lord.  It is Our reply to a destroyer of Christians, a servant of the enemies of Christianity.  It is Our reply to one who has departed from the divine worship of icons and has trodden underfoot all sacred commands.  It is Our answer to one who has destroyed holy edifices, vilifying and trampling their holy vessels and icons.  It is Our reply to the man who unites in one person Leo the Isaurian (13), Constantine Kopronymos (14) and Leo of Armenia (15) -- to Prince Andrei Mikhailovich Kurbskii, who through treachery wanted to become a ruler of Iaroslavl.

O Prince, if you think yourself pious, why have you lost your soul?  What will you use in its place on that terrible judgment day?  Even if you should gain the whole world, death will reach you in the end!  Why have you sold your soul for your body's sake?  Is it because you became afraid of death, at the false instigation of your demons and influential friends and advisers?

Are you not shamed by your slave Vaska Shibanov, (16), who swore himself to you with a kiss of the cross?  Standing at death's door, before the Tsar and the whole nation, he did not reject you.  Keeping the faith, he praised you instead and was all too ready to die for you.  But you have not emulated his devotion.  On account of angry words alone, have you lost not only your own soul, but the souls of all your ancestors?  By God's will, your forefathers were given as servants to Our grandfather, the great Tsar.  They gave their souls to him and served him unto death, ordering you -- their children -- to serve the children and grandchildren of Our grandfather.  But you have forgotten everything.  Traitorously, like a dog, you have transgressed the oath and have gone over to the enemies of Christianity.   Not considering your wrath, you utter stupid words as if throwing stones at the sky....

We have never spilled blood in the churches.  As far as We know, there has been no righteous, saintly blood on the thresholds of the churches in Our land.  As far as our means and intelligence permit, and as far as Our subjects are eager to serve Us, the churches of the Lord are resplendent with all kinds of adornments.  Through the gifts We have offered since your satanic domination, not only the thresholds and pavements, but even the antechambers shine with ornaments, so that all strangers may see them.  We do not stain the thresholds of the churches with any blood, and there are no martyrs of faith among us nowadays....  We have devised no tortures or persecutions or deaths in any forms against anyone.  As for treasoners and magicians, it is true, such dogs everywhere suffer capital punishment....

It had pleased God to take Our mother, the pious Tsarina Elena, (17) from the earthly kingdom to the Kingdom of Heaven.  My brother Iurii, (18) who now rests in heaven, and I were left orphans.  As we received no care from anyone, we laid our trust in the Holy Virgin, and in the prayers of all the saints, and in the blessing of our parents.  When I was in my eighth year, Our subjects acted according to their will.  Finding the Empire without a ruler, they did not deign to bestow their voluntary attention upon Us, their master, but became bent on acquiring wealth and glory, and quarrelled with each other.  What haven't they done!  How many boiars, how many friends of Our father and generals have they killed!   They seized the farms and villages and possessions of our uncles, and established themselves therein. They trampled and poked Our mother's valuables, and transferred them to the Great Treasure.  But some of them they grabbed for themselves, as was done by your grandfather Mikhail Tuchkov. (19)  The Princes Vasilii and Ivan Shuiskii (20) took it upon themselves to have Us in their keeping.  They let the chief traitors of Our father and mother out of prison, and they made friends with them.  In the court of Our uncle, Prince Vasilii Shuiskii, they and a crowd of Judases fell upon Our father-confessor Fedor Mishurin. (21)  They insulted him and killed him, and they imprisoned Prince Ivan Fedorovich Belskii (22) and many others in various places.  Arming themselves against the realm, they ousted Metropolitan Daniil from the Metropolitan See and banished him.  Thus they improved their fortunes, and began to rule themselves.

They brought up My brother Iurii (of blessed memory) and Me like vagrants, like children of the very poor.  What We suffered for want of garments and food!  Of all that was against Our will, all that did not become Our extreme youth, We shall mention just one thing:  One time in Our childhood, Prince Ivan Vasilievich Shuiskii sat on a bench while We were playing, leaning with his elbow against Our late father's bed and even putting his foot upon it.  He treated Us not as a parent, but as a master....  Who could bear such presumption?  How can We recount all the miseries We suffered in Our youth?  Often We dined late, against Our wishes. What had become of the treasure left Us by Our father?  They had carried everything away, under the cunning pretext that they had to pay the boiar children from it.  In reality they had held onto it for their own advantage, and had not paid the heirs off as they deserved.  They had also held back an immense legacy from Our grandfather and father.  They had made it into gold and silver vessels inscribed with the names of their parents, as if it had been their own inheritance....    It is hardly necessary to mention what became of the treasure of Our uncles: they appropriated it all to themselves!  Then they attacked the towns and villages, torturing the people most cruelly.  They brought much misery upon the inhabitants and mercilessly pillaged their possessions.

When we reached the age of fifteen, We were inspired by God to begin ruling Our own realm.  With the aid of almighty God, We ruled Our realm in peace and tranquility according to Our will.  But it happened then that, on account of Our sins, a fire having spread, by God's will, the royal city of Moscow was consumed. (23)  Our boiars, the traitors whom you call martyrs, whose names I purposely will pass over in silence, made use of the favourable opportunity for their base treachery.  They whispered into the ears of a stupid crowd that the mother of my mother, Princess Anna Glinskaia, (24) with all her children and household, was in the habit of carving out men's hearts.  They claimed that by a similar sorcery she had put Moscow on fire, and that we knew of her doings.  Through the instigation of these traitors, a crowd of insensible people came crying like the Jews to to the apostolic cathedral of the holy martyr Dmitrii of Saloniki.  They dragged Our boiar Iurii Vasil'evich Glinskii (25) out of it, pulled him inhumanly into the Cathedral of the Assumption, and killed this innocent man right in the church.  They stained the floor of the church across from the Metropolitan's palace with his blood.  They dragged his body out through the front door, and strung it up in the marketplace like a criminal's -- everyone knows all about this.  While We were living at that time in the village of Vorob'evo, (26) the same traitors tried to induce the populace to kill us on this pretext.   You dog, you repeat the lie that We were keeping from them Prince Iurii's mother, Princess Anna, and his brother Prince Mikhail.  How is one not to laugh at such stupidity?  Why should We set have fire to Our own house? 

You say that your blood has been spilled in wars with foreigners.  In your foolishness, you add that it cries to God against Us.  It is ridiculous to say that it has been spilled by one thing, but cries out against another.   If it is true that your blood has been spilled by the enemy, then you have done your duty to your country (if  you had not done it, you would have been a barbarian, not a Christian -- but that is none of Our business).  How much more does Ours, blood that has been spilled by you, cry out to the Lord against you!  We have been burdened by you unnecessarily, beyond Our strength.  Not with wounds or drops of blood, but with sweat and toil.  Your meannesses and persecutions have caused Us to shed many tears instead of blood.  They have led Us to cry out loud, and to an anguished soul.   

You say you want to put your letter in your grave?   This shows that you have completely renounced your Christianity!  God has commanded us to resist evil, but you spurn the final grace which is granted to the innocent.  Therefore it is not right that your death be followed by as much as a single sung Mass.  In Our patrimony, in the country of Livonia (27),  you name the city of Wolmar as belonging to Our enemy, King Sigismund.  By this you only complete the treachery of a vicious dog ...

Written the fifth day of July in Our great Russia, in the famous city and Imperial capital of Moscow, on the steps of Our imperial threshold, in the year from the Creation of the world 7072 (28).

Notes:

(13) Leo the Isurian = the Byzantine Emperor Leo III (reign 716-741 CE).  In the early 720s, Leo became convinced that the veneration of images was detrimental to the early Catholic Church.  Combining their suppression with moves to consolidate worship under the Patriarch in Constantinople, thereby strengthening his state, Leo's so-called "Iconoclasts" ("icon destroyers") destroyed monasteries and shrines throughout the East.  Their ruthless persecution was condemned by Pope Gregory II and contributed to a severe falling-out between Rome and Byzantium.

(14) Constantine Kopronymos = the Byzantine Emperor Constantine V (reign 741-775 CE), son of Leo III.  A palace coup after Leo III's death led the Patriarch of Constantinople to install Leo's son-in-law Artabasdus as Emperor.  In return, Artabasdus attempted to restore images to the Church.  Constantine (the direct heir) promptly raised an army, invested Constantinople, deposed Artabasdus, and reinstated his father's Iconoclasm.  Rebellion ringleaders including Artabasdus and the Patriarch were blinded and flogged through the streets.  Even worse treatment was then visited on suspected image-worshipers: monks in particular were scourged to death, tied up in sacks and thrown into the sea, and tortured in a variety of cruelly imaginative methods.

(15) Leo of Armenia = the Byzantine Emperor Leo V (reign 813-820 CE).  Byzantine Iconoclasm went into remission after the death of Constantine V, only to return with a vengeance some four decades later.  In June 813, the Byzantine armies were routed by the Bulgars and the Emperor Michael I fled the field to Constantinople.  There Michael was forced by his troops to renounce the throne, the soldiers then installing Leo the Armenian (one of their generals) as Emperor.  Leo's policies were based on the conviction that the Empire's misfortunes were the result of icon worship.  He reinstated official Iconoclasm, including the torture, murder, and banishment of icon worshipers.  Leo V was murdered in a palace coup on Christmas Day, 820.

(16) Vaska Shibanov = Vasilii Shibanov, Kurbskii's servant and the emissary who carried his master's correspondence to Ivan IV.  Since Ivan could do nothing about the source of the attack, he did the next worst thing by annihilating the messinger.  An apocryphal story recounted by the historian Karamzin has Ivan nailing Shibanov's feet to the floor and forcing his to read the letter "with the blood flowing."  In fact, Shibanov seems to have been arrested on the way to deliver the message and tortured to death after its contents were read.

(17) Tsarina Elena = Ivan IV's mother Elena Glinskaia (d. 1538 CE), wife of the Muscovite ruler Vasilii III.  Ivan was three when his father passed away, eight when his mother (who had been attempting to act as Regent) died.  Her death set off a struggle among the aristocratic clans for dominance during Ivan's minority.

(18) Iurii = Younger brother of Ivan and the second son of the Muscovite ruler Vasilii III, born 1533.

(19) Mikhail Tuchkov = Grandfather of Andrei Kurbskii.

(20) The Shuiskiis were prominent contenders for power during the interregnum of Ivan's minority.  Ivan = Ivan Vasilevich Shuiskii (d. 1542 CE), a close advisor of Vasilii III but shoved to one side during the regency of Elena Glinskaia.   He was blamed by Ivan IV for intrigues including the death of Ivan Bel'skii (q.v.).   Vasilii = Vasilii Vasil'evich Nemoi (d. 1539).  Brother of Ivan Vasil'evich Shuiskii.

(21) Fedor Mishurin was a d'iak (court secretary/sacristan) allied with Ivan Bel'skii and others against the Shuiskii princes during Ivan IV's minority.

(22) Prince Ivan Fedorovich Belskii = Ivan Fedorovich Bel'skii, a prominent opponent of the Shuiskii clan and himself a bidder for power during Ivan's minority.  At one Bel'skii managed to obtain the regency from Andrei Shuiskii, but soon lost it back to the Shuiskii clan

(23) Moscow, built almost entirely of wood in an area notoriously devoid of stone, periodically burned -- or was burned by invaders (as in 1382, 1571, 1812)-- to the ground.  The fire referred to here was the third major conflagration of 1547.

(24) Anna Glinskaia = Grandmother of Ivan IV.

(25) Iurii Vasil'evich Glinskii = maternal uncle of Ivan IV.

(26) Vorob'evo was a village (no longer extant) on the outskirts of 16th century Moscow.  The Vorob'ev Hills (the present-day site of Moscow State University) commorate its location.

(27) Livonia = principality containing (at various times) all or part of present-day Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Baltic Russia, etc.

(28) i.e. 1564.  Until Peter I put Russia onto the Julian calendar, dates were reckoned from the ecclesiastically-determined beginning of the world.   Peter also shifted New Year's Day from September 1 to January 1.  For more see the annotated document Peter I, Proclamation on the Introduction of a New Calendar in this syllabus.

Original translation and limited annotations from John Slatter's web pages at Durham University (http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dml0www/Russhist.HTML).   Extensively revised (retranslation, syntax clarifications, repunctuation, new annotation, etc.) by Jon Bone.