A reign of terror hung over Russia during the rest of Ivan's life.
The Metropolitan Philip could not endure the sight of so much suffering. He came boldly before the Tsar.
The Tsar: Keep silence, I tell thee, hold thy peace, Holy Father,—hold thy peace and give me thy blessing.
Philip: If I held my peace my silence would be a sin against thy soul.
The Tsar: My subjects rise against me to seek my hurt. What hast thou to do with my councils?
Philip: I am the shepherd of the flock.
The Tsar: Philip, dare not my power lest my anger fall upon thee. I bid thee give up thine office!
Philip: I sought not the place, neither by myself nor by others. Why dost thou remove me?
Ivan, amid the tears of the people, caused the brave Metropolitan to be literally swept out of the cathedral and exiled from Moscow; the next year he sent his ruffian, Skuratof, to demand his blessing. "How can I bless him when I see my country in mourning?" said Philip: The next moment he was seized and strangled.
Among the memorials of the monastery of St. Cyril is a letter from Ivan the Terrible asking the prayers of the church for his victims. The list numbers thirty-four hundred and seventy persons, of whom nine hundred and eighty-six are mentioned by name: "Kazarin Dubrovski and his two sons, with ten men who come to their help; "twenty men of this village, eighty of that." "Remember, Lord, the souls of thy servants, in number fifteen hundred and five men of Novgorod." Such are the sinister contents of this curious letter. Relatives, favorites, boyars, peasants, all fell alike before the suspicious wrath of the tyrant.
CHURCH OF ST. BASIL THE BLESSED.
He himself was never free from fears for his life. He sent to Queen Elizabeth to ask an assurance by oath and faith that in case any misfortune fell upon either of them, or if they were obliged to go out of their own country, they should find safe asylum each in the land of the other.
Queen Elizabeth's reply was as follows:—
"Thorough Gods goodnes allwais shewed unto us we have no manner of doubt of the Contynuance of our peacable gouernment without danger eyther of our subiects or of any forren ennemys."
But a secret despatch with the Queen's privy seal and signed by Nicholas Bacon and William Cecil, offered the Tsar an asylum:—
"Wee offer that yf at anie time it so mishappe that you lord our brother emperour and great duke, bee by anie casuall chaunce, either of secrite conspiracie or outward hostillitie, driven to change your countries and shall like to repaire into our Kingdome and dominions with the noble empresse your wife and youre deare children the princes, wee shall with such honors and curtesies receive and intreate your highnes then, as shall become so great a prince."
In this interchange of letters Ivan soon perceived that the Queen cared more for her own profit than for his. He returned a spiteful answer, rehearsing his kind acts to her merchants and ending with this outburst of anger:—
"We had thought that thou wert sovereign in thine own country and ruled with sovereign power, caring for the honor and profit of thy country; hence we wished to treat with thee as with a sovereign. But we perceive that other men and not thyself rule thy country, and not men indeed but boorish merchants, and thou, wench that thou art, behavest like a wench."
About the time that Ivan was building his treasure castle and making secret preparations to take refuge from his boyars in England, he gave up his power to a foreigner, a prisoner, a Tartar vassal. He himself seemed ashamed of this farce: he told Sylvester, the interpreter, that "though he seemed to have enthroned another, yet he had not so far resigned but that he was able to take the imperial dignity to himself again." And when ambassadors came from the Emperor Maximilian, he had them brought to one of his reserved towns, and they, not suspecting that there was any other lord of Russia, declared on their knightly honor that neither in Rome nor in Spain had they met with a more sumptuous reception.
Ivan's character was a strange mixture of greatness and meanness, of liberality and superstition. He liked foreigners and allowed them to trade freely, but "he kept up an undignified rivalry with his own subjects," forced them to sell to him their honey, wax, and furs at a low price, saying, "My people are like my beard, the oftener it is shaven the thicker it grows; they are like sheep that must need be shorn once a year at the least to keep them from being over-laden with the wool."
Ivan was religious, and built "in hys tyme above 40 faire stone churches richly bedaect and adorned within and the turrets all gilt with fine pure gold." The most curious church, perhaps, in the world is that of Basil the Blessed, who "was idiotic for Christ's sake." The legend says that Ivan built it in memory of the capture of Kazan, and put out the eyes of the Italian architect to prevent his building another like it. "It is," says a recent traveller, the most chimerical of all architectural creations, an edifice without a prototype, a riddle for the eye. Picture a maze of incoherent chapels, porches, cells, projections, and galleries, knotted in one fantastic huddle and surmounted by a crowd of carved towers, turbaned cupolas, and Tartar bulbs, each of a different size and style, painted in every possible color, a harlequin in stone with a casque of gold."
Ivan wished to be the patron of printing, and he engaged a German to set up a press and print a Russian Bible at Moscow; but the people looked upon the art as impious, and so persecuted the printer that he had to flee for his life. At first Ivan greatly harassed the dealers in magic, burying them alive with wild animals, but toward the end of his life superstition grew upon him.
The year of his death a comet appeared which he took as a fatal omen. He caused threescore sorcerers to be gathered from the far North and daintily entreated them in Moscow. But the great blazing star over the city and all the signs were against him. He was wont to play with precious stones, believing that they possessed marvellous properties. Just before his death the Englishman, Horsey, was with him in the treasury. The loadstone," said Ivan, "you all know, hath great and hidden virtue, without which the seas that at compass the world are not navigable, nor can the bounds or circles of the world be known. Mahomet, the Persian prophet, his tomb of steel hangs in the mosque at Derbent most miraculously. This fair coral and this fair turquoise by nature are orient colors; put them on my hand and arm. I am poisoned with disease. You see they show their virtue by the change of their pure color into pale. It declares my death." Then taking his staff royal, garnished with precious stones which cost seventy thousand marks, he said: "The ruby, oh! this is most comfortable to the heart, brain, vigor, and memory of man; it clarifies congealed and corrupt blood. The emerald has the nature of the rainbow; the precious stone is an enemy to uncleanness. The sapphire I greatly delight in: it preserves and encreaseth courage, joys the heart, is pleasing to all the vital senses, and is precious and very soothing to the eyes."
After the death of Anastasia, Ivan the Terrible married in succession a number of wives, all of whom came to a more or less violent death. His seventh wife was Maria Nagoi. Shortly before the birth of her son Dimitri, Ivan tried to make a foreign alliance; first he asked the sister of the King of Poland; then he sent his envoy to England, to negotiate a treaty by which the two countries might be linked together in firm amity, and to demand an interview with Lady Mary Hastings, niece of the Queen, to get her portrait, inquire her age, and notice if she were of good height, of plump person and fair complexion. The Russian, when he saw the lady, "cast down his countenance, fell prostrate at her feet, rose, ran back from her, his face still towards her; she and the rest admiring at his manner. Then he said by an interpreter that it did suffice him to behold the angel he hoped should be his master's spouse, and commended her angelical countenance, state, and admirable beauty." As the news of Dimitri's birth followed the envoy to England, Sir Jerome Bowes was sent "with a riche standing