Strictly speaking, the supreme authority over Lithuania and the part of Russia in subjection to it belonged to Iagello, king of Poland; but Lithuania was governed independently in the quality of viceroy by his cousin Vitovt, the son of that Keistut who had been strangled by Iagello. Vitovt, following the example of his predecessors, aimed at extending the frontiers of Lithuania at the expense of the Russian territories, and gradually subjugated one after another of them. Vasili Dmitrievitch was married to the daughter of Vitovt, Sophia; throughout his reign, he had to keep up friendly relations with his kinsman, and yet be on his guard against the ambitious designs of his father-in-law. The Muscovite prince acted with great caution and prudence, giving way to his father-in-law as far as possible, but safeguarded himself and Russia from him. He did not hinder Vitovt from taking Smolensk, chiefly because the last prince of Smolensk, Iuri, was a villain in the full sense of the word, and the inhabitants themselves preferred to submit to Vitovt, rather than to their own prince. When however Vitovt showed too plainly his intentions of capturing Pskov and Novgorod, the grand prince of Moscow openly took up arms against his father-in-law and a war seemed imminent; but in 1407 the matter was settled between them, and a peace was concluded by which the river Ougra was made a boundary
between the Muscovite and the Lithuanian possessions.
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vasili vasilievitch (afterwards called "the blind" or "the dark ")
Vasili Dmitrievitch died in 1425. His successor, Vasili Vasilievitch, was a man of limited gifts and of weak mind and will, but capable of every villainy and treachery. The members of the princely house had been held in utter subjection under Vasili Dmitrievitch, but at his death they raised their heads, and Iuri, the uncle of Vasili Vasilievitch, endeavoured to obtain the grand principality from the horde. But the artful and wily boyar, Ivan Dmitrievitch Vsevolozhsky, succeeded in 1432 in setting aside Iuri and assuring the grand principality to Vasili Vasilievitch. When Iuri pleaded his right of seniority as uncle, and in support pf his claim cited precedents by which uncles had been preferred, as seniors in years and birth, to their nephews, Vsevolozhsky represented to the khan that Vasili had already received the principality by will of the khan and that this will should be, held above all laws and customs. This appeal to the absolute will of the khan pleased the latter and Vasili Vasilievitch remained grand prince. Some years later this same boyar, angered at Vasili because the latter had first promised to marry his daughter and then married Marie Iaroslavna, the grand-daughter of Vladimir Andreevitch Serpukhovski, himself incited Iuri to wrest the principality from his nephew. Thus Russia again became the prey of civil wars, which were signalised by hideous crimes. Iuri, who had taken possession of Moscow, was again expelled and soon after died. The son of Iuri, Vasili Kossoi (the Squinting) concluded peace with Vasili, and then, having treacherously violated the treaty, attacked Vasili, but he was vanquished, captured, and blinded (1435). After a few years the following events took place at the Golden Horde: the khan Ulu Makhmet was deprived of his throne and sought the aid of the grand prince of Moscow. The grand prince not only refused him his aid, but also drove him out of the boundaries of the territory of Moscow. Ulu Makhmet and his partisans then established themselves on the banks of the Volga at Kazan, and there laid the foundations of a Tatar empire that during a whole century brought desolation on Russia. Ulu Makhmet, as ruler of Kazan, avenged himself on the Muscovite prince for the past, was victorious over him in battle, and took him prisoner. Vasili Vasilievitch only recovered his liberty by paying an enormous ransom. When he returned to his native land, he was against his will obliged to lay upon the people heavy taxes and to receive Tatars into his principality and give them estates. All this awakened dissatisfaction against him, of which the Galician prince Dmitri Shemiaka, the brother of Kossoi, hastened to takeadvantage, and joining himself to the princes of Tver and Mozhaisk, in 1446 he ordered Vasili to be treacherously seized at the monastery of Troitsa and blinded. Shemiaka took possession of the grand principality and kept the blind Vasili in confinement, but observing an agitation among the people, he yielded to the request of Jonas, bishop of Riazan, and gave Vasili his liberty, at the same time making him swear that he would not seek to regain the grand principality. Vasili did not keep his oath, and in 1447 the partisans of the blind prince again raised him to the throne.
It is remarkable that from this period the reign of Vasili Vasilievitch entirely changed in character. While he had his eyesight, Vasili was a most insignificant sovereign, but from the time that he lost his eyes, his reign becomes distinguished for its firmness, intelligence, and decision. It is evident that clever and active men must have ruled in the name of the blind prince. Such were the boyars: the princes Patrikeev, Riapolovski, Koshkin, Plesktcheev, Morozov, and the famous voye- vods, Striga-Obolenski and Theodore Bassenok, but above all the metropolitan Jonas.
Jonas Becomes Metropolitan
Jonas was a native of Kostroma. When he was made bishop of Riazan he did not in any wise become a partisan of the local views; his sympathies inclined to Moscow because, in conformity with the conditions of that epoch, Jonas saw in Moscow alone the centre of Russian unification. In 1431, at the death of the metropolitan Photius, Jonas was elected metropolitan, but the patriarch of Constantinople had already named the Greek Isidore to that office. This Isidore had participated in the capacity of Russian metropolitan, in the Florentine council which had proclaimed the union of the Greek church with the Roman, the pope of Rome to be the head of the Universal church. Isidore, together with the patriarch of Constantinople and the Byzantine emperor had submitted to the pope; for Isidore was at heart a Greek: all his aims were directed to the salvation of his perishing country, and like many other Greeks he hoped through the pope to arouse Europe against the Turks. It was these hopes that had caused the Greeks of that time to sacrifice the independence of their church. In the eyes of Isidore Russia too was to serve as an instrument for Greek patriotic designs; but the union was rejected at Moscow, Isidore was driven out, and for some years the office of metropolitan of Moscow remained unoccupied. Kiev had its own metropolitans since the days of Vitovt, but Moscow did not wish to have anything to do with them. The bishop of Riazan, Jonas, having been already named metropolitan by the Russian clergy, enjoyed at Moscow a pre-eminent importance and influence, and finally, in 1448, this archbishop was raised to the rank of metropolitan by an assembly of the Russian bishops,without regard to the patriarch. This event was a decisive breach with the past, and from that time the eastern-Russian church ceased to depend upon the patriarch of Constantinople and acquired full independence. The centre of her supreme power was Moscow, and this circumstance definitively established that moral importance of Moscow, which had been aimed for by the metropolitan Peter, which had been held up by Alexis, and which had received greater brilliancy from the transfer of the ikon of the Blessed Virgin from Vladimir. From that time the Russian territories not yet subject to Moscow and aiming to preserve their independence from her — Tver, Riazan, Novgorod — were bound to her more closely by spiritual bonds.