The Giants of Russian Literature: The Greatest Russian Novels, Stories, Plays, Folk Tales & Legends. Максим Горький
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own, and the faithful in the Russ-Lit’uanian lands paid their homage, and what was worse, their tithes, to this unauthorised rival. Hence Vasili had to depend on the protection of the Horde and the affections of his Moskovite subjects to defend him against the ambition of his uncle Urii. 1430The death of his powerful relative, the Lit’uanian Grand Duke, removed another possible supporter, and two years later the young prince had to appeal to the decision of the Khan Makhmet against the pretensions of his rival. By a grovelling affectation of submissiveness Vasili was able to emerge triumphant from the contest, and on his return was solemnly crowned at Moskva—the first coronation of a grand prince that had taken place in that city.87
The iarlikh of the Khan possessed, however, none of its old finality, and Vasili had to sustain a civil war against his uncle, and after his death (1434) with his sons, Vasili the Squinting, Dimitri Shemiaka, and Dimitri the Red. Although, apparently, not wanting in courage or energy (both of which deficiencies have been freely attributed to him), he possessed little skill in utilising his resources, and again and again suffered defeat, deposition, and imprisonment. The loyalty of Moskva brought him through many vicissitudes, and the tables were turned more than once upon his hostile relatives. 1436Repulsing an attack made upon the capital by Vasili the Squinting, the Grand Prince secured the person of that rebel, and supplemented the defect bestowed by nature by blinding the eyes of his hapless prisoner. The leadership of the disaffected party devolved henceforth upon Shemiaka, who became the implacable enemy of the Grand Prince, and roused for many a long year the fires of discord in the land. Meanwhile the bosom of the Church was heaving with agitation as profound as that which disturbed the State. 1437The new Metropolitan, Isidor of Salonika, had scarcely entered into his new duties when he was obliged to set off, by way of Novgorod, Riga, Lubeck, Braunschweig, Nurnberg, and the Tyrol, to attend the great Council which was to be held at Ferrara—subsequently at Florence—to unite the two Christian Churches in one communion. The immediate cause of this drawing together of the Latin and Greek rivals was the danger which was threatening the headquarters of the latter sect at the hands of the Infidel Turk. The Ottoman dynasty, rising upon the ruins of the Seljuk Empire, had slowly but steadily engorged the provinces which made up the dominion of the eastern Cæsars. Asia Minor, Bulgaria, Thessaly, Thrace, had been assimilated one by one, and now there remained but Constantinople, “a head without a body,” to resist the hitherto irresistible invader. Without substantial and speedy aid from Catholic Europe there was little probability that the city could long maintain its defence against the Ottoman armies, and Catholic Europe could not be expected to interest itself in the fate of a community which differed from itself in so many vital points of doctrine. The sole hope for Constantinople lay in the possibility of a reunion with the dominant factor of Christendom. 1438This was the motive power which had drawn to the Italian town men from Moskva, Trebizond, and the isles of the Adriatic, to discuss the vexed question of the genesis of the Holy Ghost, the exact degree of bliss and torment allotted to the souls of the departed, whether it was permissible to use leavened bread in the sacrament, and whether Pope or Patriarch should occupy the chiefest seat at feasts. These were the main points which separated the Churches, and on each of them the Greek prelates (Mark of Ephesos excepted) gave way—not that the arguments of the Latins had become suddenly convincing, but the looming vision of the Turk inclined the minds of the Orthodox to surrender. “Ils ne croyaient pas, mais ils craignaient.”
Foremost among the complaisant Greeks was the Metropolitan Isidor; already, before leaving Russia, he had shown a “scandalous predilection for the Latin faith”—had he not at Dorpat kissed the Catholic cross before saluting the Greek ikons? 1440Hence on his return to Moskva prince and prelates assembled in gloomy suspicion to receive him in the Church of the Virgin, and hear the result of the council’s deliberations. The Roman cross demurely preceding the Metropolitan, and the Pope’s name cropping up in the prayers, prepared them for the surrender set forth in the Act of Council. When Isidor had finished reading the unpalatable document there was an ominous silence, amid which Vasili rose to his feet and commenced to hurl invectives at the disconcerted Vladuika. Heretic, false shepherd, corrupter of souls, the mercenary of Rome, were among the epithets applied to the would-be reformer, who was promptly bundled off to a monastery, from which he was glad to escape back to Rome. John Paleologus might, for pressing reasons of his own, tolerate this accursed change of dogmas, but the Velikie Kniaz of Moskva would have none of it, and hastened, after the example of Vitovt, to consecrate a Metropolitan on his own responsibility, without reference to the tainted source of Constantinople. Jonas, Bishop of Riazan, was chosen for the post, but was not formally consecrated till 1448.88
The energy and reckless daring of the Prince’s character showed itself soon after in a struggle with a new enemy. On the ruins of the Great Bulgarian State had sprung up the Tartar khanate of Kazan, independent of the Golden Horde, and a source of uneasiness for Eastern Russia. In an attempt to repel an invasion of the province of Souzdal by the forces of this upstart power, Vasili, deserted by his cousin Shemiaka, could only muster 1500 men, a shadow of the mighty hosts that had followed the banner of Moskva aforetime. With this handful, however, he joined battle with the Kazanese, and fell, covered with wounds, into their hands. At the news of this disaster the enemies of the Grand Prince raised their heads throughout the land; Boris of Tver raided the possessions of the Moskovite merchants at Torjhok, Shemiaka stretched out his hand for the vacant princedom. The sudden release of Vasili by the Khan Makhmet sorely embarrassed the position of the would-be supplanter, and Shemiaka was driven to make a bold bid for the mastery. 1446A sudden move put the Kreml in his hands, and the hapless Grand Prince, while returning thanks in the Troitza monastery for his deliverance from the hands of the Infidels, experienced the worse fate of falling into the clutches of his Christian cousin, who put his eyes out. Thus after ten years came home to roost the wrong inflicted on Vasili the Squinting, and the Grand Prince was thenceforth Vasili the Blind. This barbarous requital of an “unhappy far-off” deed was perpetrated in the names of Shemiaka, Ivan Aleksandreivitch, and Boris of Tver, and in their hands remained the person of Vasili and the possessions of the Grand Principality. The first-named usurped the Moskovite throne and enjoyed for a space the power of Grand Prince without being able to gain the affections of the people. 1447In the darkness which had descended on Vasili Vasilievitch the loyalty of boyarins, town-folk, and clergy still burned bravely for the captive prince; the popular clamour and the representations of the Metropolitan forced Shemiaka to restore him to liberty and bestow on him the town of Vologda as a residence, and not many months had passed ere the exile came marching back in triumph to his beloved and faithful Moskva—whose dazzling walls, indeed, he might never again behold, but whose pealing bells and hoarse-shouting populace spoke music to his darkened soul. Scarred and mutilated in the long struggle, in which he had tasted the bitterness of defeats, imprisonment, banishment, blinding, the Grand Prince had triumphed over all his misfortunes, had wearied down all opponents, had won. A final victory dispelled the power of Shemiaka (1450), and three years later he died at Novgorod, not without suspicion of poisoning. From this turning-point Vasili the Darkened reigned peaceably and prosperously on the throne he had laboured so hard to retain.
As the Moskovites settled down to their long-estranged placidity, rumours reached them of the terrible thing which had befallen the city of the Caesars; rumours which soon grew into creditable news and made them doubt but that the bottom of their world had fallen out.
Little fruit had been born of the vaunted Council of Florence; the Churches were as far apart as ever. In vain might the Byzantine Emperor and the Greek hierarchy conform with the decisions of the act of union; the lower clergy and the bulk of the populace would have no dealings with the unholy ordinance. “Better Turkish than Papish,” the motto of the Water-Beggars in a later age, would fitly have described the sentiments of the people of Constantinople at this period. Thus they fought and squabbled over their beloved dogmas, while the enemy was slowly gathering his toils around the doomed city. The Pope, mortified at the miscarriage of his plans, sent no legions rolling across Europe to the assistance of the last of the Constantines; his legate, indeed, was on the scene, arguing and expostulating, with the rhetoric which gained him applause in the council-chamber at Florence, but failed him in the cold, grim Church of the Virgin in the Kreml—for this plausible Roman cardinal is no other than Isidor,