Me and my brother George, of blessed memory, they brought up like vagrants and children of the poorest. What have I not suffered for want of garments and food! And all that against my will and as did not become my extreme youth. I shall mention just one thing: once in my childhood we were playing, and Prince Iván Vasílevich Shúyski was sitting on a bench, leaning with his elbow against our 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 I recount all the miseries which I have suffered in my youth? Often did I dine late, against my will. What had become of the treasure left me by my father? They had carried everything away, under the cunning pretext that they had to pay the boyár children from it, but, in reality, they had kept it back from them, to their own advantage, and had not paid them off according to their deserts; and they had also held back an immense treasure of my grandfather and father, and made it into gold and silver vessels, inscribing thereupon the names of their parents, as if they had been their inheritance.... It is hardly necessary to mention what became of the treasure of our uncles: they appropriated it all to themselves! Then they attacked towns and villages, tortured the people most cruelly, brought much misery upon them, and mercilessly pillaged the possessions of the inhabitants....
When we reached the age of fifteen, we, inspired by God, undertook to rule our own realm and, with the aid of almighty God, we ruled our realm in peace and undisturbed, 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. Our boyárs, the traitors whom you call martyrs, whose names I shall purposely pass over in silence, made use of the favourable opportunity for their mean treachery, whispered into the ears of a stupid crowd that the mother of my mother, Princess Anna Glínski, with all her children and household, was in the habit of extracting men’s hearts, and that by a similar sorcery she had put Moscow on fire, and that we knew of her doings. By the instigation of these our traitors, a mass of insensate people, crying in the manner of the Jews, came to the apostolic cathedral of the holy martyr Dimítri of Selún, dragged out of it our boyár Yúri Vasílevich Glínski, pulled him inhumanly into the cathedral of the Assumption, and killed the innocent man in the church, opposite the metropolitan’s place; they stained the floor of the church with his blood, dragged his body through the front door, and exposed him on the market-place as a criminal,—everybody knows about this murder in the church. We were then living in the village of Vorobévo; the same traitors instigated the populace to kill us under the pretext (and you, dog, repeat the lie) that we were keeping from them Prince Yúri’s mother, Princess Anna, and his brother, Prince Mikhaíl. How is one not to laugh at such stupidity? Why should we be incendiaries in our own empire?...
You say that your blood has been spilled in wars with foreigners, and you add, in your foolishness, that it cries to God against us. That is ridiculous! It has been spilled by one, and it 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 so, you would not have been a Christian but a barbarian:—but that is not our affair. How much more ours, that has been spilled by you, cries out to the Lord against you! Not with wounds, nor drops of blood, but with much sweating and toiling have I been burdened by you unnecessarily and above my strength! Your many meannesses and persecutions have caused me, instead of blood, to shed many tears, and to utter sobs and have anguish of my soul....
You say you want to put your letter in your grave: that shows that you have completely renounced your Christianity! For God has ordered not to resist evil, but you renounce the final pardon which is granted to the ignorant; therefore it is not even proper that any mass shall be sung after you. In our patrimony, in the country of Lifland, you name the city of Volmir as belonging to our enemy, King Sigismund: by this you only complete the treachery of a vicious dog!...
Written in our great Russia, in the famous, royal capital city of Moscow, on the steps of our imperial threshold, in the year from the creation of the world 7072, the fifth day of July.
The Domostróy. (XVI. century.)
The Domostróy, i. e., House-government, is an important document of the sixteenth century, as it throws a light on the inner life of the Russians in the time of Iván the Terrible. Its authorship is ascribed in the extant manuscripts to Sylvester, the adviser of Iván the Terrible, but it is assumed that he was only the last compiler of various codes of conduct that were known in Russia before his day. At least, the whole production bears the stamp of being a composite work. Two distinct groups are discerned in it: the first has continual references to the Tsar and the honours due him; the other deals with a society whose chief interest is purely commercial, and appeals to the judgment of the people, instead of to that of the Tsar. From this the inference is drawn that the first had its origin in Moscow, the second in Nóvgorod. The morality of the Domostróy is one of external formalism. To preserve appearances before God and men is, according to this code, the chief aim in life.
HOW TO EDUCATE CHILDREN AND BRING THEM UP IN THE FEAR OF GOD
If God send children, sons or daughters, father and mother must take care of these their children. Provide for them and bring them up in good instruction. Teach them the fear of God and politeness and propriety, and teach them some handicraft, according to the time and age of the children: the mother instructing her daughters, and the father his sons, as best he knows and God counsels him. Love them and watch them and save them through fear. Teaching and instructing them and reasoning with them, punish them. Teach your children in their youth, and you will have a quiet old age. Look after their bodily cleanliness, and keep them from all sin, like the apple of your eye and your own souls. If the children transgress through the neglect of their parents, the parents will answer for these sins on the day of the terrible judgment. If the children are not taken care of and transgress through lack of the parents’ instruction, or do some evil, there will be both to the parents and children a sin before God, scorn and ridicule before men, a loss to the house, grief to oneself, and cost and shame from the judges. If by God-fearing, wise and sensible people the children be brought up in the fear of God, and in good instruction and sensible teaching, in wisdom and politeness and work and handicraft, such children and their parents are loved by God, blessed by the clerical vocation, and praised by good people; and when they are of the proper age, good people will gladly and thankfully marry off their sons, according to their possessions and the will of God, and will give their daughters in marriage to their sons. And if God take away one of their children, after the confession and extreme unction, the parents bring a pure offering to God, to take up an abode in the eternal mansion; and the child is bold to beg for God’s mercy and forgiveness of his parents’ sins.