These victories did not end Russia’s subjection, but they showed that the Tatars could be defeated, and hence that the subjection need not last. They also showed that Russian princes could sink their differences in a common front against the enemy, for warriors had come from all over northern Russia like eagles’ to Dmitrii’s aid. By the time of his death, in 1389, Dmitrii had also doubled the territory of the Grand Principality. The new circumstances also made it more probable that his descendants would succeed him. Yet a venerable monk named Sergius, who attended his funeral, was to do as much as Dmitrii to enlarge the Russian land.
The times encouraged piety of more than one kind. In 1349 a pious but feisty citizen of Novgorod made a pilgrimage to Constantinople with a group from his native city, and left a cheerful account of everything he saw. The journey took many months and required considerable resources, but pilgrim Stephen could afford the expense. The Tatars had hardly touched his home city of Novgorod. It had remained a prosperous commercial centre, with good connections with central Europe as well as with the Russian hinterland and with access, through it, to the eastern Mediterranean. In his description of Constantinople, Stephen expressed the pious conventionalities of a pilgrim, the innocent excitement of someone who took relics seriously, awe at secular as well as religious wonders long heard of and now seen, and credulity at every tale a guide told him:
I arrived at the city during Holy Week, and we went to St Sophia where stands a column of wondrous size, height and beauty; it can be seen from far away at sea, and a marvellous, lifelike Justinian the Great sits on a horse at the top … [holding] a large golden orb surmounted by a cross in one hand … [while] his right hand stretches out bravely … towards the Saracen land and Jerusalem …
He toured the Cathedral of St Sophia, with its icons, mosaics and relics; lit a candle; kissed the remains of St Arsenius and the live hand of the Patriarch; and proceded on a tour of the city’s shrines and monuments which lasted several days. He walked up the imperial road to Constantine’s purple column, which had been brought from Rome (‘Noah’s axe is there’), and to the Monastery of St George, where a set of the relics of Christ’s Passion was locked away ‘and sealed with the imperial seal’. He kissed the body of St Anne there, the head of St John Chrysostom, and the head of St Basil in another monastery, and joined a procession which was following the icon of Mary ‘the Virgin Mother of God … [painted] by St Luke … while she was still alive … ‘
‘You go from there to the Monastery … Church of the Nine [Ranks of Angels] …’he continued. The ‘“Palace of the Orthodox Emperor Constantine” is there … as large as a town … [which has] walls higher than those of the city … The Monastery of St Sergius and Bacchus … is near by’ He kissed their heads too, and went on to the Hippodrome, and to kiss the hand of St John the Baptist, the remains of Gregory the Theologian, and the tomb of the prophet Daniel and of St Romanus … So the catalogue continues, enlivened by tales of stabbed icons which bled, comments on the beauty of the marble and of the singing — even the occasional confession. On visiting the tombs of the emperors he kissed them too, ‘even though they are not saints’. His account concludes with advice that has application to the modern tourist too: visiting ‘Constantinople is like entering a great forest. It is impossible to get about without a good guide, and if you try to go around on your own you will not be able to see or kiss a single saint, unless it happens to be that saint’s day.’ 16
The happy pilgrim Stephen’s contemporary, Sergius, was moulded by quite different circumstances. He was born in a less prosperous, more troubled, part of Russia at a time when, as in many other parts of Europe, despair was widespread and social values were changing. The unpromising outlook was encouraging migration out of towns, which were targets for the tax collectors and the war bands of rival princes, as well as Tatar raiders. Visitations of the Black Plague also encouraged movement to safer settlements and into the forests. There was a parallel tendency to avoid exposure to earthly risks and invest more in the spirit. Such were the disturbed conditions that shaped the early life of St Sergius.
