However, the Church, which had originally been established by secular authority and had long been the staunch supporter and protector of Russia’s secular rulers, constituted a major obstacle to Ivan’s plans. It was absorbing too many resources, in that its landed property comprised a major, if not the largest, proportion of Russia’s total cultivated surface, and its wealth had been extended by legislation of 1550 which the twenty-year-old Ivan did not want but could not at that time resist. By mid-1563 his relations with the Metropolitan, Makarii, had reached breaking point, and when Makarii left Moscow for a monastery it was taken as a sign that he disapproved of the Tsar. The Tsar, however, was soon to show that he, too, could exert moral pressure in a similar time-honoured way. The Metropolitan had support among the elite, and even some of Ivan’s closest advisers, including his former friend Prince Andrei Kurbskii and Boyar Mikhail Repnin, who had invested Ivan with his crown at the coronation ceremony.
The Tsar’s attempt to restrict the Church’s wealth and to challenge its property rights breached precedent, but it should not be supposed that even the Metropolitan’s opposition was founded solely on moral, still less legal or constitutional, grounds. Protecting property was a major concern of both clerics and laity, and it should be borne in mind that an alternative model of government, which respected traditional rights and especially property, was evident in neighbouring Poland-Lithuania. Kurbskii himself was of Lithuanian descent (his family, like many others, espoused Russia because it defended the Orthodox religion against the inroads of the Catholic Church), and now that Poland was wooing his like he soon availed himself of its protection, fearing for his life in Russia.
The murder of Ivan’s opponents and suspected opponents had begun in 1563. Its purpose was to secure the throne from challenge, but opposition persisted and the Church still tried to restrain the Tsar. The pressure was maintained even after the death of Metropolitan Makarii, in December 1563, and then, a year after Makarii’s death, Ivan himself played the moral blackmail card. In December 1564 he swept out of the Kremlin together with his family and a strong force of armed retainers. He went briefly to Kolomenskoe, a short distance downstream from Moscow, where he celebrated Christmas, and then moved on to the suburb of Alexandrova. He had taken with him his entire treasury and many of the most precious icons and liturgical objects from the Kremlin churches. It was as if he were trying to strip the Metropolitan and other prelates who were opposing him of their legitimacy. In turning his back on Moscow, Ivan was metaphorically shaking the dust off his feet, as the Apostle Matthew and Saint Paul had done. Interpreting the symbolism of the occasion, Professor Floria explains that ‘In effect the Tsar was giving the ruling elite an ultimatum: either they must abandon their traditional ways which obstructed the Tsar’s freedom of action, or else they would have to go to war against their legitimate ruler — a war in which the Tsar could call on the armed service gentry and would enjoy the support of the population of Moscow.’ 23
Ivan timed his move shrewdly. Servicemen, who now fulfilled civil as well as military functions, could not function without the Tsar’s authority, so there was a danger that the administration of the realm might suffer a progressive collapse.
24 Those opposed to him did not relish a fight at a time when the country was engaged in war on two fronts and the Tsar was so evidently popular. Besides, state and Church were supposed to work in symphony, and the evident breakdown in their relationship redounded as much to the Metropolitan’s discredit as to the Tsar’s — even more so in the mind of the people. A vast crowd
