ABSOLUTISM: A PAN-EUROPEAN TREND

Hobbes' Leviathan

The advance of Absolutism was not at all a purely Russian question

Продвижение  абсолютизма не было чисто российский  вопрос

L'avanzata dell'assolutismo non fu certo solo un problema russo

L'avancée de l' absolutisme ne fut guère un problème exclusivement russe.

Der Vorsprung des Absolutismus war nicht ein rein russisches Problem

The ancient “Republican” structure of the Russia of the Middle Ages may be summarized by the statutes of Novgorod, the first Russian City, the Norse Hólmgård. The name itself of Russia, in Norse, was Gårdariki, which hints to the facts that it constituted the “Domain” of the City, or the “Country of the Towns”. Novgorod/Hólmgård was an elective chiefdom. It has not been established whether it was dependant on the Kingdom of Uppsala. It is known that King Olaf of Norway fled towards Gårdariki when defeated by King Knut of Denmark, and that, in 1040, Yngvar the Traveller had left the Swedish Uppland for a rally against the Islamic Caliphate, evidently going through Russia, as it is remembered by a runic stone in Chepsholm Castle:

        “Peir Fóru drengrla - fiari at gulli - ok austarla

        erni gafu - don sunnarla - í Serklandi”

In Novgorod, the prince was bound  to live outside of the town, in order to impeach him to take the absolute power. It is something similar to the institution of the “Prætor Peregrinus” in Rome and of the “Kende” (as opposed to the “Gyula”) in the old Magyar States.

Novgorod was governed by elective officials (Posadniki), whose unofficial chief was the Archbishop, according to a model common, in a first instance, also to the Italian and German free towns. Like the latter, the city was, originally, a part of the assets of the Great Prince of Kiev (in the same way as the German Imperial Towns were a part of the “Reichsgut” - the Emperor’s assets -). But the way, Novgorod became also a member of the Hansa, not differently from Tallinn, Riga, Gdansk, Visby, Kobenhavn, Bruges, Gand and London..

The autonomous power of the towns was gradually voided: firstly, by the Rjurikoviči, who considered the reign of Russian towns as ”a family business”, and, thereafter, by the Mongols, who, albeit leaving a complete autonomy, decided, in last instance, about confirmation of the towns’ princes. Moreover, the Mongol Khans convened periodically the Princes, together with the other vassals of them, for periodical meetings in the far away Mongolian capital - Karakorum -, in a way not so different from the one in which the Emperors and kings in Western Europe convened their Diets.

Also in the West, e.g., in denmark, in the Flanders and in England the Hansa-Cities lost progressively their autonomy, being incapsuldated more and more into the growing National Monarchies.

European visitors in the Renaissance period (zu Heberstein, Possevino and Fletcher) started widespreading the myth of “Russian Autocracy”. They described the Muscovian Empire as imprinted by the typical characteristics of “Asian Despotism”.

This impression is rather shocking, because also in Western Europe there were, at the same time,  ongoing processes of centralization and absolutism (the “absolute monarchies).It was the time of Machiavelli, Jean Bodin, Botero and Hobbes. Surely, they were less evident in Italy and in Germany, where feudalism had maintained its force, so that the Prince had not, as Machiavelli would had preferred, the power typical of Protestant Kingdoms. However, it seems astonishing that at least the English poet did not recognize, in the absolutistic mood of the Muscovite Princes, the same attitude contrary to the autonomy of Church and of high aristocracy, which had moved the Kings of England to suppress any religions and political oppositions, to kill Thomas à Becket, Thomas More, Anne Bolen and Mary Stuart.On the contrary, Russia had not a great ideologist of absolutism, as Italy, France, England and Spain had.

Also the role of Oprichniki and recalls the Templars, the German Order, the Knights of the Holy Cross,of the Sword and of Livonia, the Landesknechte, the Jeniceri, in the same way as Oprichnina recalls the Timar and the Reichsgut,

At the times of Ivan, a Muscovy Company was created in London, having, as its objective, to foster trade with Russia, in a parallel way to what was  happening with the Company of Venturer Merchants for Germany, and was  going to happen with the West Indian Company, the East Indian Company, the Hudson Bay Company, a.s.o…Ivan III struggled all his life long for estrablishing strong liaisons both with the Muscovy Company and the Kingdom of England.

The reality is, after the fall of the Byzantine Empire, there had been a strong deception in Western Europe for the fact that the remnants of the Eastern Orthodoxy had refused to accept the reunification with the Pope in order to strengthen the basis of a fight against the Turks (with someone openly stating to prefer the Turks to the Franks).In fact, after the Council of Florence, where the representations of the Byzantine Empire and of Russia had accepted the proposed reunification, the people, both in Byzance and in Russia, had disavowed the activities of their representatives. This divisions, at least according to Western European, had rendered weaker Christianity and facilitated the Turkish victory.

On the contrary, Russian Monarchs had a strong feeling of their role to defend Christianity, and even nurttured Chiliastic phantasies, not far from the ones of contemporary West Europeans, like Columbus, Vieira, Winthrop and Cotton Mather, to host the Fifth Empire, so witnessing the Parousìa of Jesus Christ.

It is noteworthy that the same text, in which Possevino exposes his critic against Muscovy’s aristocracy, it reports also the persuasion of Ivan the Terrible that Moscow had the same religious status of Rome, because the Apostle Andrew had preached there at the same Rome as St. Peter.This was probably the first reason for the hostile evaluation, from the side of the Catholic Church,  of Muscovy’s politics.

Indeed also other political and religious evolutions of the Muscovite Empire shows analogies with the one of the Western States, such as Spain, England or the German States. For example, the weakening of the originary representative organs, like the Sviešćenskij Sobor, the Zemskij Sobor and the Bojarskaja Duma.

Paradoxically, the “Enlightened” reforms of Paul 1^st and Catherine 2^nd reinforced the control of the Crown on the Church. The idea itself of Sviešćanskij Sobor is just a translation of the Kirchliche Synode der German Protestant Churches, whilst, on the contrary, the fanariotic  Princes governing Romania had maintained am autonomous role of the respective Churches.

The different heresies, like, for instance, “Strogol’niki” (“Puritans”); “Zhidosvujuščie” (“Judæisants”) , “Nestjaželi”, “Iosifliane”, are just the translation, into Russian, of the names of the corresponding Western heresies.

Also the heroic struggle of Patriarch Philipp against the excesses of Ivan the Terrible, and later on of the Raskol’nik pope Avvakum, recall episodes which took place in West and Central Europe, such as the martyrdoms of Thomas à Becket, St. Thomas More and Jan Nepomuk, for defending the Middle Ages idea of the independence of the Church against the absolutist pretentions of the fledging Monarchies.

Other trends, in Russian Church, derived from evolutions of the Greek Church, such as the ascetic “Esichasm” ,common with Balkans of XV and XVI Centuries. According to a tradition, it was Nil Sorski who brought Esichasm to Russia from Mount Athos. The original Greek Hesicasm, started by Grigorios Palamas, was very widespread in Russia already in the XVI Century, but the most important Russian hesicast was Paissi Velitchkovskij, which published his “Dobrotoljubljc” in 1793. Veličkovskij had established the centre of its activity in Petra Neamt, in Moldavia, where Romanian, Russian, Ukrainian, Greek, Bulgarian and Serb monks shared their religions experience.

Religious art in Russia was renewed by the Greek influence. The Greek painter Sergiej Grek was the teacher of Andrej Rubliev, who painted, inter alia, one of the most influential paintings of all Christian history, the “Holy Trinity”, which is presently visible in the Tretjakovskaya Galereja, and which is considered, by Pope Benedict XVI,as  the most powerful representation of the Trinity Mystery.