The Icon and the Axe

As early as 1348 the Novgorod hierarchy haughtily referred the king of Sweden to the Byzantine emperor when the Western monarch proposed discussion of a religious rapprochement.9 Conscious of its unique role of independence from the Tatars and unbroken continuity with Kievan times, articulate and imaginative Novgorodian writers cultivated a sense of special destiny. They argued that Novgorod received Christianity not from Byzantium, but directly from the apostle Andrew; that Japheth, the third son of Noah, had founded their city; and that holy objects-the white monastic hood allegedly given by the Emperor Constantine to Pope Silvester and the Xikhvin^ icon of the Virgin-had been miraculously brought by God from sinful Byzantium to Novgorod for the uncorrupted people of "shining Russia."10

As political and economic pressures on Novgorod increased in the fifteenth century, the Novgorodian church frequently interpreted negotiations with the West as signs that the end of the church calendar in 1492 would bring an end to history.11 Archbishop Gennadius of Novgorod and Pskov took the initiative shortly after his installation in 1485 in imploring a still-reluctant Moscowrto prepare for this moment of destiny by cleansing its^realm of heretics just as hehad in the see of Novgorod.12 Subsequently, of course, the leaders oFtwo key monasteries within the see of Novgorod, Joseph of Volokolamsk and Philotheus of Pskov, became the architects of the Muscovite ideology. Some of its nervous, apocalyptical quality almost certainly came from the fear that secularization of both intellectual life and church property was imminent in this westerly region, and that the Tsar

himself might emulate the new state builders of the West (or indeed the iconoclastic emperors of Byzantium) by presiding over such a revolution. The holy fools, who did so much to charge the atmosphere of Muscovy with prophetic expectation, trace their Russian beginnings to the confrontation of Byzantine Christianity and Western commercialism in Novgorod. Procopius, the thirteenth-century itinerant holy man who was the first of this genre to be canonized in Russia (and whose widely read sixteenth-century biography made him the model for many others), was in fact a German who had been converted after years of residence in Novgorod.13

Both economic and ideological factors tended to check any far-reaching Westernization of NovgorodrUnlike Tver, thT^tFeininTportant westerly rival of Moscow subdued by Ivan III, Novgorod was firmly anchored against political drift toward Poland-Lithuania.14 Novgorod had its most important Western economic links with German cities far to the west of Poland, and was linked with the northern and eastern frontiers of Great Russia through a vast, independent economic empire. Psychologically, too, the "father" of Russian cities felt a special obligation to defend the memory and honor of Rus' after the Kievan "mother" had been defiled by the Mongols. Riurik was, after all, said to have established the ruling dynasty in Novgorod even before his heirs moved to Kiev; and the fact that Novgorod was spared the Mongol "scourge of God" was seen by many as a sign that Novgorod enjoyed special favor and merited special authority within Orthodox Slavdom.

The political subordination of Novgorod to Moscow intensified Muscovite fanaticism while crushing ouTtrTree distinctive traditions which Nov-^i|Srod^arid Pskov Sad shared with the advanced cities of the high medieval' West:_comrn£5ciai cosmopolitanism, representative government, and philo-soj^iic_rationglism.

C°£nioj5o]u^ariism^^^and Vasily IIFs destruc-

tion ofjhe enclave_of the Hanseatic League in Novgorod, and by subsequent restrictions on the independent trade andTreaty-"relations that Novgorod arfrTPskov had enjoyed with the West sincTeven before associa-tionjyitbTjheTIarrs^r^epigsentative government was-desfroyed by ripping out the bells which had summoned the popular assembly(veche) in Nov-goro^Pskov^lnJjhe; Novgorodian dependency of Viatica to elect mag-istratesjmd concur on major policy questions. Though neither a democratic forum nor a fully representative legislature, the veche assembly did give propertied interests an effective means of checking princely authority. The Novgorod veche had gradually introduced property qualifications for participation, and had also spawned smaller, more workable models of the central assembly in its largely autonomous municipal subsections. Like the

druzhina (or consultative war band of the prince), the veche represented a survival from Kievan times that was alien to the tradition of Byzantine autocracy. The veche was a far more serious obstacle to the Josephite program for establishing pure autocracy, for it had established solid roots in the political traditions of a particular region and in the economic self-interest of a vigorous merchant class.