The Icon and the Axe

main resuTt~oTa century of fitful Italian influences was to arouse ""› suspicion of theWest. These feelings were strongest among the monks whose 1 v/ influence was: on theorise, and were increasingly channeled into animosity j toward the Latin church. This anti-Catholicism of official Muscqyvjs^ puzzling, since the aspects of Renaissance ????_?^?^?????-_?? the Josephite^^ifrolOgr,_"alchemy, Utopian social ideas, philosophical scepti-cisrn/iaTlff^filJ-trinitarian, anti-sacramental theology-were also opposed by theTixfflaSTThurch: In part, of courseT anti-Catnolieism was merely an extension of the earlier Hesychast protest against the inroads of scholasticism wiffiiii the late ByzantifieTfmpire: Maxim the Greek1"wasfaithful to his Athonite teachers in tellm^theTKussians that "the Latins have let themselves be seduced not only by Hellenic and Roman doctrines, but even by Hebrew and Arab books . . . attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable cause trouble for all the world."78

To understand fully, however, why resentment was particularly focused on the Roman Church, one must keep in mind both the nature of Muscovite culture and the perennial tendency to conceive of other cultures in one's own image. Since Muscovy was an organic religious civilization, Western

Europe must be one. Sir^e all culture in eastern Russia was expressive of the Orthodox Church, the bewildering cultural variety of the West must be expressions of the Roman Church, whatever that Church's formal position on ffieTmatterT'Latinstvo, "the Latin world," became a general term for the West, and the phrase "Go to Latinstvo" acquired some of the overtones of "Go to the devil." By the mid-sixteenth century prayers were being offered for the Tsar to deliver Russia from Latinstvo i Besermanstvo: the Latin and the Moslem worlds; and the terms used to contrast Russians and Westerners were "Christian" (krest'ianin) and "Latin" (latinian).n Since political rule in the Christian East was now concentrated in the tsar of the "third Rome," it was assumed that such rule in the West was concentrated in the hands of the Holy Roman Emperor (Tsezar'). Other princely authorities in the West were equated with the lesser appanage princes of Russia. Their diplomatic communications were translated into the new vernacular "chancery language," which provided the basis for modern Russian, while the predominantly Latin communications from the Emperor were translated into Church Slavonic.80

It would be a mistake to read back into this early period the systematically cultivated anti-Catholicism that developed in the following century of struggle with Poland. During this earlier century, relations were relatively cordial with the Vatican despite the Muscovite rejection of union. There was a Catholic church in Moscow in the late fifteenth century,81 numerous Catholic residents throughout the sixteenth, and several occasions when dynastic marriages nearly enabled Rome to parallel in Great Russia the proselyting success it was enjoying in White and Little Russia. Nevertheless, the basis for Russian anti-Catholicism was already being established in the neetTfor a lightning* rod to channel off popular opposition to the changes which the triumphant Josephite party was imposing on Russian society. One did not dare challenge the newly exalted figure of the tsar and his ecclesiastical entourage; but many conservative elements in Russian society felt a profound if inarticulate repugnance at the increase in hierarchical discipline and dogmatic rigidity which the Josephites had brought^ . loJlussia.,Accordingly, there was a growing tendency to attack ever more bitterly the distant Roman Catholic Church for the very things one secretly j

hated in oneself.-*--¦- _ '•J

Thus, eveir while borrowing ideas and techniques from the Roman Catholic Church, the Josephite hierarchy found criticism of that Church a useful escape valve for domestic resentments. A Western scapegoat was also sought for the inarticulate opposition to the concentration of power in the hands of the Muscovite tsars. At precisely the time when autocracy was crushing out all opposition in Muscovy a new genre of anti-monarchical

pantomime appeared in Russian popular culture. The name of the play- and of the proud, cruel king who is eventually smitten down-was Tsar Maximilian, the first Holy Roman Emperor with whom the Muscovites had extensive relations.82

Distrust of Rome thus had from the beginning in Russia a psychological as well as an ideological basis. During this first formative century of contact from the mid-fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century "the West" was for Russia the urbane Latin Church and Empire of the high Renaissance. Fascination mixed with fear, however; for the Russian Church had begun its fatefuTseries of partial borrowings from the West, and the small literate elite, its gradual turn from Greek to Latin as the main language of cultural pression.

'The Germans"