The Icon and the Axe

formless folklore of Muscovy, Poland was dominated by Latin rationalism and a stylized Renaissance literature. PolancLnot^only contradicted Russian Orthodox practice by using painting and music for profane purposes but was,actually a pioneer in the use of pictures for propaganda and the composition of instrumental and polyphonic music.

Most important, however, the Poland of Sigismund III represented the European vanguard of the Counter Reformation. Sigismund was newly enflamed by the Jesuits with the same kind of messianic fanaticism that the JosephitesJxgd imparted to Ivan the Terrible a half century earlier. Obsessed like Ivan with fears of heresy and sedition, Sigismund used a translation of Ivan's reply to the Czech brethren as an aid in his own anti-ProtestajrtjC_ampaign in White Russia.98 Because his realm was more diffuse and Protestantism far more established, Sigismund became in many ways even more fanatical than Ivan. If Ivan resembled Philip II of Spain, Sigismund became a close friend and Latin correspondent of the Spanish royal family." If the Josephites borrowed some ideas from the Inquisition, Sigismund virtually turned his kingdom over to a later monument to Spanish crusading zeal: Ignatius Loyola's Jesuit Order.

The wandering monks and holy men that traditionally accompanied the Muscovite armies and lent prophetic fervor to their cause were now confronted by a rival set of clerical aides-de-camp: the Jesuits in Sigismund's court. It is precisely because the Jesuits gave an ideological cast to the war with Muscovy that the order became a subject of such pathological hatred- and secret fascination-for subsequent Russian thinkers.

The Jesuit order had long tried to interest the Vatican in the idea that losses to Protestantism in Western and Northern Europe might be at least partially recouped in the east by combining missionary zeal with more flexible and imaginative tactics. They had encouraged the formation in the Lithuanian" and White Russian Orthodox community of the new Uniat Church-which preserved Eastern rites and the Slavonic language while accepting the supremacy of the Pope and the Latin formulation of the creed-and helped secure its formal recognition by the Vatican in 1596.

In the late years of Ivan the Terrible's reign, the Jesuit statesman Antonio Possevino had entertained the idea that Russia might be brought into union with Rome; and this suggestion was frequently echoed throughout the seventeenth century, particularly by uprooted Eastern European Catholics and leaders of the newly formed Society for the Propagation of the Faith. But by the beginning of the century, the Jesuits had succeeded in committing Vatican policy in Eastern Europe to a close working partnership with Sigismund III of Poland. Since Sigismund exercised full control over Lithuania and had a strong claim on Sweden, he seemed the logical bearer

of the Catholic cause in Northeast Europe; and he sealed his allegiance to the cause of Rome with two successive Hapsburg marriages.

One of the most eloquent and strategy-minded Jesuits, Peter Skarga, was responsible for capturing the imagination of Sigismund and his court in his "Sermons to the Diet" of the late 1590's.100 Capitalizing ohthe knightly and apocalyptical cast of Christian thought in the still-embattled East, Skarga inspired Sigismund's entourage with that mixture of gloomy premonition and crusading romanticism which was to become an essential part of the Polish national consciousness. Capitalizing on the confused Muscovite hopes that "a ''true Tsar" was still somewhere to be found, the Jesuits helped the Poles ride to power in the retinue,of the pretender, Dmitry. Capitalizing on the nsing"powif of the press in the West, thfTaged Possevino, under a pseudonym, printed pamphlets in support of Dmitry in a variety of European capitals.101 Capitalizing on the religious reverence accorded icons in Muscovy, pictures of Dmitry were printed for circulation to the superstitious masses. Anxious to secure the claims of the new dynasty, a Catholic marriage for Dmitry was staged within the Kremlin.