Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/154

 130 Andréiévitch, one of the Tsar's uncles, for whom he had already successfully interceded in 1541, and thus his influence, though still circumscribed within the narrow limits imposed by the humble priest's worldly position and intellectual quality, was evidently of much older standing, and had been exercised in a far more natural manner.

Kourbski, no doubt, remembered Nathan's coming into the presence of David; but there was nothing prophetic about the language of the Domostroï. A moment was certainly approaching at which, without any question of miraculous intervention, other and quite as humble persons in the Tsar's household were to rise to foremost rank. Ivan, as he realized the necessity for a change in his methods of government, was to look about for new men to fit new positions. Unconsciously, we may be sure, he was to imitate Louis XI. 'Distrusting, and not without good cause, highly-placed men, and honest men, he was fain to discover in the unknown herd some bold fellow or other—one of those who, without having learnt anything, succeed by their own instinct.'

Like that other terrible monarch, and in closely analogous circumstances, Ivan, too, was 'to love none but those he made himself, and who, but for him, would have been nothing at all' (Michelet, Histoire de France, vii. 262). Nothing is more probable than that the catastrophe of 1547 may have led up to this moment, and that Sylvester may have risen into prominence amidst the troubles which attended it. But nothing, on the other hand, proves that the influence over his young Sovereign ascribed to him by Kourbski and other historians was acquired at that particular juncture.

And, further, was he a man whose gifts would ever have enabled him to enact such a part in connection with a man of Ivan's calibre? The Domostroï does not give us the idea of a very far-seeing politician, nor a moral teacher of a particularly high order. Apart from this book, the only three epistles from the pen of its author preserved to us are mere twaddle and nonsense. And that addressed to Ivan—its authenticity, indeed, is doubtful—is by no means the least foolish of the three. Its only injunctions as regards morals are connected with the avoidance of the sin of sodomy. But as an inculcator of virtue, Ivan already possessed Macarius. Sylvester, much inferior to this prelate in acquirements, and with an intellectual outlook far below that of the chosen circle gathered around Maximus the Greek, neither embodied nor represented anything striking or seductive. Subsequent to the year 1547 he is said to have performed the duties of a teacher—duties of a kind calculated to produce some impression on his young master's mind. It