Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/180

 156 vention of the only omnipotent will able to hurl such a defiance at the majority. Their insertion in the Stoglav has given rise to some natural confusion, producing an impression that the assembly had adopted them, and even gone the length of adopting the views of the Niéstiajatiéli. As a matter of fact, the sobor only made a partial capitulation, and the honour of this cannot be denied to Ivan.

His victory, modest as it was, was still further diminished by the later efforts of the vanquished party. In some localities the decisions of the assembly long continued a dead letter. Everywhere the official Church endeavoured to hamper their application, and when the clergy were once more called together in 1554, to judge the heresies of Matthew Rachkine and his followers, they revenged themselves by dragging several of the most prominent of the reformers into the trial. Soon, too, certain of the ecclesiastical conservatives, wounded or threatened in their dearest interests, were to meet with other malcontents. Ivan's pursuance of his plan of reform was to rally every element of opposition against him: religious and political interests were to join hands, and with them all he was to enter on a fearful struggle, from which he did indeed emerge victorious, but leaving a terrifying name, and a memory that makes men shiver, even now, to his descendants.

The religious reform had failed. The political reform, more resolutely imposed, was to bring a reign of terror with it.

But Ivan had to solve other problems first. In his case, as in that of his predecessors, the territorial expansion of the huge and growing Empire called him to the frontier. The legislator was to be transformed into the conqueror. 

Ivan ascended the throne, the Tartar conquest was nothing but an ugly memory. The Empire of Gengiz and Timour had crumbled in the conquerors' hands. On the east and south, the remnants of the Golden Horde, which had set up almost independent khanates or tsarates at Kazan and Astra-