Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/273

 Rh 'that's all I say to thee! Hold thy peace, and give us thy blessing!'

'My silence lays a sin upon thy soul, and calls down thy death. …'

'Hold thy peace! … My subjects, my kinsmen, rose against me, and plotted my ruin. … Rebel no more, along with them, or quit thy see!'

'I never asked to be put into this see. I used neither money nor intrigue to obtain it. Why didst thou call me from my hermitage? …'

Ivan controlled himself, and even made as though he would return to a more humane state of mind. But the very next day he had Prince Vassili Pronski put to death with frightful torments, and in the following month of June, another dispute at the monastery of the Holy Virgin settled the Metroolitan's fate. The Bishops of Novgorod, Souzdal, and Riazan lent themselves, like cowards, to a sham trial, in which Philip's successor at the monastery of Solovki—Paisiï—appeared as a hostile witness. Without waiting for sentence, and the moment he was summoned before this court, the Metropolitan attempted to resign his insignia of office. But Ivan stopped him.

'Wait,' he said; 'thou hast no right to judge thyself!' And he ordered him to say Mass the next morning, just as usual. It was St. Michael's Day. Meanwhile the sentence condemning the accused man to perpetual imprisonment in a monastery was to be pronounced, and the Tsar, faithful to his love of theatrical effect, was preparing a coup de théâtre. When Mass began, the Opritchniki entered the cathedral, stripped the Metropolitan of his vestments, cast a tattered monk's frock about him, threw him on to a sledge, and drove him off, sweeping up the ground behind him and beating him with their brooms. He was shut up at Tver, and thither, the next year, Ivan, then on his way to Novgorod, sent him the fiercest of his myrmidons, Maliouta-Skouratov. The Tsar actually dared to claim the prisoner's blessing! Some narratives assure us that Skouratov brought a violent scene to a close by strangling the ex-Metropolitan. But, according to other witnesses, he was taken to the Sloboda at Alexandrov, and there burnt alive. The corpse of the holy man, which was brought back to the monastery of Solovki after Ivan's death, became an object of general veneration. In 1652, under the reign of Alexis, he was canonized, and his relics still attract crowds of faithful believers to that Cathedral of the Assumption in which his martyrdom began.

Ivan, more and more resolved to strike hard and spare nobody, could not permit anyone to interpose between himself and those he thought it necessary to remove out of his path. He was about to deliver blows just as terrible within his own