Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/283

 Rh founded somewhat ambitious hopes. The embassy, which arrived in February, 1570, just at the tragic moment when Ivan was engaged in the manner we have been describing, was forced to wait the Tsar's return, until the 4th of the following May. On the 7th, the envoys were given their audience, and three days later, Rokita had been invited to speak in public, and Ivan had himself undertaken to reply.

The controversy took place at the Kremlin, in the presence of a numerous audience, ecclesiastical and lay, and it then became evident that the only result of the Sovereign's amicable conversations with Bockhorn and other representatives of the Reform party had been to supply him with weapons against them. Ivan spoke first, and his vigorous attack on the fundamental principles of the new doctrine and its application proved his knowledge of the subject to be deep, though his views, as usual in his case, were not unmixed with passion, and even with strong language. 'To judge by their actions, the disciples of the evangelical faith were nothing but pigs!' After such a preamble, the discussion might have been expected to take an unpleasant turn. Nothing of the kind occurred. Ivan, who had promised not to interrupt his adversary, kept his word. But in vain did Rokita, speaking in the Slav tongue, answer in the most moderate and supremely skilful fashion, deliberately confining his indictment to the weaknesses of the Roman Church. The Tsar heard him patiently, praised his eloquence, expressed a wish to see his speech written down, and announced his own intention of replying in the same way. A few weeks later, on taking leave of his foreign guest, he caused the said reply to be handed to him, richly bound, and there the matter ended.

A perusal of this reply—the original text has lately been discovered and published—was sufficient to convince Rokita he had been wasting his time. From the literary point of view, indeed, the rejoinder does the monarch no particular honour. In the taste of that period, Ivan plays, pointlessly enough, on the word Luther, which he calls lioutyi (cruel, in Russian), just as Müntzer, in Germany, had called the Reformer luegner (liar); and he does not shrink from applying other injurious titles to Rokita himself and his co-religionists. The document is not distinguished either by clearness of thought, solidity of reasoning, or logic. But to atone for this, the fulness of knowledge, sure memory, quickness of mind, and dialectic power therein displayed prove the Sovereign to have been in full possession of his well-known powers. His tricks of expression—we can hardly call them his style—are the same as in his altercation with Kourbski. 'You invoke the prophets? Well, we will bring you face to face with