Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/391

 Rh brotherhood. Each of the Opritchniki took a special oath which bore some resemblance to vows. He renounced the world, after a fashion, and gave up all his former relations. The Sloboda bore all the outward appearance of a hermitage. Within its walls 300 comrades, more specially attached to the Sovereign's person, lived according to a most severe rule. Over their gold-embroidered kaftans they had to wear black gowns, and take their part in most complicated religious observances. The Tsar was the prior, Viaziémski cellarer, Skouratov sacristan. The Sovereign himself, with his sons, rang the bells for service. At midnight everybody was on foot for the first prayers. At four o'clock in the morning all were in church again for matins, which lasted till seven. At eight everyone heard Mass, and Ivan took pains to edify his comrades by prostrating himself over and over again, till his forehead was covered with bumps. At twelve o'clock dinner was served in the refectory, the Tsar reading aloud from some pious book, and, as in the best-managed monasteries, all the food that remained over was given to the poor. The Sovereign, as prior of the community, ate his meals alone, but everybody sat down together afterwards to drink. Some of the Opritchniki made these entertainments as lively as if they had been qualified jesters, and ladies were admitted to them. …

To Ivan, as to most of his contemporaries, this constituted the ideal of the religious life—excess of devotion redeeming excess of debauch, external practices and material austerity atoning for lack of internal piety, and excusing the worst moral failings. And in that sense, the Sloboda of Alexandrov was a place of stern discipline. There is no doubt Ivan took his parody in the most serious way. I see a proof of this in the celebrated epistle he addressed, in 1575, to the Archimandrite and monks of the Monastery of St. Cyril at Biélooziéro. The man who indited this missive was certainly imbued with the conviction that he himself was a monk called to hold converse with other monks on a subject peculiarly interesting to men of the same vocation. The correspondence took its rise out of the following circumstances. The powerful family of the Chérémétiév was one of those which had been most sorely tried by the persecution under which the upper aristocracy had suffered subsequent to Ivan's accession to the throne. One of the three brothers who were its chief members, Nikita Vassilivitch, had been put to death; another, Ivan, a renowned warrior, had made acquaintance with prison and the torture-chamber. To escape worse treatment, he had retired to the Monastery of Biélooziéro, and there become a monk, under the name of Iona. According to the