Terrible's Father

Vasily III, born March 25, 1479

it was the fate of Grand Prince Vasily III to be squeezed into history between two more famous men.

Vasily’s father, Ivan III, preceded him on Moscow’s throne and went down in history as the 15th century’s gatherer of the Russian lands. He brought in foreigners to build the Kremlin’s main cathedrals, and refused to pay tribute to Khan Akhmed, thus casting off the Tatar Yoke. As a result, he was given the historical appellation “the Great.”

After Vasily’s death in 1533, the throne passed to his three-year-old son Ivan, whom history would give a very different appellation: “the Terrible.”

Vasily’s long, 28-year reign was distinguished by the fact that, in the one hand, he completed many of the things left unfinished by his father, in particular gathering numerous lands not yet subjugated to Moscow. Yet, on the other hand, to Russia’s great misfortune, he brought a bloody tyrant into the world.

Actually, history tried repeatedly to keep Ivan the Terrible from coming to be. Several times it almost took a different turn, but things never quite worked out…

In point of fact, Ivan III should have been succeeded by someone other than Vasily, specifically by his son Ivan, from his first marriage. But young Ivan died before his father, leaving behind his own son (and Ivan III’s grandson), Dmitry. Thus began a story worthy of a Latin American soap opera.

Ivan III, widowed, decided to take a new wife. The choice of a new wife, naturally, was dictated by political considerations – the Muscovite prince proposed to Sophia Palaeologue, niece of the last Byzantine Emperor. Of course, Ivan had never seen her, since Sophia lived in Rome. Yet, obviously, even if Ivan had been told that his intended was ugly, fat, mean and inclined toward palace intrigues, he would nonetheless still have married her. After all, the marriage allowed him to declare himself (and Russia) to be the heir to the great Byzantine empire.

Sophia Palaeologue arrived in Moscow with great pomp and ceremony, bringing from Rome a Catholic priest and the library of the Byzantine emperor. The priest was sent back to Rome, but the library stayed. We know it existed through the 16th century and contained the rarest of books, but no one knows what happened to it or where it is now.

Ivan got his new wife and great prestige. Sometimes he was even referred to not as Grand Prince, but Tsar. When he sat on his throne, he held a scepter and an orb, symbolizing his worldly power, and his stamp bore the two-headed eagle from Byzantium. And soon Sophia gave birth to a son, whom they named Vasily, from the Greek word basilias, meaning “king.”

Meanwhile, in 1498, after a failed plot to murder Ivan’s grandson Dmitry, the boy was crowned co-ruler with Ivan. His mother, Yelena, enjoyed considerable power and favor at court as Ivan’s daughter-in-law. Sophia’s situation at this time was extremely unstable, and for a time she even thought she would have to flee Moscow with her son Vasily. But within three years, Sophia got the upper hand by undermining her husband’s confidence in Yelena’s allies. Vasily was named heir, and Dmitry and his mother were sent off to a prison for the rest of their lives.

So it was that Vasily gained the throne. However, it was not clear to whom he was to bequeath it. For many years, his marriage to Solomonia Saburova, selected from a bride show of 1,500, was childless.

The Official Chronicle describes in detail how the Grand Prince (and his wife, and the metropolitan, and all the boyars) fretted over this. The Chronicle has it that Vasily was hunting and saw a bird’s nest filled with baby birds. He began to cry, such that even those close to him were overcome with tears. And they demanded that the prince find a new wife, in order to bring forth an heir. The Grand Prince refused for a long time, but the boyars and the metropolitan kept at him. Even the good-hearted tsaritsa was prepared to forfeit her happiness to benefit the State.

Interestingly, a foreign traveler (Sigismud von Herberstein) offered a rather different version of these events. Solomonia Saburova had no intention of agreeing to be banished to a convent – at that time the only way to obtain a divorce. In theory, it was not possible to force a woman to take the veil and send her to a convent without her consent. But then all things were possible when it came to the glory of the State. The unlucky woman was dragged into church and the ceremony of the veil begun, despite her screams and tears. At some point, a boyar even took a lash to her, demanding she submit. Solomonia took the veil and was sent to a convent in Suzdal.

After this, Vasily III found a new wife so quickly, that clearly, in ridding himself of Solomonia, he was not thinking merely of the interests of the State. There was no bride show; the tsar did not choose from among a multitude of well-born girls, but quickly married Yelena Glinskaya, a 23-year-old Tatar princess. Clearly, the grand prince had somehow managed to see Yelena, even though at that time girls were kept locked up in terems. He fell in love with her and so he sent his first wife to a convent.

During his short marriage to Yelena, who was exactly half his age, Vasily was transformed. He acted younger in every way, dressing in western clothing, pampering his young wife and even – oh, the horror! – trimming his beard, something then considered beyond indecent.

Then Solomonia declared from the convent that she was with child. A commission sent to Suzdal reported that this was a lie, yet rumors of a child by the “true” and “legal” wife of the tsar spread. Even after Vasily’s death and Ivan IV’s ascent to power, there were whispered tales of a certain Kudeyar – leader of a band of thieves – who was in reality Ivan’s older half-brother and thus had greater claim to the throne. Some even felt Ivan’s brutality stemmed from his desire to find his half-brother; the sudden end to the terror of his Oprichniki was explained by the fact that the two brothers had met and reached some sort of accord.

This entire story would have remained some kind of fairy tale, were it not for the discovery in Pokrovsky Convent in Suzdal – where the unlucky Solomonia Saburova died – of a child’s coffin containing a small doll. Why would a child be buried in a convent? Obviously, because it had been born to a nun. But how did a doll come to occupy the coffin, instead of the body of a child? Perhaps if the child was in reality set free, and one wanted to give the false impression that it had died…

Did Vasily III and Solomonia in fact have a son together? Did Vasily III know about it? Did he believe the rumors? Or was he so besotted by his young bride that he paid no attention to them? We cannot know. But one thing is clear: all of history’s schemes were to no avail. In 1530, during a fierce August thunderstorm, the young Tatar princess Yelena Glinskaya gave birth to a son, Ivan.

The bloody reign of Ivan the Terrible was just around the corner.

SIXFOLD: Over the course of Ivan III’s and Vasily III’s reigns (1462-1533), the territory of Muscovy expanded from 430,000 to 2,800,000 square kilometers [Czars, James P. Duffy & Vincent L. Ricci] 

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