A crime that never happened?

On November 16, 1581, a quarrel broke out between Ivan the Terrible and his eldest son Ivan, which ended, as experts would say now, infliction of grievous bodily harm, which led to the death of the victim.

It is this tragic moment that is captured in Ilya Repin’s iconic painting Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan. November 16, 1581.” The artist created this canvas based on the version of the incident set out in the History of the Russian State by Nikolai Karamzin:

“During peace negotiations (with the Livonians who besieged Pskov – S.I.), suffering for Russia, reading sorrow and on the faces of the Boyars – hearing, perhaps, the universal murmuring – the Tsarevich was filled with noble jealousy, came to his father and demanded that he send him with an army to expel the enemy, liberate Pskov, restore the honor of Russia. John, in a flurry of anger, shouted, “Rebel! you, together with the Boyars, want to overthrow me from the throne! and raised his hand. Boris Godunov wanted to hold her back: the Tsar gave him several wounds with his sharp rod and hit the Tsarevich hard in the head with it. This unfortunate fell down, covered in blood. Here the fury of John disappeared. Turning pale with horror, in trembling, in a frenzy, he exclaimed: “I killed my son!” and rushed to hug and kiss him; kept the blood flowing from a deep ulcer; wept, sobbed, called for doctors; prayed to God for mercy, son for forgiveness. But the Heavenly Judgment took place!.. The prince, kissing his father’s hands, tenderly expressed his love and compassion to him; urged him not to despair; said that he was dying as a faithful son and subject… he lived for four days and died on November 19 in the terrible Sloboda Aleksandrovskaya… Where the blood of innocents had shed for so many years, John, stained with his son, sat in a daze motionless by the corpse without food and sleep for several days… November 22 Nobles, Boyars, Princes, all dressed in black, carried the body to Moscow. The king followed the coffin to the very church of St. Michael the Archangel, where he showed him a place between the monuments of his ancestors. The funeral was magnificent and touching. Everyone mourned the fate of the sovereign young man, who could have lived for happiness and virtue, if his father’s hand, in spite of nature, had not plunged him untimely into debauchery and into the grave! Mankind triumphed: John himself was mourned!.. Naked with all the signs of the Tsar’s dignity, in a sad robe, in the form of a simple, desperate sinner, he fought against the coffin and the earth with a piercing cry ”(quoted from the book: N. M. Karamzin“ History of the Russian State”, vol. 9, ch. 5 p. 467).

However, as the Third Pskov Chronicle testifies, the conflict between the tsar and the tsarevich due to the liberation of Pskov did take place, but in 1580, and was in no way connected with the death of Ivan Ivanovich.

Another version of the cause of this intra-family conflict, accepted by a number of Russian historians, is based on the testimony of a contemporary of these events, the papal legate, the Jesuit monk Anthony Possevino, set forth by him in Historical Writings on Russia. According to him, the reason for the royal anger was the “unkempt” appearance of the pregnant daughter-in-law (she was not girded) – Elena Sheremetyeva, who was already the third wife of 27-year-old Ivan Ivanovich. According to Possevino, the angry prince of Moscow hit her in the face, and then beat her so much with his staff, which was with him, that the next night she threw out the boy. At this time, son Ivan ran to his father and began to ask not to beat his wife, but this only drew the anger and blows of his father on himself. He was very seriously wounded in the head, almost in the temple, by the same staff. Before that, angry with his father, the son heatedly reproached him in the following words:

“You imprisoned my first wife for no reason, you did the same with your second wife, and now you are beating your third wife in order to destroy the son she is carrying in her womb.”

Having wounded his son, the father immediately indulged in deep grief and immediately called the doctors from Moscow and Andrei Shchelkalov with Nikita Romanovich to have everything at hand. On the fifth day, the son died and was transferred to Moscow amidst general grief.

However, despite the widespread prevalence of the above two versions, there have always been historians who were convinced that this quarrel with subsequent assault did not exist at all. So, Metropolitan John (Snychev) in his work “Lies and Truth about the Terrible Tsar” devotes a separate chapter to the “myth of sonicide”:

“Possevin says that the king was angry with his daughter-in-law, the wife of the prince, and during a quarrel that broke out he killed him. The absurdity of the version (already from the moment of occurrence) was so obvious that it was necessary to “ennoble” the story, to find a more “reliable” reason and “motive for the murder.” This is how another tale appeared – that the prince led the political opposition to his father’s course in negotiations with Batory on concluding peace and was killed by the tsar on suspicion of involvement in the boyar conspiracy. Needless to say, both versions are completely unfounded and unsubstantiated. It is impossible to find a hint of their authenticity in the entire mass of documents and acts that have come down to us, relating to that time. But assumptions about the natural death of Tsarevich Ivan have a documentary basis. Back in 1570, the sickly and pious prince, reverently fearing the hardships of the royal service that lay ahead of him, granted to the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery a huge contribution for those times – a thousand rubles. Preferring the monastic feat to worldly glory, he accompanied the contribution with the condition that “someone wants to get a haircut, the prince prince Ivan was tonsured for that contribution, and if, due to sins, the prince does not become, then remember.” Indirectly, Ivan’s death from illness is also evidenced by the fact that in the “modified” version of filicide, his death did not follow immediately after the “fatal blow”, but four days later, in Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda. These four days are most likely the time of the dying illness of the prince.

The instrument of the alleged filicide, the royal staff, which Ivan the Terrible himself perceived as a sacred object, also raises great doubts. According to reliable historical data, this staff was handed over to him after the consecration of the Epiphany Cathedral in the Avraamiev Monastery in Rostov the Great on October 2, 1553. This event was noted in the monastery records. They also say that during the celebration of the church tsar, as a symbol of his hope in God’s help, he took a staff that had been kept in the monastery since the time of the holy venerable Abraham. Considering this, it is hard to imagine that even being angry, Grozny could use this shrine as a cudgel…

If we return to Ivan Ivanovich’s “morbidity”, then it could also be “man-made” and be the result of someone’s malicious intent. Expert data suggest such thoughts: in 1963, the tombs of Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich and Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich were opened in the Archangel Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. The subsequent reliable studies, medical-chemical and medical-forensic examinations of the remains of the prince showed that the permissible content of mercury was 32 times higher, arsenic and lead were several times higher. Chief Archaeologist of the Kremlin, Doctor of Historical Sciences T. D. Panova writes:

“… what is the reason for such an increased content of mercury, arsenic and lead – one can only guess.”

The skull, found during the opening of the burial of Ivan Ivanovich, was in very poor condition due to the decay of bone tissue. It is not possible even now to say unequivocally whether or not the fatal blow was inflicted by the staff.

Sergei Ishkov.

Photo from topwar.ru