276 ANARCHIA
fortress of Wolmar. His wife, his son, and his mother, held by Ivan as hostages
to his good behaviour, were put to death. Having sworn allegiance to
Sigismund-August, Grand Duke of Lithuania, he was rewarded with the castle
of Smedyno, and the grant of Crown lands in the starostwo of Kowel in
Volhynia, and was assessed for a military contribution of 180 knights and 50 sol-
diers. Once established, he entered into the spirit of the Anarchy with relish. In
1567-73, he regularly appeared as an envoy to the Sejm, associating himself
politically with the Orthodox interest centred on Prince Konstanty Ostrogski,
Palatine of Kiev. He gained the reputation of a persecutor of the peasants and
the Jews. He was twice married, and once divorced, in scandalous circum-
stances, and his son by his third wife, Michal Dymitr Kurbsky (1582—1645),
sometime envoy of Upita, became a notable convert to Catholicism. He con-
stantly feuded with his neighbours, the Wisniowiecki and the Czartoryski, and
at the end of his life he was so burdened by debts incurred in lawsuits that he
was obliged to surrender his estates. All the while, he served in the Lithuanian
Army. In Batory's wars against Muscovy in 1579—81, he took command at sev-
eral victorious battles. In Russian history, Kurbsky is mainly remembered as the
ideologue of the boyars' opposition to Ivan's autocracy. His famous correspon-
dence with the Tsar over some fifteen years, and his History of the Grand Duchy
of Moscow (1573?), provide the most detailed and intimate sources of the
period. The former, whose authenticity has recently been assailed, is filled with
a mixture of rich abuse and high debate on the principles of legitimacy and civil
obedience. Kurbsky raged against the 'leprous conscience' of his former master,
who 'belches forth his bombastic and learned quotations in untameable wrath.'
Ivan called his one-time subject 'a cur', a 'stinking traitor', a 'seducer', a
'Pharisee', a 'perjurer'. The History written in similar vein, was inspired by the
chilling prospect that on the death of Sigismund-August, Ivan might be elected
to the Polish throne. In Polish history, however, Kurbsky is remembered as a
prominent recruit to the service of the Republic, and as a living advertisement
against the barbarism of Muscovy. Yet it is quite clear from his correspondence
that he had little respect for the principles of the noble democracy. 'As for the
godless nations,' he said to Ivan in his Second Epistle, 'why mention them? For
none of them rule as masters in their own house. They rule as their employees
order them to.' The Polish chronicler, Bielski, claimed that Kurbsky fled to
Lithuania from fear of the consequences of military failure; and most modern
commentators would concede that there was a strong streak of opportunism in
his conduct. None the less, the Republic gave him a sanctuary from which to
propound his views, and that in itself was a good advertisement.^27
Foreign comment on Poland-Lithuania had long been delayed by lack of
information. But as from the mid-sixteenth century western scholars were well
supplied with detailed descriptions. In Italy, the famous account written in 1575
by the Venetian ambassador, Ieronimo Lipomano, supplemented similar
reports compiled by each of the Papal Nuncios a decade earlier. Relevant pas-
sages in the Relazioni Universali (1592) of Giovanni Botero, an official of the