and participants of such ritual is not recorded, but the intent of such rituals in all
settings was“communicative.”Their impact could be, as Émile Durkheim argued,
cathartic, inspiring, and even integrating.
Some rituals were overtly political. When foreign diplomats came to Moscow,
splendidly dressed cavalrymen lined the streets for miles and boyars in resplendent
robes greeted the envoys. So overwhelming was the spectacle that even experienced
ambassadors from wealthy countries with impressive civic structures and grand
public ritual reported being awed and impressed. Others combined political and
religious roles: at moments of succession, governors assembled the ruler’s subjects
to renew their oath of loyalty to the tsar. Orthodox subjects did so by physically
kissing the cross, making a promise on one’s very soul, a gesture so serious that,
when used in courts of law to swear to testimony, litigants routinely settled cases to
avoid imperiling their souls. Non-Orthodox subjects of the tsars took their oaths
according to their own religions, equally solemnly.
The court elite was the principal target of visual displays of legitimacy, for their
loyalty to the regime was essential. Starting in Ivan III’s formative reign, court ritual
was heightened. A Byzantine coronation ceremony was tried out in a moment of
political crisis in 1498 and a more elaborate one used in 1547 when Ivan IV took
the title of“tsar”; participants processed through the Kremlin’s cathedrals and
listened as the ruler was admonished about his power and his obligations. Elaborate
wedding rituals began to be recorded, since the formal roles assigned to men and
women in the highest clans constituted proof of high rank. When the Romanov
dynasty came to power in 1613, they shored up their legitimacy by copying these
books and replicating traditional wedding ceremonies.
SYMBOLIC CENTERS AND BUILT ENVIRONMENT
The built environment has long served empires as a means of broadcasting power.
The anthropologist Clifford Geertz drew attention to how states construct“sym-
bolic centers,”often a capital city that declared symbolically through its architec-
ture, the functions of public buildings, and their interior decoration the nature of
ruler and state. In turn such capitals established an imperial style that would then
be disseminated around the realm. Capital cities—Persepolis, Rome, Baghdad,
Constantinople, Istanbul—routinely claimed legitimacy by uniting architectural
and monumental styles across time. Emperor Theodosius in the late 300s imported
to Constantinople afifteenth-centuryBCEEgyptian obelisk to lay claim to universal
empire; when Khubilai Khan occupied Beijing in 1265, he created imperial
architecture in a mixture of Mongol, Chinese, and Muslim styles; Ottoman
architects retained Byzantium’s monuments and Orthodox cathedrals in Constan-
tinople, while they built their own palaces and mosques in a style integrating
Turkish and Persian architecture and decoration. Symbolic centers acted out the
imperial imaginary: Ottoman rulers, for example, constructed mosque communities
with schools, hospitals, and convalescent homes to fulfill the sultan’s obligations of
Broadcasting Legitimacy 141