Neutralizing collateral dynastic kin did not eliminate struggles around succession
within the court elite, but there were relatively few in Muscovite political history. In
the 1490s, for example, succession was disputed between the lines of Ivan III’s two
wives (he married Princess Mariia Borisovna of Tver’in 1452 and Sofiia Paleologa
in 1472). In the process a coronation ceremony, modeled on Byzantine rites for
crown princes, was introduced for one of the candidates. When the future Vasilii III
and his faction won the upper hand, the rival Patrikeev faction suffered the forcible
tonsuring of three men and the execution of another. Throughout Ivan IV’s
minority in the 1530s–40s, factions of boyar clans (associated with Shuiskii,
Bel’skii, and Mstislavskii princes) struggled over Ivan’s eventual marriage, which
would establish primacy within the elite. They exiled and imprisoned rivals to avoid
outright violence, but also murdered a few men on each side. Tensions were
resolved when the elite agreed to marry Ivan to a maiden of the Romanovs, a
middling-rank clan in the Bel’skii faction. Even as the Bel’skii-Romanov faction
triumphed, equilibrium was ensured by distribution of benefits to Shuiskii and
Mstislavskii rivals as well. Succession came into question again in 1552 when, with
Ivan IV gravely ill, many boyars refused to support his infant son, some favoring
Ivan IV’s cousin, the adult prince Vladimir of Staritsa. Ivan recovered, and some
argue that this incident fueled his paranoid attacks in the Oprichnina of 1564–72.
Little effort was taken to publicly legitimize succession by dynastic inheritance
until the time of Ivan IV. A tsarist coronation ceremony, oath taking by the
populace, manifestos justifying rule—none of this is recorded until the mid-
sixteenth century or later. Ivan IV succeeded as grand prince at age 3 in 1533
with no public show of legitimizing ritual or document. But when he reached
maturity, after two decades of boyar strife, the court introduced an elaborate
coronation ceremony (1547) elevating his title to“tsar”in addition to the trad-
itional wedding ceremony, both of which attested to stability having been restored
at court. Modeled on Byzantine precedents, employing regalia evocative of that
described in theTale of the Princes of Vladimir, the ceremony included a peroration
by Metropolitan Makarii reminding the ruler of his imperial eminence and duty to
defend Church, faith, and people. A revised version from the 1550s, as Sergei
Bogatyrev noted, elevated the ceremony by adding anointing to underscore the
ruler’s sacrality.
More overt demonstrations of legitimacy, however, were called for by the
political crises that followed the demise of the Daniilovich dynasty in 1598 and
the selection of an entirely new dynasty in 1613. Tsar Fedor Ivanovich died in 1598
without a direct or collateral heir, a result of the family line being pruned so
ruthlessly in the sixteenth century. The boyar clans were faced with having to
choose a successor from among themselves or from outside; initially Boris
Godunov, brother-in-law to the deceased tsar and the power behind the throne
throughout Tsar Fedor Ivanovich’s rule (1584–98), took the throne. His accession
was legitimized by elaborate recourse to the tradition of advice giving. Godunov’s
supporters, after forty days when his sister refused to take power as regent,
organized in Moscow a council of approximately 100 church hierarchs, 50 boyars,
300 gentry, and a few dozen taxed townsmen. They declared for Boris Godunov
Broadcasting Legitimacy 149