Ivan IV and Vladimir Staritsky: Political Struggle or Competition in Piety?

Abstract

Introduction. The author researched and prepared for publication four acts of 1547–1566 issued by Ivan IV and the appanage prince Vladimir Andreevich on the villages of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery in Vereysky and Dmitrov counties. The diplomas are studied in the context of the corpus of act and narrative sources, containing the plot of the relationship of the appanage prince with his suzerain. Methods and materials. The task of this article is to clarify the real participation of Prince Vladimir in the political and administrative life of the country for three years from 1566 to 1569 and is solved by a comprehensive analysis of narrative texts and the act material in which the real prerogatives of the appanage prince are documented. Analysis. An indicator of Vladimir Staritsky’s administrative and political activity is the intensity and nature of the charters issued and preserved by him, and their correlation with the acts of Ivan IV, to which the key part of the article is devoted. Results. It has been established that in addition to the acts drawn up in the office of the appanage prince relatively independently, acts have been preserved in the compilation of which protographs were used. When creating the acts in 1566, the offices of the tsar and the appanage prince used the letters of 1547 and 1548, the form of which was reproduced without significant changes. It is hypothesized that the acts of Prince Vladimir Andreevich and Ivan IV indicate a kind of competition in piety between the autocratic monarch and the prince of the blood.