das
Regeneration In Process
DE NOBILITAS MOSCOVICA
...I am therefore called upon to describe the nobles of this land, their categories and standing, which are indeed quite different from what one might be accustomed to...
...The Great Prince is the supreme seigneur of all the noble people of his land; he claims descent from Rurik, who, according to the local priests, had supposedly descended from Prusas, the son of Augustus Caesar from whom the land of Prussia received its present name; that much is dubious for many reasons, but it seems indeed that the Great Prince is descended from this Rurik who came to Novgorod from beyond the sea, and also from Rurik's descendants, the Great Princes of Vladimir...
...The younger brothers of the Great Prince are considered his equals, and receive appanages of their own from the older Muscovite lands to reign over with a great degree of freedom upon the death of their father. Yet ofcourse being younger brothers their appanages are poorer and smaller than those of the Great Prince; and that is especially true now, as the present Great Prince and his father had made sure to reduce the appanages and in recent years also to limit their powers and privileges - this was a consequence of the earlier strife in the Great Principality under the present Great Prince's father, when his brother, Prince Yuri of Dmitrov, and his children had tried to seize the power of the Great Prince and had achieved great success before being defeated by the loyalty of all the other nobles. Also, the present Great Prince has made sure to seize all the vacated appanages (such as that of Yuri the Younger of Dmitrov, and also that of Andrei the Lesser of Vologda, and of some more distant relatives left over from the reign of his father) for himself whenever possible, so as to magnify his own lands and avoid strenghthening any of his brothers to a dangerous degree. For this reason, some of them had tried to rebel in the Year of Our Lord 1480, but, frightened by the Tatar invasion that had threatened the country at that time, had agreed to make peace. Still, Prince Boris reigns in Volotsk and Ruza, and Prince Andrei the Big reigns in Uglich, Zvenigorod and Serpukhov. There are also the appanages of the mother of the Great Prince, of his wife and of more distant relatives, but of them little noteworthy could be said at the time...
...The rest of the nobility regardless of their blood or their ancience or their power and rank, all-important though those may be at other times, is considered to be the servants of the Great Prince, and indeed they are all called: "the serving people", as opposed to "the taxed people", who are the peasants. They themselves bear the name of servants with pride, and judge those among their number to be the finest and most worthy of respect who are the closest to the Great Prince's person; the offices (called "chini", like all the other ranks in the Great Prince's service) of tablekeepers, cupbearers, chamberlains and stablemasters are highly sought after by the most ancient nobility; but an even higher aspiration than that is to sit on the Great Prince's private council, called the "douma", of no more than twelve people who are the Great Prince's closest confidants...
...The first among "the serving people" are the princes ("cniasi"); all the descendants of Rurik or Gedimin have rights to a princely title. Aside from the Great Prince and his immediate relatives, and the appanage princes, most such princes are no longer rulers of their own principalities, having lost them in one way or another, sometimes voluntarily conceding them to the Great Prince, and so having become princes in the Great Prince's service. At that, they often retained some or most of their old lands, but on rights of vassals and with limited privileges. Others - Rurikids and Gediminids both - had fled from the lands of the Grand Duke of Lithuania, out of disagreement with their liege or out of fear of his courtiers. The least of those princes, called princelings, serve the Great Prince in the many subjugated provinces of his realm and on other vital but inglorious duties of the state; the greatest of them sit on the douma or are otherwise close to the Great Prince. In addition to what lands they already possess, they also receive lands for their services, but keep them only for as long as they serve in one position or another...
...There are many large princely families: I must mention the Patrikeevy... the Shuiskie... the Obolenskie... the Vyazemskie... the Vorotynskie... the Kurbskie... the Belskie... the Pronskie... and the Starodubskie, although the first three families are presently the most powerful of the service princes.
...There are also princes descended from Genghis Khan of the Tatars, who however are considered distinct from the Rurikids and the Gediminids, on account of their religion and customs, and special privileges enjoed by them in the Qasimid Principality, so named after the first Tatar prince to come into the Great Prince's service. They are fierce and barbaric, but loyal as hounds and are often used by the Great Prince to perform such tasks as are necessary but best not entrusted to honest Christians...
...The greater part of the nobility is counted as boyars, who are descended from the most valorous of the retainers and courtiers of the ancient Rurikid princes. Those princes had been numerous and until more recent times independent; tehrefore they all had their own courts, and all the boyars descend from one court or another. Since the triumph of the Great Princes of Moscow and the end of the age of many courts, the boyars of the old Principaltiy of Moscow had risen above all others, the boyars of the conquered territories often being exiled and deprived of their land which was then often given to the Muscovite boyars, either adding to their patrimony, or, as is the custom of the present Great Prince, being given to them for the duration of their services (this practice is called the "pomestie", for the Great Prince places the serving people on those lands). The boyars remain, however, at the courts of the appanage princes, and those of the older princes who retained a measure of autonomy; besides, the old boyardom of the other lands has not been completely overthrown: far from it: many of them had survived in their former principalities, having proved too difficult to remove, and many others had joined the boyardom of Muscovy by intermarriage or simply coming into the Great Prince's service at the right time...
...Although the boyars have no titles, they are by no means equals: they vary in wealth, but more importantly in court offices and in the ancience and nobility of their descent, over which they often quarrel...
...Over the ages many boyar families had come into relative decline; being numerous, the successors of once powerful boyars carved up their lands into small pieces, and as this went on many became very impoverished indeed. They are considered as distinct from the other boyars, if sometimes related to more prosperous and successful branches, and are called the boyar children. Those boyar children are nonetheless a privileged group in their own right, dispersed in the provinces though it may be, and mostly provide military service, for which they are rewarded with "pomestie"...
...Aside from the boyars the Great Prince is served also by the nearbies ("okolnichi"), people of humble descent but great ability and loyalty who are entrusted in helping the boyars in many tasks related to the positions of the latter in civil government and other, and whose children may be elevated to boyardom. It is said that they are always the second to the boyars in all matters, and for every boyar position there is an "okolnichii", with similar but lesser privileges and obligations...
...Lastly there are the courtiers, or the court officials, or the court servants, in other words the "dvoryane"; they are the descendants of the older court servants who answered to the Great Princes directly and assisted in the running of the palace; judging them to be more loyal than the boyars despite their very humble descent, the Great Princes often entrusted them more and more important tasks, and at first rewarded them with little more than gratitude and favours, but with time begun to grant the most distinguished of them lands as "pomestie"; this is especially true under the current Great Prince, nonetheless many "dvoryane" have no lands to call their own, and are nobility only by their other privileges and their service to the Great Prince. The "dvoryane", though overshadowed by boyars in civil government and supreme military command, nonetheless too possess important positions in local government, but especially in the military service, for they are considered more hardy and reliable than the boyar children...
...I am therefore called upon to describe the nobles of this land, their categories and standing, which are indeed quite different from what one might be accustomed to...
...The Great Prince is the supreme seigneur of all the noble people of his land; he claims descent from Rurik, who, according to the local priests, had supposedly descended from Prusas, the son of Augustus Caesar from whom the land of Prussia received its present name; that much is dubious for many reasons, but it seems indeed that the Great Prince is descended from this Rurik who came to Novgorod from beyond the sea, and also from Rurik's descendants, the Great Princes of Vladimir...
...The younger brothers of the Great Prince are considered his equals, and receive appanages of their own from the older Muscovite lands to reign over with a great degree of freedom upon the death of their father. Yet ofcourse being younger brothers their appanages are poorer and smaller than those of the Great Prince; and that is especially true now, as the present Great Prince and his father had made sure to reduce the appanages and in recent years also to limit their powers and privileges - this was a consequence of the earlier strife in the Great Principality under the present Great Prince's father, when his brother, Prince Yuri of Dmitrov, and his children had tried to seize the power of the Great Prince and had achieved great success before being defeated by the loyalty of all the other nobles. Also, the present Great Prince has made sure to seize all the vacated appanages (such as that of Yuri the Younger of Dmitrov, and also that of Andrei the Lesser of Vologda, and of some more distant relatives left over from the reign of his father) for himself whenever possible, so as to magnify his own lands and avoid strenghthening any of his brothers to a dangerous degree. For this reason, some of them had tried to rebel in the Year of Our Lord 1480, but, frightened by the Tatar invasion that had threatened the country at that time, had agreed to make peace. Still, Prince Boris reigns in Volotsk and Ruza, and Prince Andrei the Big reigns in Uglich, Zvenigorod and Serpukhov. There are also the appanages of the mother of the Great Prince, of his wife and of more distant relatives, but of them little noteworthy could be said at the time...
...The rest of the nobility regardless of their blood or their ancience or their power and rank, all-important though those may be at other times, is considered to be the servants of the Great Prince, and indeed they are all called: "the serving people", as opposed to "the taxed people", who are the peasants. They themselves bear the name of servants with pride, and judge those among their number to be the finest and most worthy of respect who are the closest to the Great Prince's person; the offices (called "chini", like all the other ranks in the Great Prince's service) of tablekeepers, cupbearers, chamberlains and stablemasters are highly sought after by the most ancient nobility; but an even higher aspiration than that is to sit on the Great Prince's private council, called the "douma", of no more than twelve people who are the Great Prince's closest confidants...
...The first among "the serving people" are the princes ("cniasi"); all the descendants of Rurik or Gedimin have rights to a princely title. Aside from the Great Prince and his immediate relatives, and the appanage princes, most such princes are no longer rulers of their own principalities, having lost them in one way or another, sometimes voluntarily conceding them to the Great Prince, and so having become princes in the Great Prince's service. At that, they often retained some or most of their old lands, but on rights of vassals and with limited privileges. Others - Rurikids and Gediminids both - had fled from the lands of the Grand Duke of Lithuania, out of disagreement with their liege or out of fear of his courtiers. The least of those princes, called princelings, serve the Great Prince in the many subjugated provinces of his realm and on other vital but inglorious duties of the state; the greatest of them sit on the douma or are otherwise close to the Great Prince. In addition to what lands they already possess, they also receive lands for their services, but keep them only for as long as they serve in one position or another...
...There are many large princely families: I must mention the Patrikeevy... the Shuiskie... the Obolenskie... the Vyazemskie... the Vorotynskie... the Kurbskie... the Belskie... the Pronskie... and the Starodubskie, although the first three families are presently the most powerful of the service princes.
...There are also princes descended from Genghis Khan of the Tatars, who however are considered distinct from the Rurikids and the Gediminids, on account of their religion and customs, and special privileges enjoed by them in the Qasimid Principality, so named after the first Tatar prince to come into the Great Prince's service. They are fierce and barbaric, but loyal as hounds and are often used by the Great Prince to perform such tasks as are necessary but best not entrusted to honest Christians...
...The greater part of the nobility is counted as boyars, who are descended from the most valorous of the retainers and courtiers of the ancient Rurikid princes. Those princes had been numerous and until more recent times independent; tehrefore they all had their own courts, and all the boyars descend from one court or another. Since the triumph of the Great Princes of Moscow and the end of the age of many courts, the boyars of the old Principaltiy of Moscow had risen above all others, the boyars of the conquered territories often being exiled and deprived of their land which was then often given to the Muscovite boyars, either adding to their patrimony, or, as is the custom of the present Great Prince, being given to them for the duration of their services (this practice is called the "pomestie", for the Great Prince places the serving people on those lands). The boyars remain, however, at the courts of the appanage princes, and those of the older princes who retained a measure of autonomy; besides, the old boyardom of the other lands has not been completely overthrown: far from it: many of them had survived in their former principalities, having proved too difficult to remove, and many others had joined the boyardom of Muscovy by intermarriage or simply coming into the Great Prince's service at the right time...
...Although the boyars have no titles, they are by no means equals: they vary in wealth, but more importantly in court offices and in the ancience and nobility of their descent, over which they often quarrel...
...Over the ages many boyar families had come into relative decline; being numerous, the successors of once powerful boyars carved up their lands into small pieces, and as this went on many became very impoverished indeed. They are considered as distinct from the other boyars, if sometimes related to more prosperous and successful branches, and are called the boyar children. Those boyar children are nonetheless a privileged group in their own right, dispersed in the provinces though it may be, and mostly provide military service, for which they are rewarded with "pomestie"...
...Aside from the boyars the Great Prince is served also by the nearbies ("okolnichi"), people of humble descent but great ability and loyalty who are entrusted in helping the boyars in many tasks related to the positions of the latter in civil government and other, and whose children may be elevated to boyardom. It is said that they are always the second to the boyars in all matters, and for every boyar position there is an "okolnichii", with similar but lesser privileges and obligations...
...Lastly there are the courtiers, or the court officials, or the court servants, in other words the "dvoryane"; they are the descendants of the older court servants who answered to the Great Princes directly and assisted in the running of the palace; judging them to be more loyal than the boyars despite their very humble descent, the Great Princes often entrusted them more and more important tasks, and at first rewarded them with little more than gratitude and favours, but with time begun to grant the most distinguished of them lands as "pomestie"; this is especially true under the current Great Prince, nonetheless many "dvoryane" have no lands to call their own, and are nobility only by their other privileges and their service to the Great Prince. The "dvoryane", though overshadowed by boyars in civil government and supreme military command, nonetheless too possess important positions in local government, but especially in the military service, for they are considered more hardy and reliable than the boyar children...
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