solidarity^ between sovereign, church, and family on which Muscovite civilization was based. The early seventeenth century brought the deeper shock of military defeat aficT economic spoliation. Twice-in 1605 and 1616-the Poles overran and dominated Moscow; as late as 1618 they lay siege to it ancfneld lands far to the east. To combat the powerful Poles, Muscovy deepened its dependence on the Swedes, who in turn helped themselves to Novgorod and other Russian regions. To lessen dependence on the Swedes, Russia turned to the more distant 'GerTnUfis7rp^articularly;the English and the Dufch7who extracted their reward in lucrative economic concessions.
The confrontation with Poland lepresented the first frontal conflict of *»*'
ideas with the West. This powerful Western neighbor represented almost the
* complete cultural antithesis of Muscovy. The Polish-Lithuanian union was a
loose republic rather than a monolithic autocracy. Its cosmopolitan popula-
i tion included not only Polish Catholics but Orthodox believers from
/ Moldavia and White Russia and large, self-contained communities of
Calvinists, Socinians, and Jews. In striking contrast to the mystical piety and
formless folklore of Muscovy, Poland was dominated by Latin rationalism and a stylized Renaissance literature. PolancLnot^only contradicted Russian Orthodox practice by using painting and music for profane purposes but was,actually a pioneer in the use of pictures for propaganda and the composition of instrumental and polyphonic music.
Most important, however, the Poland of Sigismund III represented the European vanguard of the Counter Reformation. Sigismund was newly enflamed by the Jesuits with the same kind of messianic fanaticism that the JosephitesJxgd imparted to Ivan the Terrible a half century earlier. Obsessed like Ivan with fears of heresy and sedition, Sigismund used a translation of Ivan's reply to the Czech brethren as an aid in his own anti- ProtestajrtjC_ampaign in White Russia.98 Because his realm was more diffuse and Protestantism far more established, Sigismund became in many ways even more fanatical than Ivan. If Ivan resembled Philip II of Spain, Sigismund became a close friend and Latin correspondent of the Spanish royal family.' If the Josephites borrowed some ideas from the Inquisition, Sigismund virtually turned his kingdom over to a later monument to Spanish crusading zeal: Ignatius Loyola's Jesuit Order.
The wandering monks and holy men that traditionally accompanied the Muscovite armies and lent prophetic fervor to their cause were now confronted by a rival set of clerical aides-de-camp: the Jesuits in Sigismund's court. It is precisely because the Jesuits gave an ideological cast to the war with Muscovy that the order became a subject of such pathological hatred- and secret fascination-for subsequent Russian thinkers.
The Jesuit order had long tried to interest the Vatican in the idea that losses to Protestantism in Western and Northern Europe might be at least partially recouped in the east by combining missionary zeal with more flexible and imaginative tactics. They had encouraged the formation in the Lithuanian' and White Russian Orthodox community of the new Uniat Church-which preserved Eastern rites and the Slavonic language while accepting the supremacy of the Pope and the Latin formulation of the creed-and helped secure its formal recognition by the Vatican in 1596.
In the late years of Ivan the Terrible's reign, the Jesuit statesman Antonio Possevino had entertained the idea that Russia might be brought into union with Rome; and this suggestion was frequently echoed throughout the seventeenth century, particularly by uprooted Eastern European Catholics and leaders of the newly formed Society for the Propagation of the Faith. But by the beginning of the century, the Jesuits had succeeded in committing Vatican policy in Eastern Europe to a close working partnership with Sigismund III of Poland. Since Sigismund exercised full control over Lithuania and had a strong claim on Sweden, he seemed the logical bearer
of the Catholic cause in Northeast Europe; and he sealed his allegiance to the cause of Rome with two successive Hapsburg marriages.
One of the most eloquent and strategy-minded Jesuits, Peter Skarga, was responsible for capturing the imagination of Sigismund and his court in his 'Sermons to the Diet' of the late 1590's.100 Capitalizing ohthe knightly and apocalyptical cast of Christian thought in the still-embattled East, Skarga inspired Sigismund's entourage with that mixture of gloomy premonition and crusading romanticism which was to become an essential part of the Polish national consciousness. Capitalizing on the confused Muscovite hopes that 'a ''true Tsar' was still somewhere to be found, the Jesuits helped the Poles ride to power in the retinue,of the pretender, Dmitry. Capitalizing on the nsing'powif of the press in the West, thfTaged Possevino, under a pseudonym, printed pamphlets in support of Dmitry in a variety of European capitals.101 Capitalizing on the religious reverence accorded icons in Muscovy, pictures of Dmitry were printed for circulation to the superstitious masses. Anxious to secure the claims of the new dynasty, a Catholic marriage for Dmitry was staged within the Kremlin.
The combination within the Polish camp of proselyting Jesuit zeal at « the highest level and crude sacrilege at the lowest led to the defenestration^?^ and murder of Dmitry by a Moscow mob in 1606, The pretender who had entered Moscow triumphantly amidst the deafening peal of bells on midsummer day of 1605 was dragged through the streets and his remains shot from a cannon less than a year later. However, the Polish sense of mission was in no way diminished. A Polish court poet spoke of Cracow in 1610 as 'the New Rome more wondrous than the old,'102 and Sigismund described his cause in a letter to the Catholic king of Hungary as that of 'the Universal Christian republic.'103 Despite the coronation in Moscow of Michael, the first Romanov, in 1613, there was no clear central authority in Muscovy until at least 1619, when Michael's father, Patriarch Philaret Nikitich, returned from Polish captivity. Pro-Polish factions continued to be influential inside Muscovy until the 1630's, and Polish claimants to the Muscovite throne continued to command widespread recognition in Catholic Europe_ until the_i65q's.
The identification of the Catholic cause with Polish arms weakened |?
whatever chance thTTKoTn^^huTch might have had to establish its au
thority peacefully over the Russian Church. The military defeat of Poland
became the defeat of Roman Catholicism among the Eastern Slavs-
though not of Latin culture. For in rolling back the Polish armies in the
course of the seventeenth century, and slowly wresting from them control
of the Latinized Ukraine and White Russia, Muscovy absorbed much of
their literary and artistic culture.104L-J
. ?,. .the depiction of the Virgin Mary in Christian art.
