Ivan the Terrible Library

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Arsenal corner tower of the Kremlin

The Library of Ivan the Terrible is the popular name of a lost precious library owned by Tsar Ivan IV ( Ivan the Terrible ). It is widely believed to no longer exist, and some historians doubt that it ever existed, but it is still the subject of speculation among treasure hunters in Russia today.

Notes on the library

The Moscow Grand Duke Vasily III. asked the Patriarch in Constantinople to send him translators and scholars to renew the cultural and religious life, whereupon the humanistically educated Maxim the Greek (Michail Trivolis) came to Moscow in 1518. In a biography of Maxim, which E. Denissoff ascribed to Andrei Michailowitsch Kurbsky in the 1940s , an encounter between the Grand Duke and Maxim is described, in which Maxim shows an extensive Greek library. Maxim was impressed and said that even in Greece he had not seen such an extensive high-quality library. This is the earliest surviving news about this library, the next comes from the Livonian Chronicle of the Mayor of Riga Franz Nyenstädt (also Nyenstede) It describes how Ivan IV brought the German Protestant clergyman Johannes Wetterman and two other clergy into the Kremlin presented them selected Greek books and manuscripts from a secret chamber in the Kremlin. Wetterman confirmed their extraordinarily high value and Ivan IV invited him to translate some of the books, which Wetterman turned down because he feared that he would not be able to leave Russia. After that, the books disappeared again in the Kremlin cellars and there was no further news about them. In the 1820s, the legal historian KK Dabelow from Dorpat found a list of old manuscripts in the Pernau city ​​archives (that's the title), copied part of them and gave them to the historian from Dorpat F. Clossius (the original was found after that no more). Dabelow could not read some of the titles and he forgot to note the author (a Protestant clergyman, but not Wetterman). After that, there were around 800 books and manuscripts in the library, some of which were bought by the Tsar and some of which he received from Byzantium. These included, for example, the Caesarean story of Suetonius (with parts lost today), lost books from the Roman history of Livy, Tacitus, Sallust, Cicero, a copy of Justinian's Codex, the Aeneid of Virgil, lost comedies by Aristophanes or lost works by Historian Polybius. The unknown author stated that the Tsar wanted him to translate some books, but he could not. Clossius published about it in 1834 and was of the opinion that the library was burned in the 17th century during the Polish invasion. The view that while there were early holdings of ancient Latin and Greek manuscripts in Moscow, these were lost in the course of the 17th century, was widespread among scholars in the 19th century.

Ivan the Terrible

New impetus at the end of the 19th century

The assumption that remains of the library might have been preserved arose in the 1890s after the classical philologist Eduard Thraemer came across a manuscript of the Homeric Hymns in Leiden in Strasbourg, which had been sold there from Moscow by a professor Matthae, who owned other parts. Thraemer suspected that they were part of a library that the Byzantine wife of the Grand Duke Ivan III. and niece of the last Byzantine emperor Sofia Palaiologa brought from Byzantium to Moscow on the occasion of her marriage in 1472. Thraemer came to Moscow in 1891 and spent several months looking unsuccessfully in the libraries for clues. Finally, he proposed excavations in the cellars of the Kremlin. Thraemer's impetus was perceived as a sensation in Moscow, was taken up by Russian historians and led to an intense debate. A commission was formed, which included the leading historian of the old Moscow Ivan Yegorovich Sabelin (1820–1908, Russian Иван Егорович Егорович Забелин , IE Zabelin) and Prince NS Shcherbatov and looked for underground chambers under the Kremlin. They found underground corridors, but no secret chambers. Zabelin published on the subject in 1893 and found a report by a city official named Konon Osipov from 1724. This in turn found a report from V. Makariev from 1682 who claimed to have seen a room full of chests through windows of a secret passage under the Kremlin. When he reported this to Sofia Alexeyevna , she forbade further investigation. Osipov himself also looked for the rooms, but couldn't find anything. Zabelin thought it possible that the library and old archives could have been in the chests. This was supported by AI Sobolewski, while the Russian archives expert Sergei Alexejewitsch Belokurow (1862-1918) denied the existence of such a library. According to Belokurov, there would be no documents in the archives that would refer to such a library. He summarized his research in a book in 1898 (On the Library of the Muscovite Princes in the 16th Century (Russian)). In particular, he also critically examined the reports about them in the biography of Maxim the Greeks and came to the conclusion that they were not authentic. He also considered Nyenstadt's report on Wetterman in his Livonian Chronicle to be a misunderstanding on the part of the author. According to Belokurov, Wetterman was more likely to translate documents for the Foreign Minister. He thought Dabelow's list was a forgery, even if he wasn't sure whether Dabelow had forged it himself or had just fallen for it. Belokurov also found a letter from Pietro Arcudio, an Italian humanist, who had been sent to Moscow by Cardinal San Giorgio in 1600 to investigate rumors about ancient manuscripts that he could not find.

20th century

According to Belokurov's research, the general opinion in Moscow during the first half of the 20th century was that the library would not exist, would have been destroyed in the 17th century, or would be a legend. An exception was the archaeologist Ignati Jakowlewitsch Stellezki (1878–1949), who had been looking for the library in the underground tunnel system of the Kremlin, especially under the corner tower of the arsenal , since 1912 (at that time he could only take a quick look inside in secret and without permission) . He went to evidence of the underground passage system from the research of Shcherbatov at the end of the 19th century. In the 1930s he was an archaeological consultant for the construction of the Moscow Metro, which also resulted in a tunnel collapse at the Arsenaleck Tower. Stellezki was also able to carry out major archaeological explorations soon after (November 1933) with the permission of the Kremlin administration (under the notorious Kremlin commander Rudolf Peterson ). Stalin himself was interested in the search and, for example, the construction of the military academy (on two former monasteries) looked for underground facilities. The search under the Kremlin was dangerous because of the danger of the tunnels collapsing, and it was interrupted after a water ingress. With the beginning of the Stalinist terror (murder of Sergei Mironowitsch Kirov in December 1934), to which Peterson was also a victim, work was completely stopped at the end of 1934. The underground tunnels he examined were mostly lined with white quarry stones at the sides and followed partly drained underground rivers. Stellezki survived the Great Terror and World War II, and a Moscow journalist was later able to find his diary.

The historian and member of the Academy of Sciences Mikhail Nikolajewitsch Tichomirow (1893-1965) published a popular science article in the 1960s in which he believed the existence of the library was possible, especially since many Greeks came to Moscow in the wake of Sofia Palaiologa. A. Zimin also made arguments for the existence of the library. For example, he held the ascription of Maxim's biography to Kurbsky von Denissoff and the correspondence between Kurbsky and Ivan the Terrible, which showed that both of them knew their way around ancient and Byzantine literature, as arguments for this. He also rated the credibility of the Nyenstädt Chronicle higher than Belokurow.

After the end of the Soviet Union there was a lively interest in exploring the Moscow underground, including among hobbyists, with the legend of Ivan's library being a motivation. But it was also suspected in other residences of Ivan (such as Vologda , Alexandrov , Kolomenskoye ).

literature

  • NN Zarubin: The Library of Ivan the Terrible, Reconstruction and Bibliographical Description (Russian), Leningrad: Nauka 1982
  • David Arans: A note on the lost library of the Moscow Tsars, The Journal of Library History, Volume 18, 1983, pp. 304-316
  • Eduard Thraemer: In search of the library of Ivan the Terrible, Allgemeine Zeitung, supplement, 1892, issue 1 to 3

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Baltic Historical Commission (ed.): Entry on Franz Nyenstede. In: BBLD - Baltic Biographical Lexicon digital
  2. ↑ David Arans, A note on the lost library of the Moscow Tsars, 1983. On p. 313 it is reported (and in a 2017 ZDF film The Library of Ivan the Terrible ) that the archaeologist Stellezki said he had Dabelow's list in Pernau found again in 1912, but also only made a copy and this was not saved, so that he could not provide any evidence later. It would be signed with a Russian W (possibly a reference to Wetterman).
  3. ↑ Sergei Belokurov, Great Soviet Encyclopedia
  4. ↑ Ignatius Yakovlevich Stelletskii, Find a Grave . Russian Игнатий Яковлевич Стеллецкий . Before the First World War he was a teacher in Nazareth and traveled extensively in the Middle East, after his return he became an archaeologist specializing in the underground of Moscow, for which he also founded a society.
  5. ↑ Catherine Merridale, The Kremlin, S. Fischer 2014
  6. ↑ Great Soviet Byzclopedia, MN Tikhomirov
  7. ^ Tichomirow, On the Library of the Moscow Tsars (Russian), Nowy Mir, No. 1, 1960, pp. 196–202
  8. ↑ Zimin, On the Search for the Library of the Russian Tsars (Russian), Russkaja Literatura, No. 4, 1963, pp. 125–132