<>BC 800,000 (approximately)| Proto-humans -- not yet properly designated "Homo sapiens" but "Homo erectus" -- had the ability to sail in open seas. Early-early humanity crossed large stretches of water (12 miles or more), probably on bamboo rafts, to reach the Indonesian island Flores. Archaeologist Mike Morwood at University of New England in Armidale, Australia, has studied and dated stone tools found on Flores. This evidence vastly expands the earlier presumptions about human culture, particularly human capabilities on the open seas. Earlier it was presumed that the first such adventures were across the waters between modern-day Indonesia and Australia, 40-60,000 years ago [1998:Nature].
*--775,000 years later (approximately) something like agricultural civilization arose, the beginning of a period for which surviving records allow something like what we conventionally call "history"
*700-595 BC: "European" history comes into good focus beginning with classical Greece and Rome
\\
*2016au29:The Guardian| "The Anthropocene epoch: Scientists declare dawn of human-influenced [contemporary global] age" [E-TXT]
*2017au17:The Guardian| "'Rivers of bones': rituals of life, death and hunting in the American west", a description of pre-historic hunter/gatherer culture in what we call "North America" | [E-TXT]
*2018no01: New Republic | "Paleo Politics: What Made Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers Give Up Freedom for Civilization" [E-TXT]

Before we get down to the central purpose of SAC, IE=Russia in a global setting, let's look at
A brief but instructive outline history of classical Greece and Rome
with emphasis on the instructive fate of the Roman Republic
[you might want to GOOGLE some of these briefly outlined features of classical Greek history to get more detail] =

<>BC 700:595; Classical Greece, Athens| Eupatrid oligarchy

<>BC 510:390; Roman aristocratic republic lasted 120 years

<> BC 390:270; Roman Republic, over the next 120 years, recovered and was transformed as it established its authority over the surrounding "frontier" <>BC 270:120; Roman Republic's final grand epoch lasted 150 years

<>BC 133:Roman Tribune Tiberius Gracchus [ID] launched political campaign to restore balance to Roman political life

<>BC 123: Roman Tribune Gaius Gracchus [ID] took up his brother's cause, trying to expand citizenship beyond the city Rome and broaden public participation

<>BC 116:108; Rise and fall and rise again of Consul then censor Gaius Licinius Geta, a democratically oriented associate of the Gracchi who struggled against insider elite power and corruption in the name of the Roman "people"
\\
*2016:|>Zelinskii,FF|_Римская республика
*2009: T.P. Wiseman, _Remembering the Roman People: Essays on Late-Republic Politics and Literature

<>BC 102:86; Roman army, now a professional rather than a citizen's force, defeated Germanic invaders and came to dominate Roman political life

 <>BC 82:79; Rome soon ruled by a second military dictator, Sulla [Sylla] [ID], a bitter rival of Marius but with much the same meaning for the republic

<>BC 70:30; Rome gripped in ruinous 40-year civil war

<>BC 48:44; Rome fell under the personal autocratic military dictatorship of Julius Caesar

 

---- WE HOP FORWARD NOW TO THE TIME OF BYZANTIUM,
BEGINNING WITH THE NICAEAN COUNCIL
=

<>0325:Nicaean Council (First Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church)


<>0453:988; BYZANTINE STEPPE FRONTIER

Contemporary aerial photo of Constantinople [called Istanbul in the Turkic epoch]
istanbul.jpg (70278 bytes)
The Blue Mosque (foreground) and St.Sophia Cathedral (background)
in contemporary Istanbul [Constantinople]
[Source: website#2 above]
St.Sophia [Hagia Sophia] Cathedral was the intellectual-cultural center of Christian life in the Constantinople epoch (now a museum)
[Read Russian Chronicle account of the powerful architectural impression made by Hagia Sophia]
Blue Mosque is the spiritual center of Islamic life in the post-1453 epoch
Pick up LOOP on Islam from the beginning

Three distinct Slavic language groups emerged from this process
MAP of three contemporary Slavic language groups

  1. West Slavic villagers settled down in territories roughly equivalent to where modern-day Lithuanians, Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks live
  2. East Slavs settled where today we find Belarusians, Ukrainians and Russians
  3. South Slavic peoples, in the centuries prior to the 9th, found themselves extruded into the boiling cauldron of demographic change in the lower Danube valley, along the vital defensive frontier of Byzantium, northwest of Constantinople. These Slavs were pressured in all directions, but the most important force was the first great epoch of Turkic expansion into eastern Europe =

<>0494:Rome| Pope Gelasius's "Letter" on spiritual and temporal power outlined the "two-swords" concept of western Christendom [E-TXT]

<>0540:Balkan Peninsula settled by Bulgarian Kutrigurs and Slavs

<>0550c:Byzantine Empire| Procopius of Caesarea described Slavs [VSB,1=7]
*--0550c:Gothic Jordanes "Origin and Deeds of the Goths" [E-TXT] | On Slavs [VSB,1=7-8]

<>0576:Turkomen of Central-Asia turned against Byzantium, forcing the Empire to pull back to more proximate positions in the northern Caucasus and Crimea

<>0632:651; Turkish Bulgar khans, Kovrat and Kubrat, created independent Bulgar khanate along watersheds flowing from the north into the Danube
*--The Danube Bulgars accepted Christianity from Constantinople and thus served as a Byzantine client state, sometimes restive but clearly part of the "commonwealth"

<>0632je:Islamic Prophet Muhammad died, marking the beginning of a most dramatic cultural/political explosion, the spread of the Muslim or Islamic Arabic Empire [W]

<>0674:678; Byzantine capital city Constantinople besieged by Arabs
*--At this point, however, Islamic Arab power was turned away and diverted elsewhere
\\
*--LOOP on Islam

<>0680:681; Constantinople Council (Sixth Ecumenical [universal] Council of the universal Christian Church)

<>0689:Bulgar khan Asparukh [W] moved with his people over the Danube to the south
*--The Bulgars thus breached one of the most important Roman/Byzantine defensive lines against nomadic incursion from "The East"
*--Byzantine power concluded that Bulgars now had to be co-opted into further close alliance or crushed
*--But these Bulgars were strong enough to gain significant independent status and to sustain it over the next three centuries
\\
*--Obolensky=13, 63-4

<>0695:Dnepr River delta city Kherson, a key trading port in the Crimean area, was under the khagan [khan, kagan, kahan; ruling monarch] of Khazaria
*--Soon Byzantium achieved joint authority with them

<>0710:1185; Japan, Ezo [Hokkaido]| Historical sources of the Nara (710-794) and Heian (794-1185) periods describe how, over these 400 years, northern Honshu Island was still occupied by "barbarians" who once inhabited large areas of what is today called Japan
*--The Japanese people pushed the aboriginal people north
*--The Chinese characters, adopted by the Japanese as they because literate, named these northern areas and can be read as Ezo, Ebisu or Emishi
*--"Ezo" denoted proto-Caucasoid "barbarians" who, many years later, in the Meiji period (late 19th c.), were called Ainu
*--The Ainu are a people with a complex and obscure history [Wiki | KEJ,2=238]

<>0711:712; Spain conquered by Arabic forces erupting out of the global region "AfroAsia" (a neologism employed by SAC [ID] )

<>0717:718; Constantinople under siege by Arabs again but received significant support from Bulgar khan Tervel and his warriors [boyars]
*--Orthodox Christian Bulgaria became an increasingly important power west of Orthodox Byzantium, east of German Catholic power, south and east of Judaic Khazar as well as Islamic power
\\
*--Obolensky:61-68

<>0718:732; France under Arabic invasion
*--Frankish king Charles Martel stopped Arabic advance in what is today the French/Spanish border area [MAP]

<>0737:Lower Volga territories of Khazar authority [W] subject to Arabic attack, but without any long-term success

<>0750:The Muslim world split = Sunni and Shiah branches of the Islamic faith
*--Sunni khalif [Caliph or "khalif"] established in Damascus [capital of modern-day Syria] GO 763

<>0754:Constantinople| Church Council condemned the worship of images (icons) [W]
*--Attack on icons was called "iconoclasm" [TXT]
*--The Church called the last great Ecumenical Council to deal with this crisis
*--LOOP on "Church"

<>0763:Baghdad founded [capital of modern-day Iraq], "capital" of the Shiah khalif (Caliph) and his Arab Abbasid dynasty

<>0777:Iberian Peninsula [ID] holdings of Arabs attacked by Frankish King Karl without success

<>0787:Nicaea| Seventh Ecumenical Council restored worship of icons, on the initiative of Byzantine Empress Irene

<>0789:Baltic Sea, southeastern Pomeranian shores | Slavs (largely what would later be known as Poles) and Esti [Estonians] subdued by Frankish King Karl

<>0803:831; Bulgar khans Krum and Omurtag ruled in an epoch of great ethnic and religious diversity in Bulgaria

<>0827:843; Sicily and southern Italy conquered by Arabic forces

<>0839:German source Annales Bertiniani [W] reported on warrior merchants who passed through German-speaking territories on their way to and from western Eurasian markets

<>0852:First dated entry in Laurentian text of the Russian Chronicle (written long after this year) [CPC:58 | KRR=9-11]

<>0852:Bulgarian khan Boris I [W] played Germans off against Byzantium in order to protect Bulgarian independence

<>0855c:Constantinople University the center of a Byzantine intellectual/spiritual renaissance

<>0859:First dated entry in the Russian Nikonian Chronicle

<>0860:Byzantium| Patriarch of Constantinople Photius now sent scholar-monk Constantine [Kiril] on mission to Khazars

 

<>0862:980; Beginnings of Russian history
Origins of Kievan Rus'

<>0862:Slavs and Finns by this time paid tribute to "Viking" warrior-merchants

<>0863+:Moravian (Czech) lands [W] | Prince Rastislav and other Slavic princes asked Byzantine Emperor Michael III to send "bishop and teachers" of the Christian faith, to preach in native Slavic language [Chronicle TXT]

<>0865se:Bulgarian khan Boris baptized by Byzantine missionaries, but continued to court Rome
*--Squeezed between the two remains of the great Roman Empire, West and East, Bulgaria had to be cunning. And there was yet a third force at work here =
*--Following Boris' baptism, Turkic boyars within Bulgaria itself were reluctant to give up their customary pagan beliefs. Old Bulgar military elites led a stubborn pagan reaction
\\
Obolensky:84-94

<>0866:Byzantium | Varangians or Rus' recently launched their first attack on Constantinople, led by Viking warrior-merchants Askold and Dir

<>0867:1056; Byzantium's 189-year "Golden Age", the "Macedonian Epoch" in the history of the Roman Empire, now centered at the margins of "Europe" and "Asia" (stretching chronologically over approximately the next six SAC screens)
\\
*--Summary [TXT]
*--Pavlidis,10

<>0867:886; Byzantine Emperor Basil I (Vasilii) the Macedonian reigned almost 20 years at opening of the "Golden Age" [ZNC,1=14,20]

<>0867:869; Rome in St.Peter's Cathedral | Byzantine scholar/diplomatic and priest, Cyril celebrated mass in Slavonic language (troubling western church officials accustomed to the mass in Latin -- GO 879)

<>0874:Byzantine treaty with Rus' in which an Orthodox archbishop was posted in Kiev

<>0879:Patriarch of Rome (Pope John VIII) issued Bull against use of Slavonic language in Christian liturgy

<>0880:912; Kiev became headquarters of Varangian Prince Oleg, down from Novgorod after he defeated and killed Askold and Dir

<>0895:959; For six decades, Pecheneg marauders careened out of the Pontic Steppes along the lower Danube drainages, pressuring Magyars [Hungarians] westward and northward

<>0903:913; Ibn-Rusta on Rus' [VSB,1=9-10]

<>0911se02:Constantinople | Byzantine Empire signed Commercial treaty with Russia (after Rus' Prince Oleg's raids launched near the end of his long reign)

<>0912:945; Kievan Prince Igor's reign (33 years!) [ZNC,1=49-52]

<>0917au19:Bulgarian tsar Semeon [ID] defeated Byzantine army, built vast Bulgarian Christian tsardom
*--0927:Treaty with Byzantium ratified Bulgarian gains
Remember why we represent the descendants of these early nomadic Turks with two names, "Bulgars" and "Bolgars" [ID] =

<>0921:922; Bolgar chieftain Almis, whose domain spread along the left bank of the Volga River, below the confluence with the Kama River, sent a diplomatic mission to Muktadir, khalif (Islamic Caliph) in Baghdad [ID]

<>0941:Constantinople attacked by Prince Igor, but Greek fire repulsed the Rus'

<>0944:Byzantium | Prince Igor's treaty w/Constantinople in the last year of his long reign [CPC:72-3 | VSB,1=21-2]

<>0945:962; Kievan Grand Princess Olga reigned (17 years) [CPC:78-84 | ZNC,1=54-63 | DMR2:30-4 | DMR3:22-5 | RRH,1=18-21 | ZMR2:54-8]

<>0950s:Bulgaria | Bogomil "heresy" flourished (religious views unacceptable to conventional Christian theologians)

<>0956:Baghdad | Arabian scholar Masudi on Slavs [VSB,1=10-11]

<>0957:Byzantium | Kievan Grand Princess Olga traveled with a large diplomatic delegation to Constantinople and Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus

<>0961:German King Otto sent Catholic missionaries to Kievan Princess Olga

<>0962:972; Kievan Prince Sviatoslav [ZNC,1=57-71 | DMR2:34-8 | DMR3:26-30 | ZMR2:58-65 | ZMR1:59-65]

<>0980:1223;KIEVAN RUS
FROM PEAK THROUGH DECLINE

<>0976:1025; Byzantine Emperor Basil II reigned 49 years (jointly with his brother Constantine VIII)
*--
1018:Byzantine Emperor Basil's successful campaigns (aided on and off by Kiev) devastated Bulgaria. Basil was dubbed "The Bulgar Slayer"

<>0980:1015; Kievan Grand Prince Vladimir reigned (35 years!)

<>0987:1697; New World, Central America, Mexico, Yucatan, for 700 years the site of a great Mayan civilization

<>0993:Bulgarian Tsar Samuel [W] had commemorative tablet inscribed to the memory of his family

This table is the earliest surviving document in the "Cyrillic" alphabet

*--1018:Byzantine Emperor Basil's successful campaigns (aided on and off by Kiev) devastated Bulgaria. Basil was dubbed "The Bulgar Slayer"
*--The first great epoch of Bulgaria was at its end
*--For the next several centuries, Bulgaria was tossed about in what we might call "the Balkan maelstrom", the result of the grinding of the two great intersecting historical-seismic fault lines, east/west and north/south

<>1015:Martyrdom of Boris and Gleb the most traumatic moment in a series of internecine struggles among Rus' princes [DMR3:47-56]

Icon depicted martyred saints Boris and Gleb
Boris & Gleb.gif (71803 bytes)

\\
*--LOOP on "Church"

<>1018:Pechenegs described by German missionary among them as omnium paganorum crudelissimi

<>1029:Out of Turkmen/Bukhara Steppes, Seljuk Turks (a Tatar people out of the Altai region of modern-day Mongolia) irrupted into Arab/Persian [Iranian] world

<>1036:1054; Kievan Prince Yaroslav Vladimirovich, known as Yaroslav Mudryi [the Wise], reigned (18 years) [CPC=136-42 | ZNC,1=129-51 | VSB,1=26-7 | ZMR2:71-3]
\\
*--Vernadsky,2=79-83

<>1035:Kiev Cathedral of St. Sophia built

<>1037:Kiev became the Metropolitan See (throne or headquarters of the Russian Orthodox Church)

<>1050s:Viking saga of Harald Hardradi and Viking runes [KRR=11-13]

<>1051:Kievan Princess Mariia (Yaroslav Mudryi's daughter) married French King Henry I

<>1051:Kiev-Pechersk Lavra [Great Kievan Cave Monastery] founded [ZMR2=105-16 | Official Pechersk website]
Latterday celebration of Christmas liturgy at Pechersk
A concert of Pechersk Bells (tenor bell melody sounds only in last 45 seconds)
Computerized cartoon tour of monastery grounds (Russian narrative)

<>1054:1073; First Russian law code, Pravda Russkaia [E-TXT#1 | E-TXT#2]
*--Some printed excerpts = VML:26-56 | KRR:26-9 | RRC2,1=24-5 | VSB,1=35-6,36-8 | DMR2:44-50 | DMR3:36-41 | WAL,1=45-8 | RRH,1=43-6]
*--The law code of Yaroslav Mudryi [E-TXT | Excerpts = KRR:50-4]

<>1054:1237; Kievan political disorder (over 180 years!) [ZNC,1=151-255 and ZNC,2=Whole volume | KRR:24-6 | VSB,1=29-30 | DMR2:55-63]

<>1054:Great Schism of Byzantine Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholic churches

<>1063: Novgorod Metropolitan [Bishop] Luka Zhidiata gave instructions to brethren [WAL,1=55-5]

<>1066:England taken under power of Norman King William "the Conqueror", scion of a powerful Norseman or Viking tribe [ID]

<>1067:Kievan Rus'| Out on the Eurasian steppes, Polovtsian raids began [DMR2=64-72 | DMR3=59-64]

<>1071au19:Armenian frontier battle between Byzantium and Seljuk Turks at Manzikert

<>1076fe22:Rome | Pope Gregory VII deposed Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV [TXT]
*--This was a great symbolic moment in the history of church/state relations in regions under the authority of the Roman Church
*1087:Pope Gregory VII issued Dictatus papae [E-TXT], showing that the Patriarch of Rome was going to fight to hold his grip on power in "The West" for as long as possible
*--The chosen method was to enforce the separation of the power of the Church from the power of the Prince

<>1095no27:France, at Clermont | Pope Urban II delivered a sermon [TXT] which appealed for a western European Crusade to save the Holy Land from infidel Turks (and anyone else who got in the way or offered possibility of booty)

<>1097:Kievan princes assembled to define for each his "portion" [udel] of the unraveling Kievan princely hierarchy

<>1103:Kievan princes from various princely city-states yet again (for the third time) conferred in what seemed almost an emerging pattern, every three years

<>1108c:From Constantinople to the Holy Land, a pilgrimage of South Russian Abbot Daniel [E-TXT | WAL,1=56-62]

<>1113:1125; Kievan Prince Vladimir Vsevolodovich, better known as Vladimir "Monomakh", reigned 12 years [ZNC,1=235-48 | VSB,1=32-3 | DMR2:73-80]

<>1136:Novgorod Veche [deliberative assembly of urban elites] elected princes [VSB,1=34-5,62-3]

<>1139:1169; Kiev | Over this 30-year period, seventeen different princes occupied the unstable Kievan throne [ZNC,2=11-140]

<>1147jy24:jy28; Damascus attacked by Second Crusade, then abandoned, a debacle for Catholic Crusaders

<>1150c:Kiril of Turov "Sermon on the First Sunday after Easter" [ZMR2:90-2 | WAL,1=62-5 | ZMR1:83-6]
*--Popular apocryphal text which circulated in these years, about the Holy Virgin's descent into Hell [WAL,1=96-100]

<>1169: Vladimir-Suzdal (two linked fortress cities) | Local feudal Prince Andrei Bogoliubskii [Beloved of God] led attack from this remote northern principality and sacked distant Kiev [ZNC,2=140-2]

Visit northeastern fortress cities in the Vladimir-Suzdal area, a string of cities called "The Golden Ring"
For some excellent photos, F/Kliazma/ and F/Suzdal/ on this [W]

Suzdal, the Church of the Putting on of Vestments, 1688 [source]

<>1174:Vladimir-Suzdal Prince Bogoliubskii was assassinated [ZNC,2=157-61 | DMR3:72-5]

<>1185:Novgorod-severskii (NW of Kiev) Prince Igor Sviatoslavich's lamentable campaign against Polovtsy out on the increasingly disorderly Pontic Steppes [ZNC,2=186-9 | WAL,1=71-80]

<>1187:SW Rus (Galich-Volhynia in right-bank Dnepr River region) racked by disturbances and princely feuds [VSB,1=44]
*--Notice that this is more than 20 years before the Golden Horde came on the scene
*--Kievan Rus' was falling apart, BUT
*--Something new and strong was developing in the north =

<>1190:Novgorod treaty w/German city [VSB,1=69-70]
*1193:Novgorod elected Archbishop of its Russian Orthodox Church [VSB,1=70]

<>1204:Constantinople captured and sacked by Crusaders from western Europe (first successful attack on the city by sea)

<>1206:Altai plateau, near Lake Baikal | Mongol tribesmen gathered in kurultai [assembly] to "elect" Chinggis [Genghis] as khan

<>1211:1216; Mongols invaded China, expanding their power eastward

<>1215:Runnymede, England | Rebel barons forced King John to accept the Magna Carta as law of the land
*--Perhaps, in the world-historical setting, the critical generalizable "chapter" is #39 [E-TXT, with extensive commentary]
*--The full significance of ch#39 was not fully realized until the middle of the 17h-century [CF=habeas corpus ad subjiciendum]

<>1220:Bukhara [modern-day Uzbekistan] fell to Mongols under Chinggis-khan as he moved westward

<>1220c:Kiev-Pechersk Lavra| _The Paterik of the Kievan Caves Monastery [BX596.K513 | A 1989 translation of Kievo-Pecherskii paterik] Covers the years 1073 to 1156 (summary of text = xviii-xx) | Excerpt ZMR1:92f | ZMR2=134f]


<>1223:1462; Kievan Rus' was put to rest in the 240-year-long Era of Mongol dominion|

<>1223:Kalka River | Mongols defeated Russian forces in first probing attack, then backed away, only to return in even greater force 13 years later, in 1236

<>1225:East Persia Khorezm [Iran] wrecked by Mongol invasion

<>1228:1230; Novgorod city disturbance [ZNC,2=290-1 | VSB,1=71]

<>1229:Roman Patriarch [aka Pope] Gregory IX launched Inquisition [ID]
\\
*--James Reston,Jr., review of 2012 effort to link history of Inquisition with the contemporary world [TXT]

<>1231:1243; Azerbaijan and Armenia fell to Golden Horde

<>1236:Volga River, below the confluence with the Kama River | Bolgar administrative capital taken by Mongol chieftain Chinggis-khan's great general Subutai at the head of the new Golden Horde [ZNC,2=307-8]

<>1237:Russian city Riazan destroyed by Batu's Horde [ZNC,2=308-17 | DMR2=107-13 | DMR3=146-9 | KRR:99-101 | VSB,1=44-5 | ZMR1=176-85]

<>1240:1255; Golden Horde was under the command of Batu, now elected khan

<>1240de:Kiev captured by Golden Horde [DMR3:151-2]

<>1240:1243; Aleksandr Nevskii defeated Swedes in a series of battles
*--"A Biography of prince Alexander Nevskii" [ZNC,3=1-39 | ZMR2:224-42 | DMR3:99-105]
\\
*--LOOP on "Chronicle"

<>1243je26:Central Anatolia [central Turkey today] | Seljuk Turks defeated by Golden Horde

<>1246:Pope in Rome sent Ambassador Carpini [ID] to the Mongolian Great Khan in Karakorum

<>1247:Vladimir (city) grand prince Yaroslav Vsevolodovich died
*--A letter of appeal to him from Daniel, a member of his druzhina [closest military servitors, retinue] [DMR3:93-7 | WAL=100-4]

<>1240s:Sarai, in the lower Volga valley| A great "nomad" metropolis was founded by Batu-khan as administrative center and headquarters of the Golden Horde

<>1250:SW Rus' | Galician prince Daniel and his brother had to learn to deal with the Golden Horde [VSB,1=51-2 | DMR3=171-4]
*--After a century and a half of growing internal disorder in SW Rus', Galich-Volhyn area came under Mongol power and found itself isolated from old Kievan networks and vulnerable to influence of German Holy Roman Empire

<>1252:1263; Novgorod and Vladimir [city] prince Aleksandr Nevskii reigned 11 vital years in the early phase of Mongol dominance over the territories of old Rus' south of Novgorod
*--The_Chronicle of Novgorod, 1016-1471 [E-TXT (Thanks to Melody Charles for this URL) | Excerpts = VSB,1=64-5 | DMR2=137-50 | ZMR1=162f | RRH,1=88-90]
\\
*1938:Historial film directed by Sergei Eisenstein, ALEKSANDR NEVSKII
*--Aleksandr Presniakov, _The_Formation of the Great Russian State [DK90.P713], pp. 60-98 on Vladimir city in the 13th century

\\
*--LOOP on "Novgorod" and on "Chronicle"

<>1257:1266; Golden Horde | Berke-khan [Berkh-khan] issued an early decree on free trade [VSB,1=48-9]

<>1261:Russian Chronicles mention Sarai, headquarters of the Golden Horde, for the first time in connection with the establishment there of a Russian Orthodox diocese, following agreements reached between Novgorod prince Aleksandr Nevskii and Berke-khan

<>1267au01:Kievan Metropolitan of Orthodox Church received favorable Yarlyk from new Mengu-Temir-khan [DMR3=175-6] [VSB,1=49 dates this 1308]
*--Russia drifted out of its Byzantine orbit as the Golden Horde consolidated its grip on the Eurasian Steppe and as Novgorod developed ties with the newly independent commercial city-states of the Baltic and North-Sea regions =
*--LOOP on "Chronicle"
*--LOOP on "Church"

<>1270:Novgorod treaty with Hanse (pronounced and sometimes spelled "Hansa"; later formally the Hanseatic League) [DMR2=132-7 | DMR3=114-19]

<>1274:Naples [Italy] | Thomas Aquinas died [ID], having brought the new "Western" Christian philosophy and theology -- called "scholasticism" -- to its highest perfection. The Catholic Church later sainted him. He capped a marvelous century of theological speculation =

<>1274 and 1281:Mongols under Kublai-khan twice failed in effort to invade Japan
*--Heavy storms at sea contributed to the rescue of Japan from the overwhelming Mongol power
*--These came to be called "divine winds" [kamikaze]
*--The implausibility of success in such a venture, plus Japanese preparedness, were perhaps more decisive factors

<>1275:Lithuania the target of attack by allied Russian and Mongol forces, but the Golden Horde backed away from their furthest incursions into the Baltic river drainages

<>1290:1312; Golden Horde| Tokhta-khan ruled in a time of renewed invasion of Russian lands

<>1300:Vladimir (city) became the Metropolitan See of the Russian Church
*--Kiev was essentially cut loose and declined
\\
*--LOOP on "Church"

<>1303:1325; Moscow prince Yurii III

<>1312:1357; Forty-five years, the last successful efforts to restore disintegrating Golden Horde

<>1313:Vladimir Metropolitan of the Orthodox Church Peter received Yarlyk from Uzbek-khan [KRR=101-2]
\\
*--LOOP on "Church"

<>1313:1326; Uzbek-khan spread Islamic faith, which the Golden Horde first encountered in a serious way years earlier among the Bolgar people of the middle-Volga [ID]
*--LOOP on Islam

<>1316:1341; Lithuanian grand prince Gedimin [Gediminas] extended his authority east and south into the partial vacuum created by the strategic withdrawal of the Golden Horde
*--Lithuanian grand prince Gedimin took the old city Kiev

<>1320s:Central America, Mexico, north of the Mayan city-states | Nomadic Aztecs settled and began to build great new urban center, their "capital", Tenochtitlan [site of Mexico City]
*--The second great New World civilization grew, but no wheel, no iron, and a famously ferocious religion

<>1327:Tver rebelled against Golden Horde [ZNC,3=124-6 | DMR2=151-2 | DMR3=179-82]
\\
*--Aleksandr Presniakov, _The_Formation of the Great Russian State [DK90.P713], pp. 98-121 on medieval city-state Tver

<>1328:1462; Phase#2 of the Golden Horde
This was also Phase#1 of MUSCOVITE RUSSIA
=

<>1328:Moscow became Metropolitan See of Orthodox Church, relocated from Vladimir (city)

<>1337:Trinity-Saint Sergius Monastery [Troitse-Sergieva Lavra] founded
*--This great fortress monastery became a central institution of the Muscovite Orthodox Church
\\
*--St. Sergius-Trinity Lavra [VIDEOTAPE+05219]
*--LOOP on "Church"

<>1339c:Moscow | Testament of Ivan I [HTP=182-7 | VSB,1=53-4 | DMR3=195-8]

<>1341:1353; Moscow grand prince Semyon Ivanovich Gordyi [the proud] ruled after his father's death and was confirmed by the Golden Horde

<>1347:Novgorod granted independence to commercial/fortress city Pskov, though Pskov church remained subordinate to Novgorod
*1342:1359; Novgorod city disturbances [VSB,1=72]
\\
*--LOOP on "Novgorod"

<>1353:Moscow grand prince Semyon's Testament [HTP=189-92] Semyon was taken by the black death
*1348:1350; The Black Death spread westward through the Mediterranean Sea coastal ports, northward to England and the lowlands, then in a big circle back eastward through the Baltic Sea along Hanseatic League trade routes to Novgorod and then to Moscow under the Golden Horde

<>1353:1359; Moscow grand prince Ivan II the Meek or Krasnyi [Red]
*--His Testament [HTP=195-202]

<>1354:Ottoman Turkish power crossed the straits just south of the Byzantine imperial capital city Constantinople

<>1354:1368; Moscow | Russian Orthodox Church Metropolitan Aleksei was a powerful supporter of Muscovite throne and the actual ruler in Dmitrii's youth [See below]
\\
*--LOOP on "Church"

<>1355:1389; Moscow grand prince Dmitrii Ivanovich [after 1380 dubbed Donskoi] ruled for 34 years [ZNC,3=185-305]

<>1357no:Moscow | Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church, Aleksei. received favorable Yarlyk from Berdibek-khan of the Golden Horde [DMR3=176-7]
\\
*--CHR.1:338-59
*--LOOP on "Moscow"
+--LOOP on "Church"

<>1357:1380; Twenty-three years in which 25 khans ruled in Sarai
*--Khorezm [Khwarezm-shakh, Khiva; centered on modern-Day Iran and Uzbekistan (W-ID) ] splintered and fell away from control by Sarai [YouTube#1 music & architectural sites | YouTube#2 (in Russian and directed at potential tourists) ]
*--Poland-Lithuania projected its increasingly vigorous metropol powers into western territories of Sarai, the lower Dnepr basin periphery

<>1359:Novgorod elected Archbishop [VSB,1=71]

<>1367:Germanic trade center Köln [Cologne] hosted Confederation of the Hanseatic League

<>1367:Moscow stone Kremlin began

<>1368:1372; Lithuania attacked Moscow frequently

<>1368:Moscow treaty w/Tver [VSB,1=54-5]

<>1375:Moscow | First testament of Dmitrii Donskoi [HTP:204-6]

<>1377:Lithuanian grand prince Wladislaw Jagiello [Jagellon] created a great Polish/Lithuanian dynasty

<>1377:Suzdal | Lavrentian edition of the Chronicles
*--The Hypatian monastery ("Ipaty" [pix] in Kostroma, about 80 miles east-northeast of Yaroslavl [map]) issued its edition of the Chronicles around this time
*--The Hypatian edition of the Chronicles covered Russian history from the year 852

<>1380se08:Kulikovo battle, south of Moscow near the Don River, prince Dmitrii ("Donskoi") defeated Mamai-khan of the Golden Horde [ZNC,3:264-305 | VSB,1=55-6 | DMR2=165-8]

<>1380:1500s; Venice [on the northwestern-most shore of the Adriatic Sea in modern-day Italy], a commercial city-state, defeated its arch-rival, the city-state Genoa, and assumed dominance over Mediterranean trade

<>1385:Poland-Lithuania in Krewo Union

<>1386:Moscow prince Dmitrii Donskoi's second testament [HTP:208-17 | VSB,1=57-8]
*--Compare with simple freeholder's last will [KRR=130-1]

<>1389:Dmitrii Donskoi's last will and testament illustrated effort of Moscow prince to escape the tradition of "partible inheritance" among Russian landowning nobles

<>1389:1425; Moscow grand prince Vasilii I reigned for 36 years

<>1389:Moscow to Constantinople | Metropolitan Pimin's journey [DMR2=158-62 | DMR3:209-13]
*--First-hand accounts written by _Russian Travelers to Constantinople in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries [DR729.M34] help us test the degree of Muscovite isolation from its Byzantine roots in the era of the Golden Horde (CF=1393)

<>1392:1430; Poland-Lithuania ruled for 38 years by Witowt in the years of greatest Polish-Lithuanian power and extent

<>1393:Moscow grand prince Vasilii I reflected how far Russia had drifted out from under authority of Constantinople when he ordered Russian churches not to bother saying prayers for the Byzantine emperor ["basileus" in Greek; "tsar" in Russian] (CF=1389 above)

<>1395:Golden Horde capital city Sarai burned to the ground when Tamerlane (Timur the Lame) defeated and seized the throne from Tokhtamysh-khan
*1389:The Golden Horde in Sarai in the years before Tamerlane's devastating attack [Wki]

<>1395:Novgorod [?]. Death of Spiridon Stroganov, wealthy trader, grower, and miner in the most distant north-eastern Novgorod markets of the Hanseatic League

<>1399:Kazan Mongols ("Kazan Tatars") sometimes fled to Russian lands for sanctuary as they sought to escape internecine struggles within the splintering Golden Horde

<>1403:Czech lands, Prague | At Karel University (Univerzita Karlova, Universitas Carolina or Charles University [W]) German professors launched attack on publications of English reforming Oxford University priest John Wycliffe (1384:England, death [W])

<>1406:Moscow grand prince Vasilii I''s first testament [HTP:219-24]

<>1409:Prince Edigei of the Golden Horde dispatched letter to Vasilii I advised him strongly to consult "the old men" about how Moscow should behave in relationship to the Horde =

It would be well for you ... to observe the ancient customs, and then you will live safely and rule in your domain. Whenever you suffer any harm, either from Russian princes or from Lithuania, each year you send complaints to us against them, and you ask us for charters of protection from them, and you give us no respite on this account....
  1. Traitorous Mongol servitors of the Golden Horde ("children of Tokhtamysh") sought asylum in Moscow [EG]
  2. Vasilii showed disrespect toward Mongol envoys and merchants sent to Moscow
  3. Moscow tried to exercise its authority in certain towns under Mongol dominion
  4. Vasilii's failed to visit Sarai (to see the khan "with your own eyes") or send boyars or sons to pay homage to the khan, and
  5. Vasilii failed to pay yasak [tribute, a primitive form of taxation exacted by Golden Horde. The yasak was the standard source of revenue collected from subordinate peoples, usually those with whom a license agreement (Yarlyk) was arranged. The Yarlyk was the main non-military, non-punitive instrument of control, a licensing authority exercised by the Golden Horde over Russian administrative affairs since the early years of the conquest

<>1409ja18:Czech lands, Prague | Karel (Charles) University's "four nations" structure overturned by King Václav IV [a clumsy western European version of this name is often met = "Wenceslas", as in a popular Christmas carol]

<>1410:Tannenberg battle | Lithuania defeated Teutonic Knights
*--The zealous and holy two-century-long Teutonic military mission was now broken
*--But these German-speaking elites continued to have powerful influence on southeast Baltic (northwest Russian) culture and civilization
*--Over the next century, Poland-Lithuania acquired Belarus, much of what is today called Ukraine, and certain Russian cities and lands
*--Poland-Lithuania was becoming one of the vastest European monarchies of all times

<>1417:Moscow grand prince Vasilii I's second testament [HTP:226-34]

<>1417:1418; Trinity-Saint Sergius Monastery flourished at the height of Vasilii I's reign [pix | 1965:pix of pilgrims] [W]

Two great figures deserve a place in general European Church history,
in the history of Christendom in general =

(1) The "Life of St. Sergius of Radonezh" [TXT],
composed by Monk Epifanii Premudryi [Epiphanius the Most Wise],
became one of the most popular "lives of the saints" in the Russian tradition [ZMR2:262-90]

(2) 1430:Death of Andrei Rublev, the greatest Russian icon "writer" [painter]
Rublev's Old Testament Trinity =
(View detaeil in Olga's Gallery)
rublev1.jpg (186831 bytes)

<>1423:Moscow grand prince Vasilii I's third testament [HTP:236-40]
*--Vasilii I's long reign ended two years later

<>1425:1462; Moscow grand prince Vasilii II Temnyi [Basil the Blind] reigned on and off for 37 years

<>1431:Moscow had great military success against Bolgars. Earlier independent, then under Mongol rule, the Bolgars now were brought fully under Russian rule

<>1431jy25:1445; [Switzerland] Council of Basel [W] worked for fourteen years without success to pull the disintegrated European Christian Church together, to pull western European factions together and to reunite Eastern and Western Churches

<>1436jy16:Novgorod treaty w/ Hanseatic League [VSB,1=76-7]

<>1438:Moscow the target of a siege mounted by Kazan "tsar" Ulumakhmet | MAP of Kazan Khanate and surrounding lands

<>1447:1492; Lithuania under Polish King Kazimierz [Casimir] IV [VSB,1=96-9]

<>1453my29:Constantinople fell to Mehmet II's cannons. Ottoman Turks victorious [TXT]

<>1456:Moscow drove wedge between Novgorod upper class (who leaned toward Lithuania) and lower class (who leaned toward Moscow)

<>1458c:Novgorod. St. Michael, Fool in Christ, died [ZMR1:247-57]
\\
*--LOOP on "Novgorod"

<>1461:Moscow grand prince Vasilii II's testament [HTP:242-66]
*--His 37-year reign was nearing its end
*--The 300-year rise of grand-princely city-state Moscow now culminated in the emergence of tsarist Muscovite Russia, a national monarchy =

<>1462:1533; MUSCOVITE RUSSIA, phase #2 -- The 7-decade era of Ivan III "the Great" and his son Vasilii III
*--Ivan was co-ruler since 1449, meaning 56 years in power)

<>1463:1468; Russian serfdom spread as some of the earliest official restrictions were placed on peasant movement [DMR2=168-9 | DMR3:221-2]
*--Ivan III handed down a decree which expanded earlier decrees limiting peasant movement from one landlord to another
*--Now villagers could move only after harvest, in a two week period surrounding St. George's Day (no26) [VSB,1=123-4]
*--Peasants continued, however, to flee the evolving system of serfdom

<>1466:1474; Russia to India, and back | Russian merchant-trader Afanasii Nikitin described his enterprise abroad [ZMR2:333-53 | WAL=111-13]

<>1467:Pskov reissued its earlier Judicial Charter [W] which revealed some workings of the veche [VSB,1=83-4 | VML:61-82 | VML=18-20 describes the veche | Vernadsky translates "veche" as "city assembly", and sometimes veche is translated as "people's assembly" or "urban assembly"]

<>1468:Belaya River | Tsar Ivan III attacked Bashkirs, an episodic event = Nothing like this again for almost a century

<>1470:Novgorod treaty w/Polish King Kazimierz [Casimir] IV
*--Novgorod sought to counter-balance the power of Moscow [VSB,1=77-8]
*--Novgorod minstrel's immunity charter gives some insight into everyday life [KRR=131-3. On everyday life throughout post-Mongol Russia:127-45; illustrated]

<>1471:1474; Moscow defeated Novgorod and its remarkable female mayor, Marfa Posadnitsa [Novgorod Chronicle in RRC2,1=44-6 | KRR:91-9 | VSB,1=78-81 | DMR2=170-84 | DMR3:222-36 (with MAP)]
*--Hypertext LOOP on "Chronicle" ends here | Hop to first of this 6-century long LOOP, but you might find later chronicle entries of interest or use

<>1472:Muscovite tsar Ivan III married Zoe Paleologus, niece of the last Byzantine Emperor, now living in Italian exile

<>1476fa:Venice ambassador Ambrosio Contarini was sent to Persia in an unsuccessful effort to rally support against Ottoman Turks

<>1478:Novgorod veche bell was cut down and shipped to Moscow, later to be melted down and caste into a cannon

<>1480:Russian tsar in Moscow, Ivan III, renounced authority of Golden Horde when he rejected Akhmat-khan's effort to extract further tribute [VSB,1=113-16 | DMR2=191-3 | DMR3=184-6]
*--Moscow had grown strong, yes, but the Golden Horde had also grown weak
*--Sarai, the encampment of the Golden Horde that served as something like a "capital" or "metropol", was taken and plundered by Voevoda [Muscovite frontier military governor] Nozdrevatyi
*--This was the utter end of nearly two and one half centuries of Golden Horde dominion over Russia

<>1482:Crimean Tatars, one of the offshoots from the earlier united Golden Horde, sacked Kiev, harassed Poland-Lithuania
*--Over the next two centuries, a four-way contest for ascendancy evolved in the old Pontic Steppes, involving

  1. Catholic Poland-Lithuania
  2. Crimean Tatars, acting as ally of the Islamic Ottoman Empire
  3. Orthodox Moscow, in uneasy association with emerging
  4. Cossack communities along the Dnepr and Don river drainages
    \\
    *--LOOP on Islam

<>1485:Tver prince Michael went over to Lithuania [VSB,1=116] as Moscow seized the city-state and continued the "re-gathering of Russian lands"
\\
*--Oswald P. Backus, Motives of West Russian Nobles in Deserting Lithuania for Moscow, 1377-1514 [noUO]

<>1487:1489; Novgorod's 50 richest merchants were deported
*--Eventually 10 thousand middle class burghers were moved from Novgorod to Moscow lands
*--In these years Ivan III approved a Novgorod Judicial Charter [W]. Compare this urban charter with the earlier Pskov Judicial Charter
*--LOOP on Novgorod

<>1487my18:Moscow defeated Kazan Tatars. Mohamed-Amin became vassal khan
*--Russian frontier or imperialist expansion to the south and east now picked up momentum

<>1488:Beloozero city charter [VSB,1=116-8]

<>1489au16:Viatka taken by Moscow and all prominent figures sent under guard to Moscow
*--Tsar Ivan III granted to some of these prominent Viatka figures pomest'ia [landed estates held by pomeshchiki nobles] so long as they rendered state service to the Moscow tsar
*--Others were executed

<>1490au: Nogai Horde murzy [princes] sent embassy to Moscow offering tsar Ivan III alliance in a struggle against "Ahmad's sons", i.e., the remains of the Golden Horde

<>1492:Spanish-sponsored explorer Columbus "sailed the ocean blue", making landing on Caribbean Sea islands of the New World [MAP]

<>1492:Polish King Kazimierz died. His two sons ruled Poland-Lithuania

<>1494:Novgorod ties w/Hanse ended. Moscow authorities seized some Hanse merchants

<>1497:Moscow | Sudebnik [Law Code] of tsar Ivan III [Horace W. Dewey, ed., _Muscovite Judicial Texts, 1488-1556:9-21| Excerpts = VSB,1=118-9 | DMR3:243-58| HRR,1]

<>1500:1503; Moscow defeated Livonian Order, though the Order lingered on for a half-century

<>1502:Crimean Tatars defeated the Golden Horde and finally destroyed Sarai
*--The powerful influence of nomadic Mongol warriors on world history had still one more great moment, but the powerful Golden Horde would soon be but a legacy to which significantly less powerful Tatar khanates aspired. But also Ottoman Turks and tsarist Russians

<>1502:Central America [Honduras] the site of Columbus' first mainland disembarkation in the New World

<>1503:Moscow | Russian Orthodox Church Council declared victory of Josephites [followers of Joseph of Volokolamsk and called "Possessors"], a victory over followers of Nil Sorskii [The Trans-Volga Elders, called in this controversy the "Non-possessors"] [FTS:85-133]

<>1504:Moscow tsar Ivan III wrote his testament [HTP:268-98 | VSB,1=120-1]

<>1505:1533; Moscow tsar Vasilii III inherited from his father, Ivan III [ID], a domain of ca. 55,000 sq. miles [the state of Oregon equals 97,000 sq. miles]
*--Vasilii's father had himself inherited ca. 15,000 sq. miles, thus Russia had grown four-fold by the end of Ivan III's reign [MAP]
*--And it continued to expand =

<>1510:Pskov taken by Moscow [VSB,1=84-5] Over next years, Pskov brought thoroughly into Muscovite sphere of control

<>1514:Smolensk annexed by Moscow [VSB,1=131]
*--In that same year, feeling pressure from Moscow as it seized these western Russian towns, Poland-Lithuania granted Kiev the right to govern itself by the Magdeburg Law [W]
*--Moscow, as it "re-gathered Russian lands", was increasingly successful against Poland-Lithuania

<>1516:English statesman and thinker, Thomas More, published a Latin-language description of an imaginary ideal state, Utopia (1551:English version published)

<>1517:and again in 1526:Holy Roman Empire ambassador Sigismund von Herberstein resided in Moscow
*1557:Herberstein wrote _Description of Moscow and Muscovy [Excerpts: VSB,1=156-8 | DMR2=194-208 | DMR3:261-75]

<>1517:Ottoman Empire, Istanbul | Selim I took title khalif (Caliph)
*1512:1574; Ottoman Turks were entering their golden age
\\
*--Summary of a great Ottoman epoch [W]
*--On Selim the Grim [W]
*--The wonders of the Ottoman capital city (metropol) Istanbul from the time of Sultan Selim I to early years of architect Sinan [W-ID]
*--Pavlidis,15

<>1519:Central America, Mexico | Hernán Cortéz conquered indigenous New World territories for Spain, destroying Aztec civilization

<>1520,1566; Ottoman Turkish Sultan Suleiman I ("the Magnificent") ruled forty-four years [W-ID]

<>1520s:Russian Orthodox Church leader, the influential monk Filofei, wrote letter to tsar Vasilii III which offered a doctrinal historical analysis that amounted to a recommended state "ideology"

<>1521:German priest Martin Luther was excommunicated for his anti-Rome preaching and activism

<>1523:Moscow tsar Vasilii III's testamentary writ [HTP:300-303]

<>1525:Moscow | Russian Orthodox Church Council declared Maksim Grek [Maximus the Greek (ID)] a heretic

<>1525:New World, Central America | Spanish conquistador Cortéz established Captain-generalcy of Guatemala

<>1526:India fell under Mongol rule
*--Babei founded the Mogul dynasty in Hindustan. Delhi became the center or metropol
*--This was the last great accomplishment of the three-century-long Mongol dominion over Eurasia

<>1527:1535; New World, Central America, Mexico, Yucatan | Mayan civilization the target of Spanish conquistador Francisco de Montejo the elder
*--He failed in two military campaigns
*--Twentieth-century experience in this area

<>1527:Italian City-state Florence | Ambassador and political theorist, Niccolo Machiavelli died

<>1528:Spanish Imperial explorer and administrator, Cabeza de Vaca, published an amazing account of his near decade lost on expedition through New World territories now named Florida. Texas. New Mexico, and, probably, Arizona [E-TXT]

<>1529:Lithuania law [VSB,1=98-100 | City law=100-110]

<>1529se:Vienna, the very capital of "The Holy Roman Empire", was for the first time put under Ottoman Turkish siege
*1547:Holy Roman Empire conceded Hungary to Suleiman the Magnificent

<>1533:1587; MUSCOVITE RUSSIA, phase #3 -- The era of IVAN IV "THE TERRIBLE"

1534:1564; Moscow | Russian Orthodox Church ruled for thirty years by Metropolitan Makarii
*--Makarii resisted old-boyars, supported absolutist throne, and protected Church interests -- both Church doctrines and, of course, Church possessions
*--These early years on the throne were agony for Ivan IV, and he later described them | DMR3:276-85]

<>1540:Spanish soldier Ignatius Loyola, now a worldly and militant monk, founded the Society of Jesus [Jesuit Order]
*--Loyola dedicated his life to struggle against Protestant rebellion, especially in northern and western Europe, a struggle which often bears the title "Counter-Reformation"
*1545:1563; Council of Trent put the Catholic Church on a resolute path of Counter-Reformation, mobilizing itself against the spread of various Protestant movements
\\
*--LOOP on Protestant Reformation

<>1542:Spanish authorities called the Council of Valedolid to address problems arising from the evident abuses and excesses connected with the exploitation of conquered territories in the New World

<>1540s:Arkhangel'sk region [map] | Anika Stroganov began at age 17 to consolidate family fortunes, largely in salt
*--How could such a young man do that? Semyonov,Siberia:26 says "Perhaps [...] it is an example of inherited knowledge: the newly-hatched duck makes for the water, the young spider sets about catching flies"
*--Anika moved from his family home on the (northern) Dvina River, further north and east
*--He expanded beyond salt
*--He sent sons out on mission
*--He collected information and expanded trade relations
*--He bought, and he sold: fish, reindeer skins, feathers, down, wax, furs
*--The legend of Stroganov power spread

<>1542:Japan | Portuguese castaways came ashore in frontier territories. This was Japan's first serious contact with Europeans

<>1547ja16:Moscow tsar Ivan IV's elaborate coronation [VSB,1=133-4]
*--Now the 17-year-old tsar was in a position to move Boyars and Church officials a notch or two away from the levers of power
\\
*--Sergei Eisenstein's great movie portrayed Ivan's coronation [FLM]
*--Vernadsky,5
(two parts)

<>1547c:Rural Russian pomeshchik [landowning gentry, state servitor] [VSB,1=163]

<>1547+: 1st compilation of the _Domostroi [Household management, or "economy" in the original Greek meaning], a guidebook for everyday life
*--Carolyn Pouncy has translated and annotated the text [Excerpted TXT]
*--More excerpts = VSB,1=164-5 | BL&T:34f,86f | DMR3:285-9 | WRH | WAL=126-30
*--Consider the legacy of Classical Greek economic thought [EG]
\\
*--Carolyn Pouncy on the political/social system in the time of Ivan IV [TXT]
*--Eve Levin, _Sex and Society [Excerpts = KRR:218-22]

<>1549:Japan | Spanish Francis Xavier arrived

<>1549:English villagers rose up in what came to be known as Kett's Rebellion against inclosures of common lands and transfer of "ownership" to aristocratic lords

<>1549:Russian tsar Ivan IV summoned 1st Zemskii Sobor [Assembly of the Land]

<>1550:Moscow | Sudebnik [Law Code] [VSB,1=134-7| etc=137-42,160-2]

<>1551:Moscow | Stoglav Assembly [Hundred Chapters Orthodox Church Assembly], so named because the conclusions of the assembly were arranged into 100 chapters [VSB,1=165-6| BL&T:75f,105,140f]
*--This was not simply a church assembly. Tsar Ivan IV himself called the assembly together, bringing clerical and secular leaders together to ponder an agenda which he set
Ivan's agenda targeted the following problems =

  1. Disorder in the liturgical affairs of the Orthodox Church. Most significant was the fact that the Assembly affirmed the holy precedence of earlier Russian Church assemblies. The Assembly minimized the authority of original Greek practice, laying the foundation for later resistance to liturgical reforms on the part of "Old-Ritualists"
  2. Secular bureaucratic interference in the institutional life of the Church, especially Church courts
  3. Unrestrained monastic abuses, especially mismanagement of monastic wealth
  4. Unacceptable behavior among the Orthodox Russian people. Measures were taken to suppress sorcery, witchcraft, buffoonery, pagan entertainments among the people, games in the wheat fields, and the shaving of beards in connection with sodomite practices
  5. Disorder throughout the Russian land and other purely political issues were addressed side by side with Church issues
    \\
    *--Florovsky,5:26-32

<>1552:Kazan khanate [map] | [W] | Russian cannons brought down fortress walls, thus terminating independent Kazan Tatar power

<>1552:1740; Western Siberian plains stretched eastward from the left bank of the middle Volga River to the ancestral home of the Mongols = the Altai highlands [map]

<>1553:Peru, Cuzco | Inca Empire crushed by Spanish Conquistador Francisco Pizarro
*--The Central American New World civilizations were by now either crushed or were disintegrating for internal reasons

<>1553:Russian tsar Ivan IV fell ill and sensed his power slipping away into the hands of old-boyar families
*--The old-boyars were jealous of their historical privileges and fearful of Ivan's threat to them
*--Ivan created a personal palace guard, the "Strel'tsy" [musketeers]
*--The strel'tsy were made up of elite units who owed nearly everything to the tsar and nearly nothing to the medieval social system of sosloviia [ID]

<>1553:1564; Moscow tsar Ivan IV ordered construction of a special building to house 1st Russian printing presses
*--Primitive publications of religious texts followed [VSB,1=171-2]
\\
*--Florovsky,5:33-52 helps explain the cultural challenge posed by printing
*--BrE,24:769-70

<>1553:White Sea coast [map] | English merchant-adventurer Richard Chancellor visited Russia and wrote his impressions
[BR&B:3-41 | VSB,1=166-9 | DMR2:219-28 | DMR3:289-94 | RRH,1=113-17]

<>1554:tsar Ivan IV letter to King Edward VI of England [VSB,1=150-1]

<>1555:England, London | English "Merchant Adventurers" re-christened themselves "Muscovy Company"

<>1556:Astrakhan [map] fell to tsar Ivan IV

<>1557:Arkhangel'sk region [map] | Anika Stroganov feared tsar Ivan IV might be jealous. Visited Ivan with sons, bowed respectfully, gave bribes

At home his clerks groaned under his rod, and his second wife bore him one child after another. Ten great salt-works worked day and night for him. Carts laden with goods of every kind creaked over the rough roads, heavily loaded ships sat deep in the water. At that time he had over six hundred workmen and clerks [Semenov,SBR:31]
Anika Stroganov wanted to control Perm because he needed wheat, iron for his salt works, and waterways to Moscow so that salt did not have to be unloaded and reloaded, from boats to carts, causing lost time and product, causing dampening. Trans-loading made goods more expensive in the Moscow market
*--Stroganovs worked to protect their regional entrepreneurial independence, but fell increasingly into orbit with Muscovite mercantilist ambition

<>1558:1583; Moscow fought Livonian wars for 25 years, at first against the last remains of the Livonian Order and eventually against Poland-Lithuania as well

<>1558ap04:Arkhangel'sk region | Tsar Ivan IV gave Stroganov family a Charter, granting them for 20 years all uncultivated land on the tributaries of the Kama River [map]

<>1559:Polish King Sigismund dispatched letter to Elizabeth I of England [DMR2:229-31 | DMR3:299-301]

<>1560:Ivan IV's beloved wife, Anastasiia, died. Ivan suspected she was poisoned by old-boyar who constantly conspired against him. Ivan's personality darkened

<>1563:Moscow printing press opened with Ivan Fedorov and Petr Mstislavtsev in charge

<>1564:1572; Oprichnina was created, adding intense domestic misery to growing military/diplomatic misery arising from six years of costly and inconclusive Livonian Wars

<>1564:Correspondence between prince Andrei Kurbskii and tsar Ivan IV began with the Oprichnina [above] and stretched through the whole period =
*--_The_Correspondence between Prince A. M. Kurbsky and Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, 1564-1579 [DK106.A25] A "duo-page" edition with Russian original on right hand and English translation on left [E-TXT] excerpts]
[Printed excerpts in GPR:601-15 | RRC2,1=86-97 | VSB,1=172-4 | DMR2:209-18 | ZMR2:366-76 | ZMR1:289-99 | WAL=118-26 | RRH,1=109-12]

<>1564ja02:tsar Ivan IV granted 2nd charter to Stroganov family

<>1565:Moscow | Fedorov and Mstislavtsev published Chasovnik [Book of Hours]

<>1565:[USA FL] Spanish colony, St. Augustine, was founded

<>1566je:Moscow Zemskii Sobor [Assembly of the Land] summoned for a second time, this time to consider a significant foreign policy issue, a Polish peace proposal, which Moscow rejected [VSB,1=146-7]

<>1566:1576; Heinrich von Staden traveled to Moscow and wrote lurid tails of Russia in the grip of Ivan IV's Oprichnina = "The Land and Government of Muscovy . . ." [Excerpted E-TXT | Print excerpts: VSB,1=147-9]

<>1567:1569; the most intense three years of Oprichnina violence

<>1568mr25:tsar Ivan IV granted 3rd charter to Stroganov family

<>1569:Poland-Lithuania joined in Union of Lublin and formed Rzeczpospolita [Polish for the Latin phrase Res publica; republic or commonwealth]

<>1569:1570; the eastern Pontic Steppes, in the Don and Volga River basin, were the site of an unsuccessful Ottoman Turkish attempt to construct a great Don-Volga canal which would have linked the Mediterranean world with the Caspian Sea and Persia [Iran] for sea-going transport

<>1570oc24:Moscow tsar Ivan IV dispatched letter to Elizabeth I of England [VSB,1=151 | DMR2:231-5 | DMR3:301-4]

<>1570:Novgorod crushed by Ivan IV [VSB,1=149-50 | DMR2:235-9 | DMR3:305-8]

<>1572:Ivan IV's testament [HTP:307-60]

<>1574:tsar Ivan IV granted a 4th charter to the Stroganov family, seeking to employ the Stroganovs against Kuchum-khan and Sibir Tatar power in Bashkir territories. Tsar Ivan IV granted to the Stroganov family a 20-year lease on Siberia

<>1580:Lithuania controlled the town Ostrog where Prince Konstantin Ostrozhskii created a printing press with the exiled Russian printer Fedorov

<>1581ja15:Moscow decree on Church estates [VSB,1=174-5]

<>1581se08:5pm! Hungarian King Stephen Bathory, who was King of Poland and Lithuania, besieged the city Pskov

<>1581no16:Ivan IV, in a fit of deranged anger, killed his son =
*1885:Il'ya Repin's historical portrait [W pix]
\\
*2017jy16:Novaia gazeta | "Иван Грозный не убивает своего сына. Фрагмент будущего исторического блокбастера" [E-TXT]

<>1581:Siberia | Yermak [sometimes Ermak], a Cossack explorer, crossed Urals eastward into Siberia, the realm of the Tatar khan Kuchum

<>1583:1610; China| Society of Jesus (Jesuit Order [W-ID] ) established first permanent European institutional contact with China

<>1584:Moscow tsar Ivan IV, the Terrible, died after 51 years at the center of Muscovite political life

<>1587:1612no19; MUSCOVITE RUSSIA, phase #4 -- The Time of Troubles = Twenty-five years of profound crisis in the life of the Russian nation
\\
*--Sergei Platonov, _Time of Troubles [DK111.P5813]
*--Dunning
*--Kliuchevskii,3 chs 2-3

The crisis had four main components =

  1. A near fatal dynastic crisis (who is the legitimate ruler of Russia?). Heir to throne was dysfunctional [ID]. Ivan IV's other son died mysteriously [ID]. Boris Godunov was elected. He had no blood claim to the throne -- What was needed to make Godunov "legitimate" and to restore dynastic stability [ID]?
  2. An explosion of social tensions within the ranks of the two-tiered medieval elite social structure, service nobles [pomeshchiki] and patrimonial nobles [votchinniki and boyary]
  3. Tensions among social elites often burst out in much broader social upheaval, and then
  4. Two Polish invasions and occupations [first] [second]

The crisis may be divided into five phases [here summarized, with hypertext hops for fuller accounts]=

  1. 1584:1598; Fedor was tsar (de jure), but Boris Godunov soon became ruler (de facto) until Fedor's death. Against all odds, these were 17 productive years| EG =
    *1589:The Russian Metropolitan was elevated to the post of Patriarch
  2. 1598:1605; Boris Godunov reigned as tsar "elected" by Zemskii sobor
    But these first years were "sicklied over" by dynastic uncertainty
    Questions about monarchical legitimacy dominated a troubled period when dynastic security was needed to bring Russia out of the still-lingering "Terrible" slump [ID] and to face a mounting Polish threat
    *1604:The first "Pseudo-Dmitrii" invaded Russia with Polish troops
    *1605:When Godunov died, few were ready to accept his son as heir to the throne
    The worst years of the "Troubles" followed =
  3. 1606:1610; The rule of "Boyar-tsar" Vasilii Shuiskii, the "boyar's last fling"
  4. 1608:1611; Second Polish invasion, with a second "Pseudo-Dmitrii"
  5. 1611:1612; Russian national recovery

 

<>1587:1598: Boris Godunov "Lord Protector" for one decade, until the death of tsar Fedor
\\
*--Sergei F. Platonov, _Boris Godunov, tsar of Russia [DK109.P513]
*--Ruslan G. Skrynnikov, _Boris Godunov [DK109.S4413]

<>1588su:English ambassador Giles Fletcher in Moscow. He left less than one year later, yet wrote one of the most comprehensive analyses of Russia = _Of the Russe Commonwealth [DK21.F57 | excerpts: BR&B:87-246 | VSB,1=177-80 | DMR2:239-55 | DMR3:309-]

<>1588jy21:jy29; England defeated the Spanish Armada
*--Two decades of "unofficial" English incursions on Spanish and Portuguese overseas possessions and enterprises now gave way to open  hostilities
*--This was the beginning of the end of Spanish imperialist/colonial power

<>1589:Moscow Metropolitan See [Bishop's cathedral throne] was institutionally elevated or "upgraded" to Moscow Patriarchal See [Throne of highest church office = Patriarch] [VSB,1=175-7]

<>1590mr21:Istanbul | Turkish-Persian [Iranian] treaty brought end to 14-year war and recognized Turkish rule in Baku on the western Caspian Sea coast
*--Yet Ottoman Turkish ambitions in the north-eastern Pontic Steppes were stymied

<>1591:Dmitrii Ivanovich (Ivan's son; Fedor's brother) died mysteriously
*--Rumor spread widely = Boris Godunov killed the only surviving representative of the "house of Rurick", the only legitimate heir to the throne

<>1592:After years of tightened restrictions on peasant "right of free departure" on St. George's Day, a decree now terminated departure at any time throughout the Muscovite lands
*--Officials began to gather censuses [cadastral surveys] of peasant populations so as better to bind and enforce bondage on villagers
*--Now serfdom was permanent

<>1594:1603; Irish Earl of Tyrone, Hugh O'Neill, led 9-year-long "Tyrone Rebellion" against expanding English imperialist dominion

<>1595je25:Ukrainian territories, mainly Dnepr River "West Bank" Ukraine | The "Brest Union" created the Uniate Church [VSB,1=285-91]
*--Pope had "administrative" authority over Orthodox congregations who continued to celebrate the Eastern Orthodox mass
*--Organizationally Uniates were "Catholic"; liturgically they were "Orthodox"
*--Thus the Church lent greater prestige to Polish power in Uniate territories
\\
*--Florovsky,5:52-63

<>1596:Ufa, a frontier strong-point at the southern edge of the Ural Mts., was founded by Voevoda Ivan Nogai. Samara founded also, a fortress against the Nogai Tatars

<>1597no24:Russian law against fugitive peasants, signaled spread of serfdom and rural efforts at escape via migration [VSB,1=180]

<>1598:1605; Zemskii Sobor [Assembly of the Land] summoned by Patriarch to elect Boris Godunov tsar
*--Boris reigned as independent tsar for seven years
*--Each year seemed to slope downward into a deeper "Time of Troubles" [VSB,1=153-4]

<>1599:[Japan] Ezo [now named Hokkaido, the northern-most Japanese island] Matsumae district [now named Oshima district] | Kakizaki family swore an oath to warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu (1603:Ieyasu became Shogun) and the Kakizaki family changed their family name to Matsumae. Southern Ezo was then re-named after that family

<>1600:Japan. Netherlands ship Liefde with Englishman Will Adams arrived in Japan

<>1604:1613; Russia's most intense Time of Troubles

<>1604oc:Out of Polish territories and accompanied by Polish military forces (some of them under command of Polish version of the Voevoda), a motley crew of ca. 3,500 troops invaded Russia

<>1605ap:Russian tsar Boris Godunov died after over 20 years at the center of Muscovite power
*--Boris' son Fedor ruled only briefly, abandoned by the grandee-families = Mstislavskies, Golitsyns, and Shuiskies
*--Mob rule threatened Moscow, then came Polish troops =

<>1605je20:Moscow taken by the Pseudo-Dmitrii with Polish troops

<>1606my:Pseudo-Dmitrii killed, ending second phase of "Time of Troubles" and the first phase of hostility between Russia and Poland [DMR3:359-72]

<>1606my:1610su; Moscow tsar Vasilii Shuiskii ruled four years, the first two years of which represent the disorderly third phase of the "Time of Troubles"
*--
Shuiskii was known as the "old-boyar tsar" because he represented the most reactionary elements of the old patrimonial princely faction [votchinniki]
*--Shuiskii provoked stiff resistance from the "new servitor aristocrats" [pomeshchiki] =

<>1606:1607fa; Rural Russia | Bolotnikov Rebellion spread across lower Volga region and threatened Moscow [VSB,1=187-8]

<>1606je21:Tobolsk, on eastern watershed of Ural Mts | Voevoda reported on indigenous unrest in western Siberia [DMR3:343-4]

<>1607:[USA] English colony Jamestown founded in the New World

<>1607mr09:Rural Russia | Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii issued decree on runaway serfs [DMR2:260-3 | DMR3:372-5]
*--Related acts, VSB,1=184-7
*--Evaluation of old-boyar tsar Shuiskii [VSB,1=188]

<>1608sp:Second Polish invasion ushered in fourth phase of "Time of Troubles"

<>1610fe04:Polish and Lithuanian King Sigismund III set conditions for his son Wladislaw to rule in Moscow

<>1610su:1612oc; Boyar-tsar Shuiskii overthrown; Poland occupied Moscow [VSB,1=194-209]

<>1611je30:Liapunov and 1st Narodnoe opolchenie [National Militia] proclamation or Prigovor [VSB,1=198-9]
*--The fifth and final phase of the "Time of Troubles" was a time of national mobilization to liberate Russia from foreign rule and to re-establish political legitimacy

<>1611jy22:Cossacks murdered Liapunov

<>1611oc06:Trinity-Saint Sergius Monastery (which was founded in 1337) sent Church appeal to the Russian nation to resist Catholic Poles [VSB,1=204-5]

<>1612ap07:Russian prince Dmitrii Pozharskii mobilized a 2nd National Militia

<>1612oc:Moscow liberated from Polish occupation by Pozharskii and 2nd National Militia

<>1612no19:1652; MUSCOVITE RUSSIA, phase #5| 40 years of recovery from the depths of the "Time of Troubles" summaraized =

<>1612no19:The great Zemskii Sobor [Assembly of the Land] convocation [VSB,1=208-9]
<>1613fe: Zemskii Sobor elected tsar Mikhail Romanov [VSB,1=209-11]
*--This Sobor continued in session for two years, working with the teenage tsar to address the great problems caused by the Time of Troubles =

  1. State revenue (taxes)
  2. Economic relations
  3. Military disorganization
  4. Domestic order and security
    \\
    *2017se15:Russia Beyond, "The Romanovs: How the royal dynasty began with a kindhearted teenager who liked flowers" [E-TXT]
    *--Dunning:424-81 describes the troubled legacy of tsar Mikhail

<>1613fe:1645; tsar Mikhail Romanov
*--Russia in time of tsar Mikhail [MAP]
\\
*--Crummey2
*--Dukes, Making, pp.1-29 (ch1)
*--Kliuchevskii,3 chs. 1, 4 & 5=survey whole period

<>1615:1618; Another Zemskii Sobor convened

<>1615:England | Thomas Mun (1571-1641) became director of English East India Company ("British East India Company" 1600-1858)

<>1616:Kiev Pechersk Lavra installed Church printing press

<>1617ja18 [28 NS]:Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus spoke to Riksdag [national deliberative assembly] about national goals [Kerner,Urge:47-9]
*1617au16 [26 NS]:Swedish King spoke about the Stolbovo Treaty with Russia, explaining what needed to be done in order to achieve Swedish geographic and economic (mercantilist) goals [Kerner,Urge::49-52] =

  1. Build fortresses to protect against claims of Russians who once held much of the SE Baltic shores and lands washed by the Gulf of Finland and now in Swedish hands
  2. Control economic development there
  3. Invite noble Swedish subjects to colonize these Slavic lands [thus securing them for Sweden, or should we say for the Swedish crown]
*--Clearly mercantilism was as much a threat to Russia as it was an opportunity

<>1618:Siberia | Russian explorers and trappers reached upper Yenisei valley in central Siberia [map]

<>1618:1648; Central Europe | Thirty Years War devastated German-speaking world and intensified the alienation of northern German Protestants from Austrian Catholics [_Thirty Years War: A Documentary History (2009)]

<>1619:[USA] First significant use of black slaves in agricultural labor in the New World
\\
*--Kolchin=12

<>1619:1620; Moscow | Englishman Richard James assembled first collection of Russian folk songs (about Tatars, the daughter of Boris Godunov, and Patriarch Filaret) [ZMR2:501-10| WAL=130-4]

<>1619jy05:Zemskii Sobor convoked [VSB,1=217-18]

<>1619:1633; Patriarch Filaret reigned over the Russian Church from the time of his return from Polish captivity until his death

<>1620:English philosopher Francis Bacon published Novum Organum which laid out his principles of good thinking, certain of his guides to proper understanding of the world

<>1620:[USA] Plymouth colony in New World

<>1620s:Kallistrat Druzhina-Osoryin, Life of Yulianiia Lazarevskaia illustrates aspects of women's everyday life [ ZMR2:391-9 | KRR=194-7 | ZMR1:312-20]

<>1625:Siberia | Suleshev reform tried to control state servitors involved in the fur trade, but failed
*--Similarly, private traders [promyshlenniki, cossacks in many cases] often acted as volunteer state servitors [okhotniki]
*--Voevody had something like "roving commissions" to collect yasak, to conquer, to conduct foreign relations, etc. [Lensen.EASTWARD:36-7 quotes Fisher, Russian Fur]
*--The interests of the crown and the interests of various freebooters often did not coincide with one another in Siberia

<>1625:1649; Polish-held territories attacked by increasingly anti-Catholic and independence-minded Cossacks

<>1630:Siberia, Tobolsk, on the eastern watershed of the Ural Mts | 150 Russian women colonists arrived
*1662:Moscow Patriarch Nikon complained of abuse of indigenous women, including selling and exchanging [Lensen.EASTWARD:25]

<>1630:Nova Zembla whaling fishery map [Dow, Whale:59 (SH381.D6) ]. Greenland shores = western half of map, and, by implication, Novaia Zemlia the eastern extreme

<>1630s:Inner Mongolia fell under Chinese dominion
*--_Russia, Mongolia, China; being some record of the relations between them from the beginning of the XVIIth century to the death of the Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, A.D. 1602-1676; rendered mainly in the form of narratives dictated or written by the envoys sent by the Russian tsars, or their Voevody [military administrators] in Siberia, to the Kalmuk and Mongol khans and princes, and to the emperors of China... [DK68.A1B3+1]
*--Russian expansion east across Siberia was moving toward a clash with or "bump" against a powerful Chinese expansion north

<>1632:Kievan Academy was founded for the study of Greek, Slavonic and Latin language "free sciences" [liberal arts and sciences, understood from a distinctly theological point of view]

<>1633:1643; Moscow | German scholar and traveler, Adam Olearius, visited Russia twice and wrote account, "The Travels of Olearius in 17th Century Russia" [DK22.O6133 | Excerpts: VSB,1=248-51 | DMR2:267-93 | DMR3:399-425]
*--On eating habits and other aspects of everyday life [KRR:216-7]

<>1634ja:Zemskii Sobor had to be called into session for 2 months in order deal with the crisis caused by renewed hostilities with Poland [VSB,1=217-18]
*1637: Another Zemskii Sobor called to bolster efforts against Ottoman Turkey

<>1637:Siberia. Siberian Prikaz [ID] established to tighten central governmental control over the Siberian frontier, but regional commanders [Voevody] still strong
*--Lena River, middle course (Sakha territory [map]) | Yakutsk ostrog founded
*--An ostrog was a stockade designed to serve as frontier town, housing and protecting military administration of a defined territory, security troops, and fiscal or tax gathering authorities
*--Typically indigenous and other non-official peoples settled around the walls of the ostrog [Kerner,Urge:87; illustration of Siberian ostrog, showing indigenous encampments around (much as at Fort Dodge (USA KS) over 200 years later) 85=illustration of ostrog receiving yasak payments, showing treasury]

<>1639:Siberian merchant protested state regulation of fur trade [DMR3:344-5]
*--More on commerce and everyday life [VSB,1=246-7] GO 1648
\\
*--Janet Martin, _Treasure of the Land of Darkness: The Fur Trade and Its Significance for Medieval Russia (1986)

<>1639:Siberian east coast | A Russian expedition laid their eyes on the shores of the Okhotsk Sea [map]

<>1640:1660; English Puritan Revolution lasted two decades

<>1642:Zemskii Sobor convened to deal with Crimean Tatars, Cossacks and the port city Azov [VSB,1=218-21]

<>1644:1912; China ruled for 268 years by Manchu dynasty

<>1645:Bashkir territories | Menzelinsk Ostrozhek [minor ostrog] founded

<>1645:1676; tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich ruled for 31 years

<>1646:Siberia | Yakutsk [MAP] became a Russian strongpoint [Lensen.EASTWARD:28]

<>1647:Siberian Okhotsk Sea coast| Ivan Afanas'ev, with 54 Cossacks, arrived from Yakutsk (about a 600 mile trip)
*--They fought the indigenous Tungus tribes in a bloody battle

<>1648:1649; Russian merchants submitted petitions against foreign traders [RRC2,1=163-72]

<>1649:Siberia,Yakutsk | Voevoda gave instructions to Erofei Khabarov about his expedition into SE Siberia, into the Amur River region [DMR3:346-50]

<>1649:Moscow | Sobornoe Ulozhenie [Law Code of the Assembly of the Land (Zemskii sobor)]

<>1648:1660s; Moscow tsar Aleksei devoted a dozen years to the reform, rationalization and centralization of governing institutions, the prikazy. EG=

<>1651:English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes published The Leviathan, his most influential work [Hobbes E-TXT]

<>1651je02:Amur River | Voevoda Khabarov opened his second military expedition

<>1652:1682; MUSCOVITE RUSSIA, phase #6 -- CRISIS OF MUSCOVITE RUSSIA

<>1654:1656; Russian Orthodox Church council decided on massive reforms in the liturgy, the forms, procedures and rituals of the holy mass and Orthodox practices (as distinct from the theology, which was hardly touched by these reform measures)

<>1654mr31:Ukraine Cossacks petitioned tsar Aleksei on conditions of union [DMR2:301-10 | DMR3:442-8]

<>1659:1664; Siberian Yakut natives protested to tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich about ruinous yasak obligations imposed on them [DMR3:350-2]
*--More on late 17th-c imperialist administration of Yakut territories [DMR3:352-5]

<>1659:1683; Croatian Catholic priest Yurii Krizhanich [Juraj Križanić (ID)] came to Moscow on a visionary personal mission to bring peace and restore the unity of Christendom

<>1661:Decree on runaway serfs [DMR2:320-1 | DMR3:460-1]

<>1661:1715; France | Louis XIV "the Sun King" reigned for 54 years as divine-right absolute monarch

<>1662:Lena River, Yakutsk [Sakha] | Russian Cossack-born (but now settled in far NE Siberia) Senka Dezhnev [pronounced DezhnYAWf] sent appeal to tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich in Moscow, listing accomplishments in tsarist service in Anadyr, all out of his own pocket. He got only partial repayment or salary from the tsar, though Sables, Walrus tusks, etc. from Siberia continued to pour into the tsarist treasury [Lensen.EASTWARD:29-30]

<>1663:English mercantilist corporation in London which was in charge of the New World colonies of Carolina accepted a new "proprietor", Anthony Ashley Cooper, the first Earl of Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury was inspired by the thought that this overseas corporation in the New World might be an opportunity, not just for incredible profit, but also a new era, a new beginning for humanity. Over the next twenty years, he became the center of the anti-Catholic, anti-absolutist faction of English politics. After 1666, his doctor, John Locke, became an inseparable political associate

<>1665:France | Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683) became Controller general of finances under King Louis XIV

<>1666:1667; Russian Orthodox Church Council carried out reforms [VSB,1=257-9]. Some make a lot of the mystical numerological significance of "666"

<>1666de12:Russian Church deposed Patriarch Nikon

<>1667:Russian city Pskov | Voevoda Afanasii Lavrent'evich Ordin-Nashchokin signed Andrusovo Treaty which brought peace between Poland and Russia

<>1667:Sweden | Exiled tsarist state servitor Grigorii Kotoshikhin died. He fled from Russia in 1664 and wrote an important but sensationalized exposé "On Russia in the Reign of Alexis Mikhailovich" [DK32.K713 | Excerpts: WAL=136-49 | KRR=176-80 | VSB,1=228-32 | DMR3:451-9 | BL&T:36f | Russian E-TXT
\\
*--Kliuchevskii,3 pp. 178-80

<>1668:1676; White Sea coastal region | The Solovetskii monastery resisted Church reform in a nine-year armed struggle of militant monastic Old-Ritualists [DMR2:316-9 | DMR3:439-41]

<>1669:Moscow failed to return Kiev to Poland, as promised. Ordin-Nashchokin resigned in protest

<>1670:SE Russia | Rebellion swept over Russian land, including Don Cossack territory, led by Stenka Razin [VSB,1=233-6]

<>1670:England, London | Prince Rupert of the Palatine founded a great overseas corporation, the Hudson's Bay Co

<>1671:1673; New World tour of English spiritualist and religious leader, George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends

<>1672:England | Royal African Company, another of the growing number of overseas corporations, made England the number one slave trader in the world

<>1672no02:Russian resistance to the reformed official Church was epitomized by Boyarynya Feodosiia Morozova's death in prison [Boyarynya = wife of Boyar] [DMR3:489-97]

*1887:Detail from Vasilii Surikov's painting of
Boyarynya Feodosiia Morozova on her way to prison
The full canvas reminds us of the broad social participation in
Old-Ritualist resistance during the Raskol,
from boyars to beggars.
View full canvas in Olga's Gallery

surikov-morozova-detail.jpg (94596 bytes)

<>1674:England | Death of great poet John Milton. His writings included _A_Brief History of Moscovia… (1682) [DK70.M55c3]

<>1675ja:1676au; [USA] New World, Southern territories of "New England" | King Philip's War raged for 14 months between Native American Wampanoag tribe, led by tribal leader "King Philip", and the Plymouth Colony settlers

<>1675fa:Lower drainage of the Dnepr River [map] | Zaporozhian Cossack leader Ivan Sirko wrote letter to Ottoman Turkish sultan Mehmet IV [modern Turkish = Mehmed; classical Arabic = Muhammad], whose full set of titles continued = Calif, Amir al-Mu'minin, and Custodian of Mecca and Medina

Il'ya Repin historical portrait of the Cossack letter to Sultan
repin Zaporoj best.jpg (94755 bytes)
(View this painting in [1] Wikipedia or [2] Olga's Gallery)

The letter reads, "Zaporozhian Cossacks, to the sultan of Turkey: You Turkish Satan, brother and comrade of the accursed Devil, and Secretary to Lucifer himself, what the hell kind of noble knight are you? The Devil craps [??vikidae] and your army eats it up [pozhirae]. You will never be fit to rule over Christian sons. We do not fear your army. On land or sea, we will fight you. You scullion of Babylon, you wheelwright of Macedonia, you beer-brewer of Jerusalem, you goat-flayer of Alexandria, you swineherd of Egypt, both the Greater and the Lesser, you sow of Armenia, you goat of Tatary, you depredator of Kamenets, you evildoer of Podoliansk, you grandson of Beelzebub himself, you great silly oaf of all the world and of the netherworld and, before our God, a blockhead, a swine's snout, a mare's a-s [sic!], a butcher's cur, an unbaptized brow, May the Devil take you! That is what the Cossacks have to say to you, you slimy rascal! You are unfit to rule over true Christians! We do not know the date, because we don't have a calendar. The moon is in the sky, the year is in the book, the day is the same for us here as for you over there, and you can kiss us right back there! [signed] Koshevoi Hetman Ivan Sirko with the whole Zaporozhian assembly [Translated from D. I. Yavornits'kii, Istoriia zaporaz'kikh kozakiv,2 (1990):392, with a nod of appreciation for the help found in GPR:616]

<>1676:1682ap27; tsar Fedor II [VSB,1=236-8]

<>1676:USA VA | Bacon's Rebellion, an early example of labor unrest in the New World

<>1680c:Russian secular tale of ribald misbehavior and mischief, "Frol Skobeev, the Rogue" [ZMR2:474-86| ZMR1:397-409]

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