The Icon and the Axe

The Croatian Catholic priest, Yury Krizhanich, was the first to come to Russia, arriving with a Polish diplomatic mission in 1647 and returning in the guise of a Ukrainian war refugee in 1659.9 Throughout his long second stay in Russia, which lasted two decades, Krizhanich sought to advance both an old and a new idea. The old idea was the conversion of Russia to Catholicism; the new was the development of Russia as the center of a new united Slavdom. Only such unity could, in Krizhanich's view, counter the growing strength of the Protestant Germans on the one side and the infidel Turks on the other. The ideal that Russia rather than Poland should serve as the anchor of Catholic hopes in Eastern Europe had been favored in Vatican circles during periods of demonstrated Muscovite strength under the two Ivans. The idea was particularly popular with certain Croatian Catholics who had participated in the Vatican-sponsored lllyrian move-

ment and whose strategic imagination may have been captured by the idea of Slavic unity,10 which had already been set forth in 1601 by an Italian priest, Mauro Orbini, in his // regno degli Slavi, hoggi corrottamente detti Schiavoni: the first over-all history of the Slavic peoples ever written.11 The official recognition of the Romanov dynasty by the Holy Roman Empire in 1654 cleared the way for the resumption of close ties with Russia and the dispatching of embassies which regularly included Catholic clergy.

Special interest in Russia was also shown by the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, which was founded in 1622 largely to open lines of communication with Eastern Christians. The Congregation was a useful vehicle for Catholic activities inside Russia, because it was not identified with Polish expansion, as was the Society of Jesus. However, the Congregation also lacked the Jesuits' semi-military structure and could not exercise binding authority over those who went to Russia in its name. Ligarides, for instance, was educated by, and loosely affiliated with, the Congregation, but soon discarded his allegiance as he began to carve out a career for himself in the Orthodox world.12 Krizhanich, however, appears to have remained a dedicated Catholic throughout his much longer stay in Russia. Because of the incomplete records surviving, the extent of his proselytizing activities in Russia cannot be determined. But it is clear that he became a librarian and cataloguer within the Kremlin shortly after his second arrival and refused to collaborate in the formation of the new state church. Probably for this reason, he was sent early in 1661 to distant Tobol'sk, in Siberia, where he remained until after Alexis' death. During this exile Krizhanich wrote some of the most perceptive and profound essays in pre-Petrine Russia, returning to Moscow only in 1677 in an unsuccessful bid to gain the support of the new tsar.

Of his many works on different subjects-all written in a strange melange of Croatian, Latin, and Russian-much the most interesting is his "Political Thoughts," or "Conversations on Power," an argument for absolute monarchy based largely on classical and Renaissance authorities.13 Even though Krizhanich is the first writer in Russia to quote extensively from Machiavelli, his argument is essentially moralistic. The monarch derives his authority from God, who has decreed objective natural laws for all the world. The Russian people, who are still superstitious and lacking in moderation, are in particular need of a strong monarchy. All of Eastern Europe is, in turn, dependent on Russian leadership. The Ukraine should cease its political intrigues and subordinate itself to Russia. The Russian monarch must not permit his authority to be diluted either by a Polish type of aristocratic diet or by the German merchants who cover the land "like a swarm of locusts devouring all the fruit of the earth."14 Russia has unique

advantages for effective absolute rule because neither of the two classic sources of palace intrigue (women and traditional noblemen) are of any real importance in Muscovy.