The bizzare Metaphysics of Ivan the Terrible: Mysticism and Mayhem

Read an interesting academic paper by a scholar named Priscilla Hunt titled, Ivan IV's Personal Mythology of Kingship. Pretty dense and hard to get at one go, but her idea was based on something called "Wisdom Theology" that was common in Russia when Ivan was Tsar. I will try to do it justice.

It seems to be built on a hierarchy of pairs, highlighting the opposite nature of God/Christ at different levels, followed by Wisdom, and finally at the lowest level the Tsar and his people. These opposites defined a spectrum and an unspoken middle at each level.

The Tsar was part of this divine hierarchy and was defined on several levels himself: for example at one end of the spectrum was his "meekness" and at the other end was his sterner "severity." A perfect Tsar would possess both qualities.

Below the Tsar, the nobility should help "mediate" this dualism and below them were the people, who mirrored the same qualities on a humble household level. Thus all if creation existed in a kind of mirroring hierarchy with each level from God to Peasant defined by the balance of opposites.

However, due to his wretched childhood at the hands of the nobility and his later paranoia (justified or not) that they were plotting against him, Ivan felt he could not trust the nobility to act in its Heaven-appointed role of mediating and taking some of the weight off his regal shoulders. Because they would not accept his "severity" he could not show them "meekness," and the system became fundamentally shattered and unbalanced in Ivan's eyes.

He thus subconsciously felt he had to shoulder the entire national burden of "severity" and "meekness" by himself to keep the state functioning in the divine hierarchy. he thus felt the need to be "twice as neek" and "twice as severe."

His exaggerated "meekness" took the shape of "rolling in the lowest filth of being human": reveling in torture, gluttony, materialism, debauchery, and excess. It also invved long religious devotion, groveling before God as the lowest of men.

His hyper-"severity" also involved torture, plus rape, slaughter, pillage, invasion, and so on.

In his twisted mind he took on the two extremes to lunatic heights because he felt it was his role to balance the divine hierarchy, which was threatened because the nobles wouldn't play their part.

One person's interesting analysis, based on lengthy speeches and letters written by Ivan.

Ivan cradling his dead son in regret after killing him

originally posted by: Never Despise
The Western aristocracy was stronger, too: the nobility in France or England could and did unite against the kings at times, but resisting the Tsar's will was unthinkable. Ivan actually deprived the entire old nobility of their lands, pushed them out east, and seized the western lands as his private property. The Russians also had the Serf system, which was essentially slavery (although it was not such a large class in Ivan's time). On the Eastern and Southern fronts, Russia dealt with absolute despotic warlords like the Golden Horde, various Islamic states, the Ottomans, and the Persians. It was natural for them to develop a system influenced by "Asiatic absolutism."

I think that you make a very fair point but I don't think it is fair to compare Vlad to rulers in Europe that were contemporary to him. Pepin the Short is a better comparison in my opinion, though not quite so well documented he is remembered for his violent propensity to convert with the sword. Christianity took a little longer to make it's way to the Rus but it seems to have had a similar effect to that of the Carolingians upon the Franks. The Divine right was there before Christianity, I think the church worked with that notion to get their foot in the door and didn't really think through the genocidal consequences. I think it may finally be dawning on them now at least.

originally posted by: Never Despise
Absolute power in the hands of a probable psychopath who had been abused as a child and grew up paranoid, yet intelligent enough to absorb some Eastern Orthodox theology...a deadly cocktail.

And yet so easy to mix. We humans just keep serving them up to lesser and greater degrees. Your description could just as easily describe someone like Charles Manson.

Interesting thread. Thanks.