The Fantastic Novel. A Taste Of
Bulgakov’s History. Part III.
To Sherlock Holmes she is
always the woman.
Arthur Conan Doyle: A
Scandal in Bohemia.
So,
Moscow was burned to the ground, but Woland did not escape unscathed, either.
According to Bulgakov, “the skin on Woland’s face was
as though burned by suntan.” The principal reason for Woland’s visit to
Moscow in 1571 must have been his devilish intrigue against the Orthodox state
of Muscovy. We also learn from Woland’s explanation to Margarita that “a
charming witch” had been responsible for his aches and pains. Now, who may have
been this charming witch?
The
whole idea of the Third Rome might not have materialized at all, had Ivan
Grozny’s grandfather Ivan III not married the Princess of Byzantium Zoe Sophia
Paleolog. This marriage cemented the right of Moscow to be called the Third and
Last Rome (after Rome proper and Constantinople, respectively passing on the
torch of Christianity to their ultimate successor).
To
her own advantage and recompense, Sophia Paleolog also moved up from a(selfish)
charity case at the court of the Pope to one of the most influential women in
world history. How could Woland possibly fail to become interested in her? How
could he fail to attempt to acquire her for his collection of celebrities? Even
though she was the Princess of Tsargrad/Constantinople turned Tsarina of Russia
and giving birth to Ivan’s eleven children (!), the Russian people called her a
“Roman,” a “foreigner,” a “sorceress,” that is, a witch.
Sophia
Paleolog arrived in Moscow some one hundred years before the events described
above (the fire of Moscow and the reign of Ivan Grozny), but her impact on
Russia would last up to our time. It was her, “one charming witch,” whose
spirit Woland was contesting with, referred to as the incident of the “Devil’s
Pulpit,” by Bulgakov.
In
Italy, Sophia Paleolog and her two brothers had converted to Catholicism and
lived as the Pope’s wards. “During her life she earned
reproach and condemnation of the Pope and his allies, who had made a great
mistake about her, having hoped to use her as their medium of introducing the
Florentine Unia to Muscovy Russia.” [The quotations here and further on
are from Kostomarov’s Russian History
Through the Lives of Its Principal Movers.] This happened to be the first
blow received by Woland in his battle of wits with Sophia Paleolog. The second
blow was Sophia Paleolog’s successful insistence on stopping the payments of
tribute to the Tatars, thus declaring Russia’s complete independence from the
Tatars. Also thanks to her, an army of Italian craftsmen descended upon Moscow,
commissioned not only to build the Cathedral Square in the Kremlin (with its Dormition, Annunciation, and Archangel Cathedrals,
the Chamber of Facets, the Belfry of Ivan the Great), but also the Tsar-Cannon, as well as new
fortifications around the Kremlin, new and sturdy gates for the Kremlin, and
also in the place where Red Square is located today, a deep moat was dug to
make the Kremlin impregnable. That was the main blow to Woland: when the Tatars
imprudently burned Moscow to the ground, they failed to get into the Kremlin
with its treasury and other valuables because of those fortifications. They
could not even set fire to it, because the Kremlin was made of stone. Therefore
they could not get their loot, but then a great wind started blowing, causing
the devil himself to get burned by the fire. Thus Woland lost to Sophia
Paleolog on all counts.
Sophia
Paleolog had an ingenious mind, having lived from childhood among the powerful
men of her time. She “was a woman of strong will and
cunning.” Having converted to Catholicism early on, she refused to marry
two Catholic suitors, until her chance would come by to marry the Orthodox
ruler of Russia Ivan III, when the latter had become a widower. This shows that
her conversion to Catholicism had been for her a forced measure. Having come to
Moscow, Sophia reverted to the Orthodox faith, created her own party at her
husband’s court, and “exerted a great influence on her
husband and on the state of affairs in Russia as a whole.”
Sophia
Paleolog was quite a phenomenon, and the devil just could not fail to become
interested in her and to try to obtain her for his collection of world
celebrities.
“The marriage of Sophia to the Grand Duke of Russia had the
significance of transferring the hereditary rights of the Paleolog heirs to the
Russian royal house.”
“Incidentally, Eastern Russia was becoming free from the Tatar
enslavement during the same time that the Byzantine Empire was falling to the
Turks.”
Sophia
Paleolog knew her self-worth. Her hand-sewn shroud calls herself the Princess
of Tsargrad [Constantinople], rather than the Great Duchess of Moscow. One of
the very first acts of Ivan III, following his marriage to Sophia, was his
adoption of the Paleolog Coat of Arms, the double-headed eagle, as the official
emblem of the Russian State.
Sophia
had a dark side to her, though. She was accused of the murder of Prince Ivan
Ivanovich, her husband’s son from the first, now deceased wife, as well as of
the murders of other members of his family. Not accidentally, Prince Andrei
Kurbsky would later call her a “sorceress” [which is the same as calling her a
witch], “bringing devil’s ways to the good Russian people.”
There
is no doubt that Bulgakov had none other than Sophia Paleolog in mind when he
wrote:
“This pain in the knee was
left to me as a souvenir by one charming witch [sorceress] with whom I chanced
to be closely acquainted in 1571 on Devil’s Pulpit in the Brocken Mountains.”
[We shall be looking at this story under
a different angle in the chapter The
Birds of Master and Margarita.]
(Postscript:
Incidentally, the great Fire of 1571 significantly affected the population
distribution and migration patterns in Russia. The free people known as
Cossacks moved to the south of Russia, building towns and fortresses, and the
Tartar incursions stopped. This was the beginning of the trend of settling new lands,
such as the Caucasus, the Urals, Siberia, the Kuriles, etc., by the Cossacks.
For
as long as the Cossacks are strong in Russia, Russia will stand…)
We
shall continue our discussion of Bulgakov in the next chapter Arrests and Cannibalism, starting
tomorrow.
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