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Notes on Muscovite Affairs

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Contact us Notes on Muscovite Affairs (Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii) (1549) was a Latin book by Baron Sigismund von Herberstein on the geography, history and customs of Muscovy (the 16th century Russian state). The book was
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the main early source of knowledge about Russia in Western Europe.
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1 Background
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2 Historical note on Muscovy and Russia
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Recent changes 3 Research
Upload file 4 Content
5 Tsar vs Czar
Tools 6 English translations
What links here 7 External links and references
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Permanent link Background [ edit ]
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Cite this page Herberstein was an Austrian diplomat who was twice sent to Russia as Austrian ambassador, in 1517 and 1526. Born in Vipava (German Wippach), Carniola, he was familiar with Slovene, a Slavic language, which became important
Wikidata item later on his mission in Russia, when he was able to communicate with ordinary Russians in Slovene, another Slavic language.

Print/export These visits occurred at a time when very little was known about Russia outside the region. The few published descriptions of Russia were in some cases wildly inaccurate.

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Printable version Historical note on Muscovy and Russia [ edit ]

In other projects Muscovy in the 16th century was the Russian state which separated itself from the Kievan Rus' after it fell apart. It evolved into the Russian Empire under Peter the Great starting at the end of the 17th century. Russia was the region,
Wikimedia Commons Muscovy was the state until it no longer included just Moscow. Muscovy was then ruled by the Muscovite monarchy, starting with Ivan III (1462–1505), who expanded Muscovy, and ending with Ivan IV, who claimed the title "Tsar of
Wikisource Russia".

In this article, Russia and Muscovy are treated as similar entities. In land area there is not much difference between Muscovy and Russia west of the Ural Mountains. Herberstein wrote about Muscovy (region based on Moscow)
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because that is what it was known as in the West then. We know the area as Russia, so that is how it is referred to here.
Français
Русский
Slovenščina Research [ edit ]
Українська
Edit links Herberstein developed a keen interest in all things Russian, and researched in several ways:

using his knowledge of Slavic, he questioned a variety of people on a wide range of topics.
careful review of existing publications on Russia, comparing what he read with his own observations. He viewed most publications skeptically, because he knew that most of the authors had not been able to actually visit Russia.
corroboration. He was careful to make sure not to accept anything that was not well corroborated. As he wrote, he "did not rely upon this or that man's account, but trusted only to the unvarying statements of many."
investigation of Russian written publications, which provided him with information on Russian culture completely unavailable at the time in Europe.

Content [ edit ]

As a result, Herberstein was able to produce the first detailed eyewitness ethnography of Russia, encyclopedic in its scope, providing a view that was very accurate for the time of trade, religion, customs, politics, history and even a
theory of Russian political culture.

The book contributed greatly to a European view held for several centuries of Russia as a despotic absolute monarchy. That view was not new, but previous writers had presented an idealized view. Herberstein influenced the
development of his view in two ways:

He accentuated the absolute power of the monarchy even more than previous works had done. Writing about the Russian Tsar, Herberstein wrote that "in the power he holds over his people the ruler of Muscovy surpasses all the
monarchs of the world."
He presented a view of Russian political culture quite opposite to that argued by other writers. Although others claimed Russians were fanatically loyal to their ruler and treated in return with great fairness, Herberstein saw and
wrote differently.

His investigations made it clear that Muscovy, contrary to the view of fanatical loyalty, had suffered a violent political struggle and that Muscovy had emerged only very recently as the dominant power in the region. Besides, the man
who achieved the unification of Muscovy, Ivan III was characterized by Herberstein as a cruel tyrant, drunk, and a misogynist, far from being a ruler of great fairness and equity.

His description of Ivan's unification campaign was a series of banishments and forced relocations of whole populations to break the power of regional rulers. That culminated in Ivan's "plan of ejecting all princes and others from the
garrisons and fortified places" all formerly-independent princes of Russia "being either moved by the grandeur of his achievements or stricken with fear, became subject to him.". All was very much at odds with previous-perceived
reality but much closer to currently-understood Russian history. Similarly, the previously-touted ideal of the fairness of the Muscovy monarchy was contrasted with Herberstein's depiction of peasants as being in "a very wretched
condition, for their goods are exposed to plunder from the nobility and soldiery".

Tsar vs Czar [ edit ]

One final thing for which Herberstein and his book was noted, though not widely understood, was his contribution to a spelling confusion which did not emerge until the end of the 19th century and still causes disagreement: he
͡
recorded the spelling of "tsar" (Russian царь, pronounced [tsɑrʲ]) as czar. This may cause confusion nowadays because the digraph <cz> is today only used in the Polish language and is there pronounced as [tʃ]. ͡ However, early
modern German (as Herberstain spoke and wrote it) and furthermore also pre-20th century Hungarian or the 'mazurizing' dialects of Polish used <cz> for [ts]. ͡ Contrary to what the <cz> might suggest, all Slavonic languages
͡ which is always written with a simple <c>, in Latin-writing Slavic languages as well as in the transliterations of Cyrillic-writing ones. English and French moved from the <cz> spelling to the <ts>
pronounce the title "tsar" with [ts],
spelling in the 19th century.

English translations [ edit ]

Marshall Poe, who has written extensively on Herberstein and Russian history generally, uses the English title Notes on the Muscovites consistently when translating the Latin title. A slightly more precise English translation of the
Latin title would be Notes on Muscovite Affairs, as used for this article. There are one partial and two complete English translations of this work, the most recent one, by J. B. C. Grundy, based itself on a German version.

Notes upon Russia: being a translation of the earliest account of that country, entitled Rerum moscoviticarum commentarii by the Baron Sigismund von Herberstein. Translated and edited by R. H. Major, London: Hakluite Society,
1851-1852, 2 vols.; reprint, New York: B. Franklin, 1963
Description of Moscow and Muscovy, 1557, Sigmund von Herberstein. Edited by Bertold Picard, translated by J. B. C. Grundy, London: Dent, New York: Barnes & Noble, 1966

External links and references [ edit ]

Online editions: Wikisource has original text

related to this article:
Digital reproduction of the English translation by R. H. Major, 1851-52 Notes upon Russia
Digital reproduction of the Latin edition of 1571
Digital reproduction of the German edition of 1557
Digital reproduction of the Italian edition of 1550
Latin text of Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii, together with the early German version
For the Russian text of Herberstein's book, see http://stepanov01.narod.ru/library/herb/herb00.htm
For searching digital reprints and other online versions of related source materials and maps see the Meeting of Frontiers project at the Library of Congress.

Others:

The main English source of information on Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii and Herberstein is Marshall Poe's publications, particularly Herberstein and Origin of the European Image of Muscovite Government, which cites
many other contemporary publications such as Giorgio, Fabri and Campense. See also the notes above in the section English Translations.
For the derivation of tsar and Herberstein's contribution of czar, see the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, entry on tsar.

Categories: 1549 books History books about the Grand Duchy of Moscow 16th-century history books

This page was last edited on 7 April 2021, at 13:47 (UTC).

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