The Stewards Of Patriarch Filaret As A Rank Of The Sovereign Court

Abstract

The article is devoted to such a unique phenomenon in the history of the Sovereign court of the 17th century as the presence in its composition of the special rank of patriarchal stewards during the reign of Patriarch Filaret (1619−1633). The main attention in the article is paid to the question of the social origin of Filaret's stewards and the ways of getting into this rank, which is still insufficiently studied in historiography. Based on data from boyar lists, boyar books and other sources, the article considers the personal and family composition of the stewards of Patriarch Filaret, data on their relatives is analyzed. Despite the fact that the stewards of Patriarch Filaret, in contrast to the royal stewards, for the most part came from non-pedigree noble families, they were by no means random people at court, but were from clans, whose representatives in the Time of Troubles and after the Time of Troubles began to establish themselves in the composition the highest ranks of the Moscow nobility. Recruiting young and often underage people to serve as stewards, Patriarch Filaret took into account not only their personal merits, but the position at the court of their fathers and other relatives. The very fact of awarding the patriarchal stewards can be considered as an indicator of the disposition to this surname at court and personally on the part of Filaret. Through the rank of patriarchal stewards, many representatives of the new service clans entered the ruling elite.

Keywords: Sovereign courtMoscow noblesTime of Troublesstewards of Patriarch Filaretsolicitorsroyal stewards

Introduction

During the reign of Patriarch Filaret (1619–1633), a special rank of patriarchal stewards emerged as part of the sovereign's court. Historical literature has long noted that this bureaucratic group belongs primarily to the general sovereign, and not to the patriarchal court (Lyutkina, 1988). This circumstance was associated with the special position in the state of Patriarch Filaret as the father of Tsar Mikhail and as a “great sovereign”. Despite the fact that the stewards of Patriarch Filaret represented a special rank of the sovereign's court (and not just the rank of the patriarchal court), their service took place mainly in the patriarchal court. The persons granted to the stewards of Patriarch Filaret took an oath (kissed the cross) of loyalty to the service to the patriarch, in contrast to the tsar's stewards who swore loyalty to the service to the tsar. Information about the “nationwide” service of patriarchal stewards is very scarce and fragmentary. Basically, these services (being part of the embassies and participating in hostilities) did not seem to have the character of “nominal” appointments. Nevertheless, there was a rapid increase in the number of stewards of Patriarch Filaret. If in 1626 it was 180 people, then by 1633 it increased to 550 people, i.e. increased 3 times (Gorbatov, 2015, 2017; RGADA, n.d. b). After Filaret's death, the composition of the patriarchal stewards was disbanded, and all of them were transferred to other ranks of the Tsar's court. Although the presence in the sovereign's court of the rank of patriarchal stewards was a temporary and unprecedented phenomenon, it could not but have an impact on the further evolution of the court and the service class in general.

Problem Statement

The phenomenon of Patriarch Filaret's stewards found in the sovereign's court has not been ignored by historians. In the historical literature, questions have been considered about the place of the rank of patriarchal stewards among other ranks of the court, their number, genealogical composition, and transfer to other ranks after the death of Filaret (Gorbatov, 2017; Lyutkina, 1988). The issue of the politics of Patriarch Filaret and his entourage was touched upon in the latest works by Vovina (1991) and Morokhin (2017). Nevertheless, the history of the stewards of Patriarch Filaret has not yet received a full and comprehensive coverage in historiography. The questions about the socio-political appearance of the patriarchal stewards, the ways of getting into this rank, the position at the court of the clans and the families to which they belonged remain insufficiently developed. In the domestic and foreign historiography of the last decades, interest in the study of the service class of the Russian state in the 16th – 17th centuries has noticeably increased. At the same time, the main attention of researchers was paid to the study of the history of the Boyar Duma and the Boyar aristocracy. In the works of R Krammi, O. Kosheleva, P. Sedov, A. Pavlov and other historians have challenged the traditional point of view of the decline in the 17th century boyar aristocracy and it was shown that the entry into the Duma of representatives of new noble families meant not the displacement of the boyars by the nobility, but the replenishment of its composition with people closely related to the traditional boyars by kinship, clan and other ties (Crummey, 1983; Kosheleva, 2016; Pavlov, 2018a; Pavlov, 2018b; Sedov, 2016). However, this conclusion, made on the basis of the study of the Boyar Duma, needs to be supported by an analysis of other ranks of the Tsar's court. History of the Sovereign Court of the 17th century on the whole, it has not been sufficiently studied and has not yet received special complex lighting. Much more attention in historiography was paid to the history of the urban nobility in the 17th century. Among the most recent works, we should mention the works of Kozlyakov (2018) and Petruhincev (2015). As for the study of the Tsar's court, the overwhelming majority of studies are devoted to his history in the 16th century; in recent years, this topic was developed by Korzinin (2017, 2019) and Bencianov (2017). In connection with the above, the study of the Tsar's court of the 17th century and his individual ranks, including the stewards of Patriarch Filaret, seems to us very relevant.

Research Questions

When studying the phenomenon of the rank of stewards of Patriarch Filaret, a number of questions arises that remain not yet sufficiently clarified in historiography:

3.1. What were the principles of the staffing of the stewards of Patriarch Filaret?

3.2. How was the high formal status of Filaret's stewards at court, close to the status of tsarist stewards, combined with their relatively common origin composition?

3.3. Can the fact of the origin of the majority of patriarchal stewards from non-genealogical noble families be considered as a manifestation of the displacement of the old boyar nobility at the court by the “nobility”?

3.4. What was the impact of the presence in the sovereign's court of a special rank of patriarchal stewards in 1619−1633 on the further evolution of the court in the 17th century?

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is to research the socio-political appearance of the stewards of Patriarch Filaret and their position at court. Research objectives are to study the methods of recruiting the composition of the stewards of Patriarch Filaret by analyzing the situation at the court of both the patriarchal stewards themselves and their relatives, clarifying the question of the influence of the presence in the composition of the sovereign's court of a special rank of patriarchal stewards in 1619−1633 on the further evolution of the court and the nobility in general.

Research Methods

The article was written based on the involvement and comprehensive analysis of the entire set of preserved sources on the composition, origin and position at the court of the stewards of Patriarch Filaret, as well as their relatives. When writing the article, the principles of historicism and consistency were applied, the situation at the court of the patriarchal steward and their relatives is considered in their relationship, in the context of political events that took place in Russia during the Time of Troubles and during the reign of Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov. The methods of historical and genealogical research and prosopographic research were used.

The work used data from both published and archival sources. As sources for studying the composition, service and position at the court of the stewards of Patriarch Filaret, we used materials from boyar lists (Gorbatov, 2015; RGADA, n.d. f, pp. 13-42), boyar books (Boyarskaya kniga, 1986; RGADA, n.d. a, pp. 63-149; RGADA, n.d. c, pp. 41-85, RGADA, n.d. d, pp. 41-108), analysis of the patriarchal stewards 1633 (RGADA, n.d. e, pp. 164-217; RGADA, n.d. b; Gorbatov, 2017), account books Ustyug quarter 1620/21−1625/26 (RGADA, n.d. g; RGADA, n.d. h; RGADA, n.d. i; RGADA, n.d. j; RGADA, n.d. k), various columns Discharge order and other sources. When studying the composition of the Tsar's court as a whole and, in particular, those clans to which Filaret's stewards belonged, we relied on the working database on the composition of the court for 1604− 1645 prepared by us on the basis of boyar lists, boyar books, tenants' lists, tithes and other sources. Valuable sources for the study of the origin and kinship of the stewards of Patriarch Filaret, along with the data from the Velvet Book and other genealogical books, are materials of noble genealogical paintings presented to the House of Genealogy Affairs by representatives of service families after the abolition of parochialism. In our work, we used the materials of these murals, which, even before the revolution, were identified and copied from various archives in Moscow and St. Petersburg by V. Rummel and N. Myatlev and are kept in the Y. Tatishchev Archive St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of sciences (as cited in Archiv SPb II RAN, n.d.).

Findings

Awards for the rank of patriarchal stewards began as early as 1619, soon after Filaret's accession to the patriarchal throne (Boyarskaya kniga, 1986). We are not able to accurately and definitely judge the number of patriarchal stewards for the period from 1619 to 1625. The first complete list of representatives of this rank is contained in the boyar list of 1626, which contains the names of about 180 stewards of Patriarch Filaret. In the future, there is a significant increase in representatives of this group. By the end of Filaret's patriarchate at the time of the dissolution of the rank of patriarchal stewards, according to the collapsible tithe of 1633, their number was 549 people (Gorbatov, 2017) and compared with 1626 it increased 3 times. It should be noted that the number of stewards of Patriarch Filaret grew at a much more intensive pace than the number of tsarist stewards. If in 1626 the number of patriarchal stewards was inferior to the tsarist (180 people against 215), then already in 1630/31, i.e. 5 years later, the ratio has changed dramatically, the number of stewards of Patriarch Filaret becomes almost twice as large as the stewards of the tsarist (520 people against 280).

Formed relatively recently, the rank of stewards of Patriarch Filaret occupied a prominent place in the hierarchical structure of the sovereign's court. In the “genuine” boyar lists and boyar books, the bureaucratic group of patriarchal stewards was located immediately after the tsarist stewards and higher than the solicitors and nobles of Moscow. The decree of August 8, 1626 gave the stewards of Patriarch Filaret, as members of the sovereign's court, the right to receive estates near Moscow, equal in size to the estates of the royal stewards and other higher Moscow ranks (Lyutkina, 1988). It is known that the local salaries of the stewards, solicitors and nobles of Moscow near Moscow were at the end of the 16th - first half of the 17th century. 100 quarters of the ground; this salary was twice as high as the salaries of the lower ranks of the sovereign's court - residents and elected nobles.

Thus, formally, in terms of their position, the patriarchal stewards were close to the representative of the highest ranks of the Moscow nobility. However, in their nobility, the stewards of Patriarch Filaret were significantly inferior to the royal stewards and other metropolitan ranks. In total for the period from 1619 to 1633. we find data on about 900 stewards of Patriarch Filaret, representatives of 353 service families. Of these, only 82 people, representatives of 18 surnames: Buturlins, Velyaminovs, Godunovs, Golovins, Prince Gundorovs, Princes Dolgorukys, Princes Zvenigorodskys, Princes Zasekins (and Zasekin-Zhirovyes, Zasekin-Solntsevys), Princes Kovrovys, Kolychevs, Princes Lobanov-Rostovskys, Princes Lykov-Beloglazovys, Princes Mosalskie-Klubkovys, Pleshcheevys, Princes Priimkov-Rostovs, Saltykovs, Princes Khilkovs, Princes The Shcherbatovs (or only 9%) are belonged to the noble boyar families, and, as a rule, they were far from the most paramount, and some branches of the Pleshcheevs, Buturlins, Kolychevs and other families, whose representatives previously served in the cities, can be ranked among the boyar nobility only conditionally. Of the 352 surnames of patriarchal stewards, only 66 surnames or 18.7% before the Troubles (in the last quarter of the 16th - early 17th centuries), nominated representatives to Moscow ranks (stewards, solicitors, and Moscow nobles). Other surnames (287 or 81.3%) before the Troubles did not rise above the city's elected nobles and residents. 116 surnames of patriarchal stewards (32.86% or about a third) before the Troubles are not found at all in the Tsar's court.

As a rule, patriarchal stewards were made up, either through the tenants, or immediately into this rank, bypassing service in other ranks of the court. For the most part, Filaret's stewards were young people. Certain ideas about the age composition of the stewards of Patriarch Filaret are given by the materials of their analysis carried out in November 1633 (RGADA, n.d. e, pp. 164-217). In total, information about the age of 186 patriarchal stewards is given here, i.e. almost a third of all representatives of this rank in 1633. According to this information, the average age of patriarchal stewards was about 23 years old, and almost a quarter of them (45 people) were 15 years old or less. People who were over 20 years old, by 1633, had already, as a rule, a certain length of service in tenants and patriarchal stewards and began the service as young people.

The fact that the patriarchal stewards were for the most part young (often still underage) people suggests that Patriarch Filaret recruited people to his stewards, taking into account not so much the dignity and merits of these persons themselves, as the merits and degree of closeness to the court of their fathers and other relatives.

Although most of the surnames of patriarchal stewards (over 80%) did not nominate their representatives to the Duma before the Troubles, the highest court and Moscow ranks, later, during the Troubles, the first years of the reign of Mikhail Fedorovich and the reign of Patriarch Filaret, representatives of the overwhelming majority of these 287 surnames ( 257, or almost 90%) began to actively advance into the composition of the highest courtiers and Moscow ranks (Moscow noblemen, tsarist stewards and solicitors), and almost half of these surnames (129 out of 287, or 45%) began to enter into the capital's nobility already in Time of Troubles and the beginning of the reign of Mikhail Romanov (1613−1619), even before Filaret returned to Moscow. Thus, for the most part, the stewards of Patriarch Filaret were not directly from the ordinary nobility, but from clans, whose representatives in the Time of Troubles and after the Time of Troubles began to establish themselves as part of the Moscow nobility.

Patriarch Filaret actively promoted his stewards (for the most part came from non-genealogical "noble" surnames) at court. Most of Filaret's stewards were awarded the highest ranks in the capital. In the 1620s - early 1630s. practiced annual, on major church holidays, awards of entire groups of stewards of Patriarch Filaret, whose composition was not distinguished by aristocracy, to the royal stewards (Gorbatov, 2015). After the death of Filaret, an analysis of the patriarchal stewards was carried out, which determined their future fate. Of the 517 people who came to the analysis, 353 were granted to the higher ranks of the Moscow nobility (33 people to the tsar's stewards, 85 to the solicitor, and 235 to the Moscow nobility). 159 people were transferred to tenants, and only five patriarchal stewards were appointed to the elected city nobles (Gorbatov, 2017; RGADA, n.d. b).

Conclusion

Despite their relatively thin composition in comparison with the tsarist stewards, the stewards of Patriarch Filaret were by no means random people at the Tsar's court. In their overwhelming majority, they did not come directly from the ordinary nobility, but from clans, whose representatives in the Time of Troubles and after the Time of Troubles began to actively establish themselves in the Moscow nobility and successfully integrate into the new court environment. Therefore, the production of immigrants from new clans into the ranks of Patriarch Filaret, one of the ranks of the privileged metropolitan nobility, cannot be unambiguously regarded as an attempt to squeeze out the old nobility at court by representatives of the ordinary provincial nobility. Through the rank of stewards of Patriarch Filaret, many representatives of the new service families entered the ruling elite, the highest Moscow ranks of the nobility. The presence in the Tsar's court of the rank of patriarchal stewards, although it was temporary, had a significant impact on the evolution of the Russian nobility in the 17th century.

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