MAUREEN PERRIE (Birmingham, UK)

SUBSTITUTED TSAREVICHES AND ENEMY AGENTS: THE CASE OF

ARCHIMANDRITE FEDORIT (1635-1636)1

One of the most intriguing "sovereign's word and deed" cases in the first half of the seventeenth century is that of Archimandrite Fedorit of the Khutyn- skii , near Novgorod.2 The surviving documentation is unusually full: it provides a fascinating insight into the dynamics of the monastic com- munity in which the denunciation of the archimandrite was made, and it also illustrates the ways in which an ingenious accuser could fabricate a plausible 3 case against his enemies from flimsy snippets of factual information.3 In 1632/33 Archimandrite Fedorit traveled to Novgorod with the (chernyi d'iakon) Timofei Briukhanov in order to visit the cathedral. They stayed overnight at the monastery's townhouse (podvor'e) in Novgorod, and while there Timofei went into the archimandrite's cell and greeted him by wishing good health to Tsar Michael and his infant son Aleksei. Fedorit, who was drunk and lolling on a bench, replied, referring to the latter, "God knows whether he's a true tsarevich, isn't he perhaps :;\ changeling [podmetnyiJ?" Ti- mofei, evidently alarmed, warned the archimandrite that such an expression of 4 doubt was a reportable offence (delo dovodnoe).4

I . An archimandriteis the head or superiorof an Orthodoxmonastery, the equivalentof an abbotor in the CatholicChurch. 2. "Sovereign'sword and deed" cases were political crimes,especially those invoJvinglese- majesty.On casesof this type, see, for example,Richard Hellie, "The Originsof Denunciationin Muscovy,"Russian History / IIistoire Russe,24 (1997): 14; and P. V. Lukin,Narodnye predstav- leniiao gosudarstvennoivlasti v RossiiXVII veka (Moscow: Nauka, 2000), 9-18. 3. The main documentsrelating to the Novgorodcase are publishedin N. Ia. Novombergskii, Slovoi delo gosudarevy,vol. l: Pr tsessy do izdaniia UlozheniiaAlekseia Mikhailovicha 1649 goda (Moscow:A. I. Snegireva, 19 1; reprintedMoscow: lazyki slavianskoikul'tury, 2004), itemsno. 60 (78-l05), no. 61 (105-15)and no. 160(269-84). 4. Ibid., 105-06(from the report on Timofei'sinterrogation in Moscowon September30, 1635).Timofei was sent to Novgorodfor furtherinterrogation on October12: see ibid., 105, 275. On the search for Timofei,who had evidentlyfled from Novgorodafter his altercationwith Ar- chimandriteFedorit in 1635 (cf. ibid., 83) see Akty,sobrannye v bibliotekakhi arkhivakhRos- siiskoi imperiiArkheograficheskoiu ekspeditsieiu imperatorskoi Akarlemii nauk (hereafterAAE), vol. 3 (1613-1645)(St Petersburg:Tipografiia I1 otdeleniia SobstvennoiE. I. V. Kantseliarii, 1836),395-96 (no.258). - < 366

In fact Timofei did not repeat Fedorit's inappropriate remark (neprigozhee slovo) until two years later, in the summer of 1635, when, after an incident in which the archimandrite had ordered Timofei to be beaten, the deacon told two other members of the monastic community that Fedorit had described Aleksei Mikhailovich as a changeling.? The matter soon spread beyond the walls of the Khutynskii Monastery to Novgorod itself, where Metropolitan Afonii, the most senior clergyman in the city, attempted to hush it up by burning two anonymous letters of denunciation that he had found in the cathedral.6 Archi- mandrite Fedorit subsequently claimed that he had given Afonii a silver drink- ing-vessel (kovsh) worth 20 rubles as a thank-offering for destroying these let- ters.7 Such a scandalous affair could not be kept quiet for long, however. On September 3, 1635 another anonymous letter denouncing Fedorit was found in the governor's office (s "ezzhaia izba) in Novgorod. The governor, Prince Petr Aleksandrovich Repnin, sent this denunciation to Moscow on September 11,g and on October 6 the high-ranking courtier (stol 'nik) Prince Nikita Ivanovich Odoevskii arrived in Novgorod with the secretary (d 'iak) Bormosov to conduct an investigation.9 The investigators quickly established that the author of the letter was Ste- panka Mitrofanov, the treasury clerk (kazennyi d 'iachok) of the Khutynskii 10 Monastery, who evidently had a grievance against Fedorit.11 Stepanka's de- nunciation ranged much more widely than a mere repetition of Timofei Briuk- hanov's allegation about the archimandrite. 12 According to Stepanka, Fedorit was not the only person who had made allegations in the Khutynskii Monas- tery about Tsarevich Aleksei. In June 1635 Ivan Dmitriev, a palace (dvortsovyi ct 'iak) from Moscow, had visited Archimandrite Fedorit. When Fedorit told Dmitriev that Timofei Briukhanov had accused him of slandering Tsarevich Aleksei, Dmitriev had remarked that the rumor was commonplace in Moscow, and the same allegation was being made about Tsar Michael's

5. Novombergskii,Slovo i delo, 1: 106. 6. Ibid., 79-80, 107, 1 13-14. 7. Ibid., 1 14.On Fedorit'sattempt to "reward"the metropolitan,see also ibid.,274-75. 8. Ibid., 113. 9. Ibid.,78. PrinceOdoevskii subsequently headed the eponymouscommission that compiled the lawcode of 1649. 10. Ibid.,80, 99. 11. Ibid.,99-100. 12. We do not have the originaltext of the letterof denunciation,but it can be reconstructed fromthe transcriptsof the interrogationsof key witnesseswho were questionedabout its contents by the investigators.See in particularthe interrogationof ArchimandriteFedorit (ibid., 91-93) and of StepankaMitrofanov (ibid., 99-104).