Maria Temryukovna

Wedding

Eight days after the death of Anastasia, “the Metropolitan, Saints, Boyars solemnly invited him to look for the bride: the laws of decency were then not strict” ^[3] . Ivan intended to marry the sister of the Polish king Catherine , but the latter demanded Pskov , Smolensk and Novgorod for this.

In 1560, the king sent the matchmakers F.V. Voksherin and S. Myakinin to the Caucasus "to watch the daughters of Cherkasy princes . " On July 15, 1561, Princess Kuchenyi, “from Cherkasy Pyatigorsk damsel,” arrived in Moscow with her brother Saltankul (baptized by Michael). They were given mansions near the Kremlin. Soon, the king "Princess Cherkasskaya ordered to be in his yard, looked at her and fell in love."

“Mr. Tevryuga! But your daughter’s kindness, and our great sovereign Maria Tevryugovna, will be loved by our sovereign and grand duke Ivan Vasilievich, and he, our sovereign, will commend us for this great thing, and your daughter sovereign will reign with him glory will become. ” ^[four]

Soon, in the palace of the Annunciation Cathedral, the assembled boyars and clergy were announced that Goshani was preparing for the baptismal ceremony and would be called Mary - in the name of St. Mary Magdalene . On the same day, the king called her his bride and, according to the ancient Russian ritual, handed her a narrowed ring and a scarf studded with pearls ^[5] . Athanasius , while still a protopop, announced it before baptism ^[6] . She was baptized under the name "Mary" by Metropolitan Macarius ^[7] . After completing the baptismal rite, Ivan Vasilyevich, according to custom, presented Mary with a golden cross-fold, and Tsarevichs Ivan and Fedor handed her crosses decorated with diamonds and pearls.

On August 21, a wedding took place in the Assumption Cathedral. The young were crowned by Metropolitan Macarius. Apparently, the wedding present was a dish from the Armory (diameter - 42.3 cm, weight - almost 3 kg), decorated with niello, on which they probably brought a wedding hat ^[8] . Made from a three-kilogram piece of gold, the wedding dish of Maria Temryukovna is considered one of the masterpieces made by Russian goldsmiths.

The marriage of Ivan, concluded shortly after the death of his first wife, Anastasia Romanovna , led to the exaltation of Mary's relatives - the Princes Cherkassky , who later played a large role in Russian history. One of her nephews is Horoshai-Murza, in St. Baptism Boris Kambulatovich , was married to the sister of the Patriarch Filaret Nikitich , Martha.

The English diplomat Jerome Horsey wrote: “After this (the death of Anastasia), he (Ivan) married one of the Circassian princes, from whom, as far as is known, he had no offspring. The rites and festivities that accompanied this marriage were so strange and pagan that it is hard to believe that all this happened in reality. "

Married life

Her only child, of which Tsarevich Vasily Ivanovich is known, died at the age of two months in May 1563 , apparently buried in the Archangel Cathedral, but his tombstone was not preserved.

In 1562 and in other years she accompanied the king in a detour around the monasteries. In July 1563, she traveled from Alexandrovskaya Sloboda with Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich to a pilgrimage to Suzdal, and from there to Rostov.

In Russian history, it is traditionally customary to give the image of Maria Temryukovna negative features and consider her a negative character in the life of Ivan the Terrible, who badly influenced his character. Some contemporaries accused the "malevolent" Mary of "tampering" with the king and the transition to terror .

The second marriage of John did not have the happy actions of the first. Mary, captivating her husband with one beauty, did not replace Anastasia either for his heart or for the State, which could no longer combine the thought of Tsar’s virtue with the thought of the Tsarina. Contemporaries write that this Princess Princess of Cherkessia, wild in her temper, cruel in soul, affirmed John even more in evil inclinations, not knowing how to preserve his love, which soon became cold: for he had already tasted the dangerous charm of inconstancy and did not know shame. Indifferent to Mary, John remembered Anastasia, and for another seven years, in her memory, endowed the holy monasteries of Athos with rich alms. ^[3]

In one of the sources it is called "falling on evil deeds." In another - the chronograph “On the Marriages of Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich” - it is said: “In the summer of August 7069, the tsar turned to Mary Cherkasskaya Gorskaya for the second time ... he’s nice and angry, cruel ... very angry and very evil.” Heinrich Staden writes that it was she who gave him advice on the creation of the oprichnina:

Some [of the former grand dukes] started oprichniki orders, but nothing came of it. It also happened under the present Grand Duke, until he took the princess, the daughter of Prince Mikhail Temryukovich from Cherkasy land, as his wife. It was she who gave the Grand Duke advice that he would take 500 shooters out of his people and generously give them clothes and money, and that every day and night, they would go after him and protect him. From this began the Grand Duke Ivan Vasilyevich of All Russia and selected from his people, as well as from foreigners, a special elected detachment. And so he arranged the oprichnitsa and zemsky ^[9] .

He writes, speaking of Queen Temryuk’s father, that "the Grand Duke dishonored his daughter." Commentators remark about this phrase that with the news of Staden about the “dishonor” of the tsar concerning the wife, the messages of the Piskarevsky chronicler echo: “and then he drunk the tsarina Marya Cherkaskova,” and Gorsey : “meanwhile, he transferred his Circassian wife, tonsured her as a nun and placed in a monastery ”, also unreliable ^[11] - apparently, he confuses her with one of the following wives.

Death

Maria Temryukovna died on September 6, 1569 ^[12] in the Alexandrov settlement after returning from a long trip to Vologda. As often indicated, on New Year's Eve on September 1, 1569, she died in the morning. But judging by the tombstone epitaph, she died on September 6, 1569 at seven in the morning, that is, translated into the modern daily clock count - shortly before midnight. The date of September 1, which dates back to historiography, which dates back to N. M. Karamzin, seems to be erroneous, since Karamzin refers to a tombstone from a later tombstone installed above Mary’s grave (19th century inscriptions on tombstones of men of the princely and royal family in the Archangel Cathedral contain errors in comparison with the epitaphs of the XVII century on the same gravestones) ” ^[8] .

At noon, Mikhail Temryukovich , Alexei and Fedor Basmanovs , Athanasius Vyazemsky , Boris Godunov , Glinsky , Miloslavsky and Velsky removed a tomb with Mary’s body covered with silk materials from the royal chambers and set it on a funeral wagon. The funeral procession moved to Moscow ^[5] .

As after the death of Anastasia, Ivan suspected the boyars that they had "plagued her", claiming that she "was poisoned with malice by speed."

“On September 1, 1569, the wife of Ioannov, Maria, died, hardly even sincerely mourned by the Tsar himself, although in order to observe decency all of Russia had to reveal an image of deep sadness: things stopped; Boyars, Nobles, Prikaznye people put on a humble dress , or mourning (velvet and stone fur coats without gold ), funeral services served in all cities; gave alms to the poor, contributions to monasteries and to churches; they showed hypocrisy sorrow, hiding the true, the general, made by the ferocity of John, who, ten days later, could calmly receive foreign ambassadors in the Moscow palace, but was in a hurry to leave the capital in order to invent new treason and execution in the terrible solitude of the Alexander Sloboda. The death of two of his spouses, so dissimilar in their spiritual properties, had equally unhappy consequences: Anastasia took the virtue of Ioannova with her; it seemed that Mary bequeathed to him to surpass herself in fierce murders. Having spread the rumor that Mary, like Anastasia, was poisoned by secret villains, he prepared Russia for the terrible frenzy of her fury. " ^[13]

Maria Temryukovna was buried in the Ascension Cathedral of the Kremlin Ascension Monastery near the western wall of the church next to Queen Anastasia Romanovna (to the left of her burial).

A spiritual letter from Tsar Ivan Vasilievich (June-August 1572) mentions the deceased Maria Temryukovna and the next wife, Martha Sobakin, asking Tsarevichs Ivan and Fedor to remember them: “But, sinfully, my wife, Marya da Martha, was gone, and you too my wife, Marya da Martha, and my blessed mothers [Anastasia Romanovna], were remembered in everything according to how I was tired, and naturally their parents and all their parents would remember them unforgettably ” ^[14] .

Burial

The place of her burial was the Ascension Monastery (Moscow) . Currently (since 1929) her tomb is in the basement of the Kremlin’s Archangel Cathedral.

In 1929, the tombs of the Kremlin Museum transferred from the doomed to destruction of the Ascension Cathedral to the basement chamber of the Archangel Cathedral, where they are to this day. At the opening of the burial of Maria Temryukovna, a skeleton was found wrapped in a shroud. “The cloth of the shroud, as defined by V.K. Klein (then deputy director of the Armory Chamber for scientific work), Italian cam of the 16th century good preservation on the outside. An eastern vessel, a copper sulek, was found on the left shoulder. The side of her shoulder rusted and lost. The vessel was removed from the tomb. " The tsarina’s headdress, a hair- cut , discovered by Kremlin archaeologists under the direction of T. D. Panova during the study of the graves of the former Ascension Monastery in 1984 ^{[8], is} well preserved. Her skull is poorly preserved, so it is impossible to restore the sculptural portrait ^[15] .

• In the book of B. M. Sokolov, "Shurin of Grozny, a wrestler wrestler Mamstryuk Temgryukovich." St. Petersburg, 1913 (regarding S.K.Shambinago’s book “Songs of pamphlets of the 16th century”), songs about the tsar’s marriage, associated with the name of Ivan the Terrible, Maria Temryukovna and brother-in-law of his beloved Mamstryuk (Kostryuk) Temryukovich, are given in some retellings songs about the death of the first wife of Grozny, Anastasia (in the songs of Sofia) Romanovna and her wills to Grozny: “do not marry Maria Temryukovna in the mother of damned Lithuania” ^[10] .
• In the play by A. N. Tolstoy, “The Eagle and the Eagle” (staged at the Maly Theater)
• The novel poem "Guaschene" (2005) in the Kabardian language of the modern poetess Luba Balagova.
• The novel by the German writer Heinz Konzalik “The Queen's Life Medic” ( Der Leibarzt der Zarin) .

• The film of Paul Lungin "The King " (2009) - actress Ramil Iskander .
• In the center of Nalchik she erected a monument with an inscription on a pedestal: "Forever with Russia", opened in 1957 in honor of the 400th anniversary of the voluntary entry of Kabarda into Russia.
• In 1867, the French composer Georges Bizet wrote the opera Ivan IV , in which he freely interpreted the acquaintance and wedding of Ivan the Terrible with Maria Temryukovna.

• Karamzin N. M. History of the Russian state : in 12 volumes. - SPb. : Type. N. Grech , 1816-1829.
• B. M. Sokolov. Shurin the Terrible, a wrestling fighter Mamstryuk Temgryukovich - SPb., 1913.