Boyars - Development
Boyar [or Boyard or Bolar] was an old Russian title, next in rank to the ruling princes, and privileged with high authority. A member of a class of higher Russian nobility that until the time of Peter I headed the civil and military administration of the country and participated in an early duma. From boiaren, from Russian boyarin, from Old Russian boljarin, from Turkic baylar, pl. of bay, rich, Turkish bay, rich, gentleman. Peter the Great, who abolished the order, ennobled the boyars, but deprived them of their high authority.
The term was used for a grandee of Russia and Transylvania. The Russian boyar was before all a great landowner, comparable to the great feudal lord of Western Europe. Even in the most ancient reactions of " the Russian Truth " (thirteenth century) are found traces of the centralization of large domains in the hands of the boyars. But the birth and development of Russian landed property was different from the same process in the West, for although in the West the development was slow, and was due merely to an economic differentiation of the free rural commune, in Russia its rise was immediate upon the ruins of the " great family " or piitchishtchi.
Whatever the local circumstances, however, the results of the process were the same : the feudalization of landed property, that is, its concentration between the hands of that aristocracy which had succeeded in subjecting, politically and economically, all its weaker neighbours. The relations between masters and their subjects constituted the boyartchina, corresponding to the French seigneurie, the English manor, and the German Grundherrschaft.
The boyars were noblemen, representatives of ancient clans, who served the Russian princes in times of war and peace. But one cannot understand the boyars without understanding what constituted their income and subsistence.
Russian lands before the Mongol-Tatar invasion were politically similar to medieval Europe, where the main form of land ownership was an allod (Old Low Franconian for “fully owned estate”) – a landholding which was in inalienable use of a noble family and was passed down in it by inheritance. Russian ‘allods' were called votchinas (“the one belonging to the father”), – the name itself reminds that such ownership was passed from father to son. Votchinas could not be sold, divided or exchanged – in case of violation of these rules, they were alienated from the owner and passed to another member of his family. Votchinas were hereditary possessions of Russian princes – in 1097, at the Council of Liubech, the Russian princes, in an effort to stop the feudal war between them, accepted the rule "Let every prince govern his estate". The boyar land properties (votchinas) were also patrimonial.
The origin of the word "boyar" is not completely clear, but in Old Russian it already existed in this form. The boyars in Russia were absolute masters of their votchinas. Living on their territories were peasants and artisans, who paid the boyar and worked for him in exchange for the protection provided by the noble warlord. Of course, the boyars, together with the princes, participated in military campaigns against neighboring principalities (one of the variants of the origin of the word ‘boyar’ is from the word boy, - “battle” in Russian).
The boyars in this case were not simple servants of the prince – they enjoyed a privileged position in relation to the armed forces, as they could head armies together with princes. Boyars could also become principal statesmen in some territories – for example, a prince could install a boyar as a voevoda (military commander) in any of his towns, and the boyar in this case was responsible for collecting taxes, providing for the military needs of the city, and so on. At the same time, the boyar could freely choose which prince to serve: in the pre-Mongolian period, a boyar could depart to serve another prince, and in doing so retain his votchina and its population. The period following the Mongol-Tatar invasion brought on significant changes to the role and position of the boyars.
When the Mongol army invaded Russian lands in the 13th century, Russian princes continued their war, which helped the Mongols: not being able to unite in a single army because of their conflicts, the Russians tried to repel the enemy from separate lands and cities – a strategy which was doomed to failure.
The Russian boyartchina was like the seigneurie in the essential features of its economic structure. The large estates of the Middle Ages comprised, as in the West of Europe, two unequal portions. One, the larger, was cultivated by the peasants, who paid a due to the seigneur. The other was under the direct supervision of the latter, and was only a small part of the whole estate. The administrative center of the whole, or fotchina, was the manorial house, or dvor, like the German Hof, the Curtis of Western Europe. Votchina, Hof, and Curtis all granted land or Curtis-Villicana to the peasants. The Russian term dvor boyarsky was the exact translation of the Latin curtis dominicalis and the German Fronhof. The land belonging to the seigneurial house and administered directly by the seigneur was called the Salic land (terra salica, salland) in the West, and in Russia zemlia boyarskaya - the land of the boyar.
Each prince or boyar, sovereign on his own domain, was the vassal, that is, the military servitor, of a larger landowner. Beside military service (servitum) each French vassal had to assist his suzerain in council (consilium) and contribute to the formation of a court. The same arrangement existed in Russia in the form of the Boyarskaya Duma (boyars' council). Even the symbols of these relations were the same in France and in Russia. Thus the French hommage corresponded exactly to the Russian tchelobitii (from tchelom, bit, meaning to strike the ground with the forehead). As homage was followed by the oath, so the Tchelobitie was followed by the tzelovanie kresta, the kissing of the Cross.
Becman said that the boyars were the upper nobility ; and added that the Czar of Muscovy, in his diplomas, named the boyars before the waywodes. All royal edicts bore the stamp of the boyar's approval immediately after the "command of the czar." As the Boyars sat in Council with the Tsar, royal decrees stated that "The Tsar has commanded, and the Boyars have assented,' a formula which has become a popular saying. The old title of Boyarin, or Boyar, later abbreviated into Barin, or Master, was preserved in the memories of the people. Thus, 'At a wedding all are Boyars,' for all the guests invited to a rustic marriage feast bear that name, the bride and bridegroom being styled the Princess and the Prince. It was their privilege to attach themselves and their followers to any prince whom they might choose, but whose service it was their right to leave at their own option.
Originally the boyars were the intimate friends and confidential advisers of the Russian prince, the superior members of his druzhina or bodyguard, his comrades and champions. They were divided into classes according to rank, most generally determined by personal merit and service. Thus was spoken of the "oldest," "elder" and the "younger" boyars. At first the dignity seems to have been occasionally, but by no means invariably, hereditary. At a later day the boyars were the chief members of the prince's duma, or council, like the senatores of Poland and Lithuania. Their further designation of luchshie lyudi or "the best people" proved that they were generally richer than their fellow subjects.
So long as the princes, in their interminable struggles with the barbarians of the Steppe, needed the assistance of the towns, "the best people" of the cities and of the druzhina proper mingled freely together both in war and commerce; but after Yaroslav's crushing victory over the Petchenegs in 1036 beneath the walls of Kiev, the two classes began to draw apart, and a political and economical difference between the members of the princely druzhina and the aristocracy of the towns becomes discernible. The townsmen devoted themselves henceforth more exclusively to commerce, while the druzhina asserts the privileges of an exclusively military caste with a primary claim upon the land. Still later, when the courts of the northern grand dukes were established, the boyars appear as the first grade of a fullblown court aristocracy with the exclusive privilege of possessing land and serfs. Hence their title of dvoryane (courtiers), first used in the 12th century.
On the other hand there was no distinction, as in Germany, between the Dienst Adel (nobility of service) and the simple Adel. The Russian boyardom had no corporate or class privileges, (1) because their importance was purely local (the dignity of the principality determining the degree of dignity of the boyars), (2) because of their inalienable right of transmigration from one prince to another at will, which prevented the formation of a settled aristocracy, and (3) because birth did not determine but only facilitated the attainment of high rank, e.g. the son of a boyar was not a boyar born, but could more easily attain to boyardom, if of superior personal merit. It was reserved for Peter the Great to transform the boyarstvo or boyardom into something more nearly resembling the aristocracy of the West.
"The origin of the Russian aristocracy," says Turgeniev, quoting from Earamzin, "is lost in the most remote antiquity. The dignity of boyar is perhaps even more ancient than that of prince; it distinguished the knights and the most notable citizens, who, in the Slav republics, commanded the armies and administrated the country. This dignity appears never to have been hereditary, but only personal. Although in the course of time it was sometimes conferred by the princes, each of the ancient towns had nevertheless its own boyars, who filled the principal elective offices; even the boyars created by the princes enjoyed a ce'rtain independence. Thus, in the treaties of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the contracting parties confirmed to the boyars the right of quitting the service of one prince to enter the service of another. Dissatisfied at Tchernigov, the boyar went with his numerous following to Kiev, Galitch, or Vladimir, where he found new fiefs and tokens of general respect.
"But when southern Russia had become transformed into Lithuania, when Moscow began to grow larger at the expense of the neighbouring principalities, when the number of princes possessing appanages began to diminish, at the same time that the sovereign's power over the people was becoming more unlimited, then the dignity of boyar also lost its ancient importance. Popular power was favourable to that of the boyars, which acting through the prince on the people, could also act through these latter on the prince. This support at last failed them. Nothing remained to the boyars but to obey their prince, or to become traitors or rebels; there was no golden mean to take, and in the face of the sovereign, no legal means of opposition existed. In a word absolute power was developing itself."
In Moscovy the family was everything, the individual nothing ; nay, more, the individual was unthinkable apart from his family. The elders of every family, the magnates, were responsible for the behaviour of all the younger members of the same family, and bound to punish their misconduct, with stripes and imprisonment if necessary, even when they had reached man's estate. Further, if one member of a family were condemned to pay a heavy fine, all the other members had to contribute to pay it off, and the elevation or degradation of one member of a family was the elevation or degradation of all the other members.
This principle of family solidarity was carried out to its last consequences. Ivan Ivanovich, for instance, would refuse to serve under Semen Semenovich if any single member of Ivan's family had ever held a higher position than any single member of Semen's family, otherwise Ivan was held to have dishonoured his whole family, and the honour of the family had to be upheld at whatever cost of suffering to the individuals composing it. Thus it came about that the Moscovite boyar, slavishly obsequious as he might be to the Great Gosudar in all other things, would rather quit the Tsar's table than sit below any other boyar of inferior family ; rather endure imprisonment, balogi or even the terrible knout itself than put himself bez myesfye, " out of place," as the phrase went, on any public or ceremonial occasion. There was no help for it. He was obliged to stand on his dignity, otherwise all right-minded people of his own order would have regarded him as a renegade, and existence under such a slur would soon have become intolerable.
There were sixteen very great families in Moscovy, all of them boyars by prescription ; there were sixteen great families who had passed through the intermediate rank of okolnichy before they became boyars ; but though families of princely rank, descendants of ancient sovereign dynasties, were to be found in both groups alike, any member of any of the families in the first group would have died in torments rather than have yielded precedence to any member of any of the families in the second group, though their actual official rank might be much higher. To such a point was this principle of " priority " at length carried that the members of one family would resort to the most desperate expedients rather than yield precedence to another family, even when it was obviously entitled thereto.
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