already well rooted and constantly strengthening at Moscow, was an unexpected obstacle to all such undertakings. In vain did a physician in attendance on the Grand Duke Vassili, one Nicholas Boulew, or Lueo, commonly called Niémtchine, carry on an active campaign in support of union at the Sovereign's own Court, and hold controversy on the subject with Maximus the Greek and Filofeï, a monk of Pskov. The only proselytes he is known to have won were a boïar named Feodor Karpov, and one prior whose name has not been handed down to us.
The Pontificate of Gregory XIII. did not appear likely to win much more success for the claims of the Roman Church. Though the Pope's skilful efforts had succeeded in making the King of Spain arm against the heretic Queen of England, and in supporting the struggle for restoration carried on by the Bavarian House of Wittelsbach—the Guises of Germany—they could not wipe out the stigma laid on the Catholic religion, in the eyes of the whole world, by Alva's rule in the Low Countries, by St. Bartholomew, by the horrors of the Inquisition, and, above all, by those scandals within the Papacy itself, which had been the direct cause of the Reform. It was to the political, and not to the religious, power in Rome that Ivan had first addressed himself through his Ambassador, and it was the representative of this same secular power, the diplomat, not the apostle, whom he prepared himself to welcome in Possevino's person.
The Jesuit reached Moscow on February 14, 1582. He found the Court in mourning, and the Tsar himself plunged into deep sorrow, by a tragic event, which, if the question they had to discuss had been one of moral interest only, should in itself have sufficed to exclude any possible communion of thought or feeling between the priest and his royal host. The Tsar, in a fit of rage, had just killed his own son. I shall have to return to this gloomy episode. But there was no question of moral interests here! The anti-Ottoman league itself was very soon to be put aside. Ivan, to enable him to hold his own against Batory, had been obliged to make a truce with the Khan of the Crimea; he now avowed himself ready to break it, and take up arms against the Turk, but not until the Pope had made arrangements with the Holy Empire, France, Spain, Venice, England, Denmark, and Sweden, and requested all these powers to send embassies to Moscow, to concert a final arrangement! The Tsar was evidently joking, though he did offer to send an important Ambassador of his own to Rome, instead of a mere courier. He was anxious to preserve the useful friendship he had made.
The agreement with Sweden fell through likewise. It was not for the sake of treating with King John that the Tsar had
