even yet he did not dare to lay violent hands on the revered metropolitan. But a little later some charge was trumped up against Philip, and a slavish law court then pronounced his deposition. While he was conducting the liturgy in his church a crowd of "Peculiars" rushed in and stripped him to his shirt—a brutal act ordered by the spiteful tsar in revenge for the public rebuke he had received in church from the metropolitan. Dragged before Ivan, Philip besought the tsar to mend his ways, but in vain. Philip's punishment for this new act of daring was to receive the bleeding head of his nephew sent by the tsar as a present to him in prison. He was then banished to the Otroch Monastery in Tver, where after a short time he was strangled by Ivan's order. The story of Philip is worth telling in detail for the sake of the revelation of a noble character which it contains; but also because it relates to the one recognised "martyr" among her prelates in the Church of Russia—a Church singularly free from persecution during the whole course of her history.
Ivan reigned for fifty-one years, and died in the year 1584. His career has been a puzzle for the historians. Not only did it vary greatly in character during successive periods, but throughout it revealed a nature of startling contrasts and inconsistencies. The cruel tsar was intensely religious in his own way, but he was actively interested in literature and culture. He set up the first printing press in Moscow, where the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles were printed under the superintendence of the metropolitan Macarius during the happy early part of this reign. A little later the tsar had a copy of the Gospels printed, and after that the entire Bible was printed in Sclavonic at Kiev, under the directions of Constantine the deputy-governor.
Some of Ivan's actions were rather the achievements of a strong, capable ruler than the doings of a mere despot, even when he was most tyrannical. In the course of the consolidation of Russia he destroyed the ancient liberties of Novgorod, which hitherto had governed itself as a practically
26
