Political ideas and rituals

Abstract

This chapter describes and analyses the function of ritual in representing political ideas in Muscovy before the seventeenth century. The political life of Muscovite society was replete with rituals. The correlation of ritual and political ideas begins with the historical transformation of Muscovy and the development of a myth to account for it. The political rituals that realised most directly the myth of the Muscovite ruler and his realm were either contingent, prompted by circumstance, or cyclical, governed by the ecclesiastical calendar. The Church calendar dominated life throughout Muscovy. Apart from the numerous Church services that the tsar and the nobility regularly attended, there were five rituals of especial importance. These demarcated major junctures in the annual cycle and expressed the fundamental values of the Muscovite myth in highly marked settings. Two were non-narrative, the New Year's ritual and the Last Judgement ritual; three contained dramatised narrative, the Fiery Furnace ritual, the Epiphany ritual and the Palm Sunday ritual.