The Worst Things Ivan The Terrible Ever Did

The tsarist treasury required larger and larger cash infusions to keep the state running. During Ivan's reign, Giles Fletcher the Elder noted that the monasteries of Russia had amassed enormous wealth and vast tracts of land. The wealth of the monasteries was protected through royal charters, which Ivan had generally respected, buttressing the position of the monasteries through land grants and donations.

In 1575, Ivan allegedly decided to confiscate monastic lands and wealth to fund his foreign wars. However, to avoid the ire of the Orthodox Church, he abdicated the throne and his royal responsibilities to former Qasim Khan Simeon Bekbulatovich. Simeon promptly canceled many of the monastic charters and began amassing their wealth. Meanwhile, Ivan "retired" to live a quiet life of contemplation and prayer and could not intervene.

Fletcher writes that due to Simeon's poor governance, the church begged for Ivan's return, which happened one year later. Ivan presented himself as the savior of the church, renewing the monastic charters but at a price. According to Fletcher, in return for the charters, Ivan requested that the monasteries pay him either in money or land.

With this simple, yet ingenious trick, the crown annexed large swaths of prime land and siphoned off monastic wealth, The maneuver was recorded with mixed admiration and alarm by both Fletcher and Jerome Horsey, an English merchant with the Russia Company (via Donald Ostrovsky's "Russia's People of Empire").

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