How Holy War became Unholy

Abstract

The Livonian war in the second half of the 16th century was understood by its participants within the Christian Providentialist discourse and was seen primarily through the optics of Christian ethics (the idea of sin and its punishment, the idea of ‘God’s penalty’ which every person has to pay as a potential sinner by undergoing pain and trials, the idea of retribution and reward for feats and sins, etc.). Since the war coincided with the aggravation of religious confrontations in the region (Catholics vs Protestants, the Orthodox vs Catholics and Protestants amongst themselves), there were attempts to turn the conflict into something bigger than a war over territories and political ambitions. But the idea of a religious war failed. For Europeans, the religious factor in the Livonian conflict had very little symbolic expression. No cults of Livonian saints, martyrs for the faith, etc. emerged. For the Orthodox Church a number of significant religious and propagandistic actions were organized at the beginning of the war (‘the Narva miracle,’ creation of hagiographic monuments, etc.) that glorified the victory of the Orthodox Cross and Russian arms. However, as the conflict developed, the significance of these actions faded and was reduced to local memory objects. The defense of Pskov from King Stephen Bathory in 1581 was the most resonant and significant event. Its image was embodied in many objects of both local and all-Russian historical memory, which retain their importance to the present day.