The Mad Monk: Ra Ra Rasputin, Lover of the Russian Queen

So it’s been a while since I did one of these. I’d love to have a valid excuse like the fact that the whirlwind success of the accompanying TV series and its associated riches have distracted me from writing (yes, George R. R. Martin, this is a dig at you) but a combination of laziness and my wife’s compulsive purchasing of Grey’s Anatomy box sets are the real reasons for the inactivity. I’m sure you found that fascinating.

Tits...dragons...someone getting murdered...sod it, I'll just count my money again.

It’s fair to say that if Boney M. feel you deserve to be immortalised in music that you’ve made an impact in history. According to everyone’s favourite German/Caribbean disco combo Grigori Rasputin was not only lover of the Russian queen (Tsarina to be more accurate but that doesn’t fit as well) but also Russia’s greatest love machine. I’m sure several Russians would be keen to question the latter but that’s not what I’ll be looking at in this post. Instead I’ll be examining Rasputin’s “Mad Monk” sobriquet and whether or not he deserves it.

Little is known about Rasputin’s early years besides that he was born into a peasant family in Siberia in 1869. Unlike the rest of Europe, Russia had not experienced any real industrial revolution and rural life was almost medieval in nature. Rasputin wouldn’t have received any formal education and was illiterate well into his adulthood. Besides a few minor misdemeanours in his adolescence, which were greatly exaggerated following his rise to prominence, he lived a relatively unremarkable life marrying a fellow peasant, Praskovya Dubrovina, and having seven children with her.

In 1897 at the age of 28 Rasputin set out on a pilgrimage to the Saint Nicholas Monastery in Verkhoturye which proved to be transformative. Although not overly convinced with the monastic life Rasputin became deeply engaged in religion under the tutelage of one of the monastery’s elders, Makary, and returned home several months later a vegetarian teetotaller with a radically altered appearance. From here he took on the life of a ‘Strannik’, a wandering pilgrim, travelling the Russian Empire visiting numerous holy sites. When he was in his home village of Pokrovskoye he held prayer meetings in his father’s home where he accumulated his first followers. These meetings aroused suspicion in the locale and rumours abounded that Rasputin was ceremonially washed by his female acolytes as well as engaging in orgies and self-flagellation. As fun as this sounds it is more than likely these practices were, like his criminal record, exaggerated by his detractors but what is certain is that Rasputin’s behaviour and demeanour were getting him noticed beyond his hometown.

Rasputin showing off his snazzy new look.

Following a trip to Kazan between 1902 and 1904 Rasputin was dispatched with a letter of recommendation to Bishop Sergei in St Petersburg where he quickly began rubbing shoulders with influential figures within the Russian Orthodox Church and the aristocracy. Such was the bond between the church and state under Nicholas II that Rasputin met the Tsar within a few months of his arrival in St Petersburg in November 1905. Although they only met once during Rasputin’s first visit to the capital they stayed in contact via letter and when the Tsarevitch, Alexei, fell ill and failed to respond to medical treatment the Tsarina, Alexandra, sought the guidance of Rasputin.

The advantage of having nine children meant that Queen Victoria had managed to marry her offspring into most of the major European royal families. The disadvantage, depending on your viewpoint, was that haemophilia was rife amongst European royalty due to the years of inbreeding and Alexei inherited the disease from his English great-grandmother. Rasputin’s reputation had grown so much by this stage that it was believed he possessed the power to heal by prayer. Strangely enough whatever Rasputin did to Alexei appeared to work and the Tsarina came to depend on him whenever the Tsarevitch’s health took a turn for the worse. This reliance gave Rasputin increasing power over the Romanov family with both Nicholas and Alexandra believing him to be a prophet acting as God’s mouthpiece to the Russian royals.

The Russian Orthodox Church, however, did not hold this view of Rasputin with the Holy Synod frequently accusing him of a colourful range of sins. This was in part down to Rasputin’s view that the clergy were not necessary to lead people to salvation but also down to his dalliance with the teachings of the Khylsty sect where sin, in particular giving in to temptation, was seen as essential to earn repentance. Rasputin’s two main vices were alcohol and sex and his cohabitation with numerous aristocratic women in exchange for the political advancement of their family members made him more enemies than it did friends.

The first page of the rare "Where's Rasputin?" kids book - they did get progressively harder apparently.

The outbreak of the First World War further advanced Rasputin’s position with the Russian royalty but ultimately led to his downfall. After he was denied the opportunity to go to the front and bless the troops (Grand Duke Nicholas, the Commander-in-Chief, threatened to hang him if he turned up) he claimed to have had a divine revelation stating that the Russian Army would not succeed unless they were led by Tsar Nicholas II in person. Nicholas, a man described by his critics as unfit to run a village post office, did a disastrous job leading his troops and damaged his already ailing reputation beyond repair in the process. Meanwhile Rasputin became even closer with the Tsarina heavily influencing her political decisions and further damaging her reputation among the Russian people who were quick to highlight her German descent in a storm of wartime patriotism.

An attempt had been made on Rasputin’s life in 1914 but, as his eventual assassins were to find out, he was not an easy man to kill. With the Russian war effort disintegrating by the end of 1916 a group of nobles led by Prince Felix Yusopov conspired to murder Rasputin in order to restore some semblance of order to the Tsarina’s running of the country. What is certain is that on 30^th December 1916 Rasputin died of three gunshot wounds but the circumstances surrounding his death have opened the door for several elaborate theories relating to his mystical powers. Yusopov’s own memoirs state that he attempted to poison Rasputin with cyanide in cakes and wine but this had appeared to make no difference leading to Yusopov shooting him in the chest. Several hours later when the prince went to check that Rasputin was dead he was attacked and chased before his co-conspirator, Vladimir Purishkevich, shot the resurrected Rasputin in the head. To make sure he was definitely dead they drove his body to a bridge and dropped it into the Malaya Nevka River. Thankfully for his murderers he didn’t proceed to swim to the safety of the riverbank.

It is difficult to say if Rasputin is truly deserving of his sobriquet “The Mad Monk” firstly because, despite his religious credentials, he never held any position within the Russian Orthodox Church and had shunned the monastic lifestyle very early in his career. As for his insanity I think it is more the brains of the Romanov family that should be brought into question. Their increasingly tenuous hold on the Russian Empire as demonstrated in the Russo-Japanese War and 1905 Revolution meant that Nicholas II and Alexandra would have been desperate to ensure the health and safety of their heir but their reliance on first Rasputin’s healing powers and then his divine wisdom was instrumental in their eventual downfall in February 1917. Grigori Rasputin was clearly not a normal man, if there is such a thing, but I feel he would be better remembered as “The Machiavellian Monk” rather than “The Mad Monk”. Considering his background and the archaic feudalism of Russia at the turn of the twentieth century the fact that he was able to play on the ingrained mysticism of the Russian aristocracy to hold such power and influence over the Romanov family hints at a far more scheming and manipulative brain than that of a madman. Dismissing him simply as “mad” borders on lazy name-calling. Whether or not he was Russia’s greatest love machine, however, will dominate historiographic debate on the period for years to come.

We'll leave that debate in this man's capable hands.

Philip the Good: In Bruges 578 Years Before It Was Cool

Living up to the sobriquet “the Good” has got to be a tough ask. It’s bad enough when it’s your surname and you haven’t even chosen it. I have fond memories of the England v Wales match in the 2009 Six Nations where Martin Johnson resorted to selecting Andy Goode at fly half and my mate Emlyn and I spent an entire match referring to him as anything ranging from ‘Andy Bad’ to ‘Andy Mediocre at Best’ much to the ire of those around us. When Stuart Lancaster was kind enough to select Alex Goode at full back for their 30-3 loss in 2013 to the same opposition it provided us with another opportunity to dust off the same questionable witticisms. Those were the days and, no, I haven’t quite accepted the result of the 2017 edition of Wales v England yet.

 Halcyon days...

The day after the aforementioned disappointment I set off for Bruges with my lovely wife to celebrate our first wedding anniversary (we had a great time, thanks for asking). Ahead of our trip I had been looking into the city’s history and came across Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy and resident of Bruges in the 15^th Century, often referred to as the city’s ‘Golden Age’. This was clearly a man worthy of further research particularly as the son of John the Fearless and father of Charles the Bold and Anthony the Bastard of Burgundy. As it transpires Philip was also the father of two further legitimate children and at least seventeen other bastards so at the very least it’s clear he was good at fathering children.

Philip was born in 1396 and was already married to his first wife, Michelle of Valois, by the time he was thirteen. His father played a significant part in the Hundred Years War between England and France with his unspoken preference for the former bringing him into direct conflict with the Dauphin, the future Charles VII of France, and despite attempts to resolve the conflict John the Fearless was assassinated by the Dauphin’s supporters in July 1419. Upon his assumption of his father’s title Philip entered into a formal alliance between Burgundy and the English king, Henry V, which was further strengthened by the marriage of his sister, Anne, to the Duke of Bedford, the English regent in 1423.

This alliance with England led to Philip’s forces capturing the legendary Joan of Arc and handing her over for trial in 1430. The trial was presided over by a jury of Philip’s supporters who found Joan guilty of heresy and sentenced her to be burnt at the stake. There were, however, to be further twists in Philip’s alliance with the English as he turned on them in 1435 and led an attack on Calais on behalf of Charles VII, the man he had accused of his father’s murder. Somewhat unsurprisingly Philip then abandoned Charles VII in support for the French nobles leading the Praguerie, a revolt against the king, in 1440. If you managed to keep up with all that then you can gather that an alliance with Philip the Good wasn’t necessarily something to rely on.

Philip the Good scrunching up yet another treaty.

The main motivation for Philip’s liberal approach to his alliances was his desire to establish himself as the pre-eminent French duke. Despite his capture of Joan of Arc he generally avoided involvement in the Hundred Years War as he looked to expand Burgundian influence across France, Belgium and the Netherlands often through purchase rather than military campaigns. This placed Burgundy in a precarious position between the expanding French and Hapsburg Empires but Philip’s shrewd administration and exceptional wealth helped him to avoid significant conflict with either of the main rivals to his territory. In 1463 Philip relinquished some of his territory to King Louis XI of France but at the same time helped to establish an Estates General in the Netherlands which, as its first order of business, looked to finance a war with France in order to restore said lands to his son Charles. Charles’ wars resulted in the loss of many of Philip’s territorial gains and the eventual end of the Valois-Burgundian line at the hand of the Hapsburgs further demonstrating Philip’s skilful, if not overly ethical, management of his territories.

Philip’s inability to stick to an alliance or his marriage vows, however, was not what earned him the epithet ‘the Good’. The extravagance and opulence of the Burgundian court under Philip made it the epicentre of medieval European commerce, culture and fashion. To celebrate his third marriage to Isabella of Portugal in 1430 he established the Order of the Golden Fleece in Bruges as a tribute to both the Arthurian Knights of the Round Table and the Ancient Greek myth of Jason giving Philip the excuse to host several lavish tournaments and feasts throughout his territories. The Order of the Golden Fleece became a significant Catholic movement under the Hapsburgs and still survives today albeit in a decidedly less religious incarnation. Philip was also a keen patron of the arts and became the dominant force in the lucrative world of illuminated manuscripts as well as promoting the work of artists such as Jan van Eyck and composers such as Guillaume Defay who was part of the duke’s court chapel choir. By regularly moving his court between Bruges, Brussels and Lille Philip ensured that Burgundian influence spread far beyond his territories as trade flourished and the rest of Europe’s leaders looked to emulate his prosperity.

The founding of the Order of the Golden Fleece as imagined in Bruges City Hall - shockingly not the most gilded mural in the collection.

Philip the Good died in Bruges in 1467 by which time the city had become the gateway to the European cloth trade and the Valois-Burgundy family the richest and most influential dynasty in the region. The early death of his son Charles the Bold meant that this dominance was short lived as the Hapsburgs swept in but it is impossible to disregard Philip’s influence on medieval European architecture and culture. As a man it is difficult to say if Philip is deserving of his sobriquet ‘the Good’. By today’s standards a man who fathers at least eighteen illegitimate children and reneges on pretty much every alliance he enters into would probably find himself described as quite a lot of things with ‘good’ unlikely to be near the top of the list. For a medieval nobleman, however, Philip’s behaviour can not be seen as particularly deplorable and the fact he recognised so many of his bastards could almost be seen as liberal. His political manoeuvring, whilst not exactly an example of loyalty, enabled him to protect his own territories and lay the foundations for the renaissance in Northern Europe whilst not drawing them into major conflict with the expanding French and Hapsburg Empires. When you consider some of his contemporaries and successors it doesn’t seem too unreasonable to say that Philip the Good wasn’t a bad bloke and at the very least he knew how to make a very pretty city.