The Court of the Grand Duchess of Lithuania and Queen of Poland Elena Ivanovna

Abstract

The article is a comprehensive study of the composition of the court of the Grand Duchess of Lithuania Elena Ivanovna, daughter of the Grand Duke of Moscow Ivan III and Sophia Paleologina. The author comes to the conclusion that initially Ivan III tried to surround his daughter with Moscow noblemen and Russian servants in a foreign land However, by September 1495, almost the entire retinue of Elena was sent to Moscow on the orders of Alexander Kazimirovich, her husband. The court of the Grand Duchess was re-formed on the model of the court of the Grand Duchess of Lithuania and the Queens of Poland. All key positions in it (court-master, chancellor, сook, carver) were occupied by Lithuanian Catholic noblemen. The female court of Elena Ivanovna was headed by the court-master who supervised ladies-in-waiting (all of them were of Lithuanian origin and, probably, Catholics, with the exception of one lady of the Orthodox faith who came with the princess from Moscow). Only by 1511, the Orthodox princess became the court-master. Few Orthodox service people who arrived in Lithuania from Russia held administrative positions in the princess’s domain. In 1509, after the rebellion of Prince M. L. Glinskii and his departure to Moscow, a number of key figures (I. S. Sapega, M. Iundilovich) left the court of the Grand Duchess. The remaining courtiers (Mitia Ivanovich, Kgetovt Kalinikovich, and others), although formally in her service, in fact followed the instructions of the Lithuanian lords and were loyal to king Sigismund the Old.