You will hardly surprise anyone with stories about poisons, this reliable weapon in the hands of a villain or an insidious adversary. They are full of historical writings about the medieval past of many countries of the world (especially France and Italy), when poison often resolved dynastic and political disputes. And the pages of modern detective stories are not inferior to the atrocities of the Middle Ages with the sophistication of their plots. Getting acquainted with the Russian annals and notes of foreigners who visited Muscovy in the XIV-XVII centuries, you see that in Russia they resorted to poisons no less than in enlightened Europe. However, this side of the life of our ancestors usually remains outside the interests of historians. Meanwhile, modern research methods make it possible to verify the chronicle reports of murders committed with the help of poison - real or alleged. It happens,when it is possible to carry out a subtle chemical analysis of the remains that have survived to this day (by the way, sometimes such studies can also say about the diseases that the deceased suffered long ago). The richest material is provided by the burials of the Moscow Kremlin. Two historical lines converge here: the records of the chronicler, as a rule, recorded information about the life and death of noble persons, namely, their burial took place in the central cathedrals of Russia, which still stand today. The journal has already written about many studies of this kind. However, there are still many detective stories of the past awaiting resolution.recorded information about the life and death of noble persons, namely, their burial took place in the central cathedrals of Russia, which still stand today. The journal has already written about many studies of this kind. However, there are still many detective stories of the past awaiting resolution.recorded information about the life and death of noble persons, namely, their burial took place in the central cathedrals of Russia, which still stand today. The journal has already written about many studies of this kind. However, there are still many detective stories of the past awaiting resolution.
Analyzing historical events and destinies, first of all, you understand: in the everyday life of that distant time, which will be discussed, poisons, or rather their use, were not something unusual. In any case, the monastic chroniclers narrated such stories without much surprise or censure. Moreover, sometimes they even reported on the method of poisoning, as, for example, when they wrote about the death of Prince Rostislav of Tmutarakansky (he was the grandson of Yaroslav the Wise), who was poisoned in 1066. And it was so. A "cotopan" (official, administrator) who came from Byzantium crept into the prince's confidence. At one of Rostislav's feasts with his retinue, a Greek guest invited the prince to drink a cup of wine "in half". The Trinity Chronicle says about the moment of Rostislav's poisoning: “He (the Greek - Author's note) drank half, and gave the prince half to drink, holding his finger on the edge of the bowl,having poison under the fingernail ", or, as they called it then," soluble mortal. " Who needed the death of the prince? One can only guess about this.
In the middle of the XIII century, the fate of Russia was for a long time connected with the Mongol state, or rather, with the powerful alliance of nomadic tribes created by Genghis Khan (Temuchin). The trips of Russian princes to the headquarters of the Horde khans (on a call or to receive a label for reign) have always been a difficult ordeal, which often ended tragically. This is how the Vladimir-Suzdal prince Yaroslav III Vsevolodovich, the father of Alexander Nevsky, perished in 1246. An Italian traveler, Franciscan minority monk Giovanni da Plano Carpini writes about this in the History of the Mongols: “At that time, Yaroslav, who was the Grand Duke in a certain part of Russia called Suzdal, died. He had just been invited to the mother of the emperor (that is, the khan. - Author's note), who, as if as a sign of honor, gave him food and drink from her own hand; and he returned to his quarters,He immediately became sick and died seven days later, and his whole body turned amazingly blue. Therefore, they believed that he was drunk there in order to more freely take possession of his land."
Carpini suggested that the same fate awaited Alexander Nevsky: "The Emperor's mother … hastily sent a messenger to Russia to his son Alexander, so that he would appear to her, everyone believed that if he appeared, she would kill him or subject him to eternal captivity." This happened, but much later, in 1263, when Prince Alexander, having left the Horde, felt bad and died on the way to Russia.
As you can see, the nomads were well aware of the quiet power of poisons and widely used them, eliminating not only opponents, but also rivals. The “Mongolian everyday collection”, dedicated to the description of the life of the great Genghis Khan (he lived in 1155-1227), tells how his father, Esugai-Baatur, died of poison: “The Tatars feasted on the way to the Tsektser steppe. Having met them, Esugai-Baatur decided to stay at the holiday, as he was languishing with thirst. Tatars remembered their old grievances and scores. And so, with the intent to secretly kill him with poison, they mixed him with poison. Leaving them, he felt ill, three days later, having reached home, he became very ill and died."
Rumors have penetrated Russian written sources that the wife of the Moscow prince Yuri Danilovich, Agafya, died of poison in Tver, who in 1317 became a prisoner of the Tver prince Mikhail Yaroslavich. This is mentioned not only in the chronicles, but also in the Life of Mikhail Yaroslavich of Tverskoy, created at the end of the XIV century. It says that the accusation against Mikhail Tverskoy was heard at the trial at the headquarters of the Horde khans. The prince rejected everything, calling the Lord God to be a witness, but he did not escape death - he was killed in 1318.
An attempt to poison the Moscow prince Dmitry Ivanovich (the future Donskoy, the hero of the Battle of Kulikovo) was recorded in the Russian chronicles under 1378. The battle on the Vozha River, when it was possible to defeat the troops of Khan Begich, was the first major victory of the Russians over the Horde. Among the prisoners was a priest, a confidant of a certain Ivan Vasilyevich, a descendant of the Muscovites. As it turned out, Ivan was very resentful of the Moscow prince Dmitry, who abolished the institute of the thousand in 1374, thereby depriving him, Ivan, of hopes for a high position at the Moscow court. Hating Prince Dmitry, he went to serve in Tver, to the eternal enemies of Moscow. And the captive priest, who told about this, found a "bag of evil fierce potions." Apparently, the fears for the life of Prince Dmitry were justified: a rare case for the XIV century, when the chronicles mention the torture to which the priest was subjected,then exiled "to imprisonment at Lache-Lake."
Poisons at the end of the 14th century are a serious reality. This is confirmed by a unique archaeological find discovered in the Moscow Kremlin in 1843 during the construction of "glaciers for the Tsar's use." Then they found a copper jug with paper and parchment letters from the period of Dmitry Donskoy's reign and a small clay vessel, the so-called spherocone, containing mercury. Mercury salts (mercuric chloride) and arsenic ("mouse potion") are the most popular poisons of the Middle Ages.
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The XV century has come. Moving along the chronology of events, it should be said about the death of the nephew of the Grand Duke of Lithuania Vitovt, which happened in Moscow. N. M. Karamzin has brief information about this event. His work "History of the Russian State" contains extracts from sources that have not survived to this day. Of these, it is known: in the 1440s, a cousin of Grand Duchess Sofia Vitovtovna (widow of Vasily I) Mikhail appeared in Moscow, and it was no coincidence that in Lithuania, seized by turmoil, there was an acute struggle for power.
Unusual, or rather, sinful, is the way in which they dealt with a noble Lithuanian in 1452: "Some abbot of Moscow poisoned Mikhail with poison in a prosphora." Someone he interfered with, someone was interested in the death of Prince Mikhail Vitovt, who was already living in exile in Russia. But who exactly is hard to say.
The second quarter of the 15th century was marked by a fierce and long struggle for the throne between the grandchildren of Dmitry Donskoy: the Grand Duke Vasily II, on the one hand, and the princes - Vasily Kosym of Galician and Zvenigorod, Dmitry Shemyaka and Dmitry Krasny - on the other.
A detailed "case history" of Dmitry Yuryevich Krasny, who died on September 22, 1441, got on the pages of the chronicles. The chronicler was perplexed by its symptoms. In those days, many diseases were recognized quite accurately, and they had certain names. In this case, the description of Prince Dmitry's illness begins with the words: "There is something wonderful in his illness." A severe but unknown illness first caused a loss of appetite and sleep, then was aggravated by nosebleeds. "The blood runs out of both nostrils, as if the rods are flowing, his spiritual father Osia will plug his nostrils with a piece of paper."
At some point, the prince felt a little better, which made his entourage happy, but soon fell into a heavy unconsciousness. When he woke up, he suffered for two more days and died. Apparently, blood also appeared on the prince's body along with sweat - in any case, this is briefly mentioned in the chronicle description of the course of the disease: "I dont have that blood for sweat."
Prince Dmitry Krasny (Krasny) died very young, not yet married, and there is no reason to believe that he suddenly developed some kind of fatal disease. The rapid course of the disease and its symptoms are typical for poisoning. And the subsequent fate of his brother, Prince Dmitry Shemyaka, makes one suspect an evil will here.
The story of the death of the Zvenigorod prince Dmitry Yuryevich Shemyaka (the Grand Duke of Moscow in 1445-1447) differs from other cases in that we know for sure all its participants. The reasons are also known. The main one is the struggle for the Moscow table, during which Dmitry Shemyaka managed to capture the Grand Duke of Moscow Vasily II, blinded him (in revenge for blinding his brother, Vasily Yuryevich, the Grand Duke) and sent him into exile. Having regained power, Vasily the Dark (as Vasily II was now called) severely took revenge on the rebellious prince, who after the defeat found refuge in Veliky Novgorod.
None of the participants in this crime, of course, wanted publicity. And therefore, in the official chronicles of that time, only general information was preserved about the death of Dmitry Shemyaka: in the summer of 1453, “on July 23, you will come to the Grand Duke from Novgorod (Vasily Temny then listened to the evening service in the church of Boris and Gleb. - Ed.), that Prince Dmitry Shemyaka died in vain in Novgorod and brought the clerk with the news Trouble, and then the clerk would be. " The word "in vain" in those days meant a violent death, but the compilers of the chronicle did not specify what caused it.
However, along with the official Moscow "weather" codes of events, there were others that were created outside the capital and were negatively disposed towards the central government (and then too!). Veliky Novgorod, where Shemyaka went after being defeated in military clashes with Vasily the Dark, was one of such oppositionists. It was in one of the lists of the Novgorod IV Chronicle under 1453 that it was written: "Prince Dmitry Yuryevich Shemyaka died of poison in Veliky Novgorod, June 17".
In other chronicles there are more detailed stories about this story, according to which the chain of participants in the crime is quite logically built - from the customer to the executor. The most detailed information is contained in the Ermolinskaya and Lvovskaya Chronicles, which named the names and sequence of events: "That same summer, the ambassador, Grand Duke Stephen the Bearded, to Novgorod with the death potion, kill Prince Dmitry."
Stefan Bradaty is a clerk of Vasily the Dark, one of the most educated people of his time (apparently, he was also versed in poisons). An intermediate link in this chain was either the bribed boyar Dmitry Shemyaka, Ivan Notov (or Kotov), or the Novgorod mayor Isaac, who was close to Prince Dmitry Yuryevich. But the further course of the operation is covered by all sources without discrepancies. The chef of Prince Shemyaka was bribed with a name that is quite characteristic for this situation - Grebe. "He bribed Prince Dmitriev's cook, named Poganka, who will give him some potion in smoking" (this dish is called the same in all sources). Prince Dmitry got sick on the same day and, having been ill for 12 days, died.
An incredible story! But it is even more incredible that it is precisely this death of Shemyaka that modern research methods confirm. It turned out that the remains of the rebellious prince were partially mummified. This became clear at the end of the last century when studying the necropolis of St. Sophia Cathedral, where the burial of Shemyaki was transferred from the Yuryev Monastery near Novgorod in the 17th century (cases of mummification of remains in the necropolises of medieval Russia are extremely rare due to our rather humid climate). And what is especially important: the dried up liver and one of the prince's kidneys have been preserved, that is, organs capable of accumulating in themselves (like, by the way, hair) harmful substances that enter the human body and persist for centuries.
Forensic chemists, examining the surviving organs, found that Dmitry Shemyaka had been poisoned with arsenic compounds. Its amount in the kidney reaches 0.21 mg per one-gram sample of the sample (the natural background of arsenic in the human body is from 0.01 to 0.08 mg). By the way, it was arsenic poisoning, leading to severe dehydration of the body before death, that could cause the mummification of Shemyaka's body.
So five centuries later, scientists confirmed the authenticity of the information recorded in the annals, the compilers of which were not afraid to write the truth about the events of 1453. Apparently, it was not possible to hide this story even then, rumors about the death of Dmitry Shemyaka spread quite widely. The fate of the Toadstool's chef is proof of this.
This man, apparently tormented by remorse, was tonsured a monk. But notoriety ran ahead. Information about him is in the Life of Pafnutius of Borovsky (1394-1477), a contemporary of the events described: “A certain monk came to the monastery of the monk. The ascetic, seeing him, quietly said to his disciples: “Do you see that for the sake of the monastic rank he was not cleansed of blood?” The disciples were surprised, but were afraid to ask the monk about the meaning of these words. However, the elder himself later explained them: “This monk, being a layman, poisoned the prince he served in Novgorod. Tormented by his conscience, he accepted monasticism."
Wars, blinding, poisoning of rivals - all these terrible vicissitudes of the struggle for power in the middle of the 15th century were quite common events of medieval life. And yet Vasily the Dark, who died in 1462 from pulmonary tuberculosis ("dryness"), received from one of his contemporaries a short but harsh posthumous assessment: "Judas the murderer, your fate has come" (the inscription was preserved on one of the church books in the middle XV century).
The fate of women, even from the circle of the highest nobility, traditionally rarely attracted the attention of chroniclers. But there are rather detailed reports about the death of one of them in the Sofia and Lvov chronicles. It is about the first wife of the Grand Duke Ivan III, the Tver princess Maria Borisovna: "In the summer of 6975 (1467) of the month of April 25, 3 o'clock at night, the Grand Duchess Maria passed away from the mortal potion." A rare case when the cause of death is so firmly named. The chronicler noted the unusual state of the body of the deceased, very quickly swollen to an incredible size, although the funeral took place the very next day after death (as was customary then), and the time of year, April, was not the hottest in Russia.
Grand Duke Ivan III Vasilyevich, distinguished by his decisive and tough character, ordered an investigation, which found out that Maria Borisovna's belt was worn to the witch ("woman") and that the wife of clerk Alexei Poluektov, Natalya, participated in this. The enraged prince alienated the clerk from himself: "Then I got angry at Oleksey and for many, six years, I was not (with the Grand Duke. - Ed. Ed.) In his eyes, barely his sting."
Why was the belt of the Grand Duchess worn to the witch? Perhaps for divination about health or fertility. Be that as it may, the young princess (she was not even 23 years old) died, poisoned by someone, as her relatives believed. It is no coincidence that the chronicler wrote: "from mortal potion."
It took almost five and a half centuries before science was able to confirm these words. In 2001, the tomb of the princess was opened, and scientists analyzed the trace element composition of the bones of her skeleton. In the bones, they found an incredible, compared to the background, excess of zinc (242 times!), Mercury (30 times), lead (45 times) and an increased amount of minerals such as zirconium, gallium, because in the human body the entire periodic table. The monstrous amount of poisonous substances that entered the body clearly made Maria Borisovna sick and unwell. It was the poor health that probably made her turn to the witch.
The youth of the princess and the unnaturally large amount of harmful substances that got into her bone tissue (in order to accumulate, for example, so much zinc, you need to work for many years in a serious metallurgical production), leave no doubt: the princess was poisoned.
Medical errors (and even more so crimes) in those days cost dearly to doctors, people of a difficult and almost dangerous profession. Written sources of the Russian Middle Ages associate two cases of poisoning with foreign doctors. In the first case, the chronicles openly report that the doctor "Nemchin Anton" poisoned "Tsarevich Danyarov", who was in favor with Ivan III, "kill him with a mortal potion for laughing." Apparently, there was a quarrel between the noble patient and the doctor, which was offensive to the doctor. Grand Duke Ivan, resolute as always, betrayed the German Anton to the son of the serving Tatar prince Karakach, and the Tatars "brought him to the Moscow river under the bridge in winter and stabbed him with a knife like a sheep."
The second case is much more complicated, it is connected with the family of Ivan III and the fate of his eldest son. Prince Ivan Young, a son from his first marriage with Maria Borisovna, suffered from gout, or arthritis. The chroniclers called this disease "kamchyug in the legs". In 1489, various masters, architects and a healer - "Leon from Venice", a Jew by nationality, arrived in Moscow from Italy in 1489 with one of the Russian embassies. He assured the Grand Duke that he would cure his son, and if he didn’t heal, he was ready to accept the death penalty. The doctor's rash statement testified to his complete ignorance of the character of the Moscow sovereign.
Doctor Leon, admitted to the patient, began to treat him with the traditional method, well known in Russia as well - by applying vessels with hot water to the swollen joints of the legs. “And the healer began to heal … rub the glass over the body, pouring in hot water; and that is why he (Ivan Molodoy. - Author's note) will die hard. " Can you die quickly from gout? Today doctors will answer unequivocally: "No". Moreover, at 32, like Ivan Young. But the chroniclers noted that Leon also used some kind of internal medicine: "Piti will give him a potion."
It is known how Sophia Paleologue strove to transfer over time the paternal throne to her eldest son Vasily - bypassing the legal heir, Ivan the Young. Therefore, there is a great suspicion that in this story the primary role belongs to poison. Ivan III, after the death of his son Ivan the Young (it followed on March 7, 1490), imprisoned the doctor Leon, and after "magpies … ordered him to be executed by death, the heads of the head."
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In the legal practice of the Middle Ages, there were severe punishments not only for poisoners, but also for manufacturers of poisons. Most often they were mortal "articles". According to the "Charter" of Yaroslav the Wise (XI century), a wife who tried to poison her husband, but without a fatal outcome, was separated from her husband and imposed a large fine on her. The German monument to criminal law "Carolina" (XVI century) ordered male poisoners to wheel, and women - to drown in the river, after having subjected them to cruel torture. Under the Hungarian king Ladislav (end of the 13th century), for the preparation of poisons (if the manufacturer was caught for the first time), a fine of 100 libras was taken. If the accused did not have money, he was burned alive. The punishments are terrible, but they did not stop people who were planning dark deeds.
And what about the 16th century? In Russian history, this time cannot be called calm. It was about him that the poet of the 19th century A. N. Maikov wrote:
And that century was when the Venetian poison, Unseen like a plague crept
everywhere:
In a letter, in communion, to a brother
and to the dish …
Author: Doctor of Historical Sciences T. PANOVA.