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Ivan I
(1325-1340) was nicknamed "Kalita" by the people (Moneybag) for the
bag he always carried with him. He was clever and rich, and a skilled collector
both of taxes from the people and of duties from domestic and foreign
merchants, who increasingly used Moscow as a transit city and later as a trade
center. The process of unification of the country becomes visible from the end
of the 13th century. In the beginning of the 14th there are only two rival
principalities, almost of equal strength vying for domination: Moscow and Tver.
They fought also for inheritance of the principality of Vladimir. Although Tver
was favored by the Golden Horde, Ivan Kalita proved to be very capable diplomat
and stubborn leader. He became the Khan's trusted agent for collecting tribute,
which he extracted pitilessly from his own people. A persistent and canny man,
Kalita managed, in most cases, to get what he wanted from the Golden Horde.
Helped by the Khan, he got rid of his local enemies, or forced them to accept
his rule. Slowly but steadily the importance of Moscow kept growing. Kalita
made an important move to strengthen Moscow's primacy when he induced the
archbishop Peter to move his see from Vladimir to Moscow. This coincides with
the appearance of the new title for the archbishop as the primate of : All
Russia." Kalita also held the title of "Grand Duke of All Rus' (the
name of ancient Russia), and chose Moscow to be capital city, thus marking its
beginning as the capital of all Russia.
To replace Metropolitan Peter, who died in Moscow in 1325, as the head of the
Russian see, the Patriarch of Constantinople sent Theognostus (Geognost), a
Greek prelate. Since Kalita was already Grand Duke, Theognostus went directly
to Moscow which thus became the official ecclesiastical capital of "All
Rus'." The humiliated Russian people who suffered morally and physically
more than anybody else, saw in this a new spark of freedom and were primed to
rise up and fight the invaders.
During his reign Kalita enlarged the size of the Kremlin and built a new wooden
wall around it. (see map) A
thrifty ruler, he spent little money on stone constructions, which were very
expensive at that time. He, as well as other grand dukes, preferred to use more
inexpensive wood, which in turn burned very easily; this is why no
architectural monument belonging to Moscow's early history has survived. In
1325, on the insistence of Metropolitan Peter, an icon painter himself, who was
greatly interested in the cultural development of Moscow, Kalita laid the
foundations for the first stone church in the Kremlin, the Cathedral of the
Assumption, but it collapsed before it was finished. He had better luck when
construction resumed in 1336, but by that time the Kremlin already had its
first stone church, the Cathedral of Archangel Michael, built in 1333. The
churches of Vladimir, Suzdal and Novgorod from which the young Moscow drew all
that was best for its cultural development, served as models for the two
cathedrals. By 1343 the interior of the Archangel Michael cathedral was covered
with frescoes, painted by the Russian iconographers Zakhari, Denisei, Nicholas
and others. In the same year Metropolitan Theognostus commissioned Greek
artists to cover the Church of the Virgin with frescoes. Soon after this Moscow
started using its own builders and painters for some works. When a lime stone
quarry was discovered near the village of Myachkovo, some twelve miles from
Moscow, it was an incentive for stone construction within the Kremlin. The
stone, though relatively soft, proved resistant to the severe Russian winters
because it is very porous and permits water to run out easily before it
freezes. Its whiteness gave rise to the name "white stone Moscow" for
the Kremlin and the area around it, where gradually stone construction
prevailed. This term also originally indicated the tsar's part of the city, as
distinguished from the rest, where wood remained for many years the only
building material. Later, hundreds of churches throughout Russia were built
with lime stone for it served just as well for ornamentation of brick
constructions. Some of them are over five centuries old, and still in very good
shape.
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