R.H. Major - Notes upon Russia: Being a Translation of the earliest Account of that Country, entitled Rerum Muscoviticarum commentarii, by the Baron Sigismund von Herberstein

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ISBN 13: 978-1-4094-1276-2 (hbk)

THE BARON SIGISMUND VON HERBERSTEIN.

In his S TATE D RESS , as Ambassador from the Emperor
Maximilian to the Grand Duke Vasiley Ivanovich,

BEING A TRANSLATION OF THE

Earliest Account of that Country,

ENTITLED

RERUM MOSCOVITICARUM COMMENTARII,

BY THE BARON

SIGISMUND VON HERBERSTEIN,

AMBASSADOR FROM THE COURT OF GERMANY OF THE GRAND
PRINCE VASILEY IVANOVICH, IN THE YEARS
1517 AND 1526.

TRANSLATED AND EDITED,

With Notes and an Introduction,

BY

R. H. MAJOR,

OF THE BRITISH MUSIUM.

VOL. I.

if thou list to know the Russes well, To Sigismundus booke repayre, who all the trueth can tell.

Turbervile, 1568.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR THE HAKLUYT SOCIETY.

M.DCCC.LI.

LUXDON:

RICHARDS, 37 GREAT QUEEN STREET, LINCOLNS INN.

SIR RODERICK IMPEY MURCHISON, G.C.St.S., F.R.S., Corr. Mem. Inst. Fr.,

Hon. Mem. Imp. Acad. Sc. St. Petersburg, &c., &c., PRESIDENT.

TO

SIR HENTRY ELLIS, K.H.

ETC. ETC. ETC.

AS TO HIS EARLIEST SURVIVING FRIEND,

AND THE SUGGESTER OF THIS TRANSLATION,

THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE INSCRIBED,

WITH EVERY SENTIMENT OF

GRATEFUL AFFECTION AND RESPECT,

BY

THE EDITOR.

T HE Editor has found it necessary, on account of the length of his work, to divide it into two volumes. The second volume, however, is already at press, and will, unless unforeseen obstacles occur, be very shortly completed.

Should the large space allotted to dry bibliography in the Introduction be objected to by some, the Editor hopes that his anxiety to afford what he considered to be useful information, will protect him from too severe a reproof; while to the more curious student he trusts it will prove far from unacceptable.

It is possible, that occasionally sentences may be found in the translation somewhat too harshly turned, or too unwieldy from their length or involved construction, to please a well-attuned English ear; the translator can only plead in excuse, that the original, though in Latin, is written by a German, and naturally exhibits much of that involution of style peculiar to the German language; while it is certainly not the more lucid from having been written three centuries ago.

R. H. M.

W HEN the following Notes upon Russia are presented to the reader as the earliest description of that country, the statement, though substantially and for all essential purposes correct, must not be allowed to pass without a word of modification. As we shall presently take occasion to show, the Baron Sigismund von Herberstein was preceded by numerous travellers to Russia, the record of whose peregrinations could scarcely have been handed down to us without some slight allusion to the character of the country they visited; yet from none of them have we received anything that could with reason be referred to as an authentic description of the country and its people, derived, as all such descriptions should be, from lengthened personal observation and industrious inquiry. The present work, however, which embodies the experience and observations of a sagacious and pains-taking man, during two periods of residence, in all about sixteen months, in Moscow, as ambassador from the Emperor of Germany to the Tzar, has won for its author so high a reputation for correctness and minuteness of detail, that he has been thought by many (and one of the number is the learned historian, August Ludwig Schlzer himself) worthy of the designation of the Discoverer of Russia. The Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii has been a standing book of reference for all subsequent historians of the great empire of the north; and it is not without good reason that the distinguished biographer of Herber stein, Friedrich Adelung (to whose works, as quoted below, the editor is mainly indebted for the materials of this introduction) expresses his surprise that a work of such importance should so long have remained untranslated, either into the Polish, the French, the Dutch, or the English languages. Especially is this expression of astonishment applicable, as he justly observes, to England and Holland,countries which have for nearly three centuries maintained commercial relations with the Russian empire. The scope of the work comprises brief but interesting, and in many cases highly amusing, sketches of the history, antiquities, geography, and productions of the country, with the religion, form of government, peculiarities in matters of warfare, trade, domestic habits, and amusements of the people.