The Tsar's Happy Occasion: Ritual and Dynasty in the Weddings of Russia's Rulers, 1495-1745

by Russell E. Martin

Overview

The Tsar's Happy Occasion shows how the vast, ornate affairs that were royal weddings in early modern Russia were choreographed to broadcast powerful images of monarchy and dynasty. Processions and speeches emphasized dynastic continuity and legitimacy. Fertility rites blended Christian and pre-Christian symbols to assure the birth of heirs. Gift exchanges created and affirmed social solidarity among the elite. The bride performed rituals that integrated herself and her family into the inner circle of the court.

Using an array of archival sources, Russell E. Martin demonstrates how royal weddings reflected and shaped court politics during a time of dramatic cultural and dynastic change. As Martin shows, the rites of passage in these ceremonies were dazzling displays of monarchical power unlike any other ritual at the Muscovite court. And as dynasties came and went and the political culture evolved, so too did wedding rituals. Martin relates how Peter the Great first mocked, then remade wedding rituals to symbolize and empower his efforts to westernize Russia. After Peter, the two branches of the Romanov dynasty used weddings to solidify their claims to the throne.

The Tsar's Happy Occasion offers a sweeping, yet penetrating cultural history of the power of rituals and the rituals of power in early modern Russia.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501754852
Publisher:	Northern Illinois University Press
Publication date:	05/15/2021
Series:	NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	378
File size:	7 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Russell E. Martin is Professor of History at Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania. He is author of A Bride for the Tsar. Follow him on X @Russ_E_Martin.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. "Time to Attend to the Wedding": Origins and Traditions
2. "A Canonical Marriage for the Uninterrupted Succession to Your Royal Dynasty": Royal Weddings and Dynastic Legitimacy
3. "And Unlike Previous Royal Weddings,There Was Not the Usual Royal Ritual": Continuity and Change
4. "To Live Together in Holy Matrimony": Orthodox and Heterodox
5. "To Serve without Regard for Place": In-Laws and Courtiers
6. "To See Your Royal Children on the Thrones": Brides and Gifts
7. "Delight in Exposing the Old Methods of the Country": Transfigurations and Parodies
8. "There Will Not Be Any Direful Reversions": Heirs and Successors
Conclusion

What People are Saying About This

Nadieszda Kizenko

In this major reconceptualization, Martin shows that royal weddings were even more suggestive and symbolic than we suspected. Embodying piety and power, they used ritual to incorporate new blood into the Russian court and to assure the succession—and the success—of the Romanov dynasty.

Eve Levin

Martin expertly decodes the complex ceremonies surrounding Russian royal wedding celebrations. He shows persuasively how the tsars, their kinsmen and kinswomen, and their officials combined traditional and innovative elements to project central messages about dynastic legitimacy, social integration, and monarchical power. Readers will come away with their understanding of Muscovite and early Imperial political culture much enhanced.

Nancy S. Kollmann

In this detailed history of weddings in Moscow's ruling family from ca. 1500 to 1745, Russell Martin argues that these rituals symbolically communicated to the court elite and broader community a vision of the stability, legitimacy and power of the dynasty.

Editorial Reviews

The Tsar's Happy Occasion on "the tsar's happiest occasions" is an excellent contribution to comparative research on wedding practice as well as to the understanding of mechanisms of securing power during the Muscovite and early Petrine eras in Russian history.

Canadian-American Slavic Studies

Martin has ferreted sources out from Russian archives and analyzed their composition and evolution with great skill. The result is a fundamental contribution to our understanding of the Russian court and hence the state over three centuries.

Journal of Modern History

Through this in-depth but beautifully written study, we gain a new appreciation of the importance of ceremony and ritual in creating and promoting visions of how the world does and should work at specific points in time.

New Books Network

Russell E. Martin has produced an impressive study of early modern weddings among Russia's ruling family. He has written a book that is fun to read.

Slavic Review

The Tsar's Happy Occasion is superb, and its erudition, argument, and clarity are of a high caliber that transcends our historical moment.

The Russian Review

Martin's work offers an intensive and impressive examination of political ritual and the ways in which it supported first the Daniilovichi and then the Romanovs at court in the 16th–early 18th centuries.

Kritika