Boretskaya Marfa (also known as Marfa the Posadnitsa; not later than 1450 — after 1479) was a Novgorodian boyarynya of the Loshinsky family, the largest landowner and a leading political figure of the Novgorod Republic in the 15th century. The widow of the posadnik Isaak Boretsky, she effectively ruled Novgorod for several years, headed the pro-Lithuanian party of boyars that opposed Moscow, and was exiled to Nizhny Novgorod after Novgorod was finally annexed to the Principality of Moscow in 1478–1479.[1]

Origins and Family

Marfa came from the boyar family of the Loshinskys: in the chronicles her son Fyodor Boretsky is called the "sestrichich" (sister's son) of Ivan Ivanovich Loshinsky, and Marfa's brother owned the selo of Rakoml, three versts from Yuryev Monastery, on the shore of Lake Ilmen.[2] There is reason to believe that Marfa was married twice. By her first husband, the boyar Philip, she had two sons, Anton and Felix, who drowned at sea while traveling to their estates on the Korela Coast and were buried beside the cathedral church of the Nikolo-Korelsky Monastery; Marfa donated three villages, hayfields, and fishing grounds to this monastery.[2] In her second marriage, to the posadnik Isaak Andreyevich Boretsky, she bore two sons, Dmitry and Fyodor.[2]

Political Role in Novgorod

The Boretskys were among the richest and most distinguished boyar families of the Novgorod lands.[1] After she was widowed for the second time, in the 1460s, the nickname "Posadnitsa" became attached to Marfa; her fortune was surpassed only by the wealth of the Archbishop of Novgorod and the republic's largest monasteries.[3] In 1471, together with her son Dmitry, the stepenny posadnik, she headed the boyar party hostile to Moscow, which negotiated Novgorod's transfer into the allegiance of the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Casimir IV.[3] The Novgorod Fourth Chronicle directly accused Marfa of conspiring with the Lithuanian prince Mikhail Olelkovich.[3]

Marfa also donated to the Solovetsky Monastery the volosts of Suma and Kem (1450) and holdings on the Tersky Coast (1470), and on the Tersky Coast she owned extensive fishing grounds, from the Umba boundary to the Krasnaya Shchelika.[1]

Exile to Nizhny Novgorod

After Novgorod was finally annexed by Moscow in 1478, Marfa was arrested on the orders of Ivan III. On January 15, 1479, she was sent first to Moscow and then into exile in Nizhny Novgorod, where she was forced to take the veil as a nun, and all her property was confiscated.[1][3] Nizhny Novgorod became the last known place of her residence; her subsequent fate is not traceable in the sources.

Depiction in culture

Marfa Boretskaya became the central character of Nikolay Karamzin's historical novella "Marfa the Posadnitsa, or the Conquest of Novgorod" (1803), devoted to the events of the 1470s. The publisher of the novella described her as a "wondrous woman who knew how to take hold of the people," possessed of a great mind; the chronicles and old songs, according to Karamzin, likewise paid tribute to her extraordinary abilities.[4]

Sources

  1. ke-culture.gov-murman.ru — Boretskaya Marfa Ivanovna
  2. ru.wikisource.org — RBS/VT/Boretskaya, Marfa Ivanovna — Wikisource
  3. hrono.ru
  4. azbyka.ru — Marfa the Posadnitsa, or the Conquest of Novgorod — Karamzin Nikolay Mikhaylovich — read online, download