Vasily III

12 hrs. 3 min.

Language Russian

Author Vadim Artamonov

Narrator Stepan Starchikov

Description

Vasily Ioannovich (1505–1533). A dispute over the succession to the throne that arose at the end of the reign of Grand Prince Ivan III, in which the boyars, driven by hatred for Ivan III’s wife and the mother of Vasily Ioannovich, Sophia Fominichna Paleolog, took the side of Dmitry Ivanovich, reflected upon the entire time of Vasily Ioannovich’s grand principality. He ruled through clerks (dyaks) and people who were not distinguished by nobility or the antiquity of their family. With such an arrangement, he found strong support in the influential Volokolamsk monastery, whose monks were called Josephites, named after Joseph of Volokolamsk, the founder of that monastery—a great adherent of Sophia Fominishna, in whom he found support in the fight against the heresy of the Judaizers.