Among Russian historians Ivan IV. has found apologists as well as writers who have held him up to execration and condemned his statecraft and his cruelties alike. Even while examining critically the evidence against him on the latter score, the result arrived at is that he was probably as “terrible” as he is painted. Chronicles and historical accounts were still largely in ecclesiastical hands, and scant justice would be done to the memory of a man who had married six or seven wives. The Church might forgive his hates, but never his loves. Nor can the evidence of Kourbski be accepted as unbiassed in the matter of Ivan’s character. Other contemporary witnesses there are, however, whose testimony points in the same direction, and who were in no way interested in libelling the Tzar. Horsey, who was on terms of good fellowship with him, wrote, “The Emperour liueth in feare, daily discouers Treasons, and spends much time in torturing and execution.” A Venetian attached to the Polish Embassy at Moskva in 1570 described the Tzar as “the greatest tyrant who has ever existed,” and mentions a delinquent voevoda being thrown to a savage bear, “kept for that purpose.” The cruelties and oppressions practised by the Russian monarch were widely commented on during both the Polish elections, and the reports largely militated against his candidature. Finally the document in the Kirillov monastery, in which the Tzar complacently prays for the souls of 3470 of his victims, would, if authentic, show that the extent at least of his executions has not been exaggerated. Nor is this gloating savagery, blended as it was with a rational and understandable policy, difficult to comprehend. Ivan the Terrible was the outcome of a long line of Moskovite princes, men who had been actuated by one ruling idea, which idea was in him so developed and specialised that he was nothing short of a monomaniac. The idea was that Moskovy, and God, and Gosoudar were scarcely distinguishable entities, bound up in indissoluble bonds. With the substitution of other countries, other sovereigns in other days have fallen into the same confusion. Jealous, awe-inspiring, pain-inflicting, terrible--such was the conception of a God among peoples in most parts of the world, such was the character which came naturally to the holy, Orthodox, Moskva-bred Tzar. The religious side of Ivan’s nature was always prominent; his prostrations in the churches, his zeal in monastic regulations, the pious reflections which formed so remarkable a part of his correspondence, the solemn forebodings over Kourbski’s soul, were all indications of a mind steeped in dogmatic belief.