Marina Mniszech

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Marina Mniszech
Tsaritsa consort of all Russia
Tenure18 May [O.S. 8 May] 1606 – 27 May [O.S. 17 May] 1606
Coronation18 May [O.S. 8 May] 1606
PredecessorMaria Skuratova-Belskaya
SuccessorMaria Buynosova-Rostovskaya
Born1588
Laszki Murowane, Crown of the Kingdom of Poland[1]
Died24 December 1614(1614-12-24) (aged 25–26)
Kolomna Kremlin, Tsardom of Russia
Spouses
Roman Catholicism

Marina Mniszech or Marina Mnishek (

Catholicism
.

Life

Official portrait of False Dmitry I

Marina

Novgorod, and her father Smolensk and Severia. After the death of Boris Godunov, Dmitri captured Moscow in June 1605. In November he sent a diplomatic mission to Poland, asking for Marina's hand and proposing a military alliance to defeat the Ottoman Empire
.

Tsaritsa

Coronation of Maryna Mniszech in Moscow by Tommaso Dolabella.

The first wedding ceremony, performed in November 1605 by the

Rurikid crown on her head. It is unknown whether Marina converted from Catholicism to Orthodoxy. She wore a Polish wedding dress, and Dmitri wore the armor of a Polish hussar
.

However, Marina did not reign long. On the morning of 17 May 1606, about two weeks after the coronation, conspirators opposed to Dmitri and his policy of close cooperation with Poland stormed the Kremlin. Dmitri tried to flee through a window but broke his leg in the fall. One of the plotters shot him dead on the spot. At first the body was put on display, then cremated and the ashes were shot from a cannon towards Poland. Dmitri's reign had lasted a mere ten months. Vasili Shuisky, whom Dmitri earlier pardoned for conspiring against him, took his place as Tsar. This coup d'état caused thousands of deaths, including many from the Polish entourage. Marina and her father Jerzy Mniszech were imprisoned. However, the story of the False Dmitri was just beginning.

Later life

After the death of False Dmitry I, Marina Mniszech was spared her life – after she had rejected her royal title – and sent back to Poland in July 1608.[2] However, her father Jerzy Mniszech didn't give up on his plan to become father-in-law of the Tsar. Exiled to Yaroslavl, he searched for a way to regain his favours. With his help, Marina turned up in Tushino, where she would secretly marry another impostor False Dmitry II, after supposedly recognizing him as her husband. Polish hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski wrote in his memoirs that the only two things False Dmitris I and II had in common was that "they were both human and usurpers". False Dmitry II was killed in December 1610.

Marina Mniszech then found herself a protector in the person of

Yaik River in May 1614, after failing to gather support for a Cossack uprising, they were captured by the Cossacks
and handed over to the new Tsar the following month.

Ivan Zarutsky and Mniszech's little son were executed in 1614. Marina Mniszech died in prison in Kolomna Kremlin fortress, soon afterwards.[3] According to some sources she was found strangled.

In popular culture

Marina Mniszech in coronation robes, 1606.

Marina Mniszech appears as a character in

False Dmitriy I, the depictions of the future Tsaritsa are quite different. Pushkin wrote, "A tragedy without love attracted my imagination. But apart from love entering a great deal into the character of my adventurer, I made Dmitri fall in love with Marina to make the strange character of the latter stand out better. It is barely outlined in Karamzin. But certainly, she was an odd and pretty woman. She had only one passion and that was ambition, but with such a degree of energy, or fury, that it is difficult to imagine it. Look how having sampled royalty, drunk on a dream, she prostitutes herself to one adventurer after another -- shares now the disgusting bed of a Jew, now the tent of a Cossack, always ready to give herself to whoever can show her a faint hope of a throne which no longer exists. Look at her brave war, poverty, shame, at the same time negotiating with the King of Poland like one crowned head to another, and then end her most stormy and most extraordinary existence so miserably. I have only one scene for her, but I will return to her if God lets me live long enough. She upsets me like a violent emotion. She is horribly Polish, as Mme. Lubomirska's cousin said."[4]

Marinkina Tower in the Kolomna Kremlin where Mniszech died

In Mussorgsky's opera, however, Marina Mniszech's ambitious manipulation of her future husband is shown to be instigated by a

Jesuit priest Ercole Rangoni, who eventually threatens her with hellfire unless she seduces the Pretender. Then Rangoni informs False Dmitry about Marina coming to the garden and secretly being in love with him [with False Dmitry]. The Pretender confesses his feelings but the proud Marina rejects the love of a 'daring vagabond', and promises to share his feelings only after he becomes a Tsar to make her a Tsaritsa of all Russias.[5][6]

In folklore

When Marina's three-year-old son, Tsarevich Ivan Dmitriyevich, was publicly hanged, Marina – according to the Russian ambassador to the Polish royal court – “died of longing for her own fate”. According to other sources, she either was hanged or was drowned.

A popular legend in

Nicholas II and his family, including his twelve-year-old son the tsarevich, was Marinka the Witch's revenge for the barbaric public execution of her tsarevich-son.[9][10]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Laszki Murowane". Dawne Kresy (Former Kresy) (in Polish). Retrieved 2010-02-09.
  2. ^ Renegades, rebels and rogues under the Tsars. 2004-04-01.
  3. ISBN 978-0-511-49717-9
  4. ^ The Critical Prose of Alexander Pushkin, edited and translated by Carl R. Proffer. University of Indiana Press, 1969. Pages 96-97.
  5. ISBN 5-7140-0142-7
    .
  6. ^ "Борис Годунов - второй обзор - заговор, шизофрения и голод - 3 действие 1 картин" [Boris Godunov - Second Review - Conspiracy, Schizophrenia and Hunger - Part 3 Act 1]. YouTube (in Russian). ANGE (humorous and educational programme). 8 August 2020. Retrieved 5 October 2020.
  7. ISBN 0-87332-889-2
    .
  8. ^ "Putin's Russia and the ghost of the Romanovs". The Economist official YouTube channel. July 17, 2018. Retrieved November 24, 2018.
  9. ^ "Горелова Л. Е. Памятники русской медицинской письменности // Русский медицинский журнал. — 14.02.2000. — Т.8. — № 5" [' Gorelova L.E. Monuments of Russian medical writing]. Archived from the original on January 2, 2017.
  10. ^ "Проклятие Марины Мнишек: сказ о лжецарице, русском пире и русском бунте" [The Curse by Marina Mnishek: A Tale of the False Queen, Russian Feast and Russian Rebellion] (in Russian). June 29, 2018. Retrieved November 24, 2019.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Marina Mniszech.
Marina Mniszech
Born: 1588 Died: 1614
Russian royalty
Vacant
Title last held by
Maria Grigorievna Skuratova-Belskaya
Tsaritsa of Russia

1605–1606 		Vacant
Title next held by
Maria Buynosova-Rostovskaya
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