Plus ça change: The Shaping of Early Muscovite Diplomatic Rituals
Journal: RussianStudiesHu
Year: 2025

This study examines the diplomatic rituals and ceremonies employed in formal exchanges of envoys between Muscovy and the Grand Principality of Lithuania in the late fifteenth century and first decades of the sixteenth and also analyzes the application of parallel procedures in the reception of messengers conveying “private” letters between Lithuanian lords (pany) and Moscow boiars. The concerns for honor, precedence, and control of information, as well as the manner of negotiating, all so eviden