Ivan Chernyi
Ivan Chernyi
a scribe at the court of Grand Prince Ivan III of Moscow in the 1480’s; a leading member of the Moscow circle of religious reformers headed by Fedor Kuritsyn.
The most important of the works copied by Ivan Chernyi is the so-called Hellenic Chronicler. It contained a formulation of the ideology of a centralized state that was to greatly influence the development of historical studies in the 15th—17th centuries. Ivan is also known to have copied a collection of didactic essays intended for monks, the Ladder by Ioann Lestvichnik (1485), as well as a collection of historical and religious essays (1489). He wrote an epilogue to the Hellenic Chronicler. His marginal notes in the manuscripts he copied have helped scholars to partially reconstruct the views of the Russian religious reformers of the late 15th century. Attacked by militant churchmen, Ivan Chernyi fled abroad in 1490, possibly to Lithuania.
REFERENCES
Klibanov, A.I. “Knigi Ivana Chernogo.” Istoricheskie zapiski, vol. 62. Moscow, 1958.Klibanov, A.I. Reformatsionnye dvizheniia v Rossii v XlV-pervoi polovine XVI v. Moscow, 1960.