scholarship was also there. A learned monk and friend of Savonarola
was translating Greek books and arranging for him the priceless volumes
in his library. Vasili himself was now in correspondence with Pope Leo
X., who was using all his arts to induce him to make friends with
Catholic Poland and join in the most important of all wars--a war upon
Constantinople, of which he, Vasili, the spiritual and temporal heir to
the Eastern Empire, was the natural protector.

All this was very splendid. But things were moving with the momentum
gained by his father, Ivan the Great. It was Vasili's inheritance, not
his reign, that was great. That inheritance he had maintained and
increased. He had humiliated the nobility, had developed the movements
initiated by his greater father, and had also shown tastes magnificent
enough for the heir of his imperial mother, Sophia Paleologus. But he
is overshadowed in history by standing between the two Ivans--Ivan the
Great and Ivan the Terrible.

[Illustration: The Czar Iván the Terrible and his son Iván Ivánovitch.
From the painting by I. E. Répin.]

Leo X. was soon too much occupied with a new foe to think about designs
upon Constantinople. A certain monk was nailing a protest upon the
door of the Church at Wittenburg which would tax to the uttermost his
energies. As from time to time travelers brought back tales of the
splendor of the Muscovite court, Europe was more than ever afraid of
such neighbors. What might these powerful barbarians not do, if they
adopted European methods! More stringent measures were enforced. They
must not have access to the implements of civilization, and Sigismund,
King of Poland, threatened English merchants on the Baltic with death.