Maria Nagaya

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Maria Nagaya
"Tsaritsa Maria exposes the False Dmitry". Coloured lithograph in a sketch by V. Babushkin, middle of the 19th century.
Tsaritsa of all Russia
Tenure1581–1584
Bornc. 1553
Died1608 (aged c. 55)
SpouseIvan IV of Russia
IssueTsarevich Dmitry Ivanovich
DynastyRurik
FatherFeodor Nagoy
ReligionEastern Orthodox

Maria Feodorovna Nagaya (Russian: Мария Фёдоровна Нагая; c. 1553 – 1608) was a Russian tsaritsa and sixth (possibly eighth) uncanonical wife of Ivan the Terrible.

Life[edit]

Maria married Ivan in 1581 and a year later, she gave birth to their son Dmitry. In 1582, the tsar suggested to queen Elizabeth I of England that he would marry her relative Mary Hastings and divorce his wife Maria Nagaya, but these plans never came to fruition. Maria was not favored by her husband, and only the birth of her son spared her banishment from court.

After the Tsar's death in 1584, Nagaya was not granted any property in the will of the late tsar, but left to live on the income from the land of her son, who was granted Uglich, and both she and her son were placed under the guardianship of the boyars.[1] While the guardian regency of the new tsar, led by Boris Godunov, granted Maria an allowance, she was nevertheless forced to leave the court and the capital and depart with her son and her brothers to her son's city of Uglich.

In 1591, her son Dmitry died in Uglich of an epileptic seizure.[1] A commission was instigated by Godunov to investigate the death of her son, and Maria and her brothers supported the rumour that her son had died due to a political murder committed by Godunov, and supported a riot that attacked Pro-Godunov boyars' houses in Uglich.[1] They were however called to Moscow where Maria and her relatives were accused of "criminal negligence" and, as a result, her brothers were incarcerated, and she was made a nun in the Beloozero monastery.

In 1604, upon rumors that Maria had met the pretender the False Dmitry I, who posed as her son, she was called by Godunov, who questioned her, but she denied having met Dmitry and was sent back to the convent. In 1605, after the accession of False Dmitriy in Moscow, Nagaya famously legitimized him as pretender by identifying him as her son and returned to Moscow. All of her family members were freed, reinstated in their ranks, and given their confiscated property.

In 1606, the Vasily Shuiski had the body of her son Dmitry exhumed in the hope to prove that it was the body of another.[2]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c Natalia Pushkareva, Women in Russian History: From the Tenth to the Twentieth Century,
  2. ^ L., Barbour, Philip (1967). Dimitry, called the Pretender: Tsar and Great Prince of All Russia, 1605-1606. Macmillan. OCLC 1148851056.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Bibliography[edit]

  • Зимин А. А. В канун грозных потрясений: Предпосылки первой Крестьянской войны в России. М., 1986
Russian royalty
Vacant
Title last held by
Maria Dolgorukaya
Tsaritsa of Russia
1581–1584
Vacant
Title next held by
Irina Godunova