Иоганн Бланкенфельд и Мисюрь Мунехин: К истории ливонско-русских отношении в 1520-е годы
Johann Blankenfeld and Misyur Munekhin. On the history of Livonian-Russian relations in the 1520s.

Summary/Abstract: The archbishop of Riga and bishop of Tartu Johann Blankenfeld asked 1525 Russia for help against his Livonian opponents. Blankenfeld (†1527) originated from Berlin and acquired his positions in Livonia due to his close relations to the papal curia and the Hohenzollern dynasty. He was an outsider in Livonian policy and come into acute conflict with local nobility and towns. Simultaneously, it was the time, when the reformation ideas became popular in Livonia. The adversaries of Blankenfeld made use of his diplomatic contacts with Russia. They could effectively represent the bishop’s policy as dangerous and perfidious conspiracy with “non-Christians”. Blankenfeld stood some time under arrest in his residence castle Rauna and left then Baltics in 1526 being eliminated from Livonian internal affairs. Blankenfeld himself denied the conspiracy and claimed that he contacted Russians on behalf of the Pope. The bishop intermediated also the diplomacy between Vasili III of Moscow and Albrecht of Prussia; the latter gained in 1521 Russian funding for his war against the King of Poland. Thus Blankenfeld in point of fact asking Muscovian support acted like his patron some years earlier. There is no detailed information about the claimed papal mandate for Blankenfeld. He indeed had correspondence with the famous Pskov dyak Misyur Munekhin. It is not impossible, that they even could meet personally.

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