Maria Nagaya

Maria Nagaya
"Tsaritsa Marfa exposes the False Dmitry". Coloured lithograph in a sketch by V. Babushkin, middle of the 19th century.
Tsaritsa of All Russia
Tenure 1581–1584
Died c. 1608
Spouse Ivan IV of Russia
Issue Tsarevich Dmitry Ivanovich
Dynasty Rurik
Father Feodor Nagoy
Religion Eastern Orthodox

Maria Feodorovna Nagaya (Russian: Мария Фёдоровна Нагая) (died 1608) was a Russian tsaritsa and fifth (possibly seventh) uncanonical wife of Ivan the Terrible.

Life

Maria married Ivan IV in 1581 and a year later, she gave birth to their son Dmitry. In 1582, the czar suggested to queen Elizabeth of England that he marry her relative Mary Hastings and divorce his wife Maria Nagaya, but these plans never came to fruition.

After the Tsar's death in 1584, Nagaya was not granted any property in the will of the late czar, but left to live on the income from the land of her son, who was granted Uglich, and both she and her son was placed under the guardianship of the boyars.[1] [1] While the guardian regency of the new czar, lead 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 Dimtry died in Uglich of an epileptic seizure.[1] A commission was instiaged 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 who attached 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, 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 I 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 False Dimitry had the body of her son Dmitry exhumed in the hope to prove that it was the body of another. This act, however, offended Maria, who renounced the False Dmitry as her son with the support of the boyars, thus undermining his legitimacy as czar. After the death of False Dmitry, Maria was allowed to remain to attend the reburial of her son before returning to the convent.

References

  • 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
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