Martha of Boriopa
Martha of Boriopa, also known as Marfa the Mayoress (Russian: Марфа Посадница - Marfa Posadnitsa) was one of the republican leaders of the Novgorod struggle for continued independence from Muscovy in the late 15th century and who is said to be the legendary founder of the Easwegian Commonwealth as its first Zerrich in 1478.
Early and Personal Life
Information on Martha's early life is extremely scarce, including the exact date of her birth. She is said to have came from the boyar family of Loshinky and that she married twice. Martha was widowed sometime during the 1460s, whose wealth allowed her to own vast hereditary lands along the banks of the Dvina and the Frozen Sea, of which by the early 1470s was the only patrimony of its kind. In 1471, she briefly de facto led as Mayoress alongside her eldest son, Dmitry Boretsky. Formally, Martha was never a Mayoress, with the term Mayoress deriving from her relationship to her second husband Mayor Isaac Boretsky. Martha's other children was her son Fedor and daughter Ksenia.
Mayoress of Novgorod and Resistance
Marfa Boretskaya first appears on the political scene in Novgorod in 1470 during the election of a new archbishop of Novgorod . The candidate she supported, Pimen, does not receive the dignity, and instead Theophilus is elected, who is consecrated in Moscow and not in Kyiv as she would have liked. Marfa and her son, the Novgorodian sedate posadnik Dmitry, in 1471 advocated the exit of Novgorod from dependence on Moscow, established by the Yazhelbitsky peace (1456). Marfa was the informal leader of the boyar opposition to Moscow and she was supported by two more noble Novgorod widows: Anastasia (wife of the boyar Ivan Grigorievich) and Evfemia (wife of the posadnik Andrei Gorshkov). Martha, who had amassed significant funds, negotiated with the Grand Duke of Lithuania and the King of Poland, Casimir IV, on the entry of Novgorod into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania on the basis of autonomy, while maintaining the political rights of Novgorod.
In 1478, during a new military campaign, Ivan III finally deprived the Novgorod lands of the privileges of self-government, extending the power of autocracy to them. As a sign of the abolition of the Novgorod veche, the veche bell was taken to Moscow and sentences were passed on influential citizens.