During the late 1550s, the attention of many educated Europeans, particularly in the Holy Roman Empire, was drawn towards the East, towards the Russian frontier. In the opening stages of the Livonian War (1558-1583), the once-proud Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order disintegrated under the determined advance of the armies of Ivan IV of Russia (r. 1533/1547-1584). Muscovy, a realm on the margins of Western geographical knowledge, had entered the centre stage of European politics. Sensational accounts, circulating in broadsheets and pamphlets, sketched an alarming image of the Muscovite barbarians, their wanton cruelty, and their unbridled expansionism. Soon, agitated commentators predicted, Poland, the Scandinavian kingdoms, and even the Empire itself might fall to the relentless Muscovite onslaught. To emphasize the scope of the threat, contemporaries even equated the grand prince of Muscovy with the quintessential enemy of European Christianity, the Ottoman sultan. Both Turk and Muscovite alike were perceived as harbingers of the impending apocalypse.

A particularly well-known pamphlet, entitled Sehr grewliche/ erschrœckliche/ vorvnerhœrte/ warhafftige Newe zeyttung/ was für grausame Tyranney der Moscouiter/ an den Gefangenen/ hinweggefuerten Christen auß Lyfland … begehet … (‘Very gruesome, terrifying, and outrageous new tidings on the cruel tyranny committed by the Muscovite against the Christian prisoners and deportees from Livonia’) and printed at Nuremberg in 1561, provided a dramatic description of the Russians’ alleged atrocities: ‘Women and virgins are dishonoured and violated in such a way that it is impossible to write down or say. All the little children in Livonia that are seized by [the Muscovite] are dismembered, their tender hearts are nailed to the trees all over the country, and he orders [his soldiers] to shoot at them’. On the title page, an anonymous woodcut visualizes the horrid spectacle (figure 12.1): three naked women are hung from a tree, and a group of Muscovite archers pierces them with arrows. The mutilated bodies of children are heaped below the tree, and their hearts – which the perpetrators apparently cut from their bodies – are hung from the branches, displayed among the dying women. Both perpetrators and victims are depicted in a very static way, both motionless and emotionless, conveying a peculiar notion of formality, even serenity, which increases the unsettling effect of the gruesome scene even further.