The "Book of Degrees" and the Russian dynastic crisis of the turn of the seventeenth century

Compiled in the 1560s, the Book of Degrees [Stepennaia kniga], was already obsolete by the end of the sixteenth century. In the next century, it was used as a source in only a limited number of historical and hagiographical works composed by clerics. From the 1630s onward, several attempts were made to update the text of the Book of Degrees and connect the Romanov dynasty with the Moscow Rurikids. The most successful were Sergii Shelonin's and Tikhon Makarievskii's writings. The History of tsars and grand princes of the Rus land, compiled in 1667 by Secretary F.A. Griboedov, is a special case: materials taken from the Book of Degrees are arranged in a different perspective. All in all, the influence of the Book of Degrees on Russian seventeenth-century historiography is questionable, and, at best, limited and spotty.