noun
definition
A member of a rank of aristocracy (second only to princes) in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia and Romania.
Examples of boyar in a Sentence
Equally friendly were the great boyar families.
He first asserted his power by literally throwing to the dogs the last of his boyar tyrants, and shortly afterwards announced his intention of assuming the title of tsar, a title which his father and grandfather had coveted but never dared to assume publicly.
At the end of the year Matvyeev was raised to the rank of okolnichy, and on the 1st of September 1674 attained the still higher dignity of boyar.
For disobedience to his orders he imprisoned a boyar who was his own brother-in-law, and he caused another to be beheaded for complaining that the boyar-council was not consulted in important affairs of state.
On his return to Russia he was created a boyar of the first class and entrusted with the direction of the foreign office, with the title of "Guardian of the great Tsarish Seal and Director of the great Imperial Offices."
In 1580 the tsar chose Irene, the sister of Boris, to be the bride of the tsarevich Theodore, on which occasion Boris was promoted to the rank of boyar.
Feodor's grandson, Sakhariya Ivanovich, was a boyar of Vasilii V., grand-duke of Moscow at intervals between 1425 and 1462, and the family took its name from his grandson Roman, whose daughter Anastasia Rornanovna married the tsar Ivan the Terrible.
Radovici or Dinu din Golesti, an enlightened Walachian boyar, who was one of the first Rumanians to describe a journey in Western Europe, is also the author of a collection of maxims and parables, Adunare de pilde bisericesti filosofesti (Budapest, 1824); he left a larger collection in MS. partly edited by Zane in his Proverbele Romdnilor, vols.
Hitherto, by his own showing, the private life of the young tsar had been unspeakably abominable, but his sensitive conscience (he was naturally religious) induced him, in 1550, to summon a Zemsky Sobor or national assembly, the first of its kind, to which he made a curious public confession of the sins of his youth, and at the same time promised that the realm of Russia (for whose dilapidation he blamed the boyar regents) should henceforth be governed justly and mercifully.
The oligarchical party considered it a disgrace to obey a simple boyar; conspiracies were frequent, the rural districts were desolated by famine and plague, great bands of armed brigands roamed about the country committing all manner of atrocities, the Cossacks on the frontier were restless, and the government showed itself incapable of maintaining order.
When the Boyar Duma became the Senate, and the Prikazi or administrative departments were organized under the name of Colleges, and when every important town was endowed with a Rathhaus, a Polizeimeister, gilds, aldermen, and all the municipal paraphernalia of western Europe, the vices of the old institutions survived in the new.
In 1690 he was created a boyar and shared with Lev Naruishkin, Peter's uncle, the conduct of home affairs.
A boyar of Nizhniy-Novgorod who allowed himself to criticize the new order of things, and attributed the change to the influence of the Greek princess, had his tongue cut out.