Reutenfels, Jakob

Dates of birth and death unknown. Author of notes on the Russian state of the 17th century.

Reutenfels lived in Moscow from 1670 to 1673. He had access to the court through his uncle, who was the physician of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich. In the late 1670’s he lived at the court of the Duke of Tuscany, for whom his notes were composed.

In his work Reutenfels described the territory, population, and political and economic structure of Russia. He wrote about the organization of the legal procedure and of the army, furnished information concerning S. T. Razin, whose execution he witnessed, and described political and public figures of the second half of the 17th century, such as A. S. Matveev and S. Polotskii. Reutenfels also devoted a large part of the work to the architecture and culture of Moscow.