Moscow Becomes a Patriarchate

In June 1588 Jeremias II of Constantinople, patriarch of Constantinople, reached the Russian frontier at Smolensk, and in July Tsar Fyodor received him in Moscow. No patriarch of Constantinople, the tsar told his nobles, had come to Russia in the time of his forefathers (Russian ambassadorial records, in Muravyov, Relations with the East, June–July 1588) (Russian ambassadorial records, in Muravyov, Relations with the East, July 1588 – 13 January 1589).

The records of the tsar’s foreign office say that the talks were conducted by the tsar’s brother-in-law, Boris Godunov. The tsar first proposed that Jeremias himself stay in Russia as patriarch, with his seat at Vladimir. Jeremias answered that a patriarch belongs beside the tsar and that his own church was calling him home. On 13 January 1589 Godunov asked him instead to install a patriarch chosen by the Russian council, and he agreed (Russian ambassadorial records, in Muravyov, Relations with the East, July 1588 – 13 January 1589). The bishops met on 19 January; on 23 January they named candidates and the tsar settled on Job of Moscow, metropolitan of Moscow; and on Sunday 26 January Jeremias laid his hands on him in the cathedral (Russian ambassadorial records, in Muravyov, Relations with the East, 19–26 January 1589).

In May the decisions were set down in a charter in the tsar’s name. Jeremias, it says, chose and installed Job. From now on the patriarch of Moscow is to be installed by the Russian council with the tsar’s consent and is to write to Constantinople for its agreement, and the Russian church is to have four metropolitans, six archbishops and eight bishops (Charter of the Moscow Patriarchate (1589) narrative, decrees and closing clauses). The charter also gives a speech of Jeremias in praise of the tsar. Old Rome, he says in it, fell through the Apollinarian heresy; the second Rome, Constantinople, is held by the Turks; and the tsar’s Russian realm, “the Third Rome”, has surpassed all in piety, so that he alone under heaven is called a Christian emperor (Charter of the Moscow Patriarchate (1589) speech of Jeremias).

The image was not new. About 1523 the monk Philotheus of Pskov, in a letter to a local official against astrology, had written that all Christian realms had come together in that of his sovereign: two Romes had fallen, a third stood, and a fourth there would not be (Philotheus, Letter to Munekhin closing section). That was one monk’s letter of counsel to a layman (Philotheus, Letter to Munekhin closing section). In 1589 the phrase stood in a document sealed by the tsar and by both patriarchs (Charter of the Moscow Patriarchate (1589) narrative, decrees and closing clauses).

In May 1590 a council at Constantinople confirmed what Jeremias had done. Its charter, as translated in the Russian record, says that Job is to be named and honoured with the patriarchs, with his place in the prayers after the patriarch of Jerusalem and with the see of Constantinople as his head, and that his successors may be installed by the council of Moscow. Jeremias, the patriarchs of Antioch and Jerusalem and eighty-one metropolitans, archbishops and bishops signed it (Synodal charter of Constantinople (1590) in Muravyov, under June 1590).