Synodal Charter of Constantinople Confirming the Patriarchate of Moscow

Jeremias installed Job at Moscow in January 1589. This charter is the confirmation given the next year by a council at Constantinople. In it Jeremias says that the tsar received him and asked for the patriarchal dignity for the archbishop of Moscow; that he installed Job and gave him a patriarchal charter; and that on his return the other patriarchs approved. The council therefore declares that Job is to be honoured and named with the patriarchs, that his place in the prayers is after the patriarch of Jerusalem, that he is to hold the see of Constantinople as his head, as the other patriarchs do, and that after him the council of Moscow may install its patriarchs.

According to the Russian record the charter was signed by Jeremias, Joachim of Antioch and Sophronius of Jerusalem and by forty-two metropolitans, nineteen archbishops and twenty bishops, and was delivered in Moscow in June 1590 by Dionysius, metropolitan of Tarnovo. The text used here is the translation made for the tsar’s officials, so its wording is theirs.