Charter on the Establishment of the Patriarchate of Moscow

The charter is dated at Moscow in May of the year 7097 from the creation of the world, that is, 1589, some months after the installation it records. It is written in the tsar’s name. Fyodor Ivanovich says that he and his wife Irina resolved to set up a patriarchal throne in Moscow and put the matter to Jeremias, patriarch of Constantinople, who had come to Russia with the metropolitan of Monemvasia and the archbishop of Elasson; that Jeremias, with the Russian council, chose and installed Job, the metropolitan of Moscow; that future patriarchs are to be installed in Moscow by the Russian bishops with the tsar’s consent and are to write to Constantinople for its agreement; and that the Russian church is to have four metropolitans, six archbishops and eight bishops. A list of those present follows.

The best-known passage is a speech that the charter gives to Jeremias. He praises the tsar and says that the old Rome fell by the Apollinarian heresy, that the second Rome, Constantinople, is in the hands of the Turks, and that the tsar’s Russian realm, “the Third Rome”, surpasses all in piety, so that he alone under heaven is called a Christian emperor. The words stand in a document drawn up in Moscow in the tsar’s name; they echo the letter of the monk Philotheus recorded as Letter to Misyur Munekhin on Unfavourable Days and Hours. The act that Jeremias and the other eastern patriarchs issued themselves, a year later in Constantinople, is recorded as Synodal Charter of Constantinople Confirming the Patriarchate of Moscow.