Letter to Misyur Munekhin on Unfavourable Days and Hours

Almost nothing is known of Philotheus beyond what his letters show: he was a monk of the Eleazar monastery near Pskov in the first half of the sixteenth century. The editor of the text explains the occasion. A physician at the Moscow court had translated a German almanac predicting a flood for 1524, and the Pskov official Mikhail Misyur Munekhin asked the monk what to make of it. The editor dates the reply to the end of 1523 or the beginning of 1524.

Philotheus answers that the stars are lifeless and govern nothing, and that kingdoms rise and fall by the will of God and by their faithfulness. The Greek realm, he says, was laid waste ninety years before because it gave up the Orthodox faith for the Latin; the walls of great Rome still stand, but the souls of its people have been taken captive on account of the unleavened bread; and all Christian realms have now come together in the realm of his sovereign, for two Romes have fallen, a third stands, and a fourth there will not be. The edition prints the realm as “Roman”; its note says that the manuscript it follows reads “Russian” and that the word was corrected from another copy (Q.XVII.50). From this he draws a warning to the ruler to hold his realm with great care and with turning to God.

The letter is a monk’s private counsel to a layman, and a second letter under his name addresses the grand prince in similar terms. It is not an act of the Russian church or state. Its phrase was taken up, in other words, in the Charter on the Establishment of the Patriarchate of Moscow. The editor notes that scholars disagree on whether Philotheus meant a political claim at all.