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Further Reading

The Third Rome

At the opening of the fifteenth century the primitively patriarchal regime, which as the dynasties had grown had taken the form of petty principalities, finally gave place to a centralised state consciously based upon public law. This development secured political expression in the legal fiction that Grand Prince Ivan III, on his marriage in 1472 with the daughter of the last Palaeologus, had received from Constantinople the headship of the Byzantine empire. Muscovy now adopted the two-headed Byzantine eagle as its escutcheon, but not until the following century, in the year 1547, did Ivan IV, the Terrible, assuming the title of tsar, have himself crowned as successor of the Caesars.

In the Moscovite times, after the downfall of Constantinople (1453), the first Russian doctrine of political mysticism was formulated. It is known as the Doctrine of the Third Rome, and is to the effect that since the first Rome fell into the hands of the heathen, and since Constantinople (Tzargrad), the second Rome, succumbed to a similar fate, Moscow was the third Rome, and there would be no fourth.

While western Europe was slow and, perhaps, reluctant to take cognizance of Muscovy's political ascendancy, the transformation that had brought about the birth of the autocratic state could not but impress the Russians themselves. The authority and prestige of the grand dukes of Moscow were greatly enhanced by the fate of its old mentor, Byzantium, and by that of its secular enemy, the Golden Horde. Since 1448, as a consequence of the Ferrara-Florence Council, Russia had elected and consecrated its own metropolitans, thus achieving de facto independence from the patriarch of Constantinople. Five years later Byzantium was conquered by the Turks, and in 1480 Khan Akhmad's withdrawal from the banks of the Ugra River, with the subsequent collapse of the Golden Horde, raised Muscovy to the status of a sovereign state. These two events directly affected the position of the Russian Church, which was now left for the first time face to face with the formidable power of Muscovite absolutism, with neither Constantinople nor Sarai to defend its ancient privileges against possible encroachments by the grand dukes. The Church chose the road of submission and threw its influence to the support of the ambitions of the Moscow dynasty.

The Russian Church had always favored unification and, in agreement with the Byzantine theory, had preached the doctrine of the divine origin of the secular power. The fall of Byzantium and of the other centers of Greek Orthodoxy in the Balkans under Turkish domination raised the question of leadership in the Greek Orthodox world. The unhappy fate of Constantinople was explained by the Moscow theologians as a punishment for accepting union with Rome. The successor of Byzantium, it was declared, was Muscovy, whose brilliant political progress at the very time when the ancient strongholds of Greek Orthodoxy were suffering desecration at the hands of the unfaithful was in itself striking evidence of divine grace and also of divine justice. The first Rome had fallen because it had betrayed true Christianity; Constantinople, the Second Rome, suffered a similar fate for a similar reason; Moscow, the Third Rome and the capital of the only truly Christian sovereign, was to continue forever.

The Russian monk Philothei wrote to the Tsar Vassilii, the father of Ivan the Terrible: "Give heed unto this, O pious Tsar. Two Romes have now fallen, and the third one, our Moscow, yet standeth, and a fourth one shall there never be. In thy puissant Empire the Council of our Church doth shine throughout .all the world with a light of holiness which is greater even than the light of the sun. In all the world thou alone art the Christian Tsar."

During the period of Kiev the Byzantines had introduced a religious ideology into Russia : orthodoxy, to wit ; and during the period of Moscow they introduced a new political ideology. The external sign of the Byzantine influence was the marriage of Ivan III to the niece of the Emperor of Byzantium - Sophia Palaeologus. This marriage, excellent from a diplomatic point of view, enabled Ivan III to adopt the arms of the empire for his own. The two-headed eagle has ever since been the blazon of the Russian State. Later, in the treasury of the Grand-Duke of Moscow, a crown and other articles were "discovered," which constituted the so-called regalia of the Byzantine Emperors, which were ceded, so it was said, by the latter to the Prince of Moscow in token of the transference of their power. But this is mere legend.

To make the reasoning more convincing, some ingenious chronicler worked out a family tree tracing the lineage of the Moscovite tzars from the Roman Emperor Augustus. Conveniently forgetting that he was a pagan, the tzars accepted him into the family. Yet even foreign ambassadors who were not Greek orthodox were considered heretics so impure that the tzars would wash their hands in an official ceremony after receiving them if they were of the rank to entitle them to kiss the tzar's hand.

In 1471 the metropolitan of Moscow, Philip, wrote in one of his charters : " Learn, O my children, that the city of Constantinople and the Church of God were indestructible, for, like the sun, there shone the true faith. But losing hold of the truth, the Patriarch of Constantinople joined himself to the Latins (Catholics), swearing fealty to the Pope, for the sake of gold. Then died prematurely the Patriarch, and Tsargrad (the Tsar of Cities) fell into the hands of the impure Turks." Thus was laid the ideological basis which enabled the Muscovite princes to become " heirs " of the absolute power of the Byzantine Emperors and sole defenders of the Orthodox faith.

By consecrating to the office of Patriarch of All Rus the Muscovite Metropolitan Job, Jeremy, in 1589, finally confirmed the longpending hierarchical separation of the Russian Church from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. It would seem as though Jeremy must have got wind of the cherished ideas of the Russians of the sixteenth century, so nearly to the thoughts of the above Philothei did the words which he addressed to the Muscovite Tsar concerning the institution of a Patriarchate in Moscow approximate. " In thee," said he, " there dwelleth the Holy Spirit; and of God is it now given unto thee to remember that ancient Rome did fall through heresy, and that the second Rome, Constantinople, hath fallen into the keeping of the grandsons of the Hagarenes, the godless Turks. But thy great Tsardom of Rus doth surpass all in piety, and thou alone art known, throughout the universe, as the one Christian Tsar."

There became concocted in Russia of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the stories concerning the voyage of a Roman Abbot named Antonius to Novgorod-a journey performed on a rock, with, as cargo, certain holy relics; concerning the miraculous translation of a wonder-working ikon of the Holy Mother from the Byzantine East to Tikhvin in Rus; and so on. Also certain personages who came to Rus from the ravaged Orthodox East, to beg alms or to seek an asylum, helped to confirm in the Russians their national conviction.

As the fundamental motive of this national self-complacency we see the notion that, in all the world, Orthodox Rus was now the sole cherisher and defender of genuine Christian truth, of purest Orthodoxy; and from this notion, through a certain transposition of ideas, the national conceit deduced the additional conviction that the Christianity whereof Rus was the possessor was, with all its local peculiarities and its native limitedness of understanding, the one true Christianity under heaven, and that no other pure Orthodoxy existed, nor ever could exist, than the Russian.

The doctrine of the Third Rome and the pedigree were free from imperialistic tendencies toward expansion. Their real purpose was to give to the proud tzars, who were called simply grand dukes of Moscow until Ivan III married Sophia, niece of the last Byzantine emperor (1472), an argument upon which to base their claim for international recognition of their new title of tzar (Caesar), as well as equality of rank with the Kaiser, that is, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.