Moscow, the “Third Rome” (1505–1598)

The “century of Ivan the Terrible” (1505–1598):
Moscow, the “Third Rome”

The "gathering of Russian lands" was completed under Vasily III (1505–1533) with the capture of Smolensk and the annexation of the principality of Ryazan. The conditions were met for unified Russia—the only Orthodox state to have survived the disappearance of the Byzantine Empire in 1453—to adopt the Byzantine theocratic principle: the union of church and empire. After Ivan IV (1533–1584) was crowned on January 16, 1547, the tsar-autocrat became the only source of power, law, and justice in Russia, accepting his succession to the Byzantine emperor as the only Christian sovereign. The monk Filofei of Pskov declared Moscow to be "the Third Rome." Like the Byzantine emperors of the past, the sovereigns symbolically gathered the most distinguished relics in the Kremlin churches, and Metropolitan Macarius officialized the worship of new national saints in 1547.

The conquest of Kazan in 1552, followed by that of the Astrakhan Khanate, opened a route to the Caspian sea and the Caucasus, and Orthodoxy established itself in non-Orthodox lands with the foundation of the archbishopric of Kazan. Finally, the prestige of the imperial coronation allowed the Russian Church to attain patriarchal status in 1589; with a tsar and patriarch, Russia reproduced the Byzantine synthesis of temporal and spiritual power. However, Ivan the Terrible’s reign was blighted by the long Livonian War, the reign of terror and repression with the oprichnina (1564–1572), the sack of Novgorod, the corn crises, and Ivan’s murder of his son, Tsarevich Ivan. Yet production continued in the Kremlin workshops, dedicated to the glory of the Tsar and the Church.