The Mongol and Muscovite Periods (1237–1589)

The Mongol invasion devastated Kievan Rus’ but paradoxically granted the Church relative freedom and tax exemption. During this period, the ecclesiastical center shifted from Kiev to Moscow, Russian monasticism experienced a great revival under St. Sergius of Radonezh, and the Russian Church achieved de facto autocephaly (1448) and established its own Patriarchate (1589). The fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 gave rise to the influential “Moscow the Third Rome” ideology.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox

The Mongol Invasion and the Church (1237–1480)

The Mongol (Tatar) invasion of 1237–1240 under Batu Khan devastated the lands of Kievan Rus’. Kiev itself was sacked in 1240 and reduced to near-ruins. The destruction was immense: cities were burned, populations massacred or enslaved, and the political structure of Kievan Rus’ was shattered.

However, the position of the Orthodox Church under Mongol rule was paradoxically favorable:

Tax exemptions: The Mongols, following their general policy of religious tolerance (enshrined in the Yasa of Genghis Khan), granted the Russian Church immunity from taxation and tribute. A series of yarlyki (charters) from the khans confirmed the Church’s privileges, exempting clergy, monasteries, and church properties from all levies and forced labor.
Religious freedom: The Mongols did not interfere with the Church’s internal governance, worship, or missionary activity, so long as the clergy prayed for the health of the khan.
Growth: Paradoxically, the period of Mongol domination saw the Russian Church grow in wealth, landholdings, and social influence, as it was the one institution that retained its organizational integrity across the fragmented Russian lands.

(Fennell, The Crisis of Medieval Russia, chs. 2–4; Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols, chs. 3–4)

The Debate on Mongol Influence

Historians have debated the extent to which Mongol rule influenced Russian political and ecclesiastical culture. Some (e.g., the “Eurasianists” and later scholars like Charles Halperin) have argued that Muscovite autocracy owed much to Mongol models. Others minimize the cultural impact. The Church itself was largely insulated from Mongol religious influence, maintaining its Byzantine theological and liturgical orientation throughout the period.

The Move to Moscow

The gradual shift of the ecclesiastical center from Kiev to Moscow was one of the most consequential developments of this period:

Metropolitan Maximus moved his residence from Kiev to Vladimir in 1299, as Kiev had become depopulated and insecure after the Mongol devastation.
Metropolitan Peter (d. 1326), though appointed Metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus’, transferred his residence to Moscow in 1325 at the invitation of Grand Prince Ivan I Kalita (“Moneybag”). In 1326, the year of his death, the Cathedral of the Dormition (Uspensky Sobor) was founded in the Moscow Kremlin; Peter died on December 21, 1326, and was buried there in a crypt he had himself prepared. Peter was canonized and became the patron saint of Moscow.
Metropolitan Theognostus (1328–1353) firmly established Moscow as the permanent metropolitan see.
Metropolitan Alexius (1354–1378) served as regent of Muscovy during the minority of Grand Prince Dmitry (later Dmitry Donskoy), further cementing the alliance between the Church and the Muscovite state.

This transfer meant that the ecclesiastical authority of “Kiev and All Rus’” was now exercised from Moscow, a fact with enormous consequences for the later rivalry between Moscow and Kiev over the legacy of the Kievan Metropolitanate — a rivalry that reverberates to the present day.

(Meyendorff, Byzantium and the Rise of Russia, chs. 3–6)

St. Sergius of Radonezh and the Battle of Kulikovo (1380)

St. Sergius of Radonezh (c. 1314–1392) is discussed in detail in Russian Monasticism. His role in the Mongol period centers on his blessing of Grand Prince Dmitry Donskoy before the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380.

According to the hagiographical accounts, Dmitry came to St. Sergius at the Trinity Monastery seeking his blessing before marching against the Mongol forces of Khan Mamai. St. Sergius blessed him, prophesied victory, and sent two monks — the schema-monks Alexander Peresvet and Andrei Oslyabya — to fight alongside Dmitry’s forces. The battle reportedly began with a single combat between Peresvet and the Mongol champion Chelubey (Temir-Murza), in which both fell. The Russian forces were victorious.

The Battle of Kulikovo (September 8, 1380, the Feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos) did not end Mongol rule — Moscow was sacked again by Tokhtamysh in 1382 — but it was the first major Russian military victory over the Mongol forces and became a foundational event in Russian national consciousness. St. Sergius’s blessing sanctified the struggle and linked the cause of national liberation with spiritual renewal.

(Klyuchevsky, A Course in Russian History, vol. 2; The Life of St. Sergius of Radonezh by Epiphanius the Wise)

Autocephaly of the Russian Church (1448)

The Russian Church’s movement toward autocephaly (self-governance, independence from Constantinople) was precipitated by the Council of Florence (1438–1439), at which Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaiologos and most of the Greek hierarchy accepted a union with Rome in a desperate bid for Western military aid against the Ottoman Turks.

Metropolitan Isidore of Kiev, a Greek, attended the Council of Florence and signed the act of union. Upon his return to Moscow in 1441, he was arrested on the orders of Grand Prince Vasily II, who rejected the union as a betrayal of Orthodoxy. Isidore eventually escaped and returned to Rome.

In 1448, a council of Russian bishops, without reference to Constantinople, elected Bishop Jonah of Ryazan as Metropolitan of Moscow and All Rus’. This was the de facto declaration of Russian ecclesiastical autocephaly — the Russian Church’s independence from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Constantinople, still under the influence of the Union of Florence (which was formally repudiated only after the fall of Constantinople in 1453), did not recognize this act, and the canonical status of the Russian Church remained ambiguous for over a century.

(Meyendorff, Byzantium and the Rise of Russia, ch. 11; Ware, The Orthodox Church, pp. 83–86)

The Fall of Constantinople (1453) and Russian Self-Understanding

The fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks on May 29, 1453, was a shattering event for the entire Orthodox world. For the Russians, it confirmed their rejection of the Union of Florence: Constantinople had fallen, it was believed, as divine punishment for the betrayal of Orthodoxy at Florence.

This gave rise to a profound shift in Russian ecclesial self-understanding. If Constantinople — the “Second Rome” — had fallen through apostasy and divine judgment, then Moscow, which had remained faithful to Orthodoxy, was the heir and guardian of the true faith.

“Moscow the Third Rome”

The most famous expression of this idea is found in the writings of the monk Philotheus (Filofei) of the Pskov Eleazar Monastery, in an epistle addressed to Grand Prince Vasily III [Disputed: the traditional dating places this letter c. 1510–1511 (Stremooukhoff, “Moscow the Third Rome,” Speculum 28); more recent scholarship (N. V. Sinitsyna, Tretii Rim, 1998; Ostrowski) holds that the earliest securely datable formulation is Philotheus’s epistle against the astrologers, addressed to the Pskov state secretary Misyur Munekhin c. 1523–1524, with the epistle to the Grand Prince dated variously between c. 1514 and the mid-1520s]:

“Two Romes have fallen, the third stands, and there will be no fourth.”

Philotheus argued that Old Rome fell through the Apollinarian heresy — the charge appears explicitly in his epistles, reflecting the Byzantine polemical claim that the Latin use of unleavened bread implied an Apollinarian Christology (Stremooukhoff, “Moscow the Third Rome,” Speculum 28) — while the Second Rome (Constantinople) fell through the Union of Florence, and Moscow now stood as the last guardian of Orthodox Christianity.

The significance and influence of the “Third Rome” idea is debated among historians:

Some (e.g., Nikolai Berdyaev) saw it as the origin of Russian messianism and imperialism.
Others (e.g., Donald Ostrowski) argue that the idea had limited influence in its own time and was more a monastic eschatological reflection than a political program.
In any case, the concept shaped the Russian understanding of the relationship between Church and state (symphonia) and the special responsibility of the Russian state to protect Orthodoxy.

(Stremooukhoff, “Moscow the Third Rome: Sources of the Doctrine,” Speculum 28, no. 1 [1953]; Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols, ch. 9)

The Establishment of the Russian Patriarchate (1589)

The formal recognition of the Russian Church’s autocephalous status came with the establishment of the Patriarchate of Moscow in 1589.

In 1589, Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremias II of Constantinople, during a visit to Moscow, was persuaded (or pressured) by Tsar Fyodor I and his regent Boris Godunov to elevate the Metropolitan of Moscow to the rank of Patriarch. Metropolitan Job of Moscow became the first Russian Patriarch on January 26, 1589.

The other Eastern Patriarchates subsequently confirmed the establishment of the Russian Patriarchate, granting it the fifth place in the Orthodox diptychs (after Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem). This order of honor has been maintained to the present day, though the Russian Church’s size — by far the largest of the Orthodox churches — gives it enormous de facto influence.

The establishment of the Patriarchate completed the institutional development of the Russian Church as an autocephalous entity. It also formalized the already-existing reality that the Russian state saw itself as the primary Orthodox power, with the tsar occupying a role analogous to that of the Byzantine emperor in the symphonia model of Church-state relations.

(Ware, The Orthodox Church, pp. 88–90; Kartashev, Ocherki po Istorii Russkoi Tserkvi, vol. 2 — Russian only; no English translation has been published)

Possessors and Non-Possessors

A significant theological and political debate of the late Muscovite period was the conflict between the “Possessors” (followers of St. Joseph of Volokolamsk, the Josephites) and the “Non-Possessors” (followers of St. Nilus of Sora, the Trans-Volga Elders) over the question of monastic landownership.

St. Nilus of Sora (c. 1433–1508) argued, on the basis of the hesychast tradition and the writings of the Desert Fathers, that monasteries should not own lands or villages. Monks should support themselves through their own labor and alms, devoting their energies to prayer and inner spiritual work.
St. Joseph of Volokolamsk (1439–1515) argued that monastic wealth was necessary for the support of charitable works, the maintenance of liturgical services, and the independence of the Church from secular control.

The Josephite position prevailed at the Council of 1503, and Russian monasteries continued to accumulate vast landholdings until the secularization of monastic properties under Catherine the Great in 1764. However, the spiritual tradition of the Non-Possessors — emphasizing inner prayer, poverty, and spiritual freedom — continued as an underground current and re-emerged in the eighteenth-century Philokalia revival and the Optina elders.

(Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, vol. 2, chs. 8–10; see also Russian Monasticism)

References

Fedotov, George P. The Russian Religious Mind. Vol. 2: The Middle Ages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966.
Fennell, John. The Crisis of Medieval Russia, 1200–1304. London: Longman, 1983.
Kartashev, Anton V. Ocherki po Istorii Russkoi Tserkvi [Essays on the History of the Russian Church]. 2 vols. Paris: YMCA Press, 1959.
Klyuchevsky, Vasily. A Course in Russian History. 5 vols. Various editions.
Meyendorff, John. Byzantium and the Rise of Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Ostrowski, Donald. Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier, 1304–1589. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Sinitsyna, Nina V. Tretii Rim: Istoki i evoliutsiia russkoi srednevekovoi kontseptsii [The Third Rome: Origins and Evolution of the Russian Medieval Concept]. Moscow: Indrik, 1998.
Stremooukhoff, Dimitri. “Moscow the Third Rome: Sources of the Doctrine.” Speculum 28, no. 1 (1953): 84–101.
Ware, Timothy (Kallistos). The Orthodox Church. New edition. London: Penguin, 1993.