Alexius, Metropolitan of Moscow

Alexius (Aleksy), metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus' in the fourteenth century, was born in Moscow toward the end of the thirteenth century, the son of the boyar Fyodor Byakont, a noble of Chernigov origin who had entered the service of the Moscow princes, and of his wife Maria. In baptism he received the name Eleutherius. Precise year of birth is not securely established in the sources and is variously estimated in later literature. Hagiographical tradition relates that around the age of twelve, while watching bird snares, he fell asleep and heard a voice that addressed him as Alexius and told him he would become a fisher of men. In early adulthood he entered the Epiphany (Bogoyavlensky) Monastery in Moscow, where he was tonsured with the name Alexius and spent many years in monastic discipline. He acquired a knowledge of Greek unusual among Rus' clergy of his generation and a reputation for learning and austerity.

In the 1340s and early 1350s he became the principal assistant of Metropolitan Theognostus, a Greek hierarch who had made Moscow his residence. Alexius was consecrated bishop of Vladimir in the early 1350s. After Theognostus died in 1353, the Moscow court supported Alexius as successor. He traveled to Constantinople, where in 1354 Patriarch Philotheus Kokkinos confirmed him as metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus', with the effective center of the see understood to be Moscow. Lithuanian rulers sought a separate metropolitan for the western Rus' lands; a rival, Roman, was recognized in Lithuania, and the metropolitanate was in practice divided for a time. Alexius nevertheless upheld the claim of a single Rus' metropolitanate based in Moscow. He made further journeys to Constantinople and maintained the Greek connection of the see while remaining a Muscovite statesman.

His metropolitanate coincided with plague, succession crises, and the rise of Moscow among the northeastern principalities. After the deaths of Grand Princes Simeon and Ivan II, Alexius acted as a leading guardian and counselor of the young Dmitry Ivanovich, later called Dmitry Donskoy, and as a central figure in Muscovite government. He worked to keep the Rus' principalities aligned with Moscow rather than with Tver or with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, using the diplomatic and moral weight of the metropolitanate. In the late 1350s he was summoned to the Golden Horde and, according to chronicles and his Life, healed the blindness of the khansha Taidula, an episode that obtained a yarlyk of privileges for the Church and political advantage for Moscow. Later in his tenure Constantinople appointed Cyprian with a title covering Kiev, Rus', and Lithuania while Alexius still lived, producing tension over succession and over whether the metropolitanate would remain unified under Moscow.

Alexius founded several monasteries that became lasting centers of Muscovite monasticism. The Andronikov Monastery of the Saviour on the Yauza was established after a vow made during a storm at sea on a return from Constantinople; its first abbot, Andronicus, was a disciple of Sergius of Radonezh. In the 1360s he founded the Chudov Monastery in the Moscow Kremlin, dedicated to the Miracle of the Archangel Michael at Chonae, and he was also associated with the Alekseyevsky convent. He was closely linked with Sergius of Radonezh, whom he unsuccessfully sought to designate as his successor, and with other leading monastics of the age. He died in Moscow on 12 February 1378 and was buried in the Chudov Monastery. His relics were reported incorrupt when uncovered in the fifteenth century, and his cult grew among the Moscow wonderworkers. The Russian Church established liturgical commemoration on 12 February, together with observances for the uncovering of the relics and the synaxis of the Moscow hierarchs. He is venerated as a heavenly patron of Moscow. After the destruction of the Chudov Monastery in the twentieth century, the relics were moved within Moscow, including to the Epiphany Cathedral at Yelokhovo. Later tradition remembered him as the metropolitan who bound the church of Rus' to the rising power of Moscow.