Jonah of Moscow

Jonah of Moscow (also Jonas) was a fifteenth-century Russian Orthodox hierarch who served as Metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus', and subsequently as Metropolitan of Moscow and All Rus', from 1448 until his death in 1461. He was born in the village of Odnoushevo near Soligalich in the Kostroma region of northeastern Rus', into a pious Christian family; traditional lives name his father Theodore. No reliable source preserves a verified year of birth. According to the standard hagiographical account he was drawn to monastic life from childhood and received the monastic tonsure at about the age of twelve. He lived first in a monastery associated with Galich (often identified as a house of the Presentation of the Theotokos) and later at the Simonov Monastery in Moscow. The traditional life relates that Metropolitan Photius of Kiev and All Rus', visiting the monastery, saw the young monk at work in the bakehouse and predicted that Jonah would one day occupy the metropolitan see.

After Photius died in 1431, Jonah was consecrated Bishop of Ryazan and Murom and was advanced by Grand Prince Vasily II of Moscow as a candidate for the metropolitanate of Kiev and All Rus'. Constantinople instead appointed the Greek Isidore, who attended the Council of Florence in 1438–1439 and accepted union with the Roman Church. When Isidore returned to Moscow in 1441 and proclaimed the union, he was rejected by the grand prince and the Russian bishops, imprisoned, and later escaped. The see remained without a resident metropolitan for several years, a period that coincided with the Muscovite dynastic civil war. In December 1448 a council of Russian bishops meeting in Moscow, with the support of Vasily II, elected and installed Jonah as metropolitan without the blessing of the Patriarch of Constantinople. That election is generally treated as the beginning of the de facto autocephaly of the Russian Church, a position that became more firmly established after the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

As metropolitan, Jonah backed Vasily II against rival princely claimants and against Tatar pressure, and he sought to keep the Russian eparchies aligned with Moscow rather than with hierarchs appointed from Constantinople or operating under Polish-Lithuanian authority. From 1458 the old metropolitanate was in practice divided: a separate metropolitanate of Kiev continued in the Polish-Lithuanian lands, while Jonah and his successors in Moscow used the title of Metropolitan of Moscow and All Rus'. He was remembered for an ascetic personal life, for pastoral activity, and for consistent opposition to the Florentine union. He died in Moscow on 31 March 1461 and was buried in the Cathedral of the Dormition in the Moscow Kremlin. He was not a patriarch; the Moscow patriarchate was instituted only in 1589.

In 1472, during reconstruction of the Dormition Cathedral, Jonah’s relics were uncovered and were reported to be incorrupt; they were later enshrined in the rebuilt cathedral. He was formally glorified by the Russian Church at the Moscow council of 1547 under Metropolitan Macarius. The Russian Orthodox Church commemorates him on 31 March (the day of his repose), 27 May (the uncovering of the relics), 15 June (with Metropolitans Cyprian and Photius), and 5 October (the Synaxis of the Hierarchs of Moscow). He is venerated as a holy hierarch and wonderworker of Moscow.