Moses of Novgorod

Moses, known in Russian as Moisei, was Archbishop of Novgorod in the fourteenth century and is venerated as a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church. He is traditionally regarded as a native of Novgorod, then the political and ecclesiastical center of the Novgorod Republic, a largely self-governing East Slavic mercantile state on the northwestern edge of the Rus lands. He received the monastic tonsure at the Kolmov Monastery in the Novgorod region and later became archimandrite of the Yuriev Monastery, one of the principal monastic houses tied to the Novgorod see. In 1325 he was consecrated archbishop of Novgorod by Metropolitan Peter of Kiev and All Rus. The archbishops of Novgorod in this era were not merely diocesan bishops. They ranked among the republic's leading public figures, occupied the cathedral of Holy Wisdom (Saint Sophia), safeguarded important archives and treasures, and frequently took part in diplomacy and in the internal balance among boyar factions, the veche assembly, and neighboring princes of Tver, Moscow, and Lithuania.

Moses's first period on the cathedra lasted from 1325 until 1330, when he resigned of his own will and withdrew from office. Chronicle entries, which are the main contemporary witnesses to his career, record the resignation without an elaborate explanation of motive, a silence typical of Novgorod annalistic writing. He returned at first to the Kolmov Monastery and then founded a new community on the Skovorodka River south of the city, the Monastery of the Archangel Michael, commonly called the Skovorodsky Monastery. He remained there in retirement for more than two decades while the see was occupied by Archbishop Vasily Kalika, who held office from 1330 until 1352. Little can be verified about Moses's inner life or daily rule during these years beyond the fact of his monastic withdrawal and his role as founder of the Skovorodsky house.

In 1352, after Vasily Kalika died amid an outbreak of plague that struck the region, the Novgorodians recalled Moses to the archiepiscopal throne. His second tenure lasted from 1352 to 1359. In 1354 Patriarch Philotheus of Constantinople granted privileges that confirmed an elevated liturgical dignity for the Novgorod hierarch, including the right to wear the polystavrion, a phelonion decorated with crosses, together with other marks of honor. Moses was an active founder and builder of churches. The stone church of the Archangel Michael at the Skovorodsky Monastery, raised in the mid-1350s, is associated with his patronage; later in the fourteenth century it received frescoes that became an important monument of Novgorod painting. The church was destroyed in the twentieth century during the Second World War. In 1359, by then advanced in age, Moses again laid aside his office and retired to Skovorodsky. He was succeeded by Archbishop Alexis.

Moses died on 25 January 1362 and was buried at the Skovorodsky Monastery. He came to be honored locally as a saint, and later notices report that his relics were found incorrupt. The Russian Orthodox Church commemorates him on 25 January, the day of his repose, and on 19 April in connection with the uncovering of his relics; he is also remembered in the synaxis of the saints of Novgorod. No contemporary source records his year of birth, and later hagiographical accounts add little that can be independently checked beyond the outline preserved in the Novgorod chronicles. He did not hold the office of patriarch or of pope; his rank was that of archbishop of a powerful see that remained canonically under the metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus. As a monk-bishop of the Eastern Church he lived in celibacy and is not recorded as having married or as having had children. His historical importance rests on the continuity he gave the Novgorod church across two widely separated terms of office, on the monastic foundation that bore his imprint, and on the enhanced ceremonial standing obtained from Constantinople during his second archiepiscopate.