Patriarch Job of Moscow

Patriarch Job, known in the world as Ioann, was born in the town of Staritsa in the Tver lands of the Grand Duchy of Moscow during the first half of the sixteenth century. Surviving sources do not record a precise year of birth. He came from a family of townspeople (posad people). From youth he was noted for piety and was educated at the Dormition (Uspensky) Monastery in Staritsa, where he later received the monastic tonsure and the name Job. He advanced in that house through strict ascetic practice and familiarity with Scripture and the liturgical tradition of the Russian Church.

In the later sixteenth century he was called to Moscow and served as archimandrite of the Simonov Monastery and then of the Novospassky Monastery. In 1581 he was consecrated Bishop of Kolomna. In 1586 he was transferred to Rostov as archbishop. In December 1587, after the removal of Metropolitan Dionysius, he was appointed Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia. His metropolitanate fell in the last years of Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich and under the rising influence of Boris Godunov.

In January 1589 the Russian Church was elevated to patriarchal rank with the participation of Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremias II of Constantinople, then present in Moscow. Job was installed as the first Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. He worked to organize church administration, to establish new dioceses, and to support missionary activity on the expanding Muscovite frontiers. After Tsar Fyodor’s death in 1598 he remained a supporter of Boris Godunov. When the first False Dmitry approached Moscow in 1605, Job refused to recognize the pretender as a son of Ivan IV. After the pretender entered the capital, Job was deposed, publicly humiliated in the Dormition Cathedral, and exiled to the Staritsa monastery of his youth.

He died at Staritsa on 19 June 1607 and was buried at the Dormition Monastery there. In 1652, in the patriarchate of Nikon, his relics were examined, reported incorrupt, and transferred to the Dormition Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin. He was venerated locally as a hierarch and wonderworker. The Russian Orthodox Church formally glorified him at the Local Council of 1989. He is commemorated on 19 June (repose), 5 April (translation of relics), and 5 October (Synaxis of the Hierarchs of Moscow).