Philip I, Metropolitan of Moscow

Philip I was Metropolitan of Moscow and all Rus' from 1464 until his death in 1473, during the reign of Grand Prince Ivan III Vasilyevich. He was elevated after Metropolitan Theodosius withdrew from the see and had previously served as Bishop of Suzdal. His tenure belonged to the generation of Muscovite primates who held office after the Russian Church stopped receiving its metropolitans from Constantinople in the mid-fifteenth century, in the wake of the Council of Florence and the fall of the Byzantine capital. Contemporary chronicles and official notices say almost nothing about his family, the place or date of his birth, or the monastery of his tonsure; what can be reconstructed is confined to his public acts as bishop and metropolitan in the third quarter of the fifteenth century.

As metropolitan he supported Ivan III’s effort to bring Novgorod under Muscovite authority. In the early 1470s, factions in Novgorod considered an alliance with the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania and the possibility of taking a metropolitan from the Lithuanian Orthodox hierarchy rather than from Moscow. Philip addressed the Novgorodians in writing, urging them not to break communion with the Moscow see and warning that submission to a Catholic sovereign would endanger the Orthodox faith. The letter treated the contest over Novgorod as a defense of Orthodoxy against Latin influence as well as a political struggle. Moscow’s victory in the campaign of 1471 was a decisive step toward the later annexation of the city and showed the metropolitan acting in concert with grand-princely power.

In 1472 Philip I took part in the reception of Sophia Palaiologina, a niece of the last Byzantine emperor, who came from Italy to marry Ivan III. A papal legate accompanied her, and the metropolitan refused to allow a Latin cross to be carried in public procession in Moscow at her entry. The incident expressed the Muscovite hierarchy’s rejection of any implication of Roman jurisdiction after Florence. The marriage itself was celebrated in November 1472 and later acquired symbolic weight as a link between Moscow and the Byzantine imperial inheritance, though Philip lived only a few months after the wedding.

In the same years he promoted the rebuilding of the Cathedral of the Dormition in the Moscow Kremlin, the principal church of the Russian metropolitans. The fourteenth-century fabric was taken down and a larger cathedral begun under native masters. Philip blessed the work but did not see it finished; the first new structure collapsed in the following year and was later rebuilt by the Italian architect Aristotele Fioravanti. Philip I died in Moscow on 5 April 1473 and was succeeded by Gerontius. He was buried in the Cathedral of the Dormition in the Moscow Kremlin, the customary resting place of the metropolitans of Moscow. Because the sources are silent on his origins and youth, his historical importance rests on his defense of Muscovite ecclesiastical independence and on his share in the ceremonial and architectural projects of Ivan III’s reign.