Before the fall of Constantinople

After the fall of Tǎrnovo to the Ottoman Turks in 1393, a number of Bulgarian clergymen sought shelter in the Russian lands and transferred the idea of a "New Rome" there, which eventually resurfaced in Tver, during the reign of Boris of Tver, when the monk Foma (Thomas) of Tver had written The Eulogy of the Pious Grand Prince Boris Alexandrovich in 1453.^[3][4]

After the fall of Constantinople

Within decades after the capture of Constantinople by Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire on 29 May 1453, some Eastern Orthodox people were nominating Moscow as the "Third Rome", or the "New Rome".^[5] The Ottoman Empire claimed to be the successor to the Roman Empire, but this was not widely recognised.

Furthermore, the fortress of Mangup – the last fragment of the Empire of Trebizond and thus the Byzantine Empire – fell to the Turks at the end of 1475. Even before the fall of Constantinople, the Eastern Orthodox Slavic states in the Balkans had fallen under Ottoman rule. The fall of Constantinople caused tremendous fears; many considered the fall of Constantinople as a sign the end times were near (in 1492 it was the year 7000 Anno Mundi per the Byzantine calendar);^[6] others believed that the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (although he was a Roman Catholic) now took the place of the emperors of Constantinople. There were also hopes that Constantinople would be liberated soon. Moreover, the Eastern Orthodox Church was left without its Eastern Orthodox Basileus. Therefore, the question arose of who would become the new basileus. At the end of the various "Tales" about the fall of Constantinople, which gained great popularity in Moscow, it was directly stated that the Rus' people would defeat the Ishmaelites (Muslims) and their king would become the basileus in the City of Seven Hills (Constantinople). The Grand Prince of Moscow remained the strongest of the Eastern Orthodox rulers; Ivan III married Sophia Paleologue and broke his formal subordination to the Golden Horde (already divided into several Tatar khanates) in 1480. All of this strengthened Moscow's claims to primacy in the Eastern Orthodox world. However, the liberation of Constantinople was still far away — the Moscow State had no opportunity to fight the Ottoman Empire.^[2]

End of the 15th century

At the end of the 15th century, the emergence of the idea that Moscow is truly a new Rome can be found;^[2] the foundations of the idea of Moscow as Third Rome could be traced to 1492, when Metropolitan of Moscow Zosimus expressed the concept of a "New Rome". Metropolitan Zosimus, in a foreword to his work of 1492 Presentation of the Paschalion (Russian: "Изложение пасхалии"), called Ivan III "the new Tsar Constantine of the new city of Constantine — Moscow."^[2][7] This idea is best known in the presentation of the monk Philotheus of the early 16th century:^[8][9]

So know, pious king, that all the Christian kingdoms came to an end and came together in a single kingdom of yours, two Romes have fallen, the third stands, and there will be no fourth [emphasis added]. No one shall replace your Christian Tsardom according to the great Theologian [cf. Revelation 17:10] [...].

The Moscow scholars explained the fall of Constantinople as the divine punishment for the sin of the Union of Florence (1439) with the Catholic Church, but they did not want to obey the Patriarch of Constantinople, although there were no unionist patriarchs since the Turkish conquest in 1453 and the first Patriarch since then, Gennadius Scholarius, was the leader of the anti-unionists. At the next synod, held in Constantinople in 1484, the Union was finally declared invalid. Having lost its Christian basileus after the Turkish conquest, Constantinople as a center of power lost a significant part of its authority. On the contrary, the Moscow rulers soon began to consider themselves real Tsars (this title was already used by Ivan III), and therefore according to them the center of the Eastern Orthodox Church should have been located in Moscow, and thus the bishop of Moscow should become the head of Eastern Orthodoxy.^[2] The text of the bishop's oath in Muscovy, edited in 1505–1511, condemned the ordination of metropolitans in Constantinople, calling it "the ordination in the area of godless Turks, by the pagan^[a] tsar."^[10]

Stirrings of this sentiment began during the reign of Ivan III of Russia, who styled himself Czar (cf. Caesar) and had married Sophia Paleologue. Sophia was a niece of Constantine XI, the last Byzantine emperor. By the rules and laws of inheritance followed by most European monarchies of the time, Ivan could claim that he and his offspring were heirs of the fallen empire, but the Roman traditions of the empire had never recognized automatic inheritance of the Imperial office.^[11] It was also Sophia's brother, Andreas Palaiologos, who held the rights of succession to the Byzantine throne. Andreas died in 1502, having bequeathed his titles and royal and imperial rights to Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, who would not act on them. A stronger claim was based on religious symbolism. The Orthodox faith was central to Byzantine notions of their identity and what distinguished them from "barbarians". As the preeminent Orthodox nation following the Byzantine collapse, Moscow would view itself as the empire's logical successor.

Since the 16th century

According to historian Donald Ostrowski, "the liturgical privileges that the Byzantine emperor enjoyed carried over to the Muscovite tsar. In 1547, for instance, when Ivan IV was crowned tsar, not only was he anointed as the Byzantine emperor had been after the late twelfth century, but he was also allowed to communicate in the sanctuary with the clergy."^[12]

During Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremias II's visit to Moscow in 1588–1589 "to collect funds to assist the [Eastern] Orthodox communities living in the Ottoman Empire",^[13] Jeremias recognized in 1589 the Metropolitan of Moscow as patriarch.^[14] The 1589 charter establishing the Moscow Patriarchate, drafted by the Muscovite chancellery and signed by Jeremias II, explicitly included the phrase about Moscow being the Third Rome, making it the first official state document to incorporate the concept.^[15] This recognition was "a victory for those who saw Moscow as the Third Rome."^[13]

Following the reforms of Peter the Great in the early 18th century, the "Third Rome" concept was largely marginalized. Peter sought to Westernize Russia, abolishing the Patriarchate, adopting the secular Latin title of Imperator, and moving the capital to St. Petersburg, which was envisioned as a "New Amsterdam" or a new secular Rome rather than a religious one. The religious concept of "Third Rome" only saw a major revival in the mid-19th century among Russian Slavophiles.^[1]

In 1780, Catherine the Great presented her "Greek Plan" to the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II. She proposed to partition the Ottoman Empire and restore the Byzantine Empire with her infant grandson, Konstantin, as the Emperor of Constantinople. However, by this era, the Russian Empire was driven more by secular, Enlightenment-era geopolitical ambitions than by the medieval religious theology of the Third Rome.^[16]

Modern era

In the 21st century, the concept of "Third Rome" has seen a resurgence as a foundational element of contemporary Russian geopolitical and religious ideology, most notably intersecting with the concept of the Russian world (Russian: Русский мир, romanized: Russkiy mir). While ecclesiastical in its rhetoric, scholars observe that the "Russian world" concept functions largely as a geopolitical doctrine extending the historical "Third Rome" ideology. It was prominently articulated in a keynote speech on November 3, 2009, by Patriarch Kirill, who described it as a "common civilisational space" of countries sharing Eastern Orthodoxy, Russian culture and language, and a common historical memory.^[17][18]

Under President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church have utilized the legacy of "Moscow, Third Rome" to assert Russia's exceptionalism and its messianic role as the defender of traditional Christian values against an allegedly morally decadent West. Critics and scholars point out that this modern adaptation of the "Third Rome" doctrine provides the ideological justification for Russian imperialism, particularly regarding the assertion of influence over Eastern Slavic countries like Ukraine and Belarus.^[19] By conflating the spiritual space of the Church with the geopolitical borders of the state, the modern iteration of the concept has been heavily criticized for fueling the Russo-Ukrainian War and alienating the Russian Orthodox Church from the broader Eastern Orthodox community.^[20]

Citations

Sources