The Rise of Moscow

Mosco.

"Third Rome."—According to this the Moscovite duke was a successor of the Byzantine emperors and the only representative of the Orthodox Church in the world. Indeed, the Greek Orthodox Church had accepted the "Union" with the Catho lics as early as 1439, at the Florence council, while Constantinople, "the second Rome," had been taken by the Turks iii 1453. Ob viously, the Greeks had been punished by God for their apostasy and their succession had to pass to the "third Rome," which was Moscow, and to the Russian grand duke, who remained the only faithful and really Christian prince in the world.

The realisation of this new scheme began by the marriage of Ivan III with Zoe (in Russian: Sofia) the only niece of the last Byzantine emperor Constantine Paleologus (1472). With her ar rival new habits appeared at the Muscovite court intended to mag nify the new "autocrat" (a title used by Ivan in foreign relations). The church that gave its sanction to that change claimed a reward: the prince had to help it against all "heresies" and internal dis sensions. The prior of Volokolamsk convent, Joseph, insisted on

burning some rationalistic heretics in Novgorod. He also defended the principle that "wealth gives power" to the Church, and he mer cilessly crushed monastic and ascetic tendencies of the reformer, Nil Sorsky, the "abstainer from property." Thus the official theory on Russian Church and State was formed as early as the end of the 15th century. Under Basil III. the unification of Russian ter ritory was consummated by the acquisition of another repub lic, Pskov (I 51o) ; by the final annexation of Ryazan, the last independent grand dukedom, and by a new extension at the ex pense of Lithuania—the acquisition of the frontier city of Smo lensk (1514). The minority of Basil's son Ivan, who was three years old when his father died (1533), and subsequent disputes over the regency between rival factions, lasting 14 years, did not interrupt the growth of the Muscovite State. The reign of Ivan the Terrible marks the beginning of a new period of Russian history.