Third Rome

Third Rome refers to the doctrine that Russia or, specifically, Moscow succeeded Rome and Byzantium Rome as the ultimate center of true Christianity and of the Roman Empire. This is the most generally misunderstood and abused of the several expressions of Russia's new place in the world resulting from domestic and international events of the 1430s and 1520s. The monk Filofei of the Pskov-Eliazarov monastery formulated it in one or two epistles, written between 1523 and 1526, which were then reworked during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Neither epistle survives in its original form or a manuscript assuredly from Filofei's time. The first, probably written in 1523 to 1524 to the state-secretary administrator of Pskov, Mikhail Misiur-Munekhin, attacks astrology, the Roman Catholic Church, and the claims of the Holy Roman Empire, and in this connection asserts that Russia, with Moscow's Dormition Cathedral at its center, is the third and final Roman Empire according to the prophetic books. Filofei's unnamed opponent was Basil III's German physician Nicholas Bülew, who promoted astrology and Church union with Rome. The second epistle, addressed to an unnamed tsar - perhaps Basil III (1524 - 1526) or possibly Ivan IV (1533 - 1584) - and conceivably not by Filofei at all, calls upon the addressee to enforce the proper application of the sign of the cross by his subjects; protect church wealth; suppress homosexuality; be an ethical, just, and pious ruler; and, in oblique form, fill hierarchical vacancies.

Third Rome thinking served to elevate Russia's conception of its place within the Orthodox Christian world and the requirement to preserve the faith and its rituals in unadulterated form. If this potentially messianic doctrine played a role in the establishment of the Russian patriarchate in 1589, and may have helped Russians acquire a sense of responsibility toward the Orthodox and later Uniate subjects of Poland-Lithuania and the Ottoman Empire, at no time did it figure in aggressive policies toward non-Orthodox or non-Uniate peoples. Modern attempts to enshrine it as an essential element of Russian consciousness since the early 1500s have no basis.

The Christian notion of migrating sacrosanct goes back to the foundation of Constantinople as New Rome (still in the official title of the patriarch of Constantinople) and its subsequent claims to be a New Jerusalem, the center of a messianic kingdom. In the course of competing with Byzantium, even before the Eastern and Western Churches separated (over the course of the 860s to 1054), the German (Holy Roman) emperors also claimed to represent the true Rome. Similarly, while the Byzantine Empire still existed, among the Orthodox Slavs, Bulgarians claimed that their capital, in this case, Trnovo, was the New Imperial City (Constantinople) in the 1300s.

Russians did not seriously dispute Byzantium's pretenses until after the Council of Ferrera-Florence, from 1438 to 1439, when factions of the Greek and Russian Orthodox church accepted union with Rome. By defending Orthodoxy against Roman Catholicism, the Moscow metropolitans treated first Basil II and then Ivan III as new Constantine. With the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, Muscovy/Russia became the Orthodox monarchy. As Ivan III discarded the legal and ceremonial remnants of subordination to the Qipchak (Golden Horde) khans during the period of 1476 to 1480, Archbishop Vassian Rylo of Rostov argued the absurdity of an inviolable oath from a genuine tsar to a false one of brigand descent. In presenting new Eastern tables for the years following the year 1492 C.E., which Orthodox calendars considered to be the millennial year 7000 since Creation, Metropolitan Zosima declared Moscow to be the new Constantinople, which itself was the New Rome in one early copy and New Jerusalem in several others. Ivan's diplomacy vis-à-vis Imperial German pretenses on the 1480s to 1490s and the coronation ceremony of his grandson Dmitry in 1498 emphasized the historic equality of Russia and Byzantium's rulers. In the 1510s Joseph of Volok, while claiming that the Orthodox Tsar is in power like unto God, asserted that any wavering from Orthodoxy would lead to the fall of Russia, as other Orthodox kingdoms had ended due to apostasy. Historical works produced in the 1520s by this school of thought (Russian Chronograph, Nikon Chronicle) underscored the preeminence of Russia among Orthodox realms, while genealogical inventions used for state diplomacy asserted Roman dynastic origins of Russia's ruling house.

Filofei was not the only Russian churchman of his time to oppose Bülew's ideas; so did Metropolitan Daniel and Maksim Grek. Others also asserted a new world-historic claim for Russia.

Bibliography

Ostrowski, Donald. (1998). Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier, 1304 - 1589. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Poe, Marshall. (2001). "Moscow, the Third Rome: The Origins and Transformation of a 'Pivotal Moment.'" Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 49:412-29.

—DAVID M. GOLDFRANK

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The term Third Rome describes the idea that some European city, state, or country is the successor to the legacy of the Roman Empire, with Byzantium being the "second Rome."

Contents 1 Russian claims 2 Ottoman claims 3 Bulgarian claims 4 Italian claims 5 See also 6 Notes 7 Bibliography

Russian claims

Coat of arms of the last imperial dynasty of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Within decades after the Fall of Constantinople to Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire on 29 May 1453, some were nominating Moscow as the "Third Rome", or the "New Rome".^[1] Stirrings of this sentiment began during the reign of Ivan III, Grand Duke of Moscow who had married Sophia Paleologue. Sophia was a niece of Constantine XI, the last Eastern Roman Emperor and Ivan could claim to be the heir of the fallen Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire).

At the beginning, the notion of "Third Rome" was not necessarily imperial in nature, but rather apocalyptic. Its purpose was to point out the role of Russia as the last small remainder "in the wilderness", of the once-great Christian civilization, most of which had succumbed to heresy - Roman Catholicism was considered a heretical offshoot of the Christian stem by many Orthodox believers. Thus Russia was seen as comparable to the seven thousand Israelites who had refused to worship Baal during the lifetime of the prophet Elijah, an immensely popular biblical figure in Orthodoxy.

Coat of arms of the Russian Empire.

The idea crystallized with a panegyric letter composed by the Russian monk Philoteus (Filofey) in 1510 to their son Grand Duke Vasili III, which proclaimed, "Two Romes have fallen. The third stands. And there will be no fourth. No one shall replace your Christian Tsardom!" Contrary to the common misconception, Filofey explicitly identifies Third Rome with Russia (the country) rather than with Moscow (the city).

Ottoman claims

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After the fall of Constantinople, Mehmed II declared himself Kayser-i Rum, literally Caesar of the Romans. The Ottoman Empire also captured Otranto during that period, and it has been speculated that Mehmed II was planning on taking Rome itself when the Italian campaign was cut short by his sudden death. The title fell into disuse after his death, but the imperial bodies created by Mehmed II lived on for centuries to come. The Turkish historian İlber Ortaylı is a proponent of this claim, citing the multicultural make-up of the state and Sultan Mehmed's acceptance of certain Byzantine court customs. Prof. Ortaylı finds Russia's claim to the title to be only nominal, and that Sultan Mehmed based his court policies and conquests on creating a third, Islamic Rome (the first Rome being polytheistic, the second one Christian).

It should also be noted that Suleiman the Magnificent, after defeating the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, had a treaty signed which addressed him with the plain title King of Spain, rather than Emperor, leading Suleiman to consider himself the true successor to Caesar.

Evidence of this identification can be seen in many cases, such as when Ibrahim Pasha, Grand Vizier to Suleiman, erected Roman-style statues in Constantinople despite it being against Islamic custom, stating that it was natural since the Ottoman Empire was the successor of Rome.

Bulgarian claims

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It is noteworthy, that before Ivan III, Tsar Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria, related to the last Byzantine dynasty, facing the decline of the Eastern Roman Empire in the 14th century, made similar claims. Bulgarian manuscripts advanced the idea that Turnovo, the capital of the Bulgarian Empire, was the new Constantinople. These plans were never realized as the Ottomans defeated the Serbs at Kosovo Polje in 1389, and put an end to the Second Bulgarian Empire in 1396 with the occupation of the Despotate of Vidin. However, the doctrine, which developed in this respect earlier in Turnovo, were imported to Moscow by Cyprian, a clergyman of Bulgarian origin, who became the Metropolitan of Moscow in 1381.

Italian claims

Giuseppe Mazzini, Italian nationalist and patriot promoted the notion of the "Third Rome".^[2] He said, "After the Rome of the emperors, after the Rome of the Popes, there will come the Rome of the people", addressing Italian unification and the establishment of Rome as the capital.^[3]

In his speeches, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini referred to his Fascist Italy as a "third Rome."^[4] Terza Roma (Third Rome; the Fascist Rome after the Imperial and the Papal ones) was also a name for Mussolini's plan to expand Rome towards Ostia and the sea. The EUR neighbourhood was the first step in that direction.^[5]

See also

• Legacy of the Roman Empire
• New Rome
• Byzantium after Byzantium (novel)

Notes

1. ^ Parry, Ken; David Melling (editors) (1999). The Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity. Malden, MA.: Blackwell Publishing. p. 490. ISBN 0-631-23203-6. 
2. ^ Giuseppe Mazzini
3. ^ Rome Seminar
4. ^ Martin Clark, Mussolini: Profiles in Power (London: Pearson Longman, 2005), 136.
5. ^ Discorso pronunciato in Campidoglio per l'insediamento del primo Governatore di Roma il 31 dicembre 1925, Internet Archive copy of a page with a Mussolini speech.

Bibliography

• Dmytryshyn, Basil (transl). 1991. Medieval Russia: A Source Book, 850-1700. 259–261. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Fort Worth, Texas.
• Poe, Marshall. “Moscow, the Third Rome: the Origins and Transformations of a ‘Pivotal Moment.’” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas (2001) (In Russian: “Izobretenie kontseptsii “Moskva—Tretii Rim.” Ab Imperio. Teoriia i istoriia natsional’nostei i natsionalizma v postsovetskom prostranstve 1: 2 (2000), 61-86.)
• Martin, Janet. 1995. Medieval Russia: 980-1584. 293. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, UK.

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