Moscow, Third Rome

Uncommon card · No. 170015

"Moscow, the Third Rome" refers to a theological and political concept that posits Moscow as the successor to Constantinople (and thereby Rome), which served as both the capital city of the Byzantine Empire and the global seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church. It first emerged in the late 15th and early 16th centuries—in light of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453—receiving its classic formulation in the epistles of the Russian monk Philotheus of Pskov, who stated: "two Romes have fallen, the third stands, and a fourth there shall not be." Originally eschatological in nature, it framed the Grand Prince of Moscow as the final sovereign protector of pure Orthodox Christianity before the Second Coming. During the 19th century, many Slavophiles and pan-Slavists transformed this pastoral idea into an imperialist ideology justifying state expansion and primacy over Orthodox Christendom. Most notably, this concept, which helped to sustain Russian imperialism during the Tsarist era, has...

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