23 December 1569 A.D. Ivan
the Terrible Murdered Philip of Moscow
Graves, Dan. “Ivan the Terrible
Murdered Philip of Moscow.” Christianity.com. May 2007.
Accessed 23 Jun 2014.
Csar Ivan IV of Russia was so noted for his cruelty
he became known as "Ivan the Terrible." Among the many monstrous
actions of this sixteenth-century monarch was the murder of Philip of Moscow.
Philip was born into a good Russian family in
1510 and named Fyodor Kolychev. The Kolychevs were active in government
service, and Fyodor spent his youth at the court of the czar. One day while at
church, Fyodor was convicted by Christ's warning that a man cannot serve two
masters. Fearing that the court was keeping him from Christ, Fyodor fled the
Russian capital and went north to the Solovetsky Monastery, just within the
Arctic Circle on an island in the White Sea. It was a primitive place compared
to the glitter of the capital.
The monks accepted Fyodor and
gave him the name Philip. He won a reputation for piety, intelligence, and a
sense of duty in following monastic rules. In 1547, the same year that Ivan the
Terrible was crowned czar, Philip became abbot of the monastery. Demonstrating
exceptional administrative abilities, he transformed the monastery into one of
the great industrial complexes of the empire. Under Philip's administration,
the monks cleared fields for cultivation; established a dairy farm, a mill, and
a workshop for leather and fur clothes; built storage bins for the monastery's
grain; developed a system of dams, reservoirs and canals to drain the swampland
and bring water to the monastery; built a hospital for pilgrims; and new
dormitories. In addition to all this, they erected a new cathedral. They
consecrated all of their agricultural and industrial labor to God.
The czar was so impressed with
these accomplishments that he appointed Philip to be metropolitan--head of the
Russian church. Philip. however, was not a yes-man. On religious grounds, he
opposed many of Ivan's policies and his mass executions. Ivan tried to
intimidate him, but Philip asked himself, "Where is my faith if I am
silent?" He continued to speak against the czar. Once he warned the czar,
"Your earthly rank has no control over death, which sinks its invincible
teeth into everything. And remember that each person must answer for his own
life." Ivan would try to reform, but then lapse back into brutality.
At last he beheaded Philip's
cousin and sent the head to Philip sewn up in a leather bag. The next day, the
czar sent one of his brutal underlings to arrest Philip in the middle of
service. Ripping the metropolitan's church clothes off him, they dressed him in
sackcloth. They threw him onto a sled and hauled him to prison. After that they
moved him again and again until he was far from Moscow.
On this day, December 23, 1569, one of Ivan's henchmen, Skuratov, rode to the monastery where Philip
was held. He demanded Philip's blessing on a particularly horrible massacre
that Ivan had begun at Novgorod. When Philip refused to give it, Skuratov
smothered him.
Bibliography:
Bobrick, Benson. Ivan the Terrible. Edinburgh:
Canongate, 1987.
Various encyclopedia and internet articles.
Last updated July,
2007
No comments:
Post a Comment