The Blessing of Filipp
After long decades of humiliation, persecutions, and oppression under the Soviets, the Orthodox Church, faced with the unbridled liberalization of life and beliefs that has come crashing on us of late, has seen some chimerical transformations of its outlook. A graphic example of the latter is the idea of monarchy marketed by the far-right wing of the Russian Orthodox Church under the motto “Orthodoxy and monarchy are inseparable!” As a rule, far-right wings are always active, vociferous, and successful, albeit only for a short period. Thus, under their frantic pressure Tsar Nicholas II has been canonized, and his icons can be now seen in Ukrainian churches of the Moscow Patriarchate. This dazzling success inspires church activists for new feats of piety. Newly-formed associations and fraternities are demanding the canonization of such merited personalities as, for instance, that “defender of the Russian throne” Rasputin (a drunkard, womanizer, master of intrigue, and shaman). The Holy See of the Russian Orthodox Church attempts to resist such feats of piety. However, its failure in the case of Nicholas II is suggestive of its true motives.
Next on the list of candidates for canonization is Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible, the Nero of Russian history. In this connection, Patriarch Alexis II reminded the church activists about Metropolitan Filipp, one of that tsar’s countless victims.
Metropolitan Filipp belonged to the clan of the boyars Kolychevs. According to Archpriest P С tr Smirnov, “He became attached to sacred literature at an early age.” He was indifferent to secular life and its problems. After his relatives came into disfavor with the tsar, Filipp left the court and secretly took his monastic vows. Clad as a commoner, he set out to the Solovetsky Monastery where nine years later he became Father Superior despite his youth. He became famous for both his spiritual qualities and administrative abilities. He drained marshes around the monastery, built roads in places hitherto impassable, upgraded the saltworks, built two grand cathedrals of the Assumption and Transfiguration, and countless hermitages. He watched over the morals of the monks and to this end wrote a new charter that prohibited idleness and inactivity which he considered a source of sinful thoughts and deeds.
During his fierce oprichnina reign of terror against the boyars Tsar Ivan summoned Filipp to Moscow and offered to make him the Metropolitan of Moscow. Filipp refused at first but later agreed on condition that the tsar abolish the oprichnina. In the end, he had to obey the tsar’s will and even pledged not to interfere with royal matters and personal life of Ivan IV (and it is common knowledge that the church had many reasons to interfere). The tsar, however, declared that “the duty of the metropolitan is to appease the anger of the tsar.” However, even after the new metropolitan had been enthroned, killings and burglaries continued in the capital. In private conversation with the tsar, Filipp tried vainly to influence him. The metropolitan’s preaching irritated Ivan the Terrible and burdened his conscience. He thus began to avoid Filipp.
In the Week of the Holy Cross in March 1568 the metropolitan was standing at the pulpit in the Assumption Cathedral. Suddenly, in the middle of the service tsar Ivan and his oprichniks entered the church. All of them, the tsar included, were donned in black frocks with daggers gleaming from under them. According to custom, the tsar went straight to the metropolitan and asked for his blessing. Filipp stood there motionless and heedless of the autocrat. Ivan repeated his request again and again. At last, boyars and high priests whispered to the metropolitan, “Your Holiness, the tsar is requesting your blessing!”
The metropolitan and tsar started a dialog to which those present listened with horror. The tsar kept repeating, “Shut up and bless us! Stop defying our state or else you will part with your throne!”
To this the metropolitan answered, “I didn’t ask to be ordained. I used neither money nor intrigues to become metropolitan. Why did you deprive me of my desert?” He further said, “If the living keep silent, the stones of this cathedral will scream and condemn you!” Such words had been unheard of in the Russian church before or ever after.
The tsar did not heed the metropolitan’s words. As soon as the next day Prince Vasyl Pronsky was charged with high treason and tortured to death. Filipp, however, remained on his throne, but not for long. The last clash between the tsar and metropolitan happened in the Novodievichy Monastery. When reading the Gospel, the metropolitan noticed that one of the oprichniks was wearing a Tatar cap and pointed at him. The culprit, however, quickly took off the cap and hid it, and the metropolitan was accused of lying and of intending to disgrace the tsar before his people. The clerical court dethroned Metropolitan Filipp and sentenced him to a lifetime in the Otrochy Monastery in Tver.
However, by the order of tsar Ivan, who was an accomplished amateur of theatrical effect, Metropolitan Filipp celebrated his last mass in the Assumption Cathedral. During the mass, oprichniks broke into the church, tore the vestments off the metropolitan, donned him in a burlap frock, and rushed Filipp away, hitting him with brooms.
The following year, the tsar set out to pacify Novgorod (according to Vasily Kliuchevsky, “without investigating anything he mercilessly razed the ancient town and the whole oblast to the ground, surpassing in his cruelty even the Tatars, who never destroyed a single Russian town”) and, having remembered Metropolitan Filipp on his way, sent Maliuta Skuratov to the monastery. Maliuta strangled the maverick metropolitan. Russian historian Sergei Soloviov wrote: “Thus died undefeated the great pastor of the Russian church.” During the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich, Metropolitan Filipp was canonized (1652). His remains were transferred to the Solovetsky Monastery and his relics to the Assumption Cathedral in Moscow, where the tsar prayed for St. Filipp’s forgiveness of the sins committed by Ivan the Terrible (who by what must be a miracle of fate now appears even saintly in some eyes — Ed.).
