The Icon and the Axe

The rise of the "third Rome," like that of the first, has long tantalized historians. There are almost no surviving records for the critical 140 years

between the fall of Kiev and the turning of the Tatar tide under the leadership of Moscow at Kulikovo field in 1380. Perhaps for this very reason, there is a certain fascination in weighing and balancing the factors usually cited to explain the rapid emergence of Muscovy: its favorable central location, the skill of its grand dukes, its special position as collecting agent of the Mongol tribute, and the disunity of its rivals. Yet these explanations-like those of Soviet economic determinists in more recent years-seem insufficient to account fully for the new impetus and sense of purpose that Muscovy suddenly demonstrated-in the icon workshop as well as on the battlefield.

To understand the rise of Muscovy, one must consider the religious stirrings which pre-existed and underlay its political accomplishments. Long before there was any political or economic homogeneity among the Eastern Slavs, there was a religious bond, which was tightened during the Mongol period.

The Orthodox Church brought Russia out of its dark ages, providing a sense of unity for its scattered people, higher purpose for its princes, and inspiration for its creative artists. In the course of the fourteenth century, the prevailing term for a simple Russian peasant became krest'ianin, which was apparently synonymous with "Christian" (khristianin).* The phrase "of all Rus'," which later became a key part of the tsar's title, was first invoked at the very nadir of Russian unity and power at the turn of the thirteenth century, not by any prince, but by the ranking prelate of the Russian Church, the Metropolitan of Vladimir.5 The transfer of the Metropolitan's seat from Vladimir to Moscow in 1326 was probably an even more important milestone in the emergence of Moscow to national leadership than the celebrated bestowal by the Tatars in the following year of the title "Great Prince" on Ivan Kalita, Prince of Moscow. Probably more important than Kalita or any of the early Muscovite Princes in establishing this leadership was Alexis, the fourteenth-century Metropolitan of Moscow, and the first Muscovite ever to occupy such a high ecclesiastical position.

Within the church the monasteries played the key role in the revival of Russian civilization, just as they had somewhat earlier in the West. Monastic revival helped to consolidate the special position of Moscow within Russia, and inspired Russians everywhere with the sense of destiny, militance, and colonizing zeal on which subsequent successes depended.

The monastic revival of the north took definite form in the 1330's, when Metropolitan Alexis began to build a large number of churches within the Moscow Kremlin, providing a new religious aura to the citadel of power and centers of worship for several new monastic communities. Unlike the carefully organized and regulated monasteries of Western Christendom,

these communities were loosely structured. Although they subscribed to the ritualized communal rule of St. Theodore Studite, discipline was irregular, the monks often gathering only for common meals and worship services. One reason for this relative laxness was the very centrality of the monasteries in Russian civilization. In contrast to most other monasteries of the Christian East, early Russian monasteries had generally been founded inside the leading princely cities, and monastic vows were often undertaken by figures who continued their previous political, economic, and military activities. Thus, the activities of Alexis as monk and metropolitan were in many ways merely a continuation under more impressive auspices of his earlier military and political exploits as a member of the noble Biakont family in Moscow. Yet Alexis' new-found belief that God was with him brought new strength to the Muscovite cause. His relics were subsequently reverenced along with those of the first metropolitan of Moscow, Peter, who had been canonized at the insistence of Ivan Kalita. The most important of the new monasteries built by Alexis inside the Kremlin was named the Monastery of the Miracles in honor of the wonder-working powers attributed to the saintly lives and relics of these early metropolitans.