Hieromartyr Philip Of Moscow

Hieromartyr Philip (Feodor Stepanovich Kolychev, 1507–1569) was Metropolitan of Moscow and All Rus' (1566–1568), one of the most venerated saints of the Russian Church, renowned for his fearless denunciation of tyranny. Born into a noble boyar family, he took monastic vows at Solovki as a young man, later becoming abbot and transforming the monastery into a major spiritual and economic center of the Russian North. In 1566 he was elevated to the Moscow metropolitanate on the condition that Ivan the Terrible end the Oprichnina. When the Tsar broke his word, Philip openly and publicly — including inside the Kremlin's Dormition Cathedral — denounced the Tsar and his Oprichniki for their cruelty and lawlessness, refusing to bless their actions. For this he was deposed in 1568 on fabricated charges and imprisoned at the Otroch Monastery in Tver. On December 23, 1569, on Ivan the Terrible's orders, the oprichnik Malyuta Skuratov strangled the metropolitan in his cell. His relics were buried at Otroch Monastery, translated to Solovki in 1591, and in 1652 — through the efforts of the future Patriarch Nikon — solemnly brought to Moscow and enshrined in the Kremlin's Dormition Cathedral, at which time he was formally glorified as a saint. His feasts are kept January 9 (repose/martyrdom), July 3 (translation of relics), and October 5 (Synaxis of Moscow Hierarchs).