The Transfer of St. Metropolitan Filipp’s Relics to Moscow Reconsidered

Abstract This essay reconsiders the transfer of St. Filipp’s relics to Moscow in 1652, recognizing it as an act of historical replication founded on annual religious commemorations and intended to contextualize Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s inheritance of the Orthodox Byzantine legacy. Commemorations of Filipp, including his zhitie , were founded on the Life of St. John Chrysostom and on accounts of Emperor Theodosius II ’s translation of Chrysostom’s relics to Constantinople. The Chrysostom-Theodosian paradigm exemplified the disruption and restoration of the Byzantine concept of church-state harmony. Aleksei’s plea that Filipp “absolve the transgression of my great grandfather, Tsar Ivan” represents increasing efforts to associate the Russian saint with Chrysostom and to replicate the Byzantine past, rather than an unprecedented attempt by Nikon to degrade the tsar. The translation of Filipp’s relics informed Tsar Fedor Alekseevich’s return of Nikon from exile and Peter I ’s transfer of Alexander Nevskii’s relics to St. Petersburg.