In category ::: 14th century

The Life of Metropolitan Peter was most likely written in the first half of 1327 by someone close to the metropolitan and the Grand Prince of Moscow. The Life was commissioned by Ivan the Money-Bag: it was essential to canonise and extol the person who had transferred the Metropolitan See from Vladimir to Moscow. A vita based on the miracles which were said to have been performed straight after Peter’s death would confirm the metropolitan’s saintliness.¹⁶

The Life of Metropolitan Peter was of great political and publicistic importance. The choice of Peter by God manifested itself in the miraculous vision which the saint’s mother had before he was born. Along the whole of his life’s path he was accompanied by Divine protection. And then this prelate elected by God, the Metropolitan of All Russia, out of all the towns in the land of Russia preferred Moscow, in which he chose not only to live, but also to be buried (he began building himself a tomb in the Cathedral of the Assumption). On his death-bed Peter gives his blessing to Ivan the Money-Bag and all his descendants.

The Life of Metropolitan Peter not only extolled the saint, but also to no lesser extent sang the praises of Moscow and the Grand Prince of Moscow. It confirmed the sanctity of the town chosen by God, which was soon to become what Kiev had been at the cradle of Russian history, the main town and centre of all the Russian lands.