The Life of Metropolitan Philipp in the Latukhin Book of Royal Degrees

Abstract

The article introduces into scientific circulation another edition of the “Life of Metropolitan Philip”, which belongs to the pen of Archimandrite Tikhon, the creator of the Latukhin Book of Royal Degrees. As a result of textual analysis, it was found that in 1676 the author used as the main source the text of the Synaxarion version of the Life, which had already been published twice (in 1639 and 1675). Although in most of the Life the similarities with the source are verbatim, fundamental changes were made in its compositional completion: the final fragments of the Synaxation version were excluded. Instead, 3 new episodes were added, two of which (the execution of Mikhail Kolychev and the sending of his head to the imprisoned Metropolitan Philip and a short narration about the punishment of the slanderers of the saint) came from a rare version of the Life from the Milyutin’s Menology. The most significant semantic changes occurred after the appearance of the final fragment of the new edition: the protopope of the Annunciation Cathedral Eustathius, the confessor of the tsar, according to the main versions of the monument, is one of the main persecutors of Philip, becomes a “proponent” of the saint and is betrayed by Ivan the Terrible to a painful execution: thrown under the ice into the Moskva River. However, despite his miraculous rescue (after almost 1.5 km he came out of the ice hole alive), tsar ordered him to be thrown under the ice again. Thus, the death of the high priest and tsar’s confessor deprives the whole tsardom of protection, which confirms the story following this text about the death of Novgorod.