Sailing from Byzantium (28 page)

Above all, Athos was an international phenomenon, a traveler's polyglot way station, a place of endless comings and goings, and of energetic networking. It was here more than anywhere else that Byzantine and Slavic monks such as Philotheos and Cyprian established the far-flung friendships and long-range affiliations that allowed them to promote the Hesychast agenda with such effectiveness.

Unfortunately, we know little of Cyprian's early life other than that he was Bulgarian. He emerges from the shadows in 1373, when he was in his early forties. It was at that point that Philotheos tapped him to serve as his confidential agent in Russia.

For some time, alarming complaints had been reaching Constantinople about the metropolitan Alexis, who had acted as regent for the young grand prince Dimitri II and whose extensive political activities on Moscow's behalf had irked both Olgerd and Prince Michael of Tver. Philotheos had at first firmly supported Alexis, but by about 1370 he began to have second thoughts. In a prolonged scandal, Michael of Tver had accused Alexis of complicity when Michael was illegally imprisoned while visiting Moscow.

More ominously, Olgerd of Lithuania had complained that Alexis concentrated exclusively on Moscow at the expense of his Orthodox flock in Lithuania's extensive Russian
lands. “Not even our fathers knew such metropolitans as this metropolitan!” Olgerd had expostulated in a letter to Philotheos. “He blesses the Muscovites to commit bloodshed. He never visits us. He never goes to Kiev…. We invite the metropolitan to visit us, but he never comes to us. Give us another metropolitan for Kiev, Smolensk, Tver, Little Russia, Novosil, and Nizhni-Novgorod!” Clearly, both Olgerd and his ally Michael saw Alexis as a wedge to drive between Byzantium and its ally Moscow, their bitter rival.

Philotheos seems to have agreed that Olgerd had a valid point. In 1371 the patriarch had expressed his concern in a letter to Alexis:

Your sacredness certainly knows that, when we performed our consecration, we consecrated you as metropolitan of Kiev and all Russia: not of a portion, but of all of Russia. But now I hear that you visit neither Kiev, nor Lithuania, but remain in one place, leaving the rest without pastoral care, without supervision, without fatherly instruction. This is offensive and foreign to the tradition of the sacred canons. The right attitude for you is to visit the whole land of Russia, to have love and fatherly disposition toward all of the princes, to love them all equally, to show them the same and equal disposition, good-will and love.

Philotheos’ scolding of Alexis shows how seriously he took the pastoral commitment that went with the metropolitan's job, and his own, for that matter. More importantly, it also illustrates how, in the end, he considered Byzantium's alliance with Moscow to be subordinate to the overarching ideal of unity. It wasn't just Moscow that counted, but all of Russia, and Moscow should not be favored inordinately over other locales if such favoritism led to disunity. In other
words, the alliance with Moscow was to be pursued only when (and because) it promoted unity, not when it worked against it.

Philotheos now assigned Cyprian the delicate tasks of ensuring Alexis’ compliance with his patriarchal directives and of calming the tensions between Moscow and its rivals, Tver and Lithuania. Above all, Philotheos wished to avoid being buffaloed by Alexis’ negligence into granting Lithuania its own metropolitan, which Olgerd had been demanding with some justification. Cyprian seems to have succeeded, and in short order, for peace was soon established between Michael of Tver and Dimitri of Moscow.

More remarkably, the two Russian princes now aligned themselves with Olgerd against the divisive efforts of the Golden Horde, which at this point was weakened by internal dissension. Yet, Olgerd still hungered to run the whole show, and moreover it was obvious that Alexis, now elderly, wasn't going to be tramping around Lithuania anytime soon. On top of that, Olgerd had made it clear that he was quite ready to turn to the Latin church for comfort if necessary.

Under increasing pressure from Lithuania, Philotheos realized his time had run out. He had to do something to placate Olgerd. The problem was to do so without destroying the unity of the metropolitanate, for which he and others had fought so long and hard.

His solution to this dilemma was unconventional, even ingenious, and it seems likely to have been inspired partly by Philotheos’ observation of Cyprian's obvious ability. It was probably also inspired by the fact that Philotheos had already responded to similar complaints about Alexis from King Casimir of Poland, who had conquered Galicia, by consecrating a
temporary
metropolitan of Galicia. This office was
to revert back to the metropolitanate of Kiev and All Russia on its holder's death.

Galicia was one thing, but Olgerd's demands were far more extensive. Nevertheless, Philotheos ordered Cyprian back to Constantinople. On December 2, 1375, as a temporary expedient, the patriarch consecrated Cyprian as metropolitan of Kiev, Russia, and Lithuania, with the express provision that upon Alexis’ death Cyprian should reunite the whole metropolitanate in his person once again by succeeding Alexis as sole metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia.

It was an imaginative attempt to manage the formidable political pressures that were hammering on the metropolitanate's unity, but it had a big weakness: it relied on the cooperation of whoever was patriarch at the time of Alexis’ death. And Philotheos’ consecration of Cyprian, as it turned out, was one of his last acts as patriarch.

A few months later, the Genoese engineered a coup against John V by his son Andronicus IV, who promptly deposed Philotheos and installed his own patriarch, Macarios. Other changes quickly ensued. Olgerd and Philotheos died in 1377, and Alexis died early the following year.

In Constantinople the ruling family of Paleologos had hit a new low. The Genoese, the Venetians, and the now dominant Ottoman Turks competed over the dynasty like bickering puppeteers over the strings of a dilapidated marionette. John V and his loyal son Manuel—Chrysoloras’ friend, the future Manuel II—languished in prison, where they would remain for a year until the Venetians were able to
arrange their escape. “Each evening men expect the dawn to bring some new development, and every day they fear the night will bring some terrible calamity,” wrote Demetrius Cydones of the events surrounding Andronicus IV's coup and its aftermath. “It is like a storm at sea where we are all in danger of going down.”

The storm would continue on and off for more than a decade, until Manuel II brought some measure of calm with his assumption of the throne in 1391. Throughout that period, Byzantium remained incapable of implementing a sustained and consistent policy in Russia, as it had done with such success under Philotheos’ firm hand. Like the throne itself, Byzantine policy jumped around from one moment to the next, depending on whether Venice or Genoa could best suck up to the Turks at any given time.

The situation in Moscow was equally unstable, reflecting the new divergence of interest between the church's overall unity in a politically divided Russia and Moscow's narrower purposes. The Hesychast party of Cyprian and his allies in the Russian monastic establishment struggled to uphold the unity policies of Cantacuzenos and Philotheos. Against them were arrayed the powerful boyars, who had grown accustomed under Alexis to the church's unconditional support of the Muscovite agenda.

Into these buffeting political winds rode Cyprian in the spring of 1378, soon after Alexis’ death, as he journeyed north on horseback into Russia from Constantinople to claim his place as metropolitan under the terms of Philotheos’ decree. Stopping along the way, he wrote to his close friend and collaborator, Sergius of Radonezh, leader of the monastic party in Russia. “Let it be known to you: I have arrived in Lyubutsk on Thursday 3 June, and I am on my way to see my son, the Grand-prince, in Moscow.”

What happened when he approached Moscow we know from another letter, again to Sergius, that Cyprian wrote in anger three weeks later. Dimitri, under the influence of his boyars, had had no intention of letting Cyprian assume the metropolitanate: “But he sent envoys instructing them not to let me pass. He blocked the roads, placing military detachments and officers, giving them instructions to treat me harshly, up to the point of even putting us to death mercilessly.”

Circumventing the guards, Cyprian and his retinue snuck into Moscow by a different route, but when he confronted Dimitri, the grand prince had him imprisoned. “He locked me in the dark, naked and hungry, and I am still sick from that dark cold place.” The prince's henchmen even abused Cyprian's servants: “[T]hey drove them out of the city having stolen all their belongings, including shirts, knives and leggings. Not even shoes and hats they left them!” Cyprian also bitterly berates Sergius for not sticking up for him: “But you … why did you remain silent, seeing such evil?” His treatment at Dimitri's hands, Cyprian continues, is all the more outrageous because never once since he assumed the metropolitanate has Cyprian spoken or acted in any way against Dimitri or against Moscow. Yet, now he finds himself confronted by a rival Muscovite “metropolitan,” Mityai, uncanonically selected by Dimitri—who claims to have the backing of the patriarch.

Then Cyprian gets to the heart of the matter, showing his keen understanding of the political mess in which he has become ensnared:

He accuses me of having gone first to Lithuania [a reference to Cyprian's earlier residence in Kiev]: but what evil did I commit while I was there?… I am trying to reunite lost
areas to the metropolitanate and want to make things firm, so that they may remain forever, for the honour and majesty of the metropolitanate. But the Grand-prince plans to cut the metropolitanate in two! What advantage would be gained through such a plan? Who are his advisors? What are my faults before the Grand-prince?

Cyprian concludes, “I am travelling to Constantinople, seeking protection from God, the holy patriarch, and the great synod.” Even as he signs off, Cyprian injects a note of cynicism about the support he can expect at home: “Whereas these people rely on money and the Genoese, I rely on God and my right.”

His pessimism was fully justified. As Cyprian was now aware, the Genoese-controlled patriarch, Macarios, had already hung him out to dry. Paid off by Moscow immediately after the death of Alexis in a deal brokered by Genoese bankers, Macarios had removed his support from Cyprian even as Cyprian traveled north. He'd agreed that Dimitri should not recognize Cyprian as metropolitan, and agreed furthermore to create a separate metropolitan for “Great Russia,” that is, Moscow and the surrounding territory, to be chosen by Dimitri. All the infuriated Cyprian could do was maintain his claim to be the rightful metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia—and excommunicate all those back in Russia who stood in his way, which he proceeded to do. To top it all off, as he crossed the Danube on his way home he was held up and robbed.

After a restorative stay in his native Bulgaria, where he visited his old friend the Bulgarian patriarch Euthymius, Cyprian arrived back in Constantinople in the spring of 1379. Now the political winds swung back in his favor. No sooner had he confronted the Genoese-backed government
of Andronicus IV than Andronicus’ father, John V, and brother, Manuel, made their break from prison with Venetian and Turkish help and reentered the capital. Andronicus promptly absconded by rowboat across the Golden Horn to the Genoese quarter in Galata, taking his mother, Helena, and her now ancient father, John Cantacuzenos, as hostages. Macarios was immediately deposed; as Cyprian wrote with discernable satisfaction, “Together with the other bishops, I was present at that synod and signed the act of his deposition.”

Over the next few years the Venetians and Genoese would fight it out in the waters around the capital, each backing their own candidate for the throne and vying with each other for Turkish support. “At that time,” Cyprian continues, “I remained in the imperial city, named Constantinople, for thirteen months. I could not go out of it, because the imperial city was beleaguered by much disorder and trouble: the sea was held by the Latins, whereas the earth and dry ground was controlled by the God-hating Turks.”

Into this fluid situation now sailed the Muscovite delegation accompanying the man Dimitri had chosen to supplant Cyprian, whose name was Mityai. Unaware of the recent turn of events in Constantinople, they had voyaged down the Don expecting to find a friendly welcome— and rubber-stamped confirmation of Mityai—from Macarios. On the way they enjoyed a leisurely sojourn at Sarai, since the Golden Horde backed Mityai's nomination, which had been orchestrated in Moscow by the pro-appeasement boyars.

Then, almost unbelievably, when the delegation was already in view of Constantinople, Mityai—described in the sources as a physically imposing man—suddenly dropped dead. The Muscovites were completely thrown for a loop,
“confused and agitated,” a chronicler reports, “like drunken men.” Their Genoese allies had been overthrown, the patriarchate was still vacant, Cyprian had beaten them to the punch in Constantinople, and now their candidate for metropolitan was dead. They buried Mityai in the Genoese quarter. Recovering somewhat from their bewilderment, they then put forward one of their own, a priest named Pimen, to replace Mityai, reportedly forging Pimen's name on the official documents to make it look as though his replacement of Mityai had Dimitri's approval.

By this time, the spring of 1380, John V had filled the vacant patriarchate, appointing the prominent Hesychast Neilos Kerameus, who convened a synod to resolve the issue of the metropolitanate. The Russians played their best card, invoking grand prince Dimitri's bottomless credit and passing around loads of cash among the members of the synod: “[T]he Russians, acting in the name of the grand-prince, borrowed silver from the Genoese and the Turks…. They made promises and distributed gifts left and right, barely satisfying everyone.”

Despite strong support for Cyprian from both Byzantine and Russian Hesychast leaders, Neilos proved unable to resist completely the pressures from Moscow. The result was a compromise, splitting the metropolitanate once again. Pimen was consecrated as metropolitan of Kiev and Great Russia, while Cyprian's purvue was limited to Lithuania and Little Russia.