Filofei

(secular surname Leshchinskii). Born 1650 in the Ukraine; died May 31 (June 11), 1727, in Tiumen’. Russian religious figure who spread Orthodoxy among the indigenous inhabitants of Siberia.

Filofei was sent to Tobol’sk as the Siberian metropolitan, a post he held from 1702 to 1709 and from 1717 to 1720. While Filofei employed harsh measures in disseminating Orthodoxy, his work was beneficial in that it helped educate the people. He equipped a mission to Mongolia in 1704 and one to Kamchatka in 1705. He opened several religious schools, where members of the minority peoples of Siberia studied together with Russians.

Dates of birth and death unknown; died in Pskov. Russian writer and publicist of the first half of the 16th century. Monk at the Eleazar Monastery in Pskov.

Filofei was the author of epistles to Grand Prince Vasilii III, to Tsar Ivan IV, and to the d’iak M. G. Misiur’-Munekhin, the head of administration in Pskov after its incorporation into the Russian state. Filofei supported the principles of the Josephites in his writings. The theory of Moscow as the third Rome found its most consistent expression in his epistles. It affirmed the idea of the succession of Moscow and the Russian state to the leadership of the Orthodox Christian world after the loss of that leadership by Constantinople. Filofei favored the annexation of Pskov by Moscow.