Metropolis of Lithuania

The establishment took place in the aftermath of the Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus' which was exploited by the rulers of Lithuania to greatly expand their territory.

To help legitimize their annexations and to bind their new subjects more closely to the state, the royal powers favoured the erection of a metropolis for the inhabitants of the Grand Principality.

To avert the possibility of the state going over to the Holy See, the hierarchs based in Moscow latterly supported the erection of the metropolis as the lesser of two evils.

While adhering to the pagan faith, Grand Dukes Vytenis and Gediminas understood the political importance of controlling the Church.

[6] The lack of a metropolitan bishop for the inhabitants of the Grand Duchy impeded the development of the idea of a single Lithuanian state that was being advanced by the ruling family.

[7] At the same time, the religious leaders in Rus' realised that the lack of a separate metropolis would leave the Lithuanian state susceptible to the influence of the Latin Church.

In attempting to preserve the continued cultural and religious unity of Rus', the Orthodox leaders realised that they might ultimately drive the people into the arms of Rome.

[8] By the mid-1350's, the senior clergy of the Rus' in Lithuania were agreed that a separate Lithuanian metropolis was the lesser of two evils.

The Patriarch of Constantinople generally preferred a united Metropolis of Kiev and all Rus' and was reluctant to divide its authority.

By the 1440s however, just before the Fall of Constantinople, the Grand Duchy of Moscow had effectively won the dispute and became the new spiritual center of the Orthodox tradition in Eastern Europe.

Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos established the metropolis while Patriarch John XIII of Constantinople ordained the prelate - Theophilus — who was of Rus' origin.

[10] A surviving list of his property shows that Theophilus traveled extensively around the Rus' principalities and presented expensive gifts to prominent rulers of the region,[11] perhaps as part of a campaign to become the Metropolitan of Kiev.

Gediminas claimed that he had never said in his letters that he was ready to be baptized and that his scribes, the Franciscan brothers Henry and Berthold apparently had written things which he had never told them.

The papal legates reported to the pope that the magnates of Samogitia made threats against the life of the Grand Duke and his family and that there were also external Russian threats should he accept the Roman rite:[14]"It is for this that the king renounced the faith to the point that he no longer dared to utter a word about baptism.

When Theophilus died in 1329, Theognostus succeeded in restoring unity in the Rus' by claiming that there were too few Christians in pagan Lithuania.

When Teodoryt failed to gain support in the Ecumenical Patriarchate, he turned to the schismatic Bulgarian Orthodox Church and received ordination there.

Algirdas agreed to cease his support for Teodoryt on the grounds that his ordination was uncanonical, on condition that Roman was also appointed as Metropolitan of All Rus'.

Given the support of paganism among the nobility, the royal family was unwilling to alienate them by granting approval for Orthodox missionaries to operate in the state.

In any case, following the predations of the Mongol invasion, large parts of the countryside were underpopulated and Kiev itself was uninhabitable for a considerable period of time.

[25][26] On 12 February 1376, Alexius died; by the terms of the agreement with the patriarch, Cyprian was entitled to rule the religious affairs of all Rus'.

He attempted, but failed, to get recognition of his rights in the whole metropolitan diocese from the Grand Duke of Moscow Dmitri Donskoi, Novgorod, and Pskov.

Macarius assured Dmitriy of Moscow in writing that he denied Cyprian's claims to the Church of Great Rus.