Metropolis of Moscow and all Rus'

Seventeen prelates succeeded Jonah until Moscow's canonical status was regularised in 1589 with the recognition of Job by the Ecumenical Patriarch.

The union was proclaimed on 6 July 1439 in the document Laetentur Caeli [8][b] which was composed by Pope Eugene IV and signed by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund and all but one of the bishops present.

[9] Sylvester Syropoulos[10] and other Greek writers charge Isidore with perjury because he accepted the union, despite his promise to Vasili II.

[12] After the metropolitan throne lay vacant for seven years, the secular authorities replaced him with the Bishop of Ryazan and Murom — Jonah of Moscow.

Like his immediate predecessors, he permanently resided in Moscow, and was the last Moscow-based primate of the metropolis to keep the traditional title with reference to the metropolitan city of Kiev.

While progress toward union in the East continued to be made in the following decades, all hopes for a proximate reconciliation were dashed with the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

[13] Afterwards, the Muscovite principality and metropolis began to promote Moscow as the "Third Rome" and as the sole, legitimate successor to Constantinople.

[citation needed] Notwithstanding these events, the Ecumenical Patriarch continued to appoint metropolitans for the united Catholic and Eastern Orthodox ("Uniate") dioceses in those Ruthenian lands that were not controlled by the Tsardom of Moscow.

In the lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, the rulers rejected Jonah and continued to recognise Isidore as metropolitan.

New sects sprang up, some of which showed a tendency to revert to the Mosaic law: for instance, the archpriest Aleksei was influenced by Zechariah the Jew and converted to Judaism.

The Patriarchate was abolished by the Church reform of Peter the Great in 1721 and replaced by the Most Holy Synod, and the Bishop of Moscow came to be called a Metropolitan again.