Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/435

The disorders that next afflicted Russia were occasioned by one of the most amazingly successful impostures ever known to history. A pretender personated young Prince Dmitri, a son of Ivan the Terrible, who had died, probably murdered, some years before. This clever man was able to fight his way to Moscow and to reign there for some troublous years as Tsar of Russia. In the civil war thus occasioned the Church was seriously affected, and monks and bishops were directly involved. One man in particular now comes to the front, both on account of his vigorous activity at the time, and because his name has become famous in the light of subsequent history. This is Philaret Romanoff, the ancestor of the now reigning imperial family of Russia. The house of Ruric, the founder of the Russian princedom at Kiev, became extinct at the death of Dmitri. The new family of tsars was not yet in evidence. But during the time of confusion that intervened, its first known ancestor was already a person of importance in national and ecclesiastical affairs. Philaret was metropolitan of Rostoff. When the city was attacked by the pretender's party, most of the inhabitants fled; but the bishop held his ground, shut himself up in his cathedral with those who refused to desert him, and there celebrated the liturgy as usual. The rebels broke in, to find him preaching to his people. They seized hold of Philaret, tore off his episcopal robes, and dragged him out of the place, half dead from their violent handling. At Moscow the Trinity laura became a citadel of defence and supported a siege of sixteen months, when attacked, it is said, by an army of 80,000 men with sixty cannons pouring shot on its walls and churches. On the side of the monastery eight hundred men fell; but still the place held out. Twice it supplied Moscow itself with food. So wonderful an endurance was only accounted for by the protecting presence of two saints, Sergius and Nicon, who were believed to appear to the valiant defenders in visions or dreams. This monastery was now the heart of the defence of Russia against an impudent, lying usurpation. At the same time the patriarch Hermogenes was