For Metropolitan Peter and his successor Theognostus, however, the political fortunes of various princes were secondary to ecclesiastical concerns, the most pressing of which was maintaining the integrity of the metropolitanate of Kiev and all Rus. For the metropolitans of the second half of the fourteenth century, Alexis and Cyprian, that issue became a preoccupation. Just as Alexis became metropolitan in 1354, the Lithuanian prince Olgerd succeeded in establishing a metropolitanate over the Orthodox bishoprics in his realm, including Kiev and western Chernigov. The Lithuanian metropolitan was related to Olgerd’s wife, a princess from the house of Tver. Alexis responded by formally transferring his seat from Kiev to Vladimir (a move made, de facto, by Maxim). Subsequent efforts to reunite his see took him to Constantinople, Sarai, and Kiev (where he was held in captivity from 1358 to 1360). Only in 1361, when the metropolitan of the Lithuanian see died, did he succeed in bringing the south-western Rus bishoprics back under his jurisdiction.
In 1375 the metropolitanate of Kiev and Lithuania was revived; its metropolitan, Cyprian, was expected to succeed Alexis and reunite the two sees. But when Alexis died in 1378 and Cyprian arrived in Moscow, he was humiliated and expelled by Prince Dmitrii. The prince gave his support to Pimen, who became metropolitan in 1380. Cyprian and Pimen competed for dominance within the Rus Church until the latter, as well as Prince Dmitrii, died in 1389. Cyprian was then able to return to Moscow; he led the Church until his own death in 1407.
Cyprian, supported by monastic spiritual leaders of northeastern Rus, was an exponent of ecclesiastical unity. That theme was expressed in icons and frescos sponsored by the Church. It was also articulated in literature, which, like architecture and painting, was recovering from the decline it had suffered in the aftermath of the Mongol invasion. The Laurentian Chronicle, copied by the monk Lavrentii in 1377, for example, incorporated the Primary Chronicle and a second component covering events to the year 1305. Its broadly inclusive subject-matter and character, which drew upon sources from northern as well as southern Rus, affirmed the continuity and unity of the Orthodox community in all the lands of Rus.
Once Cyprian had become the unchallenged head of the Church, he placed even more emphasis on the themes of unity and continuity. His Life of St Peter (the former metropolitan) highlighted Peter’s relationship with Prince Ivan Kalita, whom he praised specifically as the initiator of the process of ‘gathering the Rus lands’. The Trinity Chronicle, compiled at his court, similarly praised Ivan Kalita and his grandson Dmitrii Donskoi. Its underlying premiss was that all the principalities of Rus formed a single ecclesiastical community and that Moscow had replaced Kiev as its centre. Although these themes were meant to relate to the Church, they implicitly promoted the concept of a politically unified secular state as well; such a state was envisioned as a necessary aid in the creation and protection of the ecclesiastical unity of the see.
By the mid-fifteenth century Church texts characterized Dmitrii Donskoi as the hero of Kulikovo and stressed his role as the prince who had gathered an army drawn from many of the lands of Rus, to oppose the Tatars. They also likened his grandson Vasilii II to Vladimir; the latter had introduced Christianity to Rus and had subsequently been canonized as a saint, while the former was depicted as the protector of the Orthodox faith for rejecting a union with the Roman Church (1439) and supporting the Russian prelates’ decision (1448) to name their own metropolitan without confirmation by the patriarch of Constantinople.
The deep concern of the Church to preserve the territorial and, after 1439, the spiritual integrity of the metropolitanate enhanced the prestige of the Muscovite princes, whose political policies were compatible with the causes of the Church. The Church, while pursuing and justifying its own ecclesiastical goals, furnished the Daniilovichi with ideological concepts that legitimized their rule.
By 1425 Muscovy had strengthened both its material and ideological foundations. The new domestic sources of legitimacy, however, remained secondary as long as the Golden Horde continued to be powerful and to support the Daniilovichi. Despite a devastating attack by Timur (Tamerlane) on Sarai and its other market centres in 1395, the horde was able to maintain its dominance over the Rus princes, to collect tribute from them, and even to launch a major campaign and besiege Moscow (1408). Lithuania similarly exerted a strong influence over the lands of Rus. It incorporated Smolensk (1395) and became increasingly involved in Novgorod, Tver, and Riazan. Vasilii I, who had married the daughter of Vitovt, the grand prince of Lithuania, not only met Lithuania’s expansion with relative passivity, but named Vitovt one of the guardians of his son, Vasilii II.
Shortly after Vasilii I died in 1425, however, the balance of power in the region shifted. Muscovy’s neighbours, Lithuania and the Golden Horde, had imposed internal order and external limits on the Rus lands. But in 1430 the Lithuanian grand prince died, and his realm fell into political disarray. At virtually the same time the Golden Horde, which had never fully recovered from the economic disruptions caused by Timur, began to disintegrate. During the next two decades the Golden Horde split into four divisions: the khanate of Kazan on the mid-Volga, the Crimean khanate, the khanate of Astrakhan, and the remnant core—the Great Horde.
Once Muscovy’s neighbours had weakened, the Daniilovichi reverted to intradynastic warfare. At issue, as during the Kievan Rus era, was a principle of succession. In the second half of the fourteenth century the princes of Moscow (in the absence of living brothers and eligible cousins) had regularly named their eldest sons as their heirs. Although this practice established a vertical pattern of succession, it was adopted as a matter of necessity, not as a deliberate plan to replace the traditional lateral succession system. When Vasilii I died, however, he left not only his son Vasilii II, but four brothers. As long as his son’s guardians (who included Vitovt of Lithuania and Metropolitan Photius) were alive, no one quarrelled with his succession.
But in 1430–1, within a year of one another, Vitovt and Photius both died. Shortly afterwards, the eldest of Vasilii II’s uncles challenged his nephew for the throne of Vladimir. He and Vasilii each appealed to the Mongol Khan Ulu-Muhammed. Although Vasilii was awarded the patent, his uncle none the less contested the decision and seized Moscow in 1433. When he died in 1434, his sons continued the war even though, according to the principle of seniority their father had invoked, they had no claim to the throne. The prolonged war was both brutal and decisive. By the time it was concluded, Vasilii had blinded one cousin and had in turn been blinded by another; he had been captured and released by the Tatars of Ulu-Muhammed’s horde (1445) as it migrated to the mid-Volga where it subsequently formed the khanate of Kazan; he had welcomed into his service two of the khan’s sons who assisted him against his cousins; he had established Moscow’s control over the vast majority of the northern Rus lands and increased its authority over Novgorod; and he had subdued his relatives—apanage princes in Muscovy—and restricted succession to his own direct heirs.
The triumph of Vasilii II over his uncle and cousins enabled him and his heirs to continue, virtually without restraint, the process of consolidating Muscovite authority over the northern Rus lands and forming a centralized, unified state to govern them. The principle of vertical succession, confirmed by the war, limited the division of lands to the formation of apanage principalities for the grand prince’s immediate relatives. It correspondingly restricted the proliferation of large, competitive armies under the control of autonomous princes. In addition to subordinating most of the northern principalities to Moscow, the altered succession system served to unify and consolidate the Russian lands around Moscow. By the mid-fifteenth century the princes of Moscow had fashioned a new political structure, centred around their own enlarged hereditary domain and their dynastic line, within which eligibility for the post of grand prince had been narrowly defined. Built upon territorial, economic, military, and ideological foundations that displaced both the traditional heritage of Kievan Rus and Tatar authority, the new state of Muscovy was thus poised to exploit the disintegration of Golden Horde and the reduction of Lithuanian expansion and to become a mighty Eastern European power.