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406 So Jeremiah gave his reluctant consent, and the new patriarchate was established without the œcumenical council which Joachim had said was necessary for the origination of it.

A synod of all the Russian bishops was now summoned at Moscow ( 1587); and this synod submitted three names to the tsar, who at once chose the first of them, the metropolitan Job. The newly appointed patriarch was addressed as "œcumenical lord," and treated with the ceremonial honours so important in the eyes of an oriental court, which were scrupulously equated with those assigned by ancient custom to his guest, the patriarch of Constantinople. But beyond this accession of dignity the patriarch of Moscow had acquired no more real power than had been secured already by the metropolitan. Now, however, Novgorod was able to get its desire. The supremacy of Moscow being assured, there was no longer any objection to having a metropolitan at Novgorod. Accordingly, one of Job's first acts in the patriarchate was to raise the bishop of the northern city to the position of metropolitan; at the same time he made the bishop of Rostoff also a metropolitan. A year or two later the Bulgarian metropolitan Tirnoff, a descendant of the imperial families of the Cantacuzenes and Palæologi, came to Moscow, charged with synodical letters from the three patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch, and Jerusalem, confirming the appointment of Job as patriarch of Moscow. Thus the new patriarchate was firmly established and duly recognised.

We are now approaching the time known as "the period of troubles." During the disorganisation of the civil government that followed the death of Feodor ( 1598) the Church came to the front as the chief permanent institution of the Russian nation, and the patriarch of Moscow stood out as the one visible centre of unity. In this way the temporary weakness of the tsardom led to the temporary elevation of the patriarchate. We shall see later how the appearance of a strong tsar was followed by the total and final abolition of the patriarchate. Mean-