The Hagia Sophia in Rome

In the 1470s, a new redaction of the Sophia commentary appeared which has a new incipit referring to the legendary Hagia Sophia church in Rome founded by Saint Sophia and consecrated by Apostle Peter. This legend about Saint Sophia and her Roman Sophia church has survived in a lengthy anti-Latin Slavonic polemical compilation the Greek sources of which have not yet been explored. This chapter investigates the link between the Sophia iconography and Russian anti-Latin polemics which obtained a new relevance after the Union of Florence and the subsequent Russian strive for ecclesiastical independence. It argues that the famous ‘Third Rome’ idea appeared bound up with the creation of the Novgorod Sophia icon and commentary. It studies the transmission of these intertwined anti-Latin Sophiological and Roman ideas and images from Novgorod to Moscow during the era of Makarii who in 1542, after being the archbishop of Novgorod, became the metropolitan of Moscow and the cleric who crowned the first Russian tsar, Ivan IV, in 1547. Following the appropriation of the Sophia image by Moscow, the image rapidly disseminated in the ever-growing Muscovite state to serve its ecclesiological and religious ideology.