Patriarch Philaret of Moscow

Feodor Nikitich Romanov (, ; 1553 – 1 October 1633) was a Russian boyar who after temporary disgrace rose to become patriarch of Moscow as Filaret, and became de facto ruler of Russia during the reign of his son, Mikhail Feodorovich. Biography The second son of the prominent boyar Nikita Romanovich, Feodor was born in Moscow and was the first to bear the Romanov surname. During the reign of his first cousin Feodor I (1584–1598), young Feodor Romanov distinguished himself both as a soldier and a diplomat, fighting against the forces of John III of Sweden in 1590, and conducting negotiations with the ambassadors of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor from 1593 to 1594. He was made a boyar in 1583. On the death of the childless tsar, he was the popular candidate for the vacant throne; but he acquiesced in the election of Boris Godunov, and shared the disgrace of his too-powerful family three years later, when Boris compelled both him and his wife, Xenia Shestova, to take monastic vows under the names of Filaret and Martha respectively. Filaret was kept in the strictest confinement in the Antoniev Monastery of the Russian North, where he was exposed to every conceivable indignity; but when the False Dmitriy I overthrew the Godunovs, he released Filaret and made him metropolitan of Rostov (1605).