Feodor I of Russia

Feodor I Ioannovich (Russian: Феодор I Иoаннович) or Fyodor I Ivanovich (Russian: Фёдор I Иванович; 31 May 1557 – 17 January 1598), nicknamed the Blessed (Блаженный), was Tsar of all Russia from 1584 until his death in 1598.

Feodor's mother died when he was three, and he grew up in the shadow of his father, Ivan the Terrible. He was a pious man of retiring disposition and possibly suffered from mental disability. He took little interest in politics, and the country was effectively administered in his name by Boris Godunov, the brother of his beloved wife Irina. He died without surviving children and was succeeded by Godunov as tsar, marking the end of the rule of the Rurik dynasty and spurring Russia's descent into the catastrophic Time of Troubles.

He is listed in the Great Synaxaristes of the Eastern Orthodox Church, with his feast day on 7 January (O.S.).

Early life

Feodor was born on 31 May 1557 in Moscow, the third son of Ivan the Terrible by his first wife Anastasia Romanovna. He was baptized at the Chudov Monastery and his godfather was Macarius, the metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church. Although he was the sixth and youngest child of his mother, he grew up with only one older brother, Ivan Ivanovich, because all his other older siblings had died in infancy. His mother also died by the time Feodor was three years old, and her death greatly affected his father, who had been very attached to his wife.