Feodor Nikitich Romanov (, ; 1553 – ) 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), Feodor 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.

Issue

Filaret's marriage to Xenia Shestova produced six children, of whom two survived into adulthood:

  1. Tatyana (d. 1612), married Prince Ivan Mikhailovich Katyrev-Rostovsky, no issue
  2. Boris (b. 1592, died in infancy)
  3. Nikita (b. 1593, died in infancy)
  4. Michael (1596–1645), first tsar of Russia from the House of Romanov
  5. Lev (b. 1597, died in infancy)
  6. Ivan (b. 1599, died in infancy)

References

Sources

  • Keep, J. L. H. "The Régime of Filaret 1619–1633". The Slavonic and East European Review 38, no. 91 (1960): 334–60. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4205172.
  • Michael Karpovich. "Church and State in Russian History". The Russian Review 3, no. 2 (1944): 10–20. https://doi.org/10.2307/125405.
  • Sebag Montefiore, Simon. The Romanovs: 1613 to 1918. (Penguin Random House, 2016)