St. Peter, Metropolitan of Moscow

He was born in Volhynia about 1260, entered a monastery at twelve, was an icon painter, and founded a monastery on the river Rata. He was consecrated Metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus at Constantinople in 1308.

His years in office were spent traveling a country that had been broken by the Mongol invasion and was quarreling with itself, and he was accused before the Patriarch by the party of Tver and cleared at a council at Pereyaslavl in 1311.

He settled at last at Moscow, which was then a small principality of no particular standing, and worked with its prince Ivan Kalita. The Life records what he told him: to build a stone church to the Dormition of the Theotokos in the Kremlin, and that if he did, the city would be exalted above all the cities of Rus and the hierarchs would live in it. The cathedral was begun in 1326.

Peter died on the twenty first of December of that year and was buried in the wall of the unfinished church, and Moscow became what he had said it would. He was glorified in 1339. The Church keeps the twenty fourth of August for the translation of his relics into the rebuilt Dormition Cathedral in 1479, and the twenty first of December for his repose.