After the collapse of the Orthodox Byzantine Empire, the Russian Muscovite tsardom supposedly took over the mantle of the spiritual and political center of Orthodox Christianity, a burden which was seamlessly passed on to the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and subsequently to the Russian Federation. References to the “Third Rome” myth invariably hearken back to a letter ostensibly written by the Monk Filofei in 1510 to the Muscovite Great Prince Vassily III, in which Filofei appears to claim that, since Byzantium has fallen, Muscovy is now the inheritor of its role as Orthodox empire: “Two Romes have fallen. The third stands.