while, however, the office was rendering good service to the State as well as to the Church.
A fresh attempt was now made to win over Russia by the Church of Rome. This began in the lifetime of Feodor, who had offered himself as a candidate for the kingship of Poland and Lithuania. Sigismund of Sweden was chosen, and he proved himself a zealot for Rome, and roused so fierce an anti-Russian feeling that his people were excited to a sort of crusade, which ultimately issued in the burning and sacking of Moscow. Terrible persecutions of the "orthodox" were perpetrated by the followers of the "union." At an early stage of the conflict the Swedes devastated the lands of the Solovetsky Monastery and some smaller convents. A little later the Khan of the Crimea invaded Russia and besieged Moscow. Then the patriarch Job sent his clergy round the walls chanting litanies and carrying the icon of "our Lady of the Don," after which he had it set up in a tent in the midst of the troops, like the ark in the tabernacle. Feodor, who was showing no energy in the defence of his city, calmly went to bed, assured that the spiritual protection secured by his patriarch would be sufficient. But the real protector of Moscow was Feodor's brother-inlaw, Boris Godunoff, the masterful head of the government, who strongly fortified the city and succeeded in driving off the Mongols.
A movement was now sedulously fomented in Little Russia to induce the bishops of that district to consent to union with Rome. It is said that two bishops were got to sign a request to King Sigismund and the pope for the union as though in the name of a synod, on the pretence that it was a petition for new priveleges for the orthodox Church. Hearing of this, Jeremiah the patriarch of Constantinople—who does not appear to have acted as though he had handed over his authority in this region to his brother at Moscow—wrote to the two bishops that he should deprive them of their offices if they yielded to Rome, and other ecclesiastics protested. Then Ignatius, the
