Feodor III of Russia

Feodor III
Tsar of All Russia
Reign 8 February (29 January O.S.) 1676 – 7 May 1682
Coronation 18 June 1676
Predecessor Alexis
Successor Peter I and Ivan V
Consort Agaphia Simeonovna Gruszewska
Marfa Matveievna Apraksina
Issue Tsarevich Ilya Fyodorovich
Full name
Feodor Alexeevich Romanov
House House of Romanov
Father Alexis I
Mother Maria Ilyinichna Miloslavskaya
Born 9 June 1661
Moscow
Died 7 May 1682 (aged 20)
Moscow
Burial Archangel Cathedral
Religion Eastern Orthodox

Feodor (Theodore) III Alexeyevich of Russia (in Russian: Фёдор III Алексеевич) (9 June 1661 – 7 May 1682) was the Tsar of all Russia between 1676 and 1682.

Posthumous parsuna of Tsar Feodor Alexeevich

Feodor was born in Moscow, the eldest surviving son of Tsar Alexis and Maria Miloslavskaya. In 1676, at the age of fifteen, he succeeded his father on the throne. He was endowed with a fine intellect and a noble disposition; he had received an excellent education at the hands of Simeon Polotsky, the most learned Slavonic monk of the day, knew Polish, and even possessed the unusual accomplishment of Latin; but, horribly disfigured and half paralyzed by a mysterious disease, supposed to be scurvy, he had been disabled from his birth. He spent most of the time with young nobles, Yazykov and Likhachov, who would later introduce the Russian court to Polish ceremonies, dress, and language.

On 28 July 1680 he married a Ukrainian noblewoman Agaphia Simeonovna Grushevskaya (1663 – after 14 Jul 1681), daughter of Simeon Feodorovich Grushevsky and wife Maria Ivanovna Zaborovskaya, and assumed the sceptre. His native energy, though crippled, was not crushed by his terrible disabilities; and he soon showed that he was as thorough and devoted a reformer as a man incompetent to lead armies and obliged to issue his orders from his litter, or his bed-chamber, could possibly be. The atmosphere of the court ceased to be oppressive; the light of a new liberalism shone in the highest places; and the severity of the penal laws was considerably mitigated. He founded the academy of sciences in the Zaikonospassky monastery, where everything not expressly forbidden by the Orthodox church, including Slavonic, Greek, Latin and Polish, was to be taught by competent professors.

The chief difference between the Fyodorean and the later Petrine reforms was that while the former were primarily, though not exclusively, for the benefit of the church, the latter were primarily for the benefit of the state. The most notable reform of Fyodor III, however, was the abolition in 1682, at the suggestion of Vasily Galitzine, the system of mestnichestvo, or "place priority", which had paralyzed the whole civil and military administration of Muscovy for generations. Henceforth all appointments to the civil and military services were to be determined by merit and the will of the sovereign, while pedigree (nobility) books were to be destroyed. Fyodor's first consort, Agaphia Simeonovna Grushevsky shared his progressive views. She was the first to advocate beard-shaving. On 11 July 1681, the Tsaritsa gave birth to her son, Tsarevich Ilya Fyodorovich, the expected heir to the throne. Agaphia died as a consequence of the childbirth three days later, on 14 July, and seven days later, on 21 July, the ten-days-old Tsarevich also died.

Seven months later, on 24 February 1682 Fyodor married a second time Marfa Apraksina (1667–1716), daughter of Matvei Vasilievich Apraksin and wife Domna Bogdanovna Lovchikova. Feodor died three months after his new wedding, on 7 May, without surviving issue. The news of his death sparked the Moscow Uprising of 1682.

References

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Regnal titles
Preceded by
Alexis		 Tsar of Russia
1676–1682 		Succeeded by
Peter I and Ivan V
Russian royalty
Preceded by
Alexei Alexeevich		 Heir to the Russian Throne
1670–1676 		Succeeded by
Ivan V of Russia