Peter, Metropolitan of Moscow, was a fourteenth-century hierarch born in Volhynia, in the lands of Galicia-Volhynia, who rose from monastic and iconographic obscurity to become Metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus'. He is remembered above all for transferring the metropolitan see to Moscow in 1325, an act that helped establish that city as the spiritual center of the Russian Church. He is venerated as a wonderworker and is reckoned among the patrons of Moscow.
By the accounts of his life, Peter was born to pious parents named Theodore and Eupraxia, and entered a monastery at the age of twelve. There he studied the religious learning of his day, fulfilled his monastic obediences, and learned the art of iconography. He was ordained a hieromonk, and the icons he painted were distributed among the brethren and to Christians who visited the monastery. He later withdrew to a cell at the Rata River, where he pursued ascetic life and established a monastery, sometimes identified as Novodvorsk; while serving as igumen of the Ratsk monastery he painted an icon of the Theotokos that became known as the icon 'Of Saint Peter.'
Around 1308 Peter was nominated for the metropolitan office, and the Patriarch of Constantinople consecrated him in Constantinople to the see of Kiev and all Rus', bestowing upon him the hierarchal vestments, staff, and an icon. His tenure was marked by controversy: he was accused before the Patriarch by Bishop Andrew of Tver, but a Church council convened at Pereyaslavl in 1311 recognized the accusation as slander. Peter was defended by representatives of Moscow, among them the young prince Ivan Danilovich, later known as Ivan Kalita, and he forgave his accuser.
In 1325, at the request of Grand Prince Ivan Kalita of Moscow, Peter transferred the metropolitan cathedra from Vladimir to Moscow, a move that strengthened the city's standing. By tradition he foretold that Moscow would become the foremost city of Rus'. He oversaw the laying of the foundations of the Dormition Cathedral in Moscow in August 1326 and prepared within it a stone crypt for his own burial. He reposed on December 21, 1326, and was buried there. He was numbered among the saints in 1339, and his relics rest in the Dormition Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin.
