It’s kind of hard to think of anyone not knowing what the First Rome is. (That would be the Holy Roman Empire) Specifically it’s the Rome ruled by Saint Constantine who removed restrictions on religion preventing Christians from openly practicing their faith. Eventually culminating in a Roman Empire synonymous with the Christian faith.
The second Rome is reasonably intuitive but possibly lesser known. Byzantium, and more specifically Constatinople (named for Saint Constantine) was the second Rome. This follows the split in the Roman empire as the Bishop of Rome declared the Patriarch of Constantinople to be a heretic. Anyone who’s heard Istanbul as popularized by ‘They Might Be Giants’ has heard the name Constantinople, named for Saint Constantine, but it is indeed somewhat obscure in the west. Now part of Turkey, Constatinople was once arguably the center of the modern world. Now it’s hard to pull up in most spell checkers thanks to politics. Constatinople and in fact the Byzantine Empire in general is lost much of it now a part of Turkey or other Middle Eastern nations.
What then could be considered the Third Rome?
There were many contenders. By the end of the Byzantine empire there were numerous thriving Orthodox nations, many involved in ethnic or religious conflict, and many which fell to them. The nation of Serbia, for instance, fought so bravely in fact that the Islamic invaders gave them a freedom of religion that was unheard of elsewhere in nations Islamic peoples had conquered. Serbia today uses in many instances the same Byzantine two headed eagle which Russia also uses as a national symbol and which defined the Byzantine empire with its dual capitals in Rome and Constantinople. Serbia however did fall, and never established a Holy Empire.
Here is where we find the Third Rome: Russia.
While the concept of a Second Rome applied to Constantinople as a city, though arguable the whole eastern Roman empire as well, the Third Rome has always referred to Russia as a whole. When the Monk Philotheus of Pskov spoke of a Third Rome he referred to the Russian Empire as a whole saying “ Two Romes have fallen, but the third stands and a fourth there will not be.” And indeed with Russian citizens constituting about half of all Orthodox Christians today The Russian Empire has proved to be the Third Rome.
