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close and far-reaching as the monasteries acquired wealthand privileges.Three exceptional figures stood out for their Russiancontemporaries of the fourteenth century, and stand outstill to-day—Sergius of Radonezh, Alexis the metropolitan,and Stephen of Perm. Sergius (b. about 1314,d. 1392), the most generally popular of all the saints ofMoscow, "the head and teacher for all the monasteriesthat be in Russia," was the most powerful single spiritualinfluence of his age, and the monastery that he founded,Troitsko-Sergievsky (see map 3), soon the largest andthe richest in Russia, with its strictly ordered life on thebasis of the Studite rule, almost at once became themother or exemplar of numerous other monasteries. 1Sergius shunned the political arena, though he wascredited with inspiring the victory of Kulikovo (seep. 38)—"go against the godless boldly, without wavering,and thou shalt conquer"—and he was the directopposite of his admirer Alexis (b. about 1300, d. 1378), amany-sided, much travelled ecclesiastical statesman andadministrator, the first metropolitan to be Moscow-bred,who for the last twenty-five years of his life was the centralfigure in the government of the grand-princedom ofMoscow. The third figure, Stephen, first bishop ofPerm (d. 1396), a man from the Far North, is againcompletely different, in that his monastic training andGreek learning led him to pioneer mission work in thewild north-east, where he turned his face against russificationand invented a wholly new alphabet for the conversionof the Ziryanes, among whom he laboured withundaunted bravery and practical devotion.Between 1300 and 1500 the metropolitan "of Kievand All Russia,'' in fact resident in Moscow since about1300, was on most occasions the active supporter of thegrand-princes of Moscow in their gradual extension andconcentration of power at the expense of rival princesand feudatories. The very title of the metropolitans wasa reminder of the old linking together of all the Russiansthrough Kiev. Backed by Moscow, and usually by the1 One version of his life, written by a contemporary, is translated byN. Zernov in his St Sergius, Builder of Russia (1939).184