Metropolis of Lithuania

The Metropolis of Lithuania was a metropolis of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in the Eastern Orthodox Church. It was erected on the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania between 1315 and 1317. It was disestablished in 1371.^[1] The seat (cathedra) of the metropolis was initially in Navahrudak. It had only two metropolitan bishops. The establishment took place in the aftermath of the Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus' which was exploited by the rulers of Lithuania to greatly expand their territory. To help legitimize their annexations and to bind their new subjects more closely to the state, the royal powers favoured the erection of a metropolis for the inhabitants of the Grand Principality. To avert the possibility of the state going over to the Holy See, the hierarchs based in Moscow latterly supported the erection of the metropolis as the lesser of two evils. Throughout the existence of the metropolis, the metropolitans struggled for religious control of the Rus' eparchies with the secular and religious powers in the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, the Principality of Tver, and the Grand Duchy of Moscow.