Saint Jonah was a fifteenth-century hierarch who served as Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia from 1448 until his death in 1461. According to the synaxarion he was born in the city of Galich into a pious Christian family and received monastic tonsure at the age of twelve in one of the Galich monasteries. He later transferred to the Simonov Monastery in Moscow, where he carried out various monastic obediences and, by tradition, was blessed by Metropolitan Photius, who foretold that he would become a great hierarch of the Russian Church.
Jonah was consecrated Bishop of Ryazan and Murom before being chosen to lead the whole Russian Church. His path to the metropolitanate was shaped by the fallout from the Council of Florence (1438): Metropolitan Isidore, who had supported union with the Roman Church at that council, was deposed by a council of Russian hierarchs and fled to Rome. Jonah was then chosen Metropolitan of All Russia and officially assumed the office on December 15, 1448.
His consecration in Moscow by Russian bishops, without the prior approval of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, is regarded as the beginning of the autocephaly of the Russian Orthodox Church. He reposed in 1461. His relics were uncovered incorrupt in 1472 and placed in the Dormition Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, where they are venerated. A local council of the Russian Church established his commemoration as a saint in 1547.
