New archival discoveries: to the history of family connections of Filaret, metropolitan of Moscow

The article introduces for the first time into scholarly discourse a collection of letters and documents from the 17th to 19th centuries related to the relatives and close ones of Filaret (Drozdov), Metropolitan of Moscow, whose name is inscribed in golden letters in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church. These materials, of significant value to the field of church history, have been preserved within the family of the descendants of the parents of Metropolitan Filaret, Protopriest Mikhail Fedorovich and Evdokia Nikitichna Drozdov, despite revolutionary upheavals, world wars, and persecutions of the Church. The collection, from which materials are published in this article, is provisionally referred to as the “E. N. Drozdova Archive” by the authors.