Metropolitan Philip is the brightest figure in Russian history of the 16th century, a representative of the ancient Kolychev family, who exchanged the armor of a serviceman for a monastic cassock. He, who never craved power and strived for solitude, had to head the Solovetsky monastery, and then become the head of the Russian Church. Raised from the wilderness of the islands lost in the White Sea to the pinnacle of church power, he tried to soften the heart of the stern tsar, stood up for the victims of the oprichnina and eventually came into conflict with Ivan the Terrible, was put on trial by the church and exiled to a provincial monastery. He experienced humiliation, bodily suffering and accepted death at the hands of the tsar's entourage, but did not change his ideas about faith and love. The book by historian Dmitry Volodikhin gives the reader the opportunity to lift the veil over the secret death of the bishop, to plunge into the whirlpool of historical events, where among the ominous oprichnina figures shines the purity of the image of Philip: a humble monk, abbot, head of the Russian Church, a martyr who shone in the Russian land.