Born in
Moscow, Fyodor, as the eldest surviving son of
Tsar Alexis and
Maria Miloslavskaya, succeeded his father on the throne in 1676 at the age of fifteen. He had a fine intellect and a noble disposition; he had received an excellent education at the hands of
Simeon Polotsky, the most learned Slavonic monk of the day. He knew
Polish and even possessed the unusual accomplishment of
Latin. He had been disabled from birth, however, horribly disfigured and half paralysed by a mysterious disease, supposedly
scurvy. He spent most of his time with young nobles, and . On 28 July 1680 he married a noblewoman,
Agaphia Simeonovna Grushevskaya (1663–1681), daughter of Simeon Feodorovich Grushevsky and of his wife Maria Ivanovna Zaborovskaya, and assumed the sceptre. His native energy, though crippled, was not crushed by his disabilities. He soon showed himself as a thorough and devoted reformer. The atmosphere of the court ceased to be oppressive, the light of a new
liberalism shone, and the severity of the penal laws was considerably mitigated. The Tsar founded
the academy of sciences in the
Zaikonospassky monastery, where competent professors were to teach everything not expressly forbidden by the
Orthodox church – the syllabus included
Slavonic,
Greek,
Latin and
Polish. The Feodorean and the later
Petrine reforms differed in that while the former were primarily, though not exclusively, for the benefit of the church, the latter were primarily for the benefit of the state. A household census took place in 1678. The most notable reform of Feodor III, made at the suggestion of
Vasily Galitzine, involved the abolition in 1682 of the system of
mestnichestvo, or
"place priority", which had paralyzed the whole civil and military administration of
Tsardom of Russia for generations. Henceforth all appointments to the civil and military services were to be determined by merit and by the will of the sovereign, while pedigree (nobility) books were to be destroyed. ==Family==