Photius (Greek Photios, Russian Фотий) was born around 1360 at Monemvasia on the Peloponnese to a Greek noble family. He received his monastic formation at Mount Athos — the Athonite-hesychast tradition of Sts. Gregory Palamas and Gregory of Sinai, the same tradition exemplified by his predecessor St. Cyprian of Kiev.
On the death of St. Cyprian of Kiev on September 16, 1406, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople appointed Photius as Metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus'. Photius arrived in Moscow in 1410 and undertook the governance of the Kievan-Muscovite ecclesiastical province.
Photius's twenty-one-year metropolitan ministry (1410–1431) was devoted to the continuation of St. Cyprian's Athonite-hesychast liturgical reform, the systematic pastoral organization of the Kievan-Muscovite ecclesiastical province during the politically-fragmented period, and the continued unity of the Kievan-Rus' ecclesiastical province.
He died at Moscow on July 2, 1431. His relics were translated to the Cathedral of the Dormition at the Moscow Kremlin in 1472 (simultaneously with the translation of the relics of his predecessor St. Cyprian of Kiev).