THEODORE I  . (1557-1598), tsar of Russia, the son of Ivan the Terrible and Anastasia Romanova, nominally succeeded his father in 1584, but being of weak intellect was governed throughout his reign by the boyar, Boris Godunov, whose sister Irene he married in 1580 . On his death-bed he is said to have left the throne to his consort, with the Patriarch Job, Boris Godunov, and Theodore Romanov, afterwards the Patriarch Philaret, as her chief counsellors . Irene, however, retired into a monastery and her brother Boris stepped into her place . See S . M . Solovev, History of Russia (Rus.), vol. viii . (Petersburg, 1895, &c.) .