Coronations in Russia involved a highly developed religious ceremony in which the Emperor of Russia (generally referred to as the Tsar) was crowned and invested with regalia, then anointed with chrism and formally blessed by the church to commence his reign. Although rulers of Muscovy had been crowned prior to the reign of Ivan III, their coronation rituals assumed overt Byzantine overtones as the result of the influence of Ivan's wife Sophia Paleologue, and the imperial ambitions of his grandson, Ivan IV. These elements remained, as Muscovy was transformed first into the Tsardom of Russia and then into the Russian Empire, until the abolition of the monarchy in 1917. Since czarist Russia claimed to be the "Third Rome" and the replacement of Byzantium as the true Christian state, the Russia