Tzar

[Dorothey Allen]

As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and [Russian Empire], it is known as Tsarist [autocracy], or Tsarism. The term is derived from the Latin word Caesar, which was intended to mean Emperor in the European medieval sense of the term - a ruler with the same rank as a Roman emperor, holding it by the approval of another emperor or a supreme [ecclesiastical] official (the Pope or the Ecumenical Patriarch) - but was usually considered by western Europeans to be equivalent to king, or to be somewhat in between a royal and imperial rank.