The Origins of Russian Caesaropapism

By Gleb Chistyakov.

The church reforms of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and his son Peter Alekseevich concerned not only liturgical rites but also, more broadly, changes in the position of the Church within the state. Through the efforts of these two sovereigns, the official Church fell into complete dependence on secular authority, thereby establishing the ideology of caesaropapism, which had previously been unknown in Rus’.

On the Path to Caesaropapism

It is well known that one of the key figures responsible for the church schism of the 17th century, Patriarch Nikon (Nikita Minov), did not remain on the patriarchal throne for long. Ascending it in 1652, he set about implementing church reform with the utmost determination. However, within just a few years he lost interest in it, quarreled with the tsar and the bishops, and voluntarily left his post as early as 1658.

Yet even after his departure, the reforms—which had already caused considerable harm—did not cease. “A remarkable case in history,” reflects the contemporary philosopher Pavel Schelin, “the reformer is overthrown, yet the reforms continue.” In Schelin’s view, it was not so much Nikon as the tsar who was truly interested in church reform. Imperial ambitions and the drive toward absolutism were the main reasons the tsar persisted with the church reforms. These were carried out to the detriment of Russian culture, Russian self-awareness, and Russian tradition, with active involvement from Kievan-Mohyla scholars and Greek clergy whom Alexei Mikhailovich himself had brought close to the Moscow court.

It is commonly held that, weary of Patriarch Nikon’s importunity and love of power, the Russian tsar greeted his self-willed resignation with relief. Historians often treat this conflict as a mere incident or accident. However, when viewed from the outside, the quarrel between the patriarch and the tsar was not the cause but rather the pretext for profound changes in the relations between the Russian Church and the state. After Nikon’s departure from the patriarchal throne, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich not only sought to prevent his return but also aimed to restructure the political system so as to limit the Church’s independence and, as far as possible, place it under submission to the state.

Already at the Council of 1666–1667, Alexei Mikhailovich attempted to place secular authority above spiritual authority. On January 14, 1667, the council participants were required to sign a lengthy conciliar act—prepared by the Greeks—deposing Nikon. In addition to condemning the former patriarch, the Greeks, who controlled the secretariat, surreptitiously inserted provisions requiring the Church’s subordination to the state. However, the participants saw through this inexcusable cunning. Metropolitan Paul of Krutitsy and Archbishop Hilarion of Ryazan refused to sign the act, objecting to its assertion of the primacy of secular power over ecclesiastical power. During the ensuing debate, Paul and Hilarion received support from other hierarchs, who presented excerpts from the writings of the Church Fathers on the superiority of the priesthood over the kingdom and refuted the arguments of the opposing side, represented by the presiding Greek Metropolitan Paisius Ligarides. The Greeks insisted that in Byzantium too the emperors governed the Church, deciding various issues, convening councils, and appointing or deposing patriarchs. After prolonged disputes, a formula was worked out expressing the principle of the symphony of priesthood and kingdom: “The tsar has precedence in civil affairs, and the patriarch in ecclesiastical affairs, so that in this way the harmony of the ecclesiastical institution may be preserved whole and unshaken forever.” The refusal of some Russian hierarchs to submit to the Greeks provoked extreme irritation in the tsar, and he insisted on penances against Bishop Paul and Bishop Hilarion.

Despite this failure, Alexei Mikhailovich de facto continued to decide ecclesiastical matters even after the Council of 1666–1667. For example, the Golovin redaction of the “Siberian Chronicle Compilation,” compiled on the orders of Governor Golovin in the 1680s, reports a decree from Alexei Mikhailovich: “In the year 7184 [1676], on February 19, there came the sovereign’s decree to the boyar and voivodes Peter Mikhailovich Saltykov and his associates concerning church schismatics who are found in schism: those people are to be interrogated and brought to trial three times. And if they do not repent, they are to be burned and their ashes scattered so that not even their bones remain. And those who are found to be of young age are to be forcibly brought to trial, punished, and if they do not convert, they are likewise to be burned.”

The Spiritual Regulation

What Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich could not establish legally was accomplished under his son, Peter Alekseevich Romanov. The main document of Peter’s church reform, the Spiritual Regulation (Dukhovny Reglament), was signed without objection in 1721 by 87 clergymen: 6 metropolitans, 1 archbishop, 12 bishops, 48 archimandrites, 15 hegumens, and 5 hieromonks.

The central idea of the Spiritual Regulation was not merely to proclaim the priority of secular authority, but to place the Church directly under state management—that is, classic caesaropapism: the power of secular authority, embodied in the emperor, over church institutions. Instead of church councils, a special spiritual ministry was created: “We establish the Spiritual College, that is, the Spiritual Conciliar Government, which, in accordance with the Regulation set forth here, shall manage all spiritual affairs in the All-Russian Church. And we command all Our faithful subjects, of every rank, spiritual and lay, to regard this as an important and powerful Government, and to seek from it the final resolution, decision, and judgment of spiritual affairs, to be content with its determinations, and to obey its orders in all things, under severe punishment for resistance and disobedience” (the “Spiritual College” was soon renamed the Holy Synod—note by the author). This body was subordinate to the emperor, who appointed its head (a secular official) and its members, the bishops of the synodal Church.

Bishops, upon assuming office, were required to take an oath of loyalty to the sovereign. The oath stated: “I, the undersigned, promise and swear by Almighty God, before His Holy Gospel, that I am obliged, and by duty I wish, and will in every way strive in the councils, judgments, and all affairs of this Spiritual Governing Assembly to seek always the truest truth and the truest righteousness, and to act in all things according to the statutes written in the Spiritual Regulation, and if any shall hereafter be determined by the agreement of this Spiritual Government and with the consent of His Imperial Majesty… I also confess with an oath that the ultimate Judge of this Spiritual College is Himself the All-Russian Monarch, Our Most Gracious Sovereign.”

As some theologians write, this oath contains several ideas that contradict Orthodoxy, bordering on heresy.

First, all who signed the Spiritual Regulation, as well as those who later took this oath, gravely sinned against God’s commandment—not to swear. In this oath they dared to swear by God Himself!

Second, it confesses the subordination of church affairs to secular laws and institutions: “I promise and swear by Almighty God, before His Holy Gospel, that… I will in the councils, judgments, and all affairs of this Spiritual Governing Assembly… act in all things according to the statutes written in the Spiritual Regulation, and if any shall hereafter be determined by the agreement of this Spiritual Government and with the consent of His Imperial Majesty.” Nothing is said in the oath about submission to the teaching of the Church and the holy fathers.

Third, the head of the church organization—and essentially of the earthly Church—is proclaimed to be the head of state: “I also confess with an oath that the ultimate Judge of this Spiritual College is Himself the All-Russian Monarch, Our Most Gracious Sovereign.”

All bishops were required to submit unquestioningly to the spiritual ministry: “Let every Bishop know, whatever his rank—whether a simple Bishop, or Archbishop, or Metropolitan—that he is subordinate to the Spiritual College as the supreme authority, and must obey its orders and be content with its determinations.”

In the synodal period, bishops themselves were appointed by the emperor, which completely contradicted the rules of the Ecumenical Councils. Emperors not only appointed bishops but could also unilaterally remove them from office, send them to imprisonment, and even subject them to civil execution.

New Theology and Legislation

Church historian A. S. Buevsky notes: “The Synod effectively renounced the consciousness of the church nature of its authority and reduced it to a state source, to the will of the monarch. All the Synod’s record-keeping for the following 200 years was conducted ‘by decree of His Imperial Majesty.’”

This theological position is reflected not only in the Spiritual Regulation but also in other documents of the era. For example, in the document The Truth of the Monarch’s Will (Pravda voli monarshey), devoted to the powers of the head of a monarchical state as seen by the adherents of Peter I.

Here is what it says: “The foundation of this power of his is the aforementioned, that the governing people divested themselves of their own will before him and gave him all power over themselves, and to this belong all civil and church rites, changes of customs, use of clothing, houses, buildings, ranks and ceremonies at feasts, weddings, funerals, and so on, and so on, and so on” [1].

In other words, the emperor had the right not only to control, appoint, or remove clergy, but also to interfere in the liturgical and ritual life of the Church.

The predominant role of the emperor in church affairs was reflected in state legislation. In the Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire, edition of 1832, it was stated as follows:

Art. 42. The Emperor, as a Christian sovereign, is the supreme defender and guardian of the dogmas of the dominant faith and the overseer of orthodoxy and every holy order in the Church. In a note to this article it is said: “In this sense the Emperor, in the act on the succession to the throne of April 5, 1797, is named Head of the Church.”

Art. 43. In church administration the autocratic power acts through the Most Holy Governing Synod established by it.

Historian N. M. Karamzin, in his memorandum to the emperor On Ancient and Modern Russia, openly acknowledged the fall of the new-rite Church into complete dependence on the state:

“Peter declared himself head of the church, abolishing the patriarchate as dangerous to unlimited autocracy… From the time of Peter the clergy in Russia declined. Our primates became mere favorites of the tsars, and from the cathedras they uttered words of praise to them in biblical language… If the Sovereign presides where the chief dignitaries of the church sit, if he judges them, or rewards them with worldly honors and benefits, then the church submits to worldly power and loses its character, zeal for it weakens, and faith is lost” [2].

Influence of the Kievan Scholars

As in the time of Alexei Mikhailovich, under Peter I the main advisers on church matters were natives of Little Russia [Malorossiya], from the circles of the Kiev-Mohyla Academy—most notably Archbishop Theophan (Prokopovich) of Novgorod. Not only Russian but also foreign researchers note that the Kievan-Mohyla advisers to the tsars succeeded in skillfully formulating and advantageously presenting not only the theology of caesaropapism but the entire ideology of imperial grandeur and absolutism that came to dominate Russia from the beginning of the 18th century.

It is worth recalling that at the turn of the 17th–18th centuries, quite a few historical forgeries emerged from the pens of those same Kievan scholars. For example, Metropolitan Stephen (Yavorsky), a native of the Kievan Polish szlachta and locum tenens of the patriarchal throne, in collaboration with Tsar Peter, commissioned the fabrication of forged acts of a fictitious Council of Kiev in 1151 that supposedly condemned the two-fingered sign of the cross, processions clockwise (posolon), and other ancient Russian traditions. The authenticity of this false testimony was “confirmed” by Metropolitan Joasaph (Krakovsky) of Kiev and the Council of Kiev. On January 31, 1718, the “Acts against the Heretic Martin” were solemnly delivered to Moscow, where they were signed by twelve Russian hierarchs.

The Kievan clergy gained such great influence over the Russian Church that, from the time of Peter I onward, bishops began to ordain primarily natives of Little Russia. For centuries these continued the persecution of the old rite and prevented the revival of other genuinely Russian church traditions.

The Old Believers against Caesaropapism

The Old Believers condemned the ecclesiology of this new theology because it contradicted both the church and secular traditions of ancient Rus’. First, caesaropapism was more of a Byzantine-Greek tradition. Second, in Russia it took shape under the influence of European absolutism. Historians point out that Peter I was greatly impressed by the phrase “Cuius regio, ejus religio” (“Whose realm, his religion”), which entered the Augsburg Confession of 1555 and established the principle that the confession of faith in a state’s territory is determined by its monarch. While in England, Peter also became acquainted with the structure of the Anglican Church and was inspired by the fact that its head was the head of state. Thus, the absolutism that arrived in Rus’ as a result of the policies of Alexei Mikhailovich and Peter I in no way corresponded to the historical conceptions of the Russian people regarding the nature of the state and the Church.

In one Old Believer composition, concerning Peter’s church reform, it was said:

“And he [the emperor—author’s note] became the head of the Russian Church, seizing upon himself not only royal power but also episcopal and divine power, becoming an autocratic shepherd, a single headless head over all.”

In another Old Believer manuscript of the 18th century we read:

“When Peter ascended the throne of all Rus’… he began to exalt himself above all those called gods, that is, the anointed ones, and began to boast and glorify himself before all, persecuting and tormenting Orthodox Christians and spreading his new faith, and… even abolished the patriarchate so that he alone might rule, having no equal to himself, so that apart from him no affairs should be done, but all should have him alone as the most exalted head, the judge of the entire Church, and he took upon himself the patriarchal title and called himself ‘Father of the Fatherland and Head of the Russian Church’ and is autocratic, having no one equal to himself, having seized upon himself not only royal but also patriarchal power.”

In yet another, later Old Believer manuscript, it is stated:

“Our Lord Jesus Christ said: ‘No servant can serve two masters,’ but He also says: ‘Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s’; therefore the tsar should only collect taxes and tributes; he should not interfere in spiritual affairs… Just as it is improper for bishops to enter into the management of troops, so the sovereign should not touch upon the faith…”

The Old Believer historian and polemicist F. E. Melnikov expressed himself even more categorically, calling this new teaching heresy:

“In order to practically defend all the aforementioned dogmas, as well as their other innovations, and to implement them in life, the new church was forced to establish and strengthen itself on yet another dogma without which all the other dogmas would have scattered like dust, like a temporary delusion upon Holy Rus’; perhaps they would not have had any place at all in the history of Russia. This is the dogma of caesaropapism—the new church’s bowing before royal power, even recognizing it as replacing Christ Himself.”

Afterword

Some church historians assert that after the revolutionary events of 1917, the canonical order was restored in the synodal Church and caesaropapism abolished itself. However, it is difficult to imagine that a habit formed over centuries could be so easily abandoned. For example, immediately after the establishment of Soviet power, representatives of the Orthodox Church of Russia (the Renovationist Synod) sought the patronage of the state. They urgently needed to strengthen their positions by using the levers of state pressure. A couple of years later, another part of the former synodal Church—the Tikhonite old-churchmen—also joined the state “roof.” Subsequently they even received the name “Sergians,” because the locum tenens of the patriarchal throne, Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), not only actively collaborated with the state, publicly declaring that churches were being closed at the request of believers, but also harshly applied ecclesiastical prohibitions with the aim of subsequently dealing with his own and the state’s opponents.

In one of the interviews, Metropolitan Sergius and other members of his Synod, including the future Patriarch Alexei (Simansky), declared:

“Yes, indeed, some churches are being closed. But this closing is not done on the initiative of the authorities, but at the wish of the population, and in some cases even by decision of the believers themselves.”

There the Synod also denied repressions against religious organizations:

“These reports do not correspond to reality in any degree. All this is pure invention, slander, completely unworthy of serious people. Individual clergymen are brought to account not for religious activity, but on charges of this or that anti-government action, and this, of course, occurs not in the form of any persecutions and cruelties, but in the ordinary form for all accused.”

In the early 1940s the Sergians managed to seize the initiative and obtain from the authorities (I. V. Stalin issued a personal order) the liquidation of the Renovationist Church, which contained no fewer than 40 bishops.

As some historians report, similar situations occurred in the relations among Old Believer accords. Old Believer historian S. S. Mikhailov writes:

“The Rogozhskoe Cemetery actively fought against the non-okrugniks throughout their history, beginning in the 1860s, and already in the Soviet period. As we see from the reports of the authorized representative of the Council for Religious Affairs for Moscow and the Moscow region, in the second half of the 1940s, when some Moscow-region Old Believer parishes closed during the persecutions of the 1930s–1941 were being revived or attempting to revive, the non-okrugnik communities encountered the policy both of the Soviet agency itself and of the Rogozhskoe Archdiocese, which, with the help of the authorities, settled scores with its opponents, not allowing their communities to register even after an apparent transition into its own fold” [3].

The representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) behaved no better; in the 20th century they glorified European dictators and sent them the most loyal messages.

After 1988, when atheism ceased to be the state ideology in the USSR and in the countries that emerged after its collapse, religious associations gained the opportunity to develop without state pressure. However, remnants of caesaropapism periodically continue to manifest themselves in modern church life, as many contemporary experts write.

For example, opinions are periodically expressed about the excessively close cooperation between the state and the church in Russia. At the same time, however, it is not noticed that in Ukraine the state intervenes even more actively in matters of religion. Some Ukrainian religious associations are created practically with a stroke of the pen by the head of state; others are abolished by similar decrees of secular authority. A similar situation is developing in the Baltic countries and even in Germany.

Nevertheless, there remains hope that the complete eradication of the ideology of caesaropapism awaits us in the not-too-distant future.

The truly Old Believer approach to the question is adherence to the Christian teaching of the Church, observance of the commandments, rejection of political activity, and distancing from politicized ideas. For if Old Belief, in one form or another, adopts the teaching of caesaropapism, it too will gradually turn into edinoverie-Sergianism and will differ from Nikonism only in the sign of the cross. It is no accident that in 1905 the Old Believers succeeded in achieving the establishment of freedom of religion in the Russian Empire, which allowed confessions to develop without state administration, official commands, and repressions. They should continue to follow this path.

Literature:

[1] Theophan Prokopovich. The Truth of the Monarch’s Will. 1722.
[2] Karamzin N. M. “On Ancient and Modern Russia,” quoted in A. V. Kartashev. Outlines of the History of the Russian Church, pp. 371–372.
[3] Mikhailov S. S. “Non-okrugnichestvo in Kolomna: The Question of the Continuity of the History of the Priestly Old Believer Communities of the City” // Forbidden Accord: The Non-okrugnik Movement in the History of the Old Believer Belokrinitsa Hierarchy: On the 160th Anniversary of the Publication of the “Encyclical Epistle”. Moscow: Pero Publishing House, 2024. Pp. 83–99.