Church Councils of 1666–1667 as a Watershed in Russian History – by K. Kozhurin
“And a heavy darkness… then covered Russia.”
— Andrey Denisov, Funeral Oration for Peter Prokopyev
Ты была Христова
До шездесят шестова…(You were Christ’s
Until sixty-six…)
— Old Believer spiritual verse, “On the Nikonians”
Long before the onset of Nikon’s “ventures” in Russia, when nothing seemed to foreshadow the impending catastrophe that would befall the Russian Church, the first voices warning of a fateful danger began to emerge.
At the end of the 16th century, the Western Russian theologian and preacher Stefan Zizaniy (1550–1634), at the request of Prince Konstantin Ostrogsky, translated the 15th Catechetical Instruction of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem from Greek. The translation, accompanied by Zizaniy’s own commentaries, was published in 1596 in Vilnius in Belarusian and Polish under the title “Sermon of Saint Cyril on the Antichrist and His Signs, with an Exposition of Teachings Against Various Heresies.” Drawing on Holy Scripture, Zizaniy reminded readers that the year 1492 marked the beginning of the eighth millennium since the Creation of the world, a period, according to prophecies, when Christ’s Second Coming was expected. Zizaniy saw in his contemporary era all the signs of the approaching “end times” and asserted that the Roman papal throne was the seat of the antichrists. “In calling the Roman pope the antichrist, Zizaniy was not referring to a specific individual pope, nor to the final ‘prince of darkness’ who would reign just before Christ’s coming. The papacy was understood as a church institution, a church organization, with its individual representatives being forerunners of the antichrist, his servants. Their main goal was to undermine faith in Christ and the Church”1.
Stefan Zizaniy’s ideas about the approaching reign of the antichrist found further development. Around 1622, in the Kiev Orthodox Metropolis, a monumental anti-Catholic work appeared—“Palinodia” by Zachariya Kopystensky (d. 1627). In the preface to Palinodia, Kopystensky outlined his scheme of successive apostasies of Christians toward the world of the antichrist. According to him, since the year 1000, Satan had established himself in Rome. “The number 1000 held immense significance for the Orthodox theologian. Kopystensky interpreted it in the Augustinian tradition as a fulfilled event, based on the notion of Satan being ‘bound’ for 1000 years at the time of Christ’s first coming”2. He explained the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches—specifically the apostasy of Catholics from the Church—as the triumph of the antichrist in Rome starting in 1000 AD. In this context, the Baptism of Rus by Prince Vladimir in 988 (around the same time) and the establishment of the Russian Church gained particular significance. Although Rome fell away from the true faith, Rus entered the Church, taking Rome’s place in the sacred pentarchy (the authority of the five patriarchs).
Kopystensky further referred to the well-known apocalyptic number 666, which, when added to the initial date, pointed to the year 1666. He broke this number into sequential stages—1000, 1600, 1660, 1666—each associated with a church schism. According to Kopystensky’s scheme, the next stage of apostasy was the year 1600. Around this time, in 1596, a new attack by the antichrist on the true faith occurred, specifically targeting the part of the Christian world that, in Kopystensky’s view, preserved the legacy of Rus’s baptizer—the Kiev Metropolis. This was the infamous Brest Union, concluded between the Catholic Church and the Ukrainian-Belarusian Orthodox Church, which effectively stripped the Orthodox of Western Rus of their three-tiered hierarchy. “Kopystensky explained the Brest Union as the machinations of the Roman pope-antichrist and perceived it as an event of cosmic scale. In his view, the fate of the world now depended on the struggle between Uniates and defenders of Orthodoxy. Clearly, if the Union persisted, he implied the intervention of heavenly forces. According to biblical prophecies, the Second Coming would begin with Christ saving His persecuted and oppressed elect from the antichrist. Undoubtedly, Kopystensky saw the last truly faithful community on earth in the Kiev Orthodox Metropolis. According to the prophecy in Palinodia, further developments related to the antichrist would occur in 1660 and, finally, in 1666. These dates marked subsequent stages of apostasy. In the text of Palinodia, they were not tied to specific historical events. Whether the year 1666 would bring the end of the world or the earthly manifestation of the antichrist, Kopystensky did not specify. His scheme could be interpreted in either direction”3.
Similar ideas about apostasies from the true faith were developed in the writings of another prominent Ukrainian polemicist, the Athonite monk Ioann Vishensky (ca. 1550–after 1621). Vishensky spoke of the apostasy of the Uniates, whose reckless actions endangered the fate of the entire world. In his works, he claimed that through several apostasies, the antichrist was already triumphing over the world, and the end of the world and the hour of reckoning for those who submitted to Satan were near. However, Vishensky provided no specific numbers. His primary criticism targeted the secularized Uniate episcopate, which had drifted away from the Orthodox people. Addressing the Uniate bishops, he wrote: “How can you call yourselves spiritual, not only spiritual but even faithful, when you treat your brother, baptized in the same font of faith and born equally from the same mother—grace—as inferior, humiliate him, consider him worthless, mock him, call him a peasant, a tanner, a saddler, or a cobbler in derision? Fine, let him be a peasant, tanner, saddler, or cobbler, but remember that he is your equal in every way…”4.
In the context of the Orthodox episcopate’s apostasy into union with Catholics, Ioann Vishensky, in his work “Advice,” expressed a bold idea for his time, which later became the ideological foundation of the priestless branch of Russian Old Belief—the possibility of the Church existing without a priesthood in the time of the antichrist: “It is better for you to go to church and preserve Orthodoxy without bishops and priests appointed by the devil than to be in church with bishops and priests not called by God, mocking it and trampling Orthodoxy. For it is not priests, bishops, or metropolitans who will save us, but the mystery of our Orthodox faith, preserved with the keeping of God’s commandments: that is what will save us”5. This idea is echoed in another of his works, “A Wise Latin’s Dispute with a Foolish Russian”: “It is just as good, or a hundred times better, that such deceivers should not be in the church at all, and it is more beneficial… for the congregation of the faithful to gather in the church and save themselves than to follow deceivers and blind guides into destruction and eternal torment”6.
The negative attitude toward the Roman Catholic Church, as seen among the Orthodox of Southwestern Rus, was driven not only by Rome’s external expansionist policies but also by purely spiritual reasons. The rejection stemmed from the papacy’s claims to secular power, which contradicted the spirit of Christian teaching, and its violation of the principle of the Church’s conciliarity (with the pope declared the head of the Church and the ultimate authority in matters of faith), leading to its secularization. The papacy’s attempts to impose faith through fire and sword, relying on violence and secular authority, also provoked sharp rejection. A few decades later, these same traits would vividly manifest in the actions of Patriarch Nikon and his followers. As the researcher of Old Russian literature A.N. Robinson aptly notes, “half a century later, Russia faced a socio-historical and cultural situation that, in its general type and significant circumstances, reminded contemporaries of recent events in Ukraine, allowing them to draw on the rich Ukrainian polemical literature in various ways”7.
Indeed, the works of Stefan Zizaniy, Zachariya Kopystensky, and Ioann Vishensky significantly influenced Russian 17th-century polemics through Moscow’s polemical collections, published shortly before the schism in the Russian Church. In 1644, the Moscow Printing House published the famous “Cyril’s Book,” which included “The Tale of Cyril of Jerusalem on the Eighth Century Concerning Christ’s Second Coming and the Antichrist” and a letter by Ioann Vishensky. In 1648, “The Book on the One True Orthodox Faith” was published, expounding Kopystensky’s ideas and expressing concerns that, as 1666 approached, Russians might follow the path of the Orthodox in Southwestern Rus. The works of Western Russian polemicists also circulated in manuscripts.
When the Nikon-Alekseian reformation began, one of the first to interpret it in light of predictions about the “end times” was Archpriest Ioann Neronov, who led the opposition to the reforms. The theme of the end of the world became dominant in his writings. In his early letters, he turned to eschatological prophecies, comparing the events in the Russian Church to the Union with Catholics. For Neronov, the Union with Catholics—i.e., apostasy from true Orthodoxy—would lead to the downfall of Holy Rus and the approach of the antichrist’s reign. As early as 1652, the year Nikon ascended to the patriarchal throne, Neronov prophetically wrote to Stefan Vonifatiev: “May Rus not suffer today as the Uniates did…” In his “Second Letter to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich” dated February 27, 1654, he urged the autocrat to “be cautious,” lest they suffer “from the one who is to come at the end and disturb the universe, whose coming, O pious Tsar, you know well from Holy Scripture, for he is exceedingly cunning and will be recognized by the few whom the grace of the Holy Spirit confirms.” According to Neronov, the antichrist would appear not in his true form but in a deceptive one—“he will attempt to deceive the people with righteous deeds, hypocritically embracing every virtue, appearing merciful to those impoverished in virtues, while persecuting Christ’s servants who bear the mark of the Heavenly King”8. This theme would later be developed in the writings of Spiridon Potemkin, Abbot Theoktist, Deacon Theodore, Archpriest Avvakum, and other Old Believer theologians.
And so, the fateful year 1666 arrived… In Moscow, preparations for the church council were in full swing. Both supporters of Nikon’s innovations and their opponents spoke of the necessity of such a council. The rank-and-file clergy, for the most part, resisted accepting the reforms, and those forced to serve according to the new rites adapted with difficulty and reluctance. As a result, liturgical practice at the time was marked by complete chaos. This liturgical cacophony was vividly depicted in a petition to the Tsar by the priest Nikita Dobrynin:
“In many cities of your pious realm, especially in the villages, the churches of God are greatly disturbed. I have traveled much and have not found two or three churches where they perform and sing in unison; instead, there is discord and great division everywhere. In one church, they serve and sing according to Nikon’s books, while in another, they follow the old ones. And where, during feasts or church consecrations, two or three priests serve the Divine Liturgy, they use different service books. Some only proclaim the exclamations according to the new books, mixing everything. Especially in the proskomedia, they perform and prepare the elements this way and that. Some pierce the Lamb of God according to the old tradition, while others follow Nikon’s interpretation, piercing it differently; and they place the Mother of God’s portion with nine others. Others take out portions and arrange them in ways that are impossible to describe: some take out triangular portions, others pinch with the spear and mix all the portions into a heap. Moreover, deacons and priests do not agree: one performs according to the new, another according to the old. Some priests, contrary to chapter 52 of Nikon’s book, order deacons to take out the Lamb. And all are in confusion. Likewise, the singers are in discord among themselves: on one side of the choir they sing one way, on the other side another. In many churches, they neither serve nor sing according to the new books nor the old ones. The Gospel, the Apostle, and the readings are chanted, and the stichera are sung neither in Greek nor in Slavic harmony: for they have lost the old and have not mastered the new. The sacred divine service and the entire church order are in disarray: some serve and sing one way, others another; or today they serve one way, tomorrow another. They point to Nikon’s printed books and various inconsistent decrees. Likewise, in all other services, there is discord and instability… And in all this, great sovereign, in the Christian faith of your pious realm, there is schism and instability. Because of this, great sovereign, many Christian souls, simple children, and faint-hearted people are perishing, falling into despair, ceasing to attend God’s churches, and some no longer go and have stopped having spiritual fathers”9.
The internal discord in the liturgy was matched by its external “patchwork,” particularly evident in the clergy’s vestments. “Your pilgrims,” Nikita Dobrynin continued, “Christ’s hierarchs, are divided among themselves in their attire: some wear Latin cassocks and newly styled klobuks on cap-shaped kamilavkas, while others, fearing God’s judgment, hold to the old ways. Likewise, the black clergy and the entire priestly rank are divided in their garments: some priests and deacons walk in single-breasted coats and skullcaps, others in foreign style with Latin cassocks, Roman or cap-shaped kamilavkas. Some, like simple folk, wear their hair plainly and don caps with sable trim and folds. And monks, not following monastic tradition, but in Polish fashion, without mantiyas, in cassocks resembling Jewish caftans and Roman horned klobuks. In such strange attire, it is unclear who is a priest, a monk, a choir deacon, a Roman, a Pole, or a Jew” 10.
Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich himself, in a 1665 letter to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, complained: “In Russia, the entire church order is in discord; in God’s churches, everyone serves according to their own custom.” However, this did not mean the Tsar was ready to return to the old rite.
The elder Spiridon Potemkin, widely respected among the zealots of ancient piety, saw the upcoming church council as the only means to eliminate the reformers’ heretical innovations and restore the desired peace in the Church and the former splendor in God’s temples. According to Deacon Theodore, Spiridon “often requested a council from Tsar Alexei to address the Nikonians’ motley deception and their new books, seeking to expose them fully, knowing where they came from and what they brought with them. The Tsar, with deceit, told him: ‘There will be a council, Father!’ And so they kept him waiting for a long time, awaiting his death, for they knew him to be a wise man, a great denouncer of all impiety, and that no one could stand against him regarding the new books”11. Spiridon prophetically told his companions: “Brothers, there will be no council while Spiridon lives; but when God wills my passing, in the same month after my death, their council will quickly arise.”
Indeed, as soon as Elder Spiridon passed away (on November 2, 1665), Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich promptly resolved to convene the council. Royal decrees were sent to all corners of the Russian state. The Great Moscow Council, to which the Eastern ecumenical patriarchs were invited to lend it greater authority, was intended, in the Tsar’s plan, to achieve two goals at once. It was meant to serve as a grand judicial process, on one hand, against the former Patriarch Nikon, who had exceeded his authority, and on the other, against the stubborn leaders of the church opposition. At the same time, the council was to finally elect a new patriarch.
Between late 1665 and early 1666, all remaining leaders of the Old Believer opposition were arrested. In February 1666, all Russian bishops and prominent clergy gathered in Moscow by royal decree. However, before the great council with the ecumenical patriarchs could commence, the Tsar sought to secure the support of the Russian bishops. To this end, he held a preliminary meeting with all the senior Russian hierarchs, requiring each to provide written answers to three questions designed to affirm the church reforms he had initiated: 1) Are the Greek patriarchs—Constantinopolitan, Alexandrian, Antiochian, and Jerusalemite—Orthodox? 2) Are the handwritten and printed liturgical books used in Greek churches reliable? 3) Was the Moscow Council of 1654, held in the royal chambers under Patriarch Nikon, legitimate?
By the end of February, the Tsar had in hand signed responses from all Russian bishops, unanimously affirming that the Greek patriarchs, their books, and church rites were Orthodox and sacred, and that the Moscow Council of 1654 was legitimate, making its decisions binding for all Orthodox Russians.
This unanimity among the Russian church hierarchs should not be surprising. A cursory glance at the “service records” of the participants in the ill-fated 1666 council reveals that these individuals were not placed at the head of the Russian Church by chance. In essence, this was a “pocket” church created by Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, unquestioningly carrying out all his “ventures” and directives. The embodiment of this new church was Archimandrite Ioakim of the Chudov Monastery in the Kremlin, aptly described by Deacon Theodore as a “man-pleaser and sycophant,” who later rose to the rank of patriarch. “I, O sovereign,” he told the Tsar, “know neither the old faith nor the new, but whatever the authorities command, I am ready to do and obey in all things”12. Moreover, as Deacon Theodore testifies, each bishop received a “gift” of one hundred rubles from Alexei Mikhailovich—a significant sum at the time—for supporting the Tsar’s reforms. The Tsar also held private conversations with each bishop before the council, instructing them on how to behave and what to say.
Naturally, no one dared to oppose the Tsar. As historian V.O. Klyuchevsky notes, the new bishops feared for their positions: “Everyone understood that the issue was not about old or new piety, but whether to remain at the episcopal see without a flock or to go with the flock without a see”13.
In the years since the reforms began, the Tsar had completely replaced the entire senior leadership of the Russian Church, including all bishops and heads of major monasteries. Even Nikon now accused Alexei Mikhailovich of shamelessly interfering in church affairs: “When the Tsar commands a council to be held, it is held; whomever he orders to be elected and appointed as bishops, they elect and appoint; when he orders to judge and condemn, they judge, condemn, and excommunicate.” Of the former bishops who participated in the 1654 council and were ordained in the old manner, Metropolitan Korniliy of Kazan, who had ordained Nikon as patriarch, had already passed away (in 1656). Supporters of church tradition, Metropolitan Makariy of Great Novgorod and Velikiye Luki and Archbishop Markel of Vologda and Velikoperm, had also died (both in 1663). Archbishop Simeon of Siberia was retired in 1664, and Archbishop Makariy of Pskov was removed that same year (he died the following year).
The remaining bishops were either personally appointed by Nikon or ordained according to his “corrected” books. For instance, Metropolitan Iona (Sysoevich) of Rostov and Yaroslavl was appointed by Nikon in 1652 from the archimandrites of the Rostov Epiphany Monastery, following a path nearly identical to Nikon’s own rise. From September 2, 1664, he served as locum tenens of the patriarchal throne but failed to maintain it properly when, on December 18, 1664, Nikon unexpectedly appeared in the Dormition Cathedral, attempting to reclaim the patriarchate. Iona accepted Nikon’s blessing, setting a poor example for the clergy. A council convened on February 10, 1665, ruled that Iona was unworthy to continue as locum tenens.
Lavrentiy of Tver was ordained by Nikon in 1654 from patriarchal deacon and sacristan to the Tver episcopate, elevated to archbishop a year later, and appointed Metropolitan of Kazan after the 1666–1667 council.
Alexander of Vyatka, though disapproving of the reforms, was appointed by Nikon in 1655 to the Kolomna see, replacing the deposed and later martyred Paul of Kolomna, but was soon transferred in 1657 to the less prosperous Vyatka see.
Pitirim was consecrated in 1656 as Metropolitan of Sarsk and Podonsk (or Krutitsy) from the archimandrites of the Novospassky Monastery (significant to both Alexei Mikhailovich and Nikon). He later became Metropolitan of Novgorod (from 1664) and eventually Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus.
Joseph, another “loyal” figure, was appointed bishop in 1656 and elevated to the rank of Archbishop of Astrakhan and Terek. In 1667, he was raised to metropolitan. Later, in 1671, he was killed in Astrakhan by participants in the Razin uprising.
Filaret was appointed by Nikon in 1656 from the sacristans of the Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery to the position of Archbishop of Suzdal. From 1658, he served as Archbishop of Smolensk and Chernigov (after these lands were annexed to Russia during the Russo-Polish War).
Ioasaf was appointed by Nikon in 1657 as Archbishop of Tver and Kashin, while Ilarion, in the same year, was made Archbishop of Ryazan and Murom.
Stefan was appointed by Nikon in 1658 from the archimandrites of the Resurrection New Jerusalem Monastery to the position of Archbishop of Suzdal and Tarusa. He was the only one of Nikon’s supporters who spoke in defense of Nikon at the 1666 council. Later, in 1679, he was stripped of his rank and confined to a monastery.
The remaining three—Pavel, Simon, and Arseniy—were ordained as bishops not by Nikon but by direct order of the Tsar. Pavel was appointed in 1664 as Metropolitan of Sarsk and Podonsk from the archimandrites of the Kremlin’s Chudov Monastery (where he had been since 1659). Nikon refused to recognize his episcopal ordination, stating: “I knew you as a priest, but as a metropolitan, I don’t know you, and I don’t know who made you a metropolitan!” He also refused to hand over the patriarchal staff when Pavel came to him by the Tsar’s decree.
Simon was ordained in 1664 from the abbot of the Alexander-Svir Monastery to the position of Archbishop of Vologda and Beloozero. A notable incident occurred during Simon’s episcopal ordination. When he was being appointed to the Vologda see on the recommendation of Metropolitan Pavel of Krutitsy, Simon inadvertently recited the Creed in the old manner (“begotten, but not created”), which infuriated Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. “The Tsar did not want to appoint him as archbishop; standing, he glared at Metropolitan Pavel with fury and said, ‘You recommended him to me; I don’t want him.’ And he walked away from his place…” Only with difficulty did Pavel convince the Tsar that the abbot had misspoken, and Simon was made to recite the Creed again, this time in the new manner, without “but.” Only then did the Tsar agree to ordain Simon as a bishop.
Arseniy was appointed in 1665, a year before the council, as Archbishop of Pskov, Izborsk, and Narva (having been abbot of Moscow’s Vozdvizhensky Monastery since 1661). In 1666, he was sent by the council participants to the Resurrection Monastery to summon Nikon.
Finally, another participant in the 1666 council was a foreigner—Serbian Metropolitan Theodosius. He first came to Russia in 1663 as a bishop seeking alms. In 1665, he arrived as Metropolitan of Venchatsky and remained in Russia permanently, enjoying the special favor of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. He resided at the Archangel Cathedral in the Kremlin, titled Metropolitan of Serbia and the Archangel, and performed services in the cathedral “for the Tsar’s ancestors at their tombs.” At the Great Moscow Council of 1666–1667, he served as an interpreter for the Eastern patriarchs. For this service, he was later appointed metropolitan of the newly established Belgorod Metropolis (1667).
Thus, Archpriest Avvakum had every reason to write to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich about the new “Nikonian” bishops in the following words: “Those bishops don’t help me, the villains; they only indulge you: burn those peasants, O sovereign, and we’ll sing in church as you command; we are not against you in anything, O sovereign. Even if you give us a bear in the altar, we’ll gladly amuse you, O sovereign, as long as you provide us with cellars and provisions from the palace. Yes, truly, I’m not lying”14. By the way, regarding the bear, this was not merely a figure of speech. Avvakum recalls an incident: “Nikon, laughing, sent a bear to Iona of Rostov’s courtyard, and he bowed to the bear—the metropolitan, the lawgiver!”15
Concerning the spiritual state of most of these new “princes of the church,” Archpriest Avvakum writes with remarkable precision: “Look at that face, that belly, you cursed Nikonian—you’re so fat! How do you expect to fit through the heavenly gate? Narrow is the way and strait, full of sorrow, that leads to life. The Kingdom of Heaven is for those who strive, not for the fat-bellied. Look at the holy icons and see how the saints who pleased God are depicted by skilled iconographers: their faces, hands, feet, and all their features are thin and emaciated from fasting, labor, and all kinds of afflictions. But you have changed their likeness, painting them as you are yourselves: fat-bellied, fat-faced, with legs and arms like chair legs. And for every saint—God save you—you’ve smoothed out their wrinkles, the poor things. They didn’t think to do that in their lifetime, as you’ve made them! Clever ones! You’re cunning with the devil! There’s nothing to discuss. A good person has nothing to hear from you: all you talk about is how to sell, how to buy, how to eat, how to drink, how to fornicate with women, how to grab children in the altar by their backsides.16 And I’m ashamed to mention the other things you do: I know all your evil cunning, you dogs, harlots, metropolitans, archbishops, Nikonians, thieves, betrayers, new Russian Germans”17.
Citing the Old Testament King Melchizedek as an example of a true priest, Archpriest Avvakum wrote, addressing his old friend Archbishop Ilarion of Ryazan: “This Melchizedek, living in the thicket of that forest, on that Mount Tabor, eating tree bark for seven years and licking dew instead of drinking, was a true priest. He didn’t seek Rhenish wine, or Roman wine, or vodka, or strained wines, or beer with cardamom, or raspberry and cherry mead, or various strong white meads. My friend Ilarion, Archbishop of Ryazan, do you see how Melchizedek lived? He didn’t amuse himself riding black horses in carriages! And he was of royal lineage. And who are you? Remember, Yakovlevich, you little priest! You sit in a carriage, sprawling out like a bubble on water, sitting on a cushion, combing your hair like a girl, riding across the square showing off your face so that the nuns and harlots would love you. Oh, poor man! There’s no one to weep for you! Your entire life isn’t worth a single night in the Makaryev Monastery. Do you remember standing in prayer among those mosquitoes? Clearly, the devil has blinded you! Where has your mind gone? You’ve destroyed so much good and so many labors! Why do you look to Metropolitan Pavel? He never lived spiritually—he traded pancakes and fritters, and when he became a little priest, he learned to fawn at the boyars’ courts: he never saw or knew that spiritual life. But you, dear soul, were once notable and drove out demons with your prayers. Remember when they threw stones at you in Lyskovo at that peasant’s house when I came to you! But now you’ve made friends with those demons, living peacefully; they ride with you in your carriage, lead you by the arms to the cathedral church and upstairs to the Tsar, for you are beloved by them”.18
Warning the faithful “brethren” against associating with such “spiritual authorities,” Archpriest Avvakum urges them to judge them by their deeds: “I don’t think so highly of today’s spiritual leaders: in words they are spiritual, but in deeds they are demons: all lies, all deceit. Where is Christ here? Not even close! Only legions of demons. Christ taught us to judge by their fruits, not by their fables. You, brethren, can understand what has been said. Deceit has spread across the earth, especially among those who are supposedly spiritual. They are like buffoons, cunningly deceiving and seducing the hearts of the innocent with their words. May the Lord repay them according to their deeds! Beware of such people, and do not partake in their shameful and dark deeds; rather, expose them”19.
Thus, the Russian bishops and archimandrites gathered in Moscow to address pressing church matters. Representatives of the white clergy did not participate in the council. As for the invited Eastern patriarchs, two of them—Dionysius of Constantinople and Nectarius of Jerusalem—chose to abstain from judging their fellow patriarch Nikon, while the more compliant ones, Macarius of Antioch and Paisius of Alexandria, arrived in Moscow only by the end of 1666. Consequently, the first part of the council, which opened on April 29, was held solely with the participation of Russian hierarchs. This may explain the less radical decisions made during the first part of the council compared to those adopted in the second part, which essentially became a separate, independent council (the so-called Great Moscow Council of 1666–1667).
Understanding that the issue of the legitimacy of the church reforms could not be resolved by force alone, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich fervently sought to win over Avvakum and his supporters, ordering their return from exile to the capital in advance of the council. By the start of the council, Deacon Theodore Ivanov, Priest Lazar, Elder Ephraim Potemkin, Grigory Neronov, several Solovetsky elders including Gerasim Firsov, former archimandrite of the Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery Nikanor, and others—18 people in total—were brought to Moscow. Preliminary discussions and exhortations, led by Metropolitan Pavel of Krutitsy and Archimandrite Ioakim of the Chudov Monastery, were held to persuade the opponents of Nikon’s reforms.
On March 1, 1666, Archpriest Avvakum was brought to Moscow along with his elder sons, Ivan and Prokopy. His wife and younger children remained in Mezen, awaiting the resolution of his fate. In the first days of his stay in the capital, Avvakum secretly met with Boyarina Morozova. “Having arrived, I sat with her secretly for two nights, speaking endlessly about how we would suffer for the truth, and even if we faced death, we would not betray one another. Then I went to the cathedral church and stood before Metropolitan Pavlik, presenting myself as if I had come willingly to face torment. Feodosia [Morozova] prayed for me, that I might be given words to open my mouth. And through her prayers, I spoke fervently, causing God’s enemies and our accusers to marvel and tremble”20.
Following this, lengthy debates took place between Avvakum and Metropolitan Pavel of Krutitsy. “At his residence, trying to draw me to his deceitful faith, he tormented me in every way for five days, scheming and disputing with me,” Avvakum recalled. Realizing the futility of these exhortations, on March 9, Pavel ordered the defiant archpriest to be sent to the Pafnutiev Monastery in Borovsk and chained. In the monastery, which was essentially a fortress surrounded by stone walls and towers, Avvakum spent nine and a half weeks. During this time, the abbot “tormented him greatly,” forcibly compelling him daily to attend the Nikonian services, saying, “Join us!” But Avvakum only laughed at such “madness”: “They have abandoned God and loved the devil; they sing demonic songs in churches, they have neither the fasts nor the prostrations nor the sign of the cross as the Romans do, and having destroyed our true Christian faith, they have embraced the Latin faith.”
After keeping Avvakum “in chains” for ten weeks in the Pafnutiev Monastery, he was urgently brought back to the capital on May 12 for the council’s judgment. “They transported this tormented man, placing him on an old horse,” Avvakum recalled. “A guard rode behind, beating and beating; sometimes the horse fell in the mud, and I went head over heels; in one day, they dragged me ninety versts, barely alive when I reached Moscow”21
The next morning, in the patriarchal Cross Chamber, where the church council sessions were held, another debate took place between Avvakum and the spiritual authorities. “The authorities disputed with me at length from Scripture: Ilarion of Ryazan and Pavel of Krutitsy, while Pitirim, like a coy maiden, remained silent, only sighing. They could not withstand the wisdom and power of Christ, but only reproached me. Pavel insulted me and sent me to the devil.” According to the official council record, Avvakum “showed no repentance or obedience, persisted in everything, and even reproached the consecrated council, calling it unorthodox.” He was accused of causing “schisms and disturbances” in the church with his “false teachings,” slandering the correction of the holy Creed, the three-finger sign of the cross, the “correction of books,” and the reformers themselves. He even forbade Orthodox Christians from receiving sacraments and services from priests using the new books and had “fearlessly written many lies and slanders against God.”
Unable to persuade Archpriest Avvakum, the church hierarchs decided to defrock him and anathematize him as a heretic. On the same day, May 13, 1666, during the liturgy in the Dormition Cathedral of the Kremlin, after the Great Entrance and the transfer of the gifts, Avvakum was defrocked and anathematized along with his supporter Deacon Theodore. In response, Avvakum and Theodore, in the presence of all the people, anathematized their persecutors. “It was very tumultuous during that liturgy!” A few days earlier, on May 10, Priest Nikita Dobrynin, mockingly called “Pustosvyat” (Empty Saint) by his adversaries, had also been defrocked and anathematized.
Tsarina Maria Ilyinichna, who had always sympathized with Avvakum, attempted to intercede on his behalf, leading to “great discord” with Alexei Mikhailovich. But the Tsar had already made his choice, and that day he left for the village of Preobrazhenskoye “on a campaign” without the Tsarina, staying there for over a week. Nevertheless, the final decision regarding the fate of Avvakum, his supporters, and Nikon was postponed until the arrival of the ecumenical patriarchs.
The 1666 council, which continued its work after the defrocking and anathematization of the main leaders of the church opposition, declared all changes made to liturgical books and church rites during the Nikon-Alekseian reform to be Orthodox and fully consistent with ancient Greek and Slavic books. The council claimed that Nikon’s church reform and book corrections aligned with the will of the Eastern Churches and their ancient practices, and were carried out with their advice and blessing. Both claims were false. Alongside the newly printed books, which contained numerous errors and changes to the texts of prayers and church statutes compared to the old printed books, the 1666 council approved the following innovations in church practice:
- The two-finger sign of the cross was replaced with the three-finger sign, with the council falsely claiming that “our fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers, from ancient times, passed down and used the three-finger sign.”
- The two-finger blessing by priests was replaced with the so-called “nominative” blessing (the “malaksa”).
- The eight-pointed cross on prosphora was replaced with a four-pointed one.
- The form of the Jesus Prayer was changed (instead of “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us,” the council prescribed: “Lord Jesus Christ, our God, have mercy on us”).
- The double “alleluia” in the liturgy was replaced with a triple “alleluia,” meaning instead of the doxology “alleluia, alleluia, glory to Thee, O God,” the council mandated “alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, glory to Thee, O God.”
Although the 1666 council did not formally anathematize the old rites—this was done later, in 1667, at the council with the participation of the “ecumenical” patriarchs—it completely banned their use in churches, asserting that only the newly printed books and the rites introduced during Nikon’s reform were correct.
The council participants issued a “Spiritual Instruction” addressed to all clergy, expressing their collective stance on the church schism. The instruction began by listing the “offenses” of the Old Believers, followed by a directive to perform services only according to the newly corrected books, emphasizing the necessity of receiving communion and confession (contrary to the Old Believer leaders who urged people not to accept sacraments from Nikonian priests). It concluded by stating that all clergy must possess the “Spiritual Instruction” and act in accordance with it, or face severe punishments.
On June 22, 1666, a grim omen appeared to the Russian people, portending nothing good: “During Peter’s Fast, on Friday, at the sixth hour, there was darkness; the sun dimmed, and the moon approached from the west, revealing God’s wrath…” By early July, the infamous Moscow Council of 1666 concluded. All the predictions of learned theologians and divinely inspired elders converged on a single point, finding terrible confirmation in reality…
The 1666 council did not fulfill all the objectives set by its main “patron,” Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. While the council endorsed the church reform and the crackdown on the main leaders of the Old Believers, one critical goal remained unresolved: Russia still lacked a patriarch. The Tsar hesitated to subject Nikon to a spiritual trial and depose him from the patriarchal rank without the participation of the “ecumenical” patriarchs. Moreover, he was eager to give the upcoming council the appearance of an ecumenical one. Clearly, the spiritual authority of his own bishops, bought with money and intimidated into submission, was insufficient…
On November 2, 1666 “‘ecumenical’ patriarchs Paisius of Alexandria and Macarius of Antioch” arrived in Moscow. It later emerged that both had been deposed from their thrones at the time and only regained their patriarchal positions later, thanks to the intervention of the Russian government and with the help of Turkish authorities. “The two patriarchs who came to Moscow were driven not by concern for the Russian Church but by the desire to receive substantial rewards from the Russian government for condemning their fellow patriarch,” writes S.A. Zenkovsky. “In this, they were not mistaken, as each personally received furs, gold, and gifts worth 200,000 rubles (in 1900 currency) from the Russian treasury for their services to the Tsar. Whenever they had doubts or pangs of conscience, these were easily dispelled by financial pressure. The canonical legitimacy of these two Eastern patriarchs’ participation in the Russian council was highly questionable. Outraged by their journey to judge Nikon, Patriarch Parthenius and the council he convened secured their dismissal by the Turkish government on the pretext that they had abandoned their flocks and churches without permission. Both patriarchs were constantly embroiled in debts and financial troubles, and Patriarch Paisius, upon returning from Russia to the East, was imprisoned for embezzling a colossal sum of 70,000 gold coins”22.
Their hostility toward the old Russian rite was evident even before reaching the capital, as the “ecumenical” patriarch-adventurers arrested the elderly local priest Nikifor in Simbirsk (on foreign canonical territory!) for serving according to pre-Nikonian books. On their return journey from Russia, Macarius of Antioch wrote another denunciation from the Makaryev Zheltovodsky Monastery: “In this land, there are many schismatics and opponents, not only among the ignorant but also among priests: order them to be subdued and punished with severe penalties.” As a result, the harshest measures were taken against one of Russia’s most renowned monasteries…
On November 5, the Eastern patriarchs held a private, four-hour conversation with Alexei Mikhailovich. On November 7, the Tsar invited the Eastern patriarchs, Russian hierarchs, boyars, okolnichy, and Duma members to his Dining Chamber. The Tsar delivered a solemn speech to the Eastern patriarchs and handed them all the documents related to “Nikon’s case.” They were given 20 days to review the materials. Paisius Ligarides was assigned as a consultant on Russian affairs to the Eastern patriarchs, playing a pivotal role at the council. This individual’s character warrants special attention, as he would play a fateful role in the council’s proceedings.
Paisius Ligarides (born Panteleimon or Pantaleon), a highly controversial figure, was the former Metropolitan of Gaza (Palestine), a secret Catholic, and a Jesuit agent. From the age of thirteen, he was raised and educated at the Jesuit Greek College of St. Athanasius in Rome. After graduating with a doctorate in theology and philosophy, he was ordained a priest by the Uniate Metropolitan Rafail Korsak. In 1641, he left Rome for Constantinople to spread the Catholic faith. Later, he traveled to Moldavia and Wallachia, where he served as a teacher at the Iași school. In 1650, he participated in a religious dispute with Elder Arseny Sukhanov against the Greeks. The following year, he became a monk, and a year later, the Jerusalem Patriarch ordained him Metropolitan of Gaza.
Although Ligarides outwardly adopted Orthodoxy, he maintained active correspondence with the Jesuit Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, from which he received a stipend as a Catholic missionary, and with the Warsaw nuncio Pignatelli, later Pope Innocent XII. As a cunning diplomat, Ligarides later promoted the union of the Russian Church with Rome in Moscow. The Polish king Jan Casimir addressed him as follows: “Venerable Father in Christ and dearly beloved, in our pious desire, we consider Your Eminence the sole instrument in the neighboring and friendly Grand Duchy of Moscow… We repeatedly ask Your Eminence to apply all your diligence in fostering peace and unity between the Latin and Greek Churches,” promising him “our royal favor.”
Deposed from his rank by Jerusalem Patriarch Nectarius, Ligarides arrived in Moscow in 1662 at Nikon’s invitation to lend authority to his reforms. However, after Nikon’s fall, he quickly turned against him and actively assisted Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in dealing with his former benefactor at the 1666–1667 council. The mutual accusations between Nikon and Ligarides are telling. Nikon claimed that Ligarides “introduces new laws to corrupt the holy church: some from heretical books, others from foreign, fantastical wanderings,” guided by “false, cursed Jesuit books.” He addressed him as “new schismatic, or rather heretic,” “new Luther, mocker of the Gospel,” “mad schismatic and transgressor of the eternal boundaries set by the holy fathers,” calling him a “hypocrite,” “man-pleaser,” “troublemaker,” and “imitator of the Jews.” Finally, he declared: “If you, like a crow, have no home or tree to claim, you deserve to be hanged on a robber’s tree.” In turn, Ligarides remarked to the Tsar about Nikon: “Truly, it would have been better for me never to have seen such a monster; I would rather be blind and deaf than hear his Cyclopean roars and loud chatter”…
Well-read and charming, Ligarides managed to win the Tsar’s trust by appealing to his deepest ambitions, recounting a prophecy that Tsar Alexei would liberate the Greeks from the Turks. His book of “prophetic sayings,” titled Chrysmos, survives. Archdeacon Paul of Aleppo reports: “We (Patriarch Macarius of Antioch and I) obtained another Greek book from the Metropolitan of Gaza, which he compiled from various sources and countries, called Chrysmos, meaning a book of predictions. It is unique, with no other copy. It contains predictions from prophets, sages, and saints about events in the East: the Hagarenes, Constantinople, and their conquest of the city—truly astonishing information; also about future events yet to occur. I had the same scribe make two copies of it. With great difficulty, the Metropolitan allowed us to copy it, but he, the Metropolitan of Gaza, was reluctant until I secured his consent with gifts, as he felt ashamed before us and permitted us to copy it. Whoever reads this remarkable book will be struck with awe at its prophecies, sayings, and contents…”23. If even Eastern hierarchs, who knew Ligarides well, took this dubious Jesuit compilation seriously, what can be said of the impressionable and flattery-prone Alexei Mikhailovich!
While in Moscow, Ligarides constantly begged the Tsar for money, purportedly for the Gaza diocese, to which he no longer had any connection. He also forged a letter from Patriarch Dionysius of Constantinople, posing as his exarch. He earned money by illegally trading furs, precious stones, wine, and tobacco, the latter banned in Russia under penalty of death. “From the Metropolitan of Gaza,” Avvakum reports, “they eventually seized 60 poods of tobacco, a domra, and other secret monastic items used for debauchery”24. For this ecclesiastical adventurer, there were no moral, confessional, or even sexual boundaries. Like many visiting Greeks, Ligarides was not averse to “the sin of Sodom.”
“Metropolitan Paisius Ligarides,” notes historian S. Zenkovsky, “was cursed and excommunicated by his own superior, Patriarch Nectarius of Jerusalem, and for his un-Christian actions and betrayal of Orthodoxy, he deserved to be on the defendant’s bench rather than among the judges”25. Patriarch Nectarius wrote to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich that Ligarides “calls himself Orthodox among the Orthodox,” but “the Latins testify and call him their own, and the Roman Pope receives 200 efimki from him annually.” Patriarch Dionysius of Constantinople echoed this: “Paisius Ligarides is not a vine of the Constantinopolitan throne, and I do not call him Orthodox.”
However, despite receiving such compromising information from Patriarch Nectarius, the Tsar had no intention of expelling Ligarides as a deceiver and “papist.” Instead, he decided to buy him a pardon from the Jerusalem Patriarch. The new patriarch proved more compliant, granting the pardon for a substantial sum, though he later regretted it and again banned Ligarides from serving as a “Latinizer.”
On November 28, 1666, the Great Moscow Council opened in the Tsar’s Dining Chamber. It was attended by 29 hierarchs, 12 of whom were foreigners. Representatives of all major Eastern churches were present, creating the illusion of a new “ecumenical council.” Besides the two “ecumenical” patriarchs, Macarius of Antioch and Paisius of Alexandria, the council included five metropolitans from the Constantinopolitan Patriarchate—Gregory of Nicaea, Cosmas of Amasya, Athanasius of Iconium (who, however, was imprisoned in the Simonov Monastery for forging credentials), Philotheus of Trebizond, Daniel of Varna—and one archbishop, Daniel of Pogonian; from the Jerusalem Patriarchate and Palestine, the aforementioned deposed Metropolitan Paisius of Gaza and the independent Archbishop Ananias of Mount Sinai; from Georgia, Metropolitan Epiphany; from Serbia, Bishop Ioakim Dyakovich; from Little Russia, Bishop Lazar (Baranovich) of Chernigov and Bishop Methodius, locum tenens of the Kiev Metropolis. Seventeen Russian hierarchs participated: Metropolitans Pitirim of Novgorod, Lavrentiy of Kazan, Iona of Rostov, Pavel of Krutitsy; Archbishops Simon of Vologda, Filaret of Smolensk, Stefan of Suzdal, Ilarion of Ryazan, Ioasaf of Tver, Joseph of Astrakhan, Arseniy of Pskov; and Bishop Alexander of Vyatka. They were soon joined by the newly elected Moscow Patriarch Ioasaf II and the hierarchs of two newly established dioceses: Metropolitan Theodosius of Belgorod and Bishop Misail of Kolomna. Numerous Russian and foreign archimandrites, abbots, monks, and priests were also present.
A total of eight sessions of the council were held concerning “Nikon’s case”: three preliminary sessions, four dedicated to the trial itself (two in absentia and two with the accused present), and one final session where the verdict was announced. Nikon was charged with arbitrarily abandoning the patriarchal throne, insulting the Church, the Tsar, the council, and all Orthodox Christians, slandering the Eastern patriarchs, unlawfully deposing and exiling Bishop Paul of Kolomna, adopting Catholic customs by ordering a cross to be carried before him, and illegally establishing monasteries outside the Patriarchal domain on lands taken from monasteries of other dioceses. As a result of the council sessions, Nikon was sentenced to be stripped of his patriarchal and priestly ranks. The verdict was signed by 2 patriarchs, 10 metropolitans, 7 archbishops, and 4 bishops. In response, the former patriarch, addressing the Tsar, declared: “My blood and the sins of all be upon your head,” and that evening prophesied that unbearable torments awaited all the council participants who had condemned him.
On December 12, 1666, the “ecumenical” patriarchs removed Nikon’s black klobuk adorned with a cherub and a pearl cross—the symbol of patriarchal dignity—and his panagia, replacing them with a simple monastic klobuk taken from a Greek monk present at the scene. The deposed patriarch was instructed that he could no longer call himself patriarch or reside in the Resurrection Monastery but must go to the Ferapontov Monastery, live there quietly and peacefully, and repent of his sins. In response, Nikon said: “I know how to live without your instructions, and as for removing the klobuk and panagia, they should divide the pearls and panagia among themselves; they’ll get five or six zolotniks of pearls, or more, and ten gold pieces…”
Thus ended, ingloriously, a patriarchate that had once begun with such great promise. Nikon, who had once been solemnly proclaimed patriarch in a packed Dormition Cathedral in the presence of the Tsar and a multitude of Orthodox people, tearfully implored on their knees to accept the primatial throne, was now defrocked in secret, without the presence of either the Tsar or the people.
Subsequent sessions of the Great Moscow Council took place in the Patriarchal Cross Chamber without Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich’s participation. The election of a new Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus was held. On January 31, 1667, the council participants submitted three candidates to the Tsar: Ioasaf, archimandrite of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery; Filaret, archimandrite of the Vladimir Monastery; and Sava, cellarer of the Chudov Monastery.
Notably, none of the candidates for the patriarchate were bishops. This can partly be explained by the stance taken by some bishops after Nikon’s deposition. For instance, Metropolitan Pavel of Krutitsy and Archbishop Ilarion of Ryazan declared at the council that “the degree of priesthood is higher than the degree of tsardom.” “At this dramatic moment, it became clear that Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich’s hospitality toward the Greeks was not in vain. The latter were indifferent to the vital interests of Russian bishops, not to mention that they built their relationship with the Tsar’s authority on different grounds. Thus, both Eastern patriarchs, supported by the approving voices of the other Greeks, accused the Russian ‘princes of the church’ of caesaropapism and used their authority to suppress the new rebellion in its infancy”26.
Paisius Ligarides was particularly zealous, excessively flattering Alexei Mikhailovich and asserting that “the Tsar should appear and be above all others” and combine in his person “the authority of both sovereign and hierarch”27. “Truly,” Ligarides gushed, “our most sovereign Tsar, Alexei Mikhailovich, is so versed in church matters that one might think he had been a hierarch his entire life… You, God-honored Tsar Alexei, are truly a man of God… You fear for the future, lest some new sovereign, becoming autocratic, enslave the Russian Church. No, no! A good Tsar will have an even better heir. He will be your guardian. He will be called a new Constantine, both Tsar and hierarch…” In light of the subsequent “synodal captivity” of the dominant Russian Church under Alexei Mikhailovich’s son, Peter I, who not only subordinated the Church to the state but declared himself its head, these “prophecies” of the old Jesuit sound like a grim mockery and derision.
As a result, the council declared that the Tsar held precedence in civil matters, while the patriarch held precedence in ecclesiastical ones. However, this was merely a formal courtesy. Council sessions were more often held in the Tsar’s Dining Chamber than in the Patriarchal Cross Chamber. Ilarion of Ryazan and Pavel of Krutitsy were accused by the council of “Nikonianism and papism” and had penances imposed on them. Other Russian hierarchs, as Paisius Ligarides noted, “were struck with fear by this unexpected punishment.”
Ultimately, the Tsar chose the Trinity archimandrite Ioasaf, who was “already in deep old age and daily infirmities.” This choice likely reflected Alexei Mikhailovich’s desire to avoid having an active and independent figure at the head of the Russian Church. On February 10, 1667, Ioasaf was elevated to the patriarchate under the name Ioasaf II. “A silent abettor of Satan’s deception,” Deacon Theodore succinctly and pointedly described him.
Although the Great Moscow Council accomplished its main task—condemning and deposing Patriarch Nikon—the church turmoil did not end but instead worsened. The Russian Orthodox people expected the council not only to condemn Nikon but to reject all his actions and legacy. “Nikon’s removal to the New Jerusalem Monastery was seen by supporters of the old rite as a favorable sign,” writes a modern historian. “The main instigator of harmful innovations was gone, and with him, in their conviction, his diabolical innovations should have vanished into eternity”28. In connection with these events, Old Believer preaching intensified, as did its influence on the people, which could not but alarm the Tsar and the “spiritual authorities.” After the February and March sessions, which addressed secondary issues, in April 1667, the hierarchs returned to the problem of “church rebels” and the issue of church rites.
Once again, repentant church oppositionists appeared before the council participants for a new trial and a new act of repentance. “Archimandrite Nikanor, who arrived from Solovki, was tried first on April 20. Following him, Priest Ambrose, Deacon Pakhomiy, Monk Nikita, and the already repentant Father Nikita Dobrynin and Elder Grigory Neronov came forward, also repenting of their errors”29. Next, those who refused to accept Nikonian innovations were brought to the council: Deacon Theodore, who had recanted his renunciation of the old faith and resumed his struggle against “Nikonianism”; the Solovetsky monk Epiphany, who had come to the council from a distant northern skete and submitted a book denouncing the new rite to the Tsar; Priest Nikifor, arrested by the Eastern patriarchs in Simbirsk for his fidelity to the two-finger sign and old rites and brought to Moscow; and Priest Lazar from Romanov. The latter, appearing before the Eastern patriarchs’ court in December 1666, stunned them with an unexpected proposal: to determine the truth of the old and new rites through a divine judgment by fire. “Order me to go to God’s judgment by fire,” he said. If he burned, the new rite and its “new teachers” would be proven correct; if he survived, the old rite would be confirmed as truly Orthodox, and the truth would lie with the zealots of ancient piety. Stunned by this argument, the patriarchs were at a loss for a response.
Summoning a boyar and a leader, they instructed the interpreter Dionysius the Greek to tell the Tsar: “In ancient times, your Russian people did not simply accept holy baptism from our Greek hierarchs but demanded a sign—placing the Gospel of Christ in the fire, saying, ‘If it does not burn, then we will believe and be baptized.’ And the Gospel was placed in the fire and did not burn: then the Russians believed and were baptized. Now, too, your priest Lazar refuses to accept the new books without proof and wishes to go to God’s judgment by fire; we did not force him to this, but he himself chose it… We cannot judge beyond this! Tell the Tsar.” The Tsar “fell silent,” and the “spiritual authorities” “were all disturbed, and fear fell upon them: this came from one they did not expect!” For seven months, the Tsar deliberated whether to rely on “God’s judgment” or not, “for,” as Deacon Theodore notes, “his conscience troubled him.” Finally, the “God’s anointed” decided that trusting in “God’s justice” was not entirely reliable. What if the Old Believers were proven right, and “God acted not in our favor”? Then the Tsar and all the “authorities” would face “shame and disgrace before the whole world.”
Meanwhile, the Eastern patriarchs were being “brainwashed,” soon beginning to view Russian church matters through the lens of the Jesuit-trained Paisius Ligarides. Ligarides sought to portray the Old Believers merely as enemies of the Greeks, ignorant boors, and innovators in the Church, fully aware that these true zealots of Orthodoxy were the main obstacle to a future church union with Catholic Rome. Here is how this eloquent master of ancient pagan mythology spoke with bias about the events of the church schism in the Russian Church: “Suddenly, another noisy swarm of great calamities rushed upon the cunning work, followed by a kind of universal excess of humors that caused an incurable disease in the Orthodox Russian Church… Thus, due to Nikon’s excessive negligence, who never held a firm opinion but constantly changed like Proteus, new schismatics arose for the general corruption of the Russian Church: Avvakum, Lazar, Epiphany, Nikita, Nikanor, Firs, unrestrained in words like Thersites, and Grigory, bearing the nickname Nero. They wrote an abyss of lies against us, far surpassing the foul dung of Augeas… Against these destructive men who, for ruinous delusion and to spread evil, pervert the ancient church customs and traditions of the fathers, yet think they uphold legitimate decrees; when many criminal disturbances occurred, when unspeakable innovations filled this royal capital: against these men who rose up with human cunning and clothed themselves in unbelief, we compiled a book, by the Tsar’s and council’s command, in which we refuted in great detail the writings of Nikita, the ephemeral theologian who never even tasted theology with the tip of his finger. Our book was later abridged, translated by Hieromonk Simeon, and printed for eternal memory and immortal glory”30.
As the saying goes, blaming the healthy for the ailments of the sick… To great misfortune, this monstrous lie, spewing from the venomous lips of itinerant Greek adventurers ready to sell their conscience and soul for a pile of Siberian sables, not only formed the basis of the council’s decrees but has survived to our day, continuing to be passed from textbook to textbook.
On April 30, after eight months of imprisonment in Borovsk, Archpriest Avvakum was brought to Moscow in chains. He was placed at the residence of the Pafnutiev Monastery on Posolskaya Street. Here, he enjoyed relative freedom, able to communicate with his friends, like-minded supporters, and spiritual children. On May 3 and 11, by the Tsar’s decree, Avvakum was taken to the Chudov Monastery, where Archimandrite Ioakim of Chudov and Archimandrite Sergius Volk of Yaroslavl’s Savior Monastery interrogated him and attempted to persuade him to accept the new faith. “The authorities gnashed at me like dogs,” Avvakum recalled.
Finally, Archpriest Avvakum stood trial before the “ecumenical” patriarchs. He later recounted this episode: “On June 17, the silver-loving patriarchs brought me to the Cross Chamber for the council, to tempt me…” Also present were the Russian hierarchs, “sitting like foxes.” At the council, the rebellious archpriest did not submit, “speaking much with the patriarchs from Scripture,” for, as he noted, “God opened my sinful mouth, and Christ confounded them!” The patriarchs resorted to their final argument: “Why are you so stubborn? All our Palestine—Serbs, Albanians, Wallachians, Romans, and Poles—all cross themselves with three fingers, and you alone persist in your obstinacy, crossing yourself with five fingers!31 That is not proper!” Avvakum responded to the “silver-loving patriarchs” with this speech:
“Ecumenical teachers! Rome fell long ago and lies prostrate, and the Poles perished with it, remaining enemies of Christians to the end. Even your Orthodoxy has become motley due to the violence of the Turkish Mehmet, so one cannot rely on you: you have grown weak. Henceforth, come to us to learn: by God’s grace, we have autocracy. Before Nikon the apostate, in our Russia under pious princes and tsars, Orthodoxy was pure and undefiled, and the Church was undisturbed. Nikon, that wolf, together with the devil, introduced the three-finger sign; but our first pastors crossed themselves with five fingers and blessed with five fingers according to the tradition of our holy fathers Meletius of Antioch, Theodoret the Blessed, Bishop of Cyrrhus, Peter of Damascus, and Maximus the Greek. Moreover, the Moscow local council under Tsar Ivan also commanded to cross and bless with five fingers, as taught by the earlier holy fathers Meletius and others. At that council under Tsar Ivan were the standard-bearers Guriy and Varsonofy, wonderworkers of Kazan, and Philip, abbot of Solovki, among the Russian saints”32.
The Eastern patriarchs “fell into thought,” unsure how to respond, while the Russian hierarchs, “like wolf cubs, jumped up, howled, and began to spew at their own fathers, saying: ‘Our Russian saints were foolish and ignorant, unlearned people—why believe them? They didn’t know how to read!’” How these foreign “enlightened” Greeks managed to deceive the Russian hierarchs, convincing them that holiness depended on education!
Faced with such an unexpected argument, all Avvakum could do was “scold them.” “I am pure,” he said in conclusion, “and I shake the dust from my feet before you, as it is written: ‘Better one who does God’s will than thousands of the lawless!’”33. Having exhausted all their arguments, the “fathers of the holy council” fell into an indescribable rage and, no longer restraining themselves, gave free rein to their hands: “‘Seize him, seize him! He has dishonored us all!’ And they began to push and beat me; the patriarchs themselves lunged at me, about forty of them, I reckon—what a great army of the antichrist had gathered! Ivan Uarov grabbed me and dragged me. I shouted, ‘Stop, don’t beat me!’ And they all backed off. I started speaking to the interpreter-archimandrite: ‘Tell the patriarchs: the Apostle Paul writes, “Such a high priest became us—holy, harmless,”34 and so forth; but if you kill a man, how will you serve the liturgy?’ So they sat down.”
Seeing that rational arguments had no effect on the minds of the “enlightened” hierarchs, Avvakum resorted to the traditional Russian “holy foolery”: “I went to the door and fell on my side: ‘You sit, but I’ll lie down,’ I told them. They laughed: ‘That archpriest is a fool! He doesn’t honor the patriarchs!’” But this “foolery” was filled with deep meaning. Justifying his behavior with Scripture, Avvakum responded to the hierarchs with a New Testament phrase that theologically underpinned the feat of holy foolery: “We are fools for Christ’s sake; you are honored, we are dishonored; you are strong, we are weak!”35.
“This gesture,” writes academician A.M. Panchenko, “is decoded through the Old Testament. Avvakum imitated the prophet Ezekiel: ‘Lie on your left side and place on it the iniquity of the house of Israel… Lie again on your right side, and bear the iniquity of the house of Judah for forty days.’ By divine command, Ezekiel denounced the Jews mired in sins, predicting their death by plague, famine, and sword. Avvakum reiterated this prophecy. He wrote to the Tsar as early as 1664, in his first petition, about the ‘pestilent plague’ (the plague that struck Moscow) and the ‘Hagarene sword’ as punishment for ‘Nikon’s ventures.’ He returned to this theme repeatedly in the Pustozersk prison: ‘Is it not evident in our poor Russia: the Razin uprising—rebellion due to sin, and before that in Moscow, the Kolomna disaster, plague, war, and many other woes. Turn Your face away, O Lord, since Nikon began to corrupt the true faith, from then on all evils have befallen us and continue to this day’”36.
The dispute with the patriarchs ended with a discussion of the “double” and “triple” alleluia. Here, too, the inspired Avvakum “confounded their Roman harlot with Dionysius the Areopagite.” The cellarer of Chudov, Euthymius, who had translated Dionysius’s theological treatises himself, could offer no rebuttal, only saying: “You’re right—we have nothing more to say to you.” After this, Avvakum was led out of the Cross Chamber in chains.
Meanwhile, the work of the Great Moscow Council of 1666–1667 continued, and fateful decisions were made that permanently entrenched the schism in the Russian Church. The council revisited the issue of Nikon’s church reform, and the participants, having condemned Nikon himself, not only unanimously affirmed his work but also pronounced even harsher anathemas against the Old Orthodox Christians as heretics. On May 13, 1667, the council solemnly anathematized the Old Orthodox church rites and practices, sacredly preserved by the Russian Church until the years of Nikon’s patriarchate: “This is our conciliar decree and testament to all, concerning the aforementioned Orthodox rites. We command and decree that all steadfastly preserve and submit to the holy Eastern Church. But if anyone does not heed our decrees and does not submit to the holy Eastern Church and this consecrated council, or begins to contradict and oppose us: we, by the authority given to us by the all-holy and life-giving Spirit, if he be of the consecrated rank, depose and strip him of all sacred functions and anathematize him. If he be of the secular rank, we excommunicate and make him a stranger to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and anathematize him as a heretic and disobedient, cutting him off from the Orthodox community and flock and from God’s Church until he comes to his senses and returns to the truth through repentance. And whoever does not come to his senses and return to the truth through repentance, remaining obstinate until his death: let him be excommunicated even after death, and let his portion and soul be with Judas the betrayer, with the Jews who crucified Christ, and with Arius and other accursed heretics: let iron, stone, and wood be destroyed and decay, but let him remain unabsolved and undecayed, like a drum, forever and ever, amen”37.
The “first violin” at the continued council sessions in 1667 was played by the notorious Archimandrite Dionysius the Greek. He became a worthy successor to Arseny the Greek, who was exiled to Solovki in 1662, taking over as corrector at the Printing House. Proficient in Russian and assigned as an interpreter to the Eastern patriarchs, Dionysius managed to instill in them the “necessary” ideas about the old rites—exactly what the Tsar wanted to hear. Deacon Theodore writes: “All the Russian authorities… prepared lavish feasts for that patriarchal interpreter, Archimandrite Denis, invited him to their homes, showered him with gifts, and flattered him in every way, so that he would persuade his patriarchs to arrange everything according to their wishes, enact their conciliar decisions, and not undo them, for the Tsar loves it… That interpreter… was well-versed in the Russian language and customs, known to all the new authorities; but the patriarchs, newly arrived, knew nothing, believed whatever he told them, and trusted him—a rogue deliberately assigned to them, as they themselves were. And that Denis, a fornicator, corrupted the souls of the patriarchs…”38. At the same time, Dionysius unambiguously intimidated the patriarchs, reminding them of the fate of Maximus the Greek, who was exiled to a monastery for refusing to submit to the will of the Grand Prince of Moscow.
In essence, the “ecumenical” patriarchs began to view the schism in the Russian Church through Dionysius’s eyes. Shortly before the council, he had written an extensive polemical work against the Old Believers—the first of its kind. “A unscrupulous mercenary, Dionysius knew what Tsar Alexei expected of him and was aware of the Tsar’s Westernizing orientation, which held all things Russian in contempt. Therefore, he shamelessly defamed Russian church tradition, brazenly slandering it. All the peculiarities of the Russian church rite, Dionysius assured, were created solely on Russian soil as a result of ignorance, folly, and self-will; they were established by some heretics at Satan’s instigation and thus ‘bear an unorthodox character, containing outright heretical teaching’”39.
Thus, at the Great Moscow Council of 1666–1667, aptly dubbed by the people as the “robber” and “mad” council, the fate of the Russian Church fell into the hands of a gang of itinerant adventurers and blatant profiteers, ready to sell their conscience and soul for the clink of gold coins. This played a fateful role in the subsequent history of Russia. It became abundantly clear to the Orthodox people who was steering the earthly Church in those days, and the people recoiled in horror from the hierarchs who had betrayed them.
During the days when the sessions of the “robber council” were held in Moscow, during Great Lent of 1667, a vision was granted to a musketeer standing guard at the Kremlin’s Frolov Gates. “He saw,” writes Deacon Theodore, “on one of those days, after Matins, Satan sitting on a throne in the air, with the Greco-Turkish patriarchs and Russian authorities seated around him, and Artemon, the head of the musketeers, standing there, along with others from the Tsar’s rank, above the place where they all gathered, sitting and affirming Nikon’s deception and his new books, preparing for the shedding of Christian blood, and arranging everything according to the whisperings of the deceitful serpent, who always rejoices in bloodshed. And that soldier began to openly tell everyone about the vision shown to him by God, and for this, he was exiled to an unknown place. And this God revealed for the sake of simple people, so that all might understand that at their deceitful council with the authorities, it was not Christ who sat, nor the Spirit of Truth who taught them all injustice, but the cunning Satan, the God-opposing enemy and murderer of men. And every devilish deed and action does not occur without bloodshed; but Christ’s divine work and action is accomplished with love and good counsel, established and perfected in peace and tranquility”40.
Along with the anathematization of all the old rites and practices, the council, led by the “Greco-Turkish patriarchs,” also condemned and vilified previous Russian church councils, particularly the renowned Stoglav Council of 1551: “And the council held under the pious great Sovereign Tsar and Grand Prince Ivan Vasilyevich, Autocrat of All Russia, by Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow, and what they wrote about the sign of the Honorable Cross, that is, about the two-finger sign, and about the double Alleluia, and about other matters, written imprudently, in simplicity and ignorance, in the book of the Stoglav… For that Macarius, Metropolitan, and those with him, reasoned ignorantly and recklessly as they wished”41. Among those “with him” were saints glorified by the Russian Church—Philip, the future Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia, Acacius of Rostov, Guriy and Varsonofy, wonderworkers of Kazan, and the venerable Maximus the Greek… With these reckless decrees, the entire centuries-long tradition of Russian holiness was defiled and anathematized.
The Great Moscow Council of 1666–1667 also approved the book The Staff (Жезл) of Governance, compiled by Simeon Polotsky, which Avvakum justly called “cunning and God-repulsive.”
The personality of the book’s author is noteworthy in itself. In literature, Simeon Polotsky is widely regarded as a progressive figure of his time, almost the sole beacon in the dark realm of ignorant Russian medievalism. However, this image does not align with reality. Hieromonk Simeon Polotsky (born Samuel Yemelyanovich Petrovsky-Sitnianovich), a native of Belarus, brought to Moscow exclusively Latin scholarship, and not even of the highest quality for its time. As Professor K. Yarosh aptly notes, “his scholarship bore all the characteristics of scholasticism. But his scholasticism was not the vibrant and fresh medieval wisdom that reached respectable heights in the person of Thomas Aquinas and expressed the intellectual curiosity of its era. Simeon’s scholarship was the scholasticism of Ockham’s time, when only the dry, external husk remained, consisting of logical controversies and casuistic subtleties. Polotsky’s erudition was entirely imbued with the spirit of formalism, in which the essence of things vanished, and the profound interests of reality, history, nationality, and the state receded, leaving only a mechanism of verbal and logical formulas—a mechanism, admittedly, well-oiled and easily turning with the wind. Thus, while Bacon and Descartes in Europe were already pointing to new methods of thinking, while Spinoza in Holland sought to raise the edifice of philosophy to the divine abode, while Hobbes in England labored on Leviathan, and while Machiavelli’s patriotic cry had long resounded in Italy—Simeon Polotsky, with self-satisfied pride, offered Russia European wisdom that was one and a half centuries outdated, celebrated in Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly and surviving only in the obscure corners of provincial schools. It cannot be denied that it is a remarkable phenomenon that the first ‘fashionable imports’ from abroad turned out to be items from a long-past season”42.
Simeon received his initial education at the Latinized Kiev-Mohyla Academy, then continued his studies at the Jesuit college in Vilnius. As a secret Uniate, Simeon Polotsky concealed his affiliation with the Basilian Order, founded in 1617 by the Dominicans for Catholic missionary work in Eastern Slavic lands. Later, in the book Osten, it was said of the “Polotsk elder”: “Though Simeon was a learned and virtuous man, he was pre-instructed by the Jesuits, the papists, and was seduced by them: he read only their Latin books, being unskilled in reading Greek books, and thus reasoned that Latin innovations were true. For among the Jesuits, one who studies only Latin without Greek cannot fully be a sincere son of the Eastern Church”43. In 1656, when Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich visited Polotsk during his campaign to Riga, Simeon presented him with his work Meters on the Arrival of the Great Sovereign, thereby drawing the Tsar’s attention. In 1664, after Polotsk returned to Polish control, he relocated to Moscow, where he taught Latin to young clerks of the Secret Chancery, later becoming a tutor to the Tsar’s children and a court poet. Simeon authored numerous works: The Staff of Governance, The Crown of Faith, Rifmologion, The Multicolored Garden, The Spiritual Dinner, The Spiritual Supper, and several dramatic compositions.
Among other things, Simeon Polotsky earned the Tsar’s special favor through his professional knowledge of astrology—a practice categorically rejected by the Orthodox Church. A surviving tale recounts that on August 11, 1671, after Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich “deigned to unite with the great Tsarina,” Simeon saw a “most radiant star near Mars” in the sky and interpreted it as a sign of the impending birth of a “great sovereign.” “And that observer recognized that star… and named the child conceived in the womb: Peter.” It should be noted that the conception of the future emperor occurred during the Dormition Fast, when the Orthodox Church prohibits marriage ceremonies and prescribes marital abstinence. “According to experienced spiritual figures, children born in violation of Christian fasts usually do not bring joy to their parents or society with a virtuous life”44.
At the 1666 council, Simeon Polotsky served as a theological consultant and editor of the council’s proceedings. His records of the council’s acts, written in a Latin alphabet in a semi-Russian, semi-Polish language, have survived. While editing the texts of speeches, he took considerable liberties, substituting the speeches of the Tsar and Metropolitan Pitirim with his own. He also participated in interrogations of Old Believers (e.g., Priest Nikita Dobrynin).
The book The Staff of Governance, approved by the Great Moscow Council of 1666–1667, not only contained numerous derogatory remarks about Old Orthodox traditions but also overt Latin heresies. In particular, it included the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Most Holy God-bearer. Regarding human conception, Simeon Polotsky expounded a completely heretical teaching that the soul enters a male fetus on the fortieth day and a female fetus on the eightieth day after conception. This doctrine directly echoes the ideas of the Manicheans and Origenists, condemned by the ancient Church. As the prominent Old Believer theologian and apologist Andrey Denisov noted in his Pomorian Answers, “this reasoning of the newly printed books, which teaches that human flesh grows and forms in the womb without a soul, is contrary to the great holy theologians and teachers who teach that the soul and body are together in human conception, not preceding one another”45. Refuting this absurd teaching, Andrey Denisov cites authoritative Orthodox thinkers such as Saints Athanasius the Great, John of Damascus, and Simeon of Thessalonica. Finally, in The Staff of Governance, Simeon Polotsky presents a thoroughly Catholic doctrine regarding the moment of transubstantiation of the Holy Gifts during the liturgy.
Of Archpriest Avvakum and his like-minded companions, who courageously stood in defense of the defiled Orthodox faith and later gave their lives for it, The Staff writes: “Now the newly arisen apostates Nikita, Avvakum, Lazar, Theodore, Theoktist, Spiridon, along with the foolishly wise hermits and others who have rejected the unity of the Church, establishing and building their own God-hated brothels… a great storm and unbearable turmoil now strikes the temple of the divine Church through the blasphemous mouths of Nikita and his like-minded companions: Priest Lazar, Avvakum, Deacon Theodore, and others, who slander, claiming there is no tradition of the holy fathers that Orthodox people should make the sign of the holy cross with the first three fingers”46.
In conclusion, the Great Moscow Council of 1666–1667 decreed: “If anyone now begins to contradict the reasons set forth at this great council by the most holy ecumenical patriarchs, who corrected and legislated concerning the alleluia, the cross, and other matters written in the conciliar exposition of this present council, in the year 1667 from the Incarnation of God, and in the book The Staff of Governance, let him, according to the Apostle Paul, be justly self-condemned and inherit the curse of this council, as written in its conciliar act, as a disobedient one to God and an opponent of the rules of the holy fathers.” The heir of the council’s curse “shall be excommunicated even after death, and his portion and soul shall be with Judas the betrayer, with the Jews who crucified Christ, with Arius, and with other accursed heretics. Let iron, stone, and wood be destroyed and decay, but let him remain unabsolved and undecayed, like a drum, forever and ever”47.
What impact did the decrees of the “robber” council have on Avvakum and his like-minded companions? From the perspective of an Orthodox person, these decrees and curses held no force. Being unjustly pronounced, the curses turned back upon the heads of those who uttered them. Defrocked by the council’s decree, Avvakum continued to confess and administer the reserved sacraments to his spiritual children at the residence of the Pafnutiev Monastery. He wrote even more sharply about the council’s decrees of 1666–1667 in his Life: “As for that apostate prohibition, I cast it underfoot in Christ, and that curse—foolish talk!—I wipe my backside with it. I am blessed by the Moscow hierarchs Peter, Alexei, Jonah, and Philip—I believe in my God with a pure conscience according to their books and serve Him; but I renounce and curse the apostates—they are God’s enemies, and I do not fear them, living with Christ!”48
The final chord of the 1666–1667 council, which fully exposed its pro-Latin essence, was another decree contrary to the practice of the pre-schism Church: “Concerning Latin baptism, performed in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit by triple aspersion… the entire consecrated council, having heard these excerpts, judged the matter: It is not fitting to rebaptize those coming from the Latins to the holy apostolic Eastern Church”49. In essence, Catholics were declared orthodox and Orthodox by the council, and their baptism by aspersion was recognized as valid. Any priest who dared to receive a Catholic through baptism was to be deposed from the sacred rank: “If anyone, out of obstinacy, wishes to rebaptize Latins, let him remember the 47th rule of the holy apostles, which says: ‘He who baptizes a second time one who has been truly baptized, and does not baptize one defiled by heretics, such a hierarch is not a priest’”50.
This decision, which directly contradicted not only the Local Council of 1620 under Patriarch Filaret but also the entire practice of the ancient Church dating back to apostolic times, undeniably bears the “hand of the Jesuits,” acting through their secret agents Paisius Ligarides and Dionysius the Greek, who had long dreamed of subjugating Moscow to the Roman Pope through a union. At the same time, there was also the personal interest of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, given the political situation in Europe.
As early as 1656, when the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was in a critical position, pressed by Russian troops on one side and Swedish forces on the other, the Poles made every effort to pull Russia out of the war and pit it against Sweden. To this end, during peace negotiations in Vilnius, they promised Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich nothing less than the Polish crown, but only after King Jan Casimir. “In Vilnius, Polish and Lithuanian envoys did everything to fuel the Tsar’s hopes for a favorable resolution of the succession question. They assured him that the election was a done deal and that he needed only patience to await the Sejm. The draft of the Vilnius Treaty explicitly stated in its first article that Alexei Mikhailovich would be elected to the Polish throne, so the Moscow sovereign needed only to regard the Commonwealth as his future inheritance and, accordingly, protect it”51.
Obsessed with delusional ideas of the “Greek project” and the creation of a “universal Orthodox empire,” Tsar Alexei fell for yet another Jesuit trap—concluding a truce with the nearly defeated Commonwealth and recklessly starting a war with Sweden, which ended in a complete Russian defeat. Patriarch Nikon played a significant role in ending the war with Poland and starting the one with Sweden, reportedly receiving a substantial bribe from the Poles. The Polish nobles, recovering from their earlier defeats, later imposed 21 conditions under which the Russian Tsar could not obtain the Polish crown. Truly, as Archpriest Avvakum would later say, a “mad little tsar”!
In 1667, the “Polish card” was played again, to the detriment of the Russian state. That year, a Polish mission arrived in Moscow to ratify the Truce of Andrusovo. A “private audience” was arranged for them, attended by the Tsar himself, the heir to the throne Tsarevich Alexei Alexeevich, and the close boyar Afanasy Lavrentievich Ordin-Nashchokin—another Westernizer and favorite of the Tsar. Notably, the Eastern patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria were also present at this “private audience,” but not a single Russian hierarch.
On behalf of Alexei Mikhailovich, Ordin-Nashchokin proposed to the envoys a plan to unite Russia with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth while preserving Polish freedoms and liberties, on the condition that Tsarevich Alexei Alexeevich be elected to the Polish throne. Religious policy was to play a significant role in the future unification of the two states. “According to Ordin-Nashchokin’s words, in the internal policy of this future united state, the primary task was to completely eliminate freedom of religion, which still existed in Poland. Thus, the Polish Catholic Counter-Reformation was welcomed, and simultaneously, the Old Believers (whom the authorities called ‘hostile enemies of the holy Orthodox Church’) were to be eradicated both in Russia and in Poland. The Counter-Reformation was seen as a direct parallel to the persecution of Old Believers in Russia and was fully supported, with Russia cited as an example of such religious persecution of dissenters for Poland. Thus, the ruling Moscow elite viewed the persecution of Old Believers through the lens of the European Inquisition’s experience”52.
Then, the thirteen-year-old Tsarevich Alexei Alexeevich delivered a lengthy speech, half in Latin and half in Polish, about the mutual benefits of a future Russo-Polish union in light of “the danger threatening both of us from the barbarian Tatars, requiring unbreakable agreement, unity of thought, and joint action”53.
The “ecumenical” patriarchs also expressed their views. Patriarch Macarius of Antioch, obediently following the Tsar’s tune at the Great Moscow Council, proposed to the Polish envoys, without hesitation, to unite the Catholic and Eastern Churches: “It is not enough to achieve your union through civil means and order, even under oath; you must unite not only in body but, above all, in heart and soul, and thus it is necessary to return to a single faith and agreement”54. Patriarch Macarius proposed, as a condition for concluding the church union, that Catholics officially recognize him and the Alexandrian Patriarch as popes, while preserving all their dignities and rights. Significant dogmatic differences between Catholicism and Orthodoxy did not pose an obstacle. For instance, the serious dogmatic issue of the Filioque (the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son), which had sparked heated theological debates between Catholics and Orthodox for centuries, was deemed by Patriarch Macarius as “not worthy of persistent dispute.” “How much does your Western Church differ from our Eastern one?” the Eastern patriarch rhetorically asked. “Only the interpretation of the procession of the Holy Spirit divides us. We, too, believe that the Holy Spirit was sent and descended through the Son, but, according to our teaching, only by the will of the Father; and the Latin holy fathers also call the Father the creator and source, but ours call the Father the cause of all, including the Son; and this disagreement does not deserve such stubborn dispute. Therefore, most distinguished men, exert every effort and advocate before your illustrious king and republic for the restoration of the union between both churches”55.
A union in exchange for Catholic military aid in the war against Turkey for Constantinople and the “liberation of the Greeks”—such was the price of the deal. History was repeating itself. Just as the Byzantine Emperor John VIII and the Eastern patriarchs once made a deal with the Roman Pope, concluding the Florentine Union of 1439, sacrificing their souls for nothing in return…
The Polish envoys responded to Patriarch Macarius: “This great matter concerns all of you, groaning under the cruel and fierce slavery of your Eastern tyrant (the Turkish Sultan—K.K.). But his reckless endeavors and audacious, God-opposing plans, we hope, will easily be crushed before the barrier of this present union of valiant sovereigns and mighty nations. As for the arrangement of church affairs, we, as Christians, sincerely desire that the reconciliation you mentioned be achieved through the mediation of influential persons from both Orthodox and Catholics; however, it must be clarified that we entrust all such matters to bishops and other spiritual persons solely responsible for the care of our souls’ salvation, and thus it is their prerogative to address such questions”56.
In this context, it becomes entirely clear why the Great Moscow Council recognized baptism by aspersion as valid and prohibited, under threat of deposition, the rebaptism of Catholics in accordance with apostolic rules. Thus, to accommodate the political adventures of the capricious Russian Tsar, the line between Catholicism, Uniatism, and the Eastern Churches was erased, opening a wide path for a future church union.
The Great Moscow Council of 1666–1667 led to the final schism in the Russian Church and sanctioned the genocide of the Russian people unleashed by secular and ecclesiastical authorities. As historian A.S. Prugavin wrote, “At the very outset of the schism, the authorities sought to crush it with harsh, severe measures. And so, blood flowed like a river. All the early leaders and champions of the schism perished on the scaffold, burned in log cabins, or wasted away in confinement. Ruthless tortures and countless, agonizing executions followed in an endless, unbroken chain. Schismatics were exiled, imprisoned in dungeons, monasteries, and cells, tortured and burned, mercilessly whipped, had their ribs broken, were thrown into wooden cages and burned with straw, doused with cold water and frozen naked, hanged, impaled, quartered, and had their sinews torn out… In short, everything that human cruelty could devise to instill fear, panic, and terror was put into action. The population professing the true faith was horrified”57.
To force the people to accept the new faith and new books, the “robber” council sanctioned subjecting those who disobeyed its decrees to the harshest punishments: imprisonment, exile, beating with ox sinews, cutting off ears and noses, tearing out tongues, and severing hands. The council’s directive to the clergy stated: “If anyone does not obey us in any of the commands we issue or begins to contradict, report such persons to us, and we will punish them spiritually; and if they begin to despise our spiritual punishment, we will also impose bodily afflictions on them.” To justify the persecutions, the council participants cited Holy Scripture, reinterpreting it in a Jesuitical manner: “Since in the Old Testament there was a shadow, a type, and a foreshadowing of what is done in the new grace, this staff appears to be a certain prefiguration.” This lawless decree, contrary to the evangelical spirit of love, became the foundation for all subsequent repressions by both ecclesiastical and secular authorities against the Old Believers. Church historian A.V. Kartashev calls things by their names, noting that during this period, “for the first time in the history of the Russian Church and state, the system and spirit of the Western Inquisition were applied.” The emergence of an “Orthodox” Inquisition, modeled on the Catholic one, was one of the most “outstanding” results of the 17th-century church reform. Later, in the book Prashchitsa, the “Holy Synod” would justify the need for an inquisition with this blasphemous explanation: “If in the Old Testament church the disobedient were commanded to be killed, how much more in the new grace should those who disobey the holy Eastern and Great Russian Church be subjected to punishment, for it is worthy and just: there was a shadow, here is grace; there were types, here is truth; there was the lamb, here is Christ.” This idea was shared by leading hierarchs of the dominant church. Thus, Stefan (Yavorsky), locum tenens of the patriarchal throne and Metropolitan of Ryazan, asserted in the early 18th century: “All this is fitting for heretics: it is worthy and just to kill them,” and in his book The Rock of Faith, he argued that “Saint John Chrysostom, along with others, interprets heretics as thieves and robbers… There is no other remedy for a heretic but death.”
Tortures and executions were carried out in various parts of the Russian state. The government, obsessed with the “Greek project,” and the compliant church hierarchs brutally persecuted adherents of the old faith: bonfires blazed everywhere, people were burned by the hundreds and thousands, tongues were cut out, heads were chopped off, ribs were broken with tongs, and bodies were quartered. All the horrors familiar to Russians from the lives of holy martyrs who suffered in pagan Rome now became a terrifying reality in Rus! “It’s a wonder they don’t come to their senses,” wrote Archpriest Avvakum. “They want to establish the faith with fire, whips, and gallows! Which apostles taught this? I don’t know. My Christ did not command our apostles to teach this way, to bring people to faith with fire, whips, and gallows… The Tatar god Muhammad wrote in his books: ‘Those who do not submit to our tradition and law, we command their heads to be bowed under the sword.’ But our Christ never commanded His disciples thus. Those teachers who bring people to faith by destruction and death are clearly the minions of the antichrist; their deeds match their faith”58.
The clergy and civil government mercilessly exterminated their own brothers—Russian people. No one was spared: men, women, and even children were killed. “The grim hero of the Middle Ages, the Spanish inquisitor Torquemada, sometimes pales before our Russian inquisitor-executioners in mitres and uniforms”59. Yet, Russian people displayed extraordinary strength of spirit, enduring all deprivations and tortures. Many faced death boldly and resolutely, like the first Christians.
In the 17th century, the best representatives of the Russian people chose the path of co-crucifixion with Christ over earthly comforts. Unwilling to betray the faith of their ancestors, tens and hundreds of thousands of Russians chose the path of martyrdom and confession. Others (according to historians, from a quarter to a third of the Russian state’s population!) fled to impenetrable forests, to the outskirts of the state, and beyond its borders, not waiting for the tortures that awaited them. Escaping persecution, Old Believers fled to all corners of vast Rus: to the Don, Siberia, Kerzhenets, Starodubye, where they established entire settlements and sketes; they fled abroad—to Lithuania, Poland, Courland, Sweden, Prussia, and Turkey. The keepers of ancient piety abandoned their homes and possessions, taking only icons and old printed books, and in new places, wherever fate led them, they painstakingly, bit by bit, revived Ancient Rus.
The question inevitably arises: can the unprecedented resistance of at least a third of the Russian people to Nikon’s church reform be explained solely by “religious fanaticism” and “ignorance” rooted in “ritualism,” as some synodal and later Soviet historians attempted to portray? Certainly not. Above all, the very concept of “ritual” requires further clarification.
This concept is not Orthodox and is, in essence, deeply alien to the spirit of Christian doctrine. Saint John Chrysostom wrote: “The Lord God, in the depth of His wisdom, grants His invisible gifts to man, clothed in a visible body, through visible and bodily signs. For if man had only a soul without a body, as the angels do, he would receive God’s gifts without these material, sensory, and visible signs; but since man is clothed in a body, he cannot receive God’s grace without visible and sensory signs”60. Saint Simeon of Thessalonica expressed a similar thought: “Since we are twofold, consisting of soul and body, Christ gave us sacraments with two aspects, as He Himself truly became twofold, remaining true God and becoming true Man. Thus, He sanctifies our souls spiritually by the grace of the Spirit, and through sensory water, oil, bread, the chalice, and other things sanctified by the Spirit, He sanctifies our bodies and grants complete salvation”61.
Thus, the internal and external, the spiritual and the material, are inseparably linked in church sacraments and rites, just as, according to the definition of the Council of Chalcedon, the two natures of Christ—divine and human—are united “unconfusedly and indivisibly.” The idea that in sacraments and rites one can distinguish between the “internal” (essential and primary) and the “external” (allegedly non-essential and secondary) first appeared in Catholic theology. “Western scholastic thought,” writes Professor M.O. Shakhov, “adopted Aristotle’s philosophy—a philosophy of logical forms—as its paradigm, accustoming minds to ‘clothe ideas in rigid, stable forms, delineate concepts, classify them, introduce external order and structure into the realm of thought, and uniformity in expression.’ Only after this shift in intellectual approach did the analytical, systematizing method, seeking to separate the ‘essential’ from the ‘non-essential’ in church life, begin to dominate Western religious-philosophical thought. Orthodox Rus was not influenced by scholastic worldview and preserved the mode of thinking inherited from Eastern patristics. Therefore, arguments aimed at downplaying the significance of changes in the material forms of worship were doubly alien to traditional Orthodox worldview. On the one hand, Orthodox philosophical-worldview notions of the interconnectedness of the material and the ideal did not allow for the possibility that distortion of the former would not affect the latter. On the other hand, the scholastic division of church life into ‘essential’ and ‘non-essential,’ which could be arbitrarily altered, could not be reconciled with the Orthodox worldview, which saw elements not in opposition but in harmonious unity, where the overall harmony depends on all elements and their combination. Orthodox traditionalists and representatives of the ‘European mode of thinking,’ which developed from scholasticism, fundamentally could not understand each other in such a dispute”62.
As the renowned church historian Professor A. Lebedev wrote, “the cause of the schism lies much deeper—it concerns the very essence of the Church and the foundations of its structure and governance. The difference in rites alone would not have led to a schism if the matter of ritual correction had not been conducted as it was by hierarchical autocracy. ‘Nothing causes schism in churches as much as the love of power among the authorities,’ wrote Archpriest Avvakum in his petition to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. And it was precisely this love of power, oppressing the Church, trampling on church freedom, and distorting the very concept of the Church (the Church is me), that caused the schism in the Russian Church as a protest against hierarchical arbitrariness. This love of power was the reason that, to resolve a religious-ritual dispute that deeply concerned and agitated the entire Orthodox people, a council was convened consisting solely of hierarchs without the participation of the people, and the old rites, cherished by the people, through which, according to their belief, the wonderworkers glorified in the Russian Church were saved, were mercilessly condemned; and a terrible, everlasting curse was pronounced on the zealots of these rites who did not submit to the council’s decrees”63.
Despite the immense importance of rites, sacred texts, and religious symbolism in general for the people of that time, the issue was not merely about changing rites and liturgical texts but about altering the entire way of life, the character, and the spirit of the people, subjecting them to a foreign will imposed from above—a reality that became entirely evident over time. Even if unconsciously, the Russian Orthodox people sensed this.
Subsequent research by generations of independent historians has made it clear: “The decisive and harsh condemnation by the 1667 council, led by two Eastern patriarchs, of the old Russian rite was, as more thorough and impartial investigation of this phenomenon shows, a complete misunderstanding and mistake, and therefore it demands a new conciliar review of the entire matter and its correction, with the aim of reconciliation and ending the centuries-old strife between Old Believers and New Ritualists, so that the Russian Church may once again become one, as it was before the patriarchate of Nikon,” wrote N.F. Kapterev64. In April 1929, at a session of the Synod of the Patriarchal Church, it was decreed that the anathemas pronounced by Patriarch Macarius of Antioch and confirmed by Metropolitans Gabriel of Serbia, Gregory of Nicaea, Gideon of Moldavia, and Russian hierarchs and priests at the 1656 council, as well as the anathemas of the 1666–1667 councils that annulled the decisions of the Stoglav Council of 1551, should be abolished and considered “as if they had never been.” At the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church convened in 1971, the issue of the “anathemas on the old rites and their adherents” was revisited. The council decided to uphold the Synod’s decree of April 23 (10), 1929, regarding the abolition of the anathemas. The council also recognized the old rites as “salvific, like the new rites, and equal in honor to them”65.
However, this new decision had almost no effect, particularly within the Russian Orthodox Church itself. Regrettably, despite its own conciliar decrees, literature published today with the blessing of Russian Orthodox Church hierarchs contains numerous distortions of historical facts, and the old rites and Old Believers are subjected to scorn and ridicule. In textbooks on the Law of God and prayer books, only the three-finger sign of the cross is indicated, while so-called “Old Believer” (edinoverie) parishes within the Russian Orthodox Church remain a kind of reservation for lovers of church antiquity. But most importantly: rivers of blood were shed, hundreds of thousands of innocent lives were destroyed—and not a single word of repentance has been uttered, which would seem so natural from the lips of truly Christian shepherds… Meanwhile, the voices of overly zealous “zealots” calling for a revision of the 1971 Local Council’s decisions are heard more and more frequently. It may not be long before its decrees, too, are declared “as if they had never been”…
K.Ya. Kozhurin
- Mirolyubov, I.I. Russian-Ukrainian Spiritual Connections on the Eve of the Schism // Old Believer Church Calendar for 1989. Riga, 1989. p. 38. ↩︎
- Oparina, T.V. The Number 1666 in Russian Literature of the Mid-to-Late 17th Century // Man Between Kingdom and Empire: Proceedings of the International Conference / Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Man; Edited by M.S. Kiseleva. Moscow, 2003. p. 290. ↩︎
- Ibid. p. 292. ↩︎
- Vishensky, Ivan. Works. Moscow-Leningrad, 1955. p. 239. ↩︎
- Ibid. p. 256. ↩︎
- Ibid. p. 174. ↩︎
- Robinson, A.N. The Struggle of Ideas in 17th-Century Russian Literature. Moscow, 1974. p. 313. ↩︎
- Neronov’s Second Letter to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich from the Spasokamenny Monastery, February 27, 1654 // The Old Faith. Old Believer Anthology. Edited by A.S. Rybakov. Moscow, 1914. p. 202. ↩︎
- Cited in: Kartashev, A.V. Essays on the History of the Russian Church. Vol. 2. Moscow, 2009. p. 214. ↩︎
- Ibid. p. 215. ↩︎
- Pustozersk Prose: Collection. Moscow, 1989. p. 236. ↩︎
- Ibid. p. 235. ↩︎
- Klyuchevsky, V.O. Works in Nine Volumes. Course of Russian History. Part 3. Moscow, 1988. p. 298. ↩︎
- The Life of Archpriest Avvakum, Written by Himself, and His Other Works. Moscow, 1960. p. 161. ↩︎
- Ibid. p. 155. ↩︎
- Afedron (Greek) — anus. ↩︎
- The Life of Archpriest Avvakum… pp. 139–140. ↩︎
- Ibid. pp. 141–142. ↩︎
- Ibid. p. 139. ↩︎
- Ibid. pp. 298–299. ↩︎
- Ibid. p. 94. ↩︎
- Zenkovsky, S.A. Russian Old Belief. In 2 vols. Moscow, 2006. p. 222. ↩︎
- Paul of Aleppo (Archdeacon). The Journey of Patriarch Macarius of Antioch to Russia in the Mid-17th Century, Described by His Son, Archdeacon Paul of Aleppo. Moscow, 2005. p. 569. ↩︎
- The Life of Archpriest Avvakum… p. 97. ↩︎
- Zenkovsky, S.A. Russian Old Belief… p. 222. ↩︎
- Andreev, I.L. Alexei Mikhailovich. Moscow, 2006. p. 369. ↩︎
- Alexei Mikhailovich took these flattering words of the Greek literally: after his break with Nikon, around 1662, he began to partake of communion during the liturgy according to the rite of the clergy, that is, directly in the altar and separately of the Body and Blood of Christ, as priests and deacons did. This manner of Alexei Mikhailovich’s communion corresponded to the ancient Byzantine practice of imperial communion, likely conveyed to him by the obliging Paisius. ↩︎
- Andreev, I.L. Op. cit. p. 373. ↩︎
- Zenkovsky, S.A. Russian Old Belief… p. 226. ↩︎
- Kapterev, N.F. Patriarch Nikon and Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Sergiev Posad, 1909. Vol. 2. p. 369. ↩︎
- This refers to the two-finger sign of the cross, in which the arrangement of all five fingers carries deep dogmatic significance: the two extended fingers—index and middle—signify the two natures of Christ, while the three folded together represent the Holy Trinity. According to Nikon’s new interpretation, only the first three fingers, folded in honor of the Holy Trinity, held meaning, while the other two remained “idle,” signifying nothing. Later, under the influence of Old Believer criticism, in New Rite books, the two previously “idle” fingers were also interpreted as representing the two natures of Christ. ↩︎
- Kapterev, N.F. Patriarch Nikon and Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Vol. 2. pp. 101–102. ↩︎
- Sirach 16:3. ↩︎
- Hebrews 7:26. ↩︎
- 1 Corinthians 4:10. ↩︎
- Panchenko, A.M. I Emigrated to Ancient Rus… pp. 34–35. ↩︎
- Acts of the Moscow Council of 1667. Moscow, 1893. Fol. 6v–7. ↩︎
- Pustozersk Prose. p. 243. ↩︎
- Kutuzov, B.P. The Church “Reform” of the 17th Century… p. 230. ↩︎
- Pustozersk Prose. p. 240. ↩︎
- Acts of the Moscow Council of 1667. Fol. 7v–8. ↩︎
- Yarosh, K. Characters of Bygone Times: Archpriest Avvakum. Kharkov, 1898. pp. 28–29. ↩︎
- Osten. A Monument of 17th-Century Russian Spiritual Literature. Kazan, 1865. p. 130. ↩︎
- Kutuzov, B.P. The Church “Reform” of the 17th Century… p. 147. ↩︎
- Pomorian Answers. Moscow, 2004. p. 180. ↩︎
- The Staff of Governance. Moscow, 1667. Part I. Fol. 16v–17, 57. ↩︎
- Acts of the Moscow Council of 1667. Fol. 93–93v. ↩︎
- The Life of Archpriest Avvakum. p. 85. ↩︎
- Acts of the Moscow Council of 1667. Fol. 72v–73. ↩︎
- Ibid. Fol. 72v. ↩︎
- Andreev, I.L. Alexei Mikhailovich. pp. 309–310. ↩︎
- Ibid. p. 310. ↩︎
- Historical Account of the Journey of Polish Envoys to Muscovy Undertaken in 1667 // Traveling Through Muscovy. Moscow, 1991. pp. 337–338. ↩︎
- Ibid. p. 340. ↩︎
- Ibid. pp. 340–341. ↩︎
- Ibid. p. 341. ↩︎
- Prugavin, A. Schism and Sectarianism. Moscow, 1905. p. 31. ↩︎
- The Life of Archpriest Avvakum… p. 108. ↩︎
- Vl. M-ov. Preface // Denisov, S. Russian Vineyard, or Description of Those Who Suffered in Russia for Ancient Church Piety. Moscow, 1906. p. 8. ↩︎
- Great Catechism. Grodno, 1788. Fol. 353–353v. ↩︎
- Works of Blessed Simeon, Archbishop of Thessalonica. Novosibirsk, 2009. p. 9. ↩︎
- Shakhov, M.O. The Old Believer Worldview: Religious-Philosophical Foundations and Social Position. Moscow, 2002. pp. 112–113. ↩︎
- Moscow Weekly, 1906. p. 27. ↩︎
- Kapterev, N.F. Patriarch Nikon and Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Vol. II. p. 529. ↩︎
- Act of the Consecrated Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church on the Abolition of Anathemas on the Old Rites and Their Adherents // Vasily (Krivoshein), Archbishop. The Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Election of Patriarch Pimen. St. Petersburg, 2004. p. 222. ↩︎