The Messianic Background of the Schism #
By the 17th century, messianism had fully taken shape as a fundamental part of the Russian mentality, crystallized through the terror of Ivan the Terrible and the Time of Troubles that inevitably followed. The sense of a providential mission before the whole world shaped key features of the Russian national character, including (1) isolation from the Western world as apostate and (2) the conviction of preserving the only true Christian canons. All the calamities of the 17th century were understood solely as punishment for sins or as trials to test the strength of faith.
Orthodox Eschatology and Russian Messianism #
In matters of national identity, the purpose of life, and the meaning of state existence, traditionally Orthodox and traditionally Russian values reigned supreme. In the words of the cultural historian S.A. Zenkovsky, Russians saw and conceived of Rus’ as “a radiant temple with the eternal celebration of the Liturgy, uniting God and the world”. Earthly life was perceived as temporary, while the fullness of a Christian’s being was revealed beyond the threshold of death; life on earth was considered a spiritual examination. This sacred-traditionalist teleology distinguished 17th-century Russia from Europe, where, after the Protestant Reformation and the Jesuit Counter-Reformation, secular rationalist ideas had already taken root in the popular mentality. However, in the 17th century, rationalist concepts and sentiments began to infiltrate Russia, which, in ecclesiastical circles, led to an even greater distancing from the West. The concern for preserving true Christianity in Rus’ became more pronounced, along with the mission of safeguarding it for the rest of the world. The spiritual role of the Tsar as the guardian of the faith was emphasized—he was increasingly invested with a katechonic function (as the final barrier against the Antichrist). In the 17th century, the process of identifying Orthodoxy with Russia and Russianness with Orthodoxy was brought to completion. There was a merging of nationality, geography, and religiosity. The historian V.A. Myakotin cited the words of a foreigner who described the mindset of Russians at the time:
“Russians, especially those of noble birth, would sooner die than send their children to foreign lands… Only those who die in their homeland go straight to paradise…”
In Russian folk consciousness, the concepts of “paradise” and “homeland” were closely linked: paradise began with one’s homeland and was its continuation in the afterlife. In the words of the philosopher V.D. Bakulov, Russians perceived Russia as a “metaphysical Homeland”. The correlation between religious and geopolitical factors was particularly vivid, with a sacralization of Russia’s place in the temporal flow of world history and its territoriality.
Throughout Russian society, ideas spread widely about the decline of piety in the world, the imminent end of times, the coming of the Antichrist, and the need for all Orthodox believers to unite under the anointed of God—the Russian Tsar. The political and eschatological significance of the Third Rome became increasingly intertwined. One of the myths illustrating this shift in public consciousness was The Tale of the White Klobuk, composed in the late 16th to early 17th century. This work tells of the white metropolitan klobuk—a symbol of the last uncorrupted Orthodoxy—sent by Pope Sylvester I (d. 335) to the Byzantine Patriarch, who then forwarded it to Rus’ as the final refuge of true Christianity:
“All Christian kingdoms shall come to an end and be united into one kingdom—Rus’—for the sake of Orthodoxy.”
“Because of the many sins committed in Rome, this klobuk was sent to the Patriarch in Constantinople. The Patriarch, in turn, sent it to the Russian land, to Great Novgorod,” as a symbol of the purity of faith.
Later, Protopope Avvakum interpreted the words of the Tale in this way:
“In the Third Rome—Moscow—piety shall shine forth more than in the former kingdoms, and it shall be called Bright Russia by God. There was sent that white klobuk, that the sons of Rus’ might glory in it.”
The theme of the Third Rome and the White Klobuk is also mentioned in The Life of Feodosia Morozova, where Rus’ is called the heir to the two great legacies of Byzantium and Rome:
“Making it no less glorious than all of Rome, and Jerusalem, and the ruling city of Byzantium.”
“All piety has departed from all lands into the Russian kingdom.”
It is symbolic that The Tale of the White Klobuk was declared a forgery at the Council of 1666–1667. It is also symbolic that radical traditionalists—the Old Believers—have turned to this work as a reflection of Russian Orthodox identity. Immediately after the Council, in 1668, the priest Lazar wrote to the Tsar:
“For the sake of piety, Great Russia may be called the New Rome, as it holds the chief papal dignity, which is the holy klobuk of the first holy Pope Sylvester, made by the holy Emperor Constantine after a revelation, and sent to Rus’, to Great Novgorod, to Archbishop Vasily, during the time of the Patriarch of Tsargrad, Philotheos. But now, sovereign, our authorities have altered even this divine gift—does this not reveal their open deceit?”
The “Bogolyubtsy” as Actors in the Schism #
The Church Schism was sudden but not spontaneous; it did not depend solely on the subjective will of its participants—it had been brewing gradually in an atmosphere of religious and political tension. The philosopher M.O. Shakhov refers to it as an “eschatological fright.” By the mid-17th century, morals in Russia were deteriorating, ecclesiastical piety was declining, Western confessions and secular teachings were spreading, and anti-traditional and anti-clerical Western literature was being actively translated.
The first attempt to bring about an Orthodox revival of the nation and to rekindle religious sentiment was undertaken by the Circle of Zealots of Piety (Bogolyubtsy), a community of Orthodox traditionalists who set themselves the extraordinary task of restoring declining morals and disorder in church services to conformity with Orthodox canons. The Zealots confronted the evident degradation of Russian spirituality and sought to correct the situation through several measures:
- Political: The future Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich was a member of the circle.
- Preaching: All Bogolyubtsy were highly educated and possessed exceptional oratorical skills.
- Structural and Functional: They sought to reform the structure of the Russian Church (the future Patriarch Nikon was also a member of the circle).
However, the increasing secularization of the people forced the Zealots to make a choice: either return to the origins of “Old Orthodoxy” (Drevlepravoslavie) or modernize the Church along Western lines, incorporating political power—not in symphonia with the state, but by assuming its functions (theocracy, papocaesarism). This marked the beginning of the split within the Zealots, dividing them into the future Nikonites and Old Believers, who would become the main ideological opponents during the reforms of the 1650s–1660s.
The actual schism began in 1651 with Nikon. Rejecting the traditional ideology of the Third Rome and reinterpreting it in his own way (akin to the Catholic balance of spiritual and secular power), he sought to alter the very worldview of the Russian people. During one church service, Nikon demonstratively and symbolically removed his Russian klobuk and donned a Greek one, declaring: “I am Russian, but my faith is Greek.”
That same year, Nikon issued the circular Pamyat’ (“Remembrance”), in which he declared the necessity of ritual unification with the Greek Church, which had gradually adopted new, modern practices in the 15th–16th centuries. All traditional Russian forms of worship were uncompromisingly declared incorrect and, later, even heretical. To Orthodox traditionalists, the unification of the Russian Church with the Greeks—whom they considered heretics after the 1439 Florence Union with Rome—meant that the highest church authorities had fallen into heresy.
It is important to note that in the consciousness of 17th-century Orthodox believers, there was no distinction between “primary” and “secondary” church practices. Dogmas and rituals (chiny) were understood as equally valid forms of communion with God and deeply symbolic expressions of religious position. In the words of M.O. Shakhov, verbal and non-verbal expressions of faith were united within the traditional Orthodox worldview. This was the traditionalist vector of Orthodoxy: there was no hierarchy of worship forms—from the Sacraments and the Creed to the parish sorokoust (forty-day prayer) and the sign of the cross. Thus, any alteration of non-verbal forms of worship was immediately perceived as a deviation into heresy. The Catholic distinction between different levels of religious practice—with dogma taking precedence over rituals, which could be altered—was seen by traditionalists as a sign of the “last days.”
Nikon’s actions were not merely an attempt to establish a theocracy; they introduced a new concept of Orthodox identity. The historian A.V. Pankratov, having studied Nikon’s writings, noted that nowhere does he use the term Holy Rus’. The national-revanchist mission of preserving universal Orthodoxy was replaced by an ecumenical unity that carried far-reaching cosmopolitan ambitions (naturally supported by the Quiet One, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich). The modern historian of philosophy A.F. Zamaleev also argues that the cause of the Schism lay in the fact that Holy Rus’ did not wish to become Russian Europe, a frontier of Western civilization and its eastern outpost.
The Social Dimension of the Schism #
For the Old Believers, the greatest trauma of the Schism was not merely the recognition that the Antichrist was at work in the sinful, fallen world outside, but the realization that he had already infiltrated the Church itself, and that Russia, the last bastion of the Christian Faith, was no longer safe. The philosopher N.A. Berdyaev wrote:
“Among the people, suspicion arose that the Orthodox kingdom, the Third Rome, had been corrupted, that true faith had been betrayed. The state power and the highest church hierarchy had been overtaken by the Antichrist. Popular Orthodoxy severed ties with the church hierarchy and the state. The true Orthodox kingdom went underground.”
The most terrifying aspect of the Schism was not theological division but the fracturing of Russian society, which had previously been largely monolithic and united. The Schism, as the Old Believer theologian F.E. Melnikov described it, marked the division of the Church (understood as the Russian people) into “those who teach” and “those who are taught.” The notion of Christian equality, so powerfully expressed by Protopope Avvakum Kondratyev both in word and in style, began to disappear. His declaration that “the Russian people are the last remaining seed of Abraham on earth, that is, the New Israel, the people of renewal” lost its meaning, for in a divided society, there could no longer be a single spiritual aspiration or shared values.
The traditional moral and righteous ideal was gradually replaced by a new standard—rationality and material benefit. M.O. Shakhov explains this shift: “For the traditionalist, the source of truth is righteousness; for the reformer, it is education.” The driving forces behind the reforms were not the most ascetic figures, but rather the most educated—those who had studied in the West, in the spiritual schools of Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland, which were steeped in Catholic or Protestant influences, even if outwardly they remained Orthodox. Some of the future reformers even temporarily converted to Catholicism or Protestantism in order to receive an education. Righteousness, prayerful wisdom, and spiritual striving were cast aside, replaced by a foreign rationalism alien to the Orthodox spirit.
Russian Orthodox writers themselves sensed the apostate pressure of the West upon Rus’, from which there was no escape; the fall of the Last Rome into heresy signaled the beginning of the world’s complete loss of divine grace and the intensification of apocalyptic tendencies. At the end of the 1660s, Monk Avraamy wrote:
“There will be no other apostasy, for now is the last of Rus’. From this hour onward, things will grow worse. It will be ruled by impious tsars, for they are the thorns of the Antichrist. In this time, there is neither a true tsar, nor a prince, nor an Orthodox hierarch. There was but one Orthodox tsar on earth, and he, unmindful of himself—alas, alas!—was engulfed by the Western heretics, who, like dark clouds, have extinguished the Christian sun of Russia, have plunged it into many delusions, and have drowned it utterly, so that it may never rise again to its first true light of righteousness.”
Yet, under these conditions of spiritual and religious-political assault, the concept of the Third Rome did not diminish; rather, it flourished with renewed vigor and inspiration. Another early schismatic ideologue, Monk Avraamy, wrote that the Antichrist would come specifically to Russia, for only the Russians, through their spirituality, embodied the Third Rome, the new “Scythopolis.”
The Third Rome did not disappear completely. Since rulers had ceased to be bearers of divine grace, power had been secularized and stripped of its spiritual immanence. Long before the Schism, the Josephites had emphasized that authority could lose the grace of divine blessing—what we might today call legitimacy. The Third Rome was not removed from that part of Russia which remained faithful to the traditional Orthodox canons—the Old Believers. This theory was most vividly expressed in the writings of the founders of the Vyg communal monasticism, Andrei and Simeon Denisov. In the words of A.G. Dugin:
“After 1666, there was no longer one Russia, but two—an official pro-Western, systemic Russia, and a hidden, Old Believer Russia, which rose up against evil and apostasy, the true Rus’. The Rus’ of Avvakum and Morozova. The two-fingered Rus’. The Christ-bearing Rus’. The Rus’ of Isus. Two countries—two churches, two nations.”
The Third Rome did not disappear entirely—it retreated into the people. This was the position of the spiritual counter-revolutionaries of the 17th century—the Old Believers. It was precisely this dualism of Russia that obstructed and continues to obstruct many bold endeavors aimed at improving national life.
Later, during the period when Russian philosophers were reinterpreting the country’s spiritual path, the folk embodiment of the Third Rome led Vladimir Solovyov to consider it a relic of the past—something already surpassed and transformed into a new entity: the imperial, Petrine, noble state. To be fair, it should be noted that V.S. Solovyov, the son of the historian and statesman S.M. Solovyov, was one of the few thinkers who attempted to explain the Schism as a clash of ideologies and mentalities in the battle for the very essence of the Russian Idea. To Solovyov, the Old Believers appeared as an ultraconservative force, pulling Russia backward. In his view, the ethos of statehood shifted at the moment of the Schism from peasant Russia to noble Russia. The schismatics became an element that tore at the state, an unlawful force—peasant unrest rebelling against the dictatorship of hierarchy, demanding the restoration of its authority over society, and asserting the primacy of the local, national, and traditional form of Christianity over the universal and all-embracing Christianity.
Solovyov wrote:
“The people may at times fail to understand their calling.”
“The Russian Idea is a particular aspect of the Christian Idea.”
Between one-fifth and two-fifths of Russia’s population—primarily the peasant Russia—sided with the Old Faith. This is what led many scholars to interpret Old Belief solely as a peasant protest. Solovyov did not stray far from the official concept, though he infused it with new meaning.
Here, it is appropriate to agree with Metropolitan Ioann (Snychev), who argued that the Schism can only be understood within the framework of Orthodox ecclesiology. That is, reducing the rise of Old Belief merely to a peasant or anti-feudal protest is to ignore the Orthodox foundations of 17th-century Russian identity. According to Metropolitan Ioann, at the moment of the Schism, the entire Russian people divided into two groups based on their answers to three fundamental sacred questions:
- Did Rus’ truly fulfill the role of God’s chosen nation?
- Was the Russian people bearing the yoke and burden of its religious-moral obedience and Christian duty worthily?
- How could the Church safeguard life from the corrupting influence of the vain world, Western faith, and the homegrown compromisers who inclined toward it?
This crisis provoked an eschatological fright—a hysteria on a national scale: the very sacred purpose of an entire people’s existence, its universal mission, was vanishing. Deacon Feodor exclaimed:
“There will be no other apostasy, for it is everywhere now—here is the last Rus’.”
Faced with the questions of the time, Orthodox believers answered differently. This, in turn, determined the division of Russian society. The 17th-century Schism did not merely divide the church leadership—it split the people and shaped the very social trajectories of Russia’s future.