The Schism of the Orthodox Church #

Excerpt from the book: V.P. Ryabushinsky – Old Belief and the Russian Religious Consciousness

Around the middle of the 17th century, an event of tremendous significance took place in the history of Russian culture: the Russian Church was torn by a schism. This division, for many, even to this day, seems to have arisen from utterly trifling and purely external causes. And yet, this was not the case.

The literature on the schism is vast, but almost everything written about it—even in works of general historical nature—bears, whether openly or subtly, and sometimes perhaps even against the will of the authors, the mark of polemic.

As a result, the treatment of the issue often takes on a narrow and one-sided character, which prevents us from approaching Old Belief from the perspective of religious philosophy in general. It also obscures the broader, universal human principles—principles that are vitally important, though often unrecognized—which lie at the heart of this seemingly exclusively Russian phenomenon.

These principles concern the sphere where spirit and matter come into contact and mutually influence each other. They are valid for all peoples, but among other nations, the operation of these principles tends to occur covertly and unconsciously. In Russia, however, they were consciously acknowledged, and their importance was proclaimed openly and explicitly.

This took place as a logical development of Russian ecclesiastical life. It is well known that in the Christian East, the significance of liturgics has always been, and remains, very great—far greater than in the West—and in Russia it became especially intertwined with all aspects of national life. Through liturgics, and the closely related tradition of iconography, religious knowledge, concerns, and sentiments penetrated deeply into the Russian people, reaching even the lowest strata of society.

Knowledge of even the details of church services was often encountered among peasants, including those who were illiterate.

Because books were copied by hand until the 16th century, they contained a fair number of errors and discrepancies. This problem was compounded by the fact that there were often several Greek-to-Slavonic translations for the same text. One variant might be used in one place, another elsewhere. From the earliest centuries of its existence, the Russian Church continually concerned itself with the accuracy and consistency of liturgical texts, and the correction of books was undertaken frequently.

However, one should not think that Russian scribes were worse than others, including Western ones. Mistakes and textual distortions occurred everywhere, no less in the West than in Russia. But the life of the Church unfolded differently in the West than in Russia. The accessibility of the liturgical language to the laity—in contrast to the West, where the incomprehensible Latin concealed from laypeople the variety, errors, and alterations in liturgical texts—made the issue of errors and corrections in Russia very complex and delicate. For the work of the correctors was subjected to scrutiny not only by the clergy, but by the whole body of the faithful, especially by its active minority, during the divine services themselves.

When book printing emerged, the harm from errors was bound to increase significantly, since these errors were now fixed in print and widely disseminated. The Church recognized this, and during the first half of the 17th century, under Patriarchs Filaret, Iosaf, and Iosif, book corrections were carried out with great vigor. This work was supported and encouraged by all those zealous for piety—most of whom would later become Old Believers.

In 1652, the Metropolitan of Novgorod, Nikon, was elevated to the patriarchal throne. Under his leadership, fundamental changes were introduced into the process of correcting the books:

1. Instead of relying on old Slavonic manuscripts—and at times even older Greek manuscripts—the corrections were now based on new printed Greek books, though it was claimed that ancient texts were being used.

2. Instead of northern Russian correctors, scholars were brought in from southern Rus’, particularly Kiev, including monastic scholars who had been influenced by Catholic scholastic education. In addition, Greeks were brought in—some of whom had returned to Orthodoxy but had received their education in Italy, where they had been part of the Uniate Church. These Greeks either did not know the Slavonic language at all or had only a poor grasp of it, and had to learn it while in Russia.

Patriarch Nikon did not stop at “correcting” the books—he extended his reforms to the rituals of the Russian Church. His goal was to eliminate all differences that had arisen in this regard between the Greek and Russian churches. These differences had developed primarily for the following reason: Russian Christians, holding sacred things in reverence, preserved intact the rituals that had been in use in the Greek Church between the 11th and 14th centuries—during which time the Russian Church was especially dependent on the Greeks. During that same period, the gradual translation of Greek books into Church Slavonic took place in the Balkans and partly in Russia. These texts (South Slavic and native Russian) became established in the Russian Church. The 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries witnessed in Russia a careful preservation of the precious liturgical heritage received from the Greeks. Meanwhile, in Greece itself, that same heritage was undergoing corruption.

The Russians noticed this. Thus, at the beginning of the 17th century, Muscovite scribes—Igumen Elijah of the Epiphany Monastery and the corrector Grigory—said to the famous Belarusian defender of Orthodoxy, Archpriest Lavrentiy Zizanios: “We have many books in Greek, translated long ago. And now new printed books are coming to us, also in Greek. If they agree with the old translations, we accept and love them. But if anything new has been added to them, we do not accept them—even if they are printed in Greek—because the Greeks now live in great hardship in foreign lands and are unable to publish books according to their own traditions.”

Many such testimonies could be cited, but we will limit ourselves to one more, already from the time of the schism. In a petition to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, the former archimandrite of Murom, Antoniy, wrote: “As for the books that are now being printed and translated into our language—those books are called Greek, but they are printed by the Romans in three cities… in Rome, Paris, and Venice—in Greek, but not according to ancient piety. And the Greeks themselves buy these books from them, because in their own land they have no printing presses. The wise Maximus the Greek spoke of this long ago to Grand Prince Vasily Ivanovich.”

In general, the Old Believers persistently insisted for more than two centuries that the 17th-century Greek liturgical texts did not agree with the ancient Greek texts. They were called ignorant for saying this. But by the end of the 19th century, scholars had come to the same conclusion as those supposed “ignorant” people. This issue was especially thoroughly examined by the renowned Greek scholar Popandopulo-Kerameus, who settled in St. Petersburg and dedicated a special article to the topic in the Byzantine Chronicle (Vizantiyskiy Vremennik) in 1894.

As is well known, the current liturgical Menaia (monthly service books) of the Greek Church—which were accepted in Slavonic translation after Nikon’s time and adopted by the Russian Church—are essentially reproductions of editions published in Venice in the early 17th century. Kerameus began comparing them with ancient, well-preserved Greek liturgical manuscripts (no later than the 14th century) and discovered that in these new editions the ancient text is often distorted and corrupted by inappropriate additions.

From what has been said, it becomes clear why, during the two centuries preceding Nikon—except for the rare case of St. Maximus the Greek in the 16th century—Russians did not turn to the Greeks for help in correcting their books.

The reasons for this were:

1. The Council of Florence and the Union of 1439.¹

2. The fall of Constantinople (its capture by the Turks in 1453), which was interpreted as a divine punishment for the decline of piety and for the Union.

3. The low moral level and dogmatic instability of many Greek clergy.²

4. The negligence of the Greeks in observing church rubrics and conducting services.

At the same time, a religious-political idea arose and spread in Russia: “Moscow is the Third Rome; a Fourth there shall not be”.³

This idea filled the souls of Russians with pride, but also with trembling, for it warned that if the Third Rome—Moscow—should fall into impiety, it would cause the collapse of piety throughout the world and deliver it into the hands of the Antichrist.

Thus, among our ancestors, there grew a consciousness of responsibility not only for themselves but also for others, and with it, a constant fear of falling into heresy. So long as they firmly believed in their own Muscovite orthodoxy, and held Greek orthodoxy in suspicion, the situation seemed clear. But around the middle of the 17th century, there was a shift in attitude toward the Greeks—people began to view them more leniently, and an attempt was made to study Greek Orthodoxy objectively. For this purpose, during the reign of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, a Greek-speaking monk named Arseny Sukhanov was sent to the East.

However, upon his return, he confirmed that Greek church life was in a state of extreme decline; that rituals were not performed with strictness and differed from Russian practices; and that, finally, the entire way of life was much more lax than in Moscow, as religious discipline had weakened.

It had long been known in Moscow that something similar was happening in the southern regions of Russia.

Sukhanov’s report should have, it seemed, caused Russia to distance itself again from Greece. Yet, the opposite occurred. At that time, it appears that a shift was underway in the mindset of a significant portion of Russian society. The weakening of religious and moral discipline began to align with the desires and secret longings of many Muscovites, especially those of the upper classes, who had grown weary of their own strict way of life.

This fact—along with fear of Nikon—likely explains the considerable success of the Greekophile policy of the powerful Moscow patriarch among the secular and even ecclesiastical elite of the Tsardom of Moscow.

As for the reasons behind Patriarch Nikon’s own Greekophilia, they must be sought in the dominant trait of his character: his thirst for power.

Greekophile policy undoubtedly seemed to him the best path toward establishing for himself an independent, preeminent position in the Christian East. That hope, however, was not fulfilled.

Patriarch Nikon held office for only about six years (from 1652 to 1658), yet in that short time he managed to overturn the entire order of the Russian Church. Even the most uneducated parishioner in the most remote village parish felt that some changes were taking place in the Church. In particular, the old liturgical books were declared to be corrupted, bad, and full of errors, and it was mandated that they be exchanged for new ones. This suggested an obvious conclusion to the people: that the former primates of the Russian Church over the previous centuries—including the most renowned, respected, and even canonized saints—were, without exception, either heretics or ignoramuses.

But one could also draw the opposite conclusion: that the old, glorified saints of the Russian land could not possibly have been heretics or ignoramuses—rather, it was the present-day reformers of Nikon’s era who were the heretics and ignoramuses. The latter conclusion was not difficult for contemporaries to reach, especially given the low moral character of one of the chief, if not the principal, new correctors—Arseny the Greek⁴ —whose reputation was widely known. A renegade who had throughout his stormy life changed religions multiple times—Roman Catholicism, Islam, Orthodoxy—Arseny also lacked a proper command of the Russian-Slavonic language.

An equally, if not even more morally questionable figure was the long-time influential collaborator of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in enforcing the church reforms, and their apologist—though essentially almost entirely ignorant of the Slavonic-Russian language and working only through translators—the Greek Metropolitan Paisius Ligarides of Gaza. Like Arseny, he studied in Rome, and though he outwardly presented himself in Russia as a zealous Orthodox believer, it has now been definitively established that he remained a secret Catholic or Uniate and acted as an agent of the Roman Church in Moscow.

He was an adventurer of the highest order, and was accused by contemporaries of every imaginable vice.⁵

All the above, in the eyes of many, may justify to some extent—but not fully excuse—the resistance that the people of ancient piety gave to Nikon’s reforms, though they thereby split the Church. And yet, the accusation against the Old Believers of being merely ritualistic, of failing to understand the essence of Christianity, continues to this day.

To determine whether this accusation is just, we must examine the relationship between spirit and ritual.

What is a ritual?

What is the spirit?

Opinions differ on what “ritual” means—and diverge even more sharply on what is meant by “spirit.”

Indeed, all kinds of religious movements—some of them wildly unlike each other—have claimed in the past, and still claim today, to stand under the banner of “spirit”: the respectable, dry American Quakers; the trembling Russian Khlysts in their feverish and scandalous ecstasy; the ferocious German Anabaptists of the 16th century; the naïve but often touching Russian Doukhobors; the frenzied and licentious French and German sectarians of the 13th and 14th centuries, who called themselves brothers and sisters of the Free Spirit; and the fanatical, austere, pragmatic, and money-loving, yet at the same time sincere and wildly spiritually proud Russian Skoptsy. And many other groups.

To them must be added individual people from various religions, each pursuing their own path in search of the spirit—some distortedly but sincerely, others superficially, reducing their “spirituality” to the constant use of the word “spirit” on their lips and nothing more. Such people have especially proliferated in our own time.

This diverse mass is united only in one thing: in opposing spirit to ritual, in demeaning the latter, and in emphasizing those cases where rituals were performed but the presence of the spirit was not felt. From this, they draw the conclusion that ritual destroys the spirit—or at best is unnecessary to it.

This view is mistaken: ritual is neither indifferent nor hostile to spirit. On the contrary—there is a deep internal connection and interdependence between them.

The entire history of the Jewish people bears witness to this: the power of the spirit was secured among the Jews through ritual, and only when ritual became part of the flesh and blood of the people did they cease wavering between polytheism and belief in the One God. The fact that many stop at the level of ritual does not prove that this level is unnecessary; it is necessary, always indispensable, though it does not represent the pinnacle of the spiritual edifice. Of course, one who is satisfied with ritual alone is greatly mistaken—but those who, having attained spiritual heights, begin to despise ritual, expose themselves to grave danger. It is no coincidence that ritual arose during the ages of the greatest spirituality, in the first centuries of Christianity. The authors of the Orthodox rite—particularly the Fathers who gave form to the liturgies that have endured to the present day, St. Basil the Great and St. John Chrysostom—must be counted, even by the harshest critics, among the first of those whom the Savior described: “The true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23). There is deep meaning in the fact that such people created and established the ritual, and that the Church people held fast to it in times of piety, performed it carelessly in times of turmoil, and began their spiritual renewal after a fall precisely with a return to ritual.

A thorough and impartial analysis of the history of religious feeling and piety makes it indisputably clear that there is a connection between spirit and ritual among the masses. And the same conclusion is reached when examining the lives of individuals. Indeed, in everyday life, each of us can observe among our acquaintances and surroundings how the dying away of the spirit in a person, and the replacement of ideal aspirations with material interests, is accompanied by neglect in observing rituals.

On the other hand, a person full of spirit finds it natural to stand through long services without feeling their length, to make prostrations without tiring, and to keep fasts without strain.

It takes great spiritual strength—especially under present conditions—to preserve ritual; its observance is a test of the spirit. Certainly, there are cases of principled, not lazy, departure from ritual, but this is usually not the infusion of living spirit where formalism reigned, but rather a sign of a change in dogma. In most cases, the absence of ritual under such circumstances is only temporary, for a new dogma will inevitably bring with it a new ritual. If the new ritual is drearier, duller than the old, if it constricts and dries the heart rather than warming and elevating it, then this is one of the signs of the superiority of the old faith over the new.

Sometimes, no new ritual arises at all, and a void is formed—this means that there is no spirit either. But people often do not want to admit this, and the absence of spirit is replaced with heightened, perhaps eloquent, but entirely non-binding talk about the spirit. Words give rise to more words, but not to action. Yet action is the sure and unmistakable sign of the presence of spirit—always life-giving, always striving to subjugate the flesh. Ritual is its weapon—and ritual is also the armor of the spiritualized body. A steadfast warrior is willing to carry heavy gear on campaign, knowing it will be needed in battle. The faint-hearted one, wearied by the burden, thinks not of battle but only of how to lighten his load now, and so he throws away his ammunition, his spade, and even his weapon. The result is inglorious death, captivity, or flight. Something similar happens in the religious life of people. When the spirit weakens, fasting, prayer, and church services become tiresome; they are abandoned, and the last remnants of spirit perish. From this, it becomes clear that on earth, ritual is needed by the spirit, even though the spirit occupies a higher place in the hierarchy of being. Contempt for ritual is one particular manifestation of the broader error—the idea that the lower is useless for the higher, and that the higher can always replace the lower under all circumstances.

Without going further into the detailed examination of this important question—closely tied to the problem of the hierarchical structure of the universe—let us point out one thing: spiritualization flows from above downward in a significant degree by stages, and the lower is needed by the higher for the gradual transmission and refinement of that which is passed on to the level below.

As is well known, after the 5th century, a group of writings spread widely throughout all of Christendom and gained universal recognition. These writings were attributed to St. Dionysius the Areopagite, a disciple of the Apostle Paul.

Whether these writings came down directly—albeit secretly—from the first to the fifth century, or whether they were only reconstructed at that time from oral traditions, is impossible to say now. But even in the latter case, and in the form in which they have come down to us, these works must be recognized as remarkable, and their orthodoxy is unquestionable. In one of them, On the Celestial Hierarchy, we find the following concerning the relationship among the angelic orders:

“The higher angels do not exercise their ruling authority tyrannically, for oppression, but being themselves irresistibly and harmoniously drawn upward to the Divine, they lovingly raise with themselves those orders that are beneath them. Striving justly to resemble the Giver of all authority, the Supreme Power, they reflect Him upon the lower angels insofar as possible by the exercise of the ruling authority inherent in their own perfect order.”

This can serve as an ideal for the relationships between members and levels of all hierarchies in the universe, including that of man himself—for even human nature, according to the Holy Apostle Paul, is essentially hierarchical, composed of spirit, soul, and body, in which the first is higher than the second, and the second higher than the third.

Today, the terms “spirit” and “soul” are generally confused, and the boundaries between them are almost erased—especially in the West, where the doctrine of the tripartite division of human nature never took root. Only very recently has the correctness of distinguishing between spirit and soul begun to be recognized again—perhaps still only by a few, but among them is one of the most subtle German thinkers of recent decades, Heinrich Rickert.

In the East, things were different. Unlike the Latins, the Greek Fathers followed the Apostle Paul. Based on their teachings, spirit can most succinctly be defined as the striving toward the highest heavenly realm, while soul is the mind and the emotions—the bodiless body of the spirit, to use the expression found in Dall’s dictionary.

In the religious life of man, spirit and the intellectual part of the soul find their expression in dogma, while spirit and the emotional aspect of the soul form what is called religious feeling.

Earlier, the fact of the connection between spirit and ritual was established. The doctrine of the tripartite composition and hierarchical structure of human nature now allows us to understand the character and logic of this connection. But to do so, we must first consider the nature of ritual. It is easily and simply apprehended by intuition, but a purely rational approach leads to a mistaken result—namely, to the denial of the dogmatic side of ritual. This is because the dogmatic side is so closely intertwined and organically united with the expression of religious feeling on the one hand, and with flesh and matter on the other, that by reason alone one can neither isolate nor discern them.

Through dogma and religious feeling, elements of spirit and both aspects of the soul—the rational and the emotional—enter the material shell of ritual. Therefore, in ritual are united the qualities of all three levels of human nature. And this explains why ritual is such an important conduit for the transmission of grace from higher levels to lower ones, from spirit to soul, and through it to the body.

If a person casts aside ritual, he thereby deprives his body of the influence of the higher aspects—soul and spirit. The result is as though the elder angels, ascending upward themselves, forgot the younger ones, neither drawing them along nor reflecting the Heavenly Light toward them. As a result, the flesh, abandoned to its own devices, unspiritualized, does not rise upward but instead begins to drag down both soul and spirit.

But it is not only the body that suffers directly from the rejection of ritual—the soul is also diminished, for ritual serves as one of the conductors of spirit to the soul through the elements of dogma and religious feeling that are infused into it.

Subconsciously, the importance of ritual is felt and acknowledged by almost everyone, even if it is often denied in words. In theory, many mock ritual, but in practice they live their inner life by a law of submission to ritual—not only with the heart but even with the mind.⁶

Characteristic examples of the universality of this law can be found throughout the religious history of all humanity—among Christians and non-Christians alike. Take, for instance, the Buddhists: a study of their widespread fragmentation into sects reveals that the majority of schisms in Buddhism were not caused by doctrinal disagreements, but by divergences in external forms of life and ritual.

Turning to Christians, we must first of all observe that the causes and grounds of the great schism that split the Church in the 11th century into Eastern and Western halves contain a significant—perhaps even a dominant—element of so-called “ritualism.” And as grievous as this schism is, one cannot say it happened over mere trifles.

Even in places where one would least expect it—such as among the Puritans—ritual questions have had major influence during decisive moments in Church history. Their break with the Anglicans began in 1560, when the latter refused to tolerate minor changes in ritual that the Puritans demanded—such as issues regarding the vestments of clergy during worship.

Despite this and many other similar examples, the West has shown a great timidity, inattentiveness, and mental hypocrisy in the matter of ritual. After the 15th century, this attitude also began to influence the Christian East, which had temporarily lost its strength of intellectual resistance following the destruction of Byzantium.

Among all peoples, only the Russians not only practically but also theoretically understood the importance of ritual and its significance for the spirit, bringing it to full expression particularly at the end of the 17th century. For the Great Schism was, in essence, not a dispute over the letter, but over the spirit. Every detail of Church practice—however indifferent it may appear to the casual observer, every jot over which people went to the flames—was linked either with dogma or with the entire continuous life of the Church. Our fathers perceived the breath of the Spirit everywhere, and the foundation of the dispute was an inspired trembling before the sacred—not the fear of a slave, but the reverent awe of a faithful warrior, a trembling that lifts the flesh toward the spirit.

The feeling of this trembling may not be as concrete in the West—it may be more abstract, pale, intellectual—but it is, nonetheless, genuine. This feeling seems to be reawakening in the West, as can be seen in the well-known book by the Protestant theologian Rudolf Otto, bearing the telling title The Idea of the Holy. At the same time, a Russian-like understanding of ritual is beginning to spread there: the liturgical movement among Catholics, particularly among the Benedictines, and—most strikingly—even among Lutherans, testifies to this.

A shift in sentiment is being felt, though the first steps of Western people are still hesitant and uncertain. A full understanding of the connection between spirit and ritual will only come when it is widely recognized that between the Russian so-called “ritualism”—which many still mock today, though less than before—and the “Russian soul,” which represents an interesting psychological type, there exists a mutual dependence and a profound closeness.

If the Russians had not possessed their “ritualism,” they would not have possessed the “Russian soul”—or, more precisely, the Russian spirit. Yet among all Russians, it is only the Old Believers who have fully grasped the dogmatic and spiritual meaning of ritual. A very different attitude toward ritual developed at the beginning of the conflict among their opponents. This attitude received a particularly clear formulation in a document sent in 1720 by the Holy Synod—established by Peter I to replace the Patriarchate—to Archimandrite Antoniy in Moscow, in response to his inquiry concerning members of the Church who wished to be baptized with two fingers.

The Synod replied that this was impermissible, and in doing so, laid out an entire doctrine of ritual: it declared ritual to be something intermediate between heresy and dogma. Heresy must be avoided, dogma must be preserved, but rituals are neither necessary nor harmful for piety. When lawful authority leaves aside or changes this intermediate thing—that is, ritual—the people must obey without question. Rituals, it said, have no meaning of their own, but derive their significance solely from the will of ecclesiastical authority.

Thus, according to the teaching of the Synod, one was to pray as commanded: today one way, tomorrow another.

A living religious feeling cannot be reconciled with such an approach. From this it becomes clear that, under the banner of a struggle for ritual, what began in Russia was not merely a dogmatic dispute, but a clash between two forms of religious feeling: one more fervent—the Old Believers’; the other more placid, and often more calculating, rigid, and cold—that of their opponents.

Therefore, it is evident that a mere acquaintance with the outward history of Old Belief is insufficient to truly understand it. One must endeavor to penetrate its depths. In doing so, the following must be kept in mind: the Russian Old Believers, even after the schism, did not live in a vacuum or in a hermetically sealed kingdom; they formed, and still form, a distinctive part of the broader Russian world. By their very existence, they influenced other parts of this world, and in turn, were influenced by them.

Hence, to comprehend the spirit and meaning of Old Belief, it is necessary to examine the role it has played in the history of Russian culture. And since Old Belief is a religious phenomenon, and its contribution to Russian culture proceeded primarily through the sphere of religious feeling, acquaintance with the history of this feeling in Russia—especially in the period from the end of the 17th century to the present day—becomes of great importance for a proper understanding of ancient Russian Orthodoxy, and indeed, of Russian reality in general.

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