Church Reform of the 17th Century: Tragic Mistake or Sabotage? -Boris Kutuzov
from the Periodical “Church”
The Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1971 solemnly resolved to lift the curses (anathema) imposed in the 17th century on the old rites and on those who adhered to them. The old Russian rites were declared “salvific and equal in honour” to the new ones. In the report read at the Local Council, the Nikon reform was characterised as “a sharp and hasty breaking of Russian church ritual”. The grounds for replacing the two-fingered sign of the cross with the three-fingered one were declared more than dubious.
This resolution may seem unexpected only to someone unfamiliar with the issue; in reality, the 1971 Council merely summed up a decades-long discussion of the old rite and, more precisely, confirmed the decisions of the Holy Synod adopted as early as 1929.
This is how it was expressed in the conciliar decree: “Having examined the question… from theological, liturgical, canonical and historical perspectives, we solemnly decree:
- To confirm the resolution of the Patriarchal Holy Synod of 23 April 1929 on recognising the old Russian rites as salvific, like the new rites, and equal in honour to them.
- To confirm the resolution of the Patriarchal Holy Synod of 23 April 1929 on rejecting and regarding as non-existent the condemnatory expressions relating to the old rites and especially to the two-fingered sign of the cross, wherever they may appear and by whomsoever they may have been uttered.
- To confirm the resolution of the Patriarchal Holy Synod of 23 April 1929 on abolishing the oaths of the Moscow Council of 1656 and the Great Moscow Council of 1667 imposed by them on the old Russian rites and on the Orthodox Christian believers who adhered to them, and to regard these oaths as non-existent.”
One may say that the words written in 1912 by the eminent church historian, Professor of the Moscow Theological Academy N. F. Kaptev, came true: “The condemnation by the 1667 Council of the Russian old rite was, as a more careful and impartial investigation of this phenomenon shows, a complete misunderstanding, a mistake, and therefore must prompt a new conciliar review of the whole matter and its correction, in order to pacify and end the centuries-old quarrel between Old Believers and New Believers, so that the Russian Church may once again become one, as it was before the patriarchate of Nikon.”
Thus, if the old rites are equal in honour to the new, the first question that arises is: was the Nikon reform necessary at all? The answer was given by Professor of the Leningrad Theological Academy, Protopresbyter Ioann Belevtsev, in his report to the Second International Church-Scholarly Conference held in Moscow in May 1987: the Nikon reform was “theologically unjustified and completely unnecessary”.
The 17th-century church schism, which without fear of exaggeration may be called a great national catastrophe, was the consequence of a reform that, as has now become clear, was justified neither theologically nor canonically and was simply “unnecessary” for the Church. But if so, then who needed this reform after all, what were its true causes and aims, and who was its real author?
The author of the present article, having studied the problem of the old rite for several years, has reached a conclusion that fully coincides with the above statement by Fr Ioann Belevtsev: the Nikon reform had neither theological nor canonical foundations; it was imposed on the Church artificially. The chief architect of the reform was Tsar Aleksey Mikhaylovich, while Patriarch Nikon was merely the executor. Therefore it would be fairer to call the reform “Aleksey’s”.
A widespread opinion holds that the reform was caused by the need to correct the numerous errors and slips that had crept into the service books over time. However, an unbiased comparison of the texts of pre-reform service books (of the Iosif printing) and post-reform ones leaves no doubt as to the superiority of precisely the old books: there are perhaps fewer misprints in them than in editions contemporary to us. Moreover, this comparison permits exactly the opposite conclusions. The post-reform texts are markedly inferior in quality to the old-printed ones. As a result of the so-called correction, a huge number of errors of various kinds appeared – grammatical, lexical, historical, even dogmatic (a comparison of the texts is given below). So if the aim was to correct errors in the old-printed books, it can hardly be considered achieved.
But there was another aim: to achieve uniformity between Russian and Greek church practice. And the Greeks were taken as the model, as noted in the report of Metropolitan Nikodim read at the 1971 Local Council. This aim was dictated exclusively by political considerations.
The fact is that Aleksey Mikhaylovich was the first Russian tsar seriously to contemplate ascending the ancient Byzantine throne and standing at the head of the entire Orthodox world. “Aleksey Mikhaylovich considered himself the successor of the ancient Greek emperors not only in matters of faith and piety but also the lawful heir of their kingdom; he believed that he or his successors were destined in the future to rule Constantinople itself and all the Orthodox peoples languishing under the Turkish yoke… The tsar was not averse to the idea of becoming the liberator of the Orthodox nationalities from the Turkish yoke and of taking possession, as his inheritance, of Constantinople; and he regarded church unity as the first and necessary step towards future political unity.”
The political naïvety of these designs fully matched the short-sightedness of the tsar himself, who with full justification may be called a calamity not only for Russia but for universal Orthodoxy. For Tsar Aleksey, the reform to achieve church uniformity on the Greek model was the first step in realising his global political designs – the creation of a Great Greco-Russian Eastern Empire.
It must be said that the very idea of uniting all Orthodox peoples under the sceptre of the Russian tsar arose long before Aleksey Mikhaylovich. After the fall of Byzantium in 1453 the Russians had no doubt that Russia had become its spiritual heiress. In 1516 the elder Philotheus, in an epistle to Grand Prince Vasily III, wrote the words that later became famous: “All Christian kingdoms have converged in thine own alone; for two Romes have fallen, the third (that is, Moscow – B.K.) stands, and there shall not be a fourth… Thou alone in all the earth art the Christian tsar.”
On this idea of the exclusive vocation of the Russian tsar Aleksey Mikhaylovich was raised. Ascending the throne at the age of only sixteen, he resolved with all youthful directness to resurrect in his own person the image of the ancient Byzantine emperors. But what did this mean? To begin a war with the gigantic Ottoman Sultanate that stretched across half the world? Earlier the same had been urged upon Grand Prince Vasily III and Tsar Ivan the Terrible, but those were sufficiently wise and experienced politicians and did not succumb to the provocation. War with the Turks at that time would have been political madness.
A comprehensible interest in this was shown by the enslaved Greeks. But it is also known who else, besides the Greeks, wished to draw the Russians into the struggle with the Turks: “the threat of Turkish invasion alarmed Western Europe right up to the defeat of the Turks before the walls of Vienna in 1683.”
At the already-mentioned Moscow church-scholarly conference Protopresbyter N. Novosad spoke quite definitely on this question: “In that era (16th–17th centuries) the Papacy had a long-standing idea that the popes wished to instil in all Europe: the idea of a crusade to drive the Turks out of Europe. This idea was shared by Stephen Báthory. The plan of struggle with the Turks was equally carefully worked out both in Rome and in Poland. At the same time it was considered that for success it was necessary to draw Moscow in as a tool. Moscow had to be saddled with a Catholic tsar (so thought Stephen Báthory and Possevino) in order to Catholicise Moscow and secure its help.”
The authors of the plan came very close to realising it in the adventure of the pretenders. If they had succeeded in placing a Catholic tsar on the Moscow throne, half the job would have been done. And to draw the Russians into war with the Turks, the most attractive bait for the Muscovites had to be the throne of Constantinople.
The “Vicar of the whole North”, the papal legate Antonio Possevino, arriving in Moscow, presented Tsar Ivan the Terrible with a book about the Union of Florence, “richly adorned with golden initials, and by this gift at once made it clear that all Russia’s woes could easily be remedied if the Russians did not disdain to accept the union and kiss the pope’s slipper.” The legate without circumlocution promised Tsar Ivan the throne of Tsargrad. “If thou unite in faith with the pope and all the sovereigns, then with their assistance thou shalt not only be on thy ancestral patrimony in Kiev but shalt become emperor of Tsargrad and of the whole East.”
And what did Ivan IV reply to this cunning temptation? The reply was as follows: “As for the Eastern Empire, the earth is the Lord’s; to whom God wills, to him He will give it. My own realm is enough for me; I desire no other and greater realms in all the world.”
In this case, Ivan the Terrible displayed statesmanship, wisdom and firmness worthy of a tsar! How far from this Aleksey Mikhaylovich turned out to be. By the proposal to occupy the throne of Tsargrad, Possevino rather clearly expressed the Jesuits’ programme on this question – that is, precisely those who persistently tried to draw the Muscovites into an eastern adventure over the course of several centuries. There had been attempts before. As early as 1518 a legate of Pope Leo X, the Dominican monk Nicholas Schönberg, came to Moscow and urged Grand Prince Vasily III to unite with the other sovereigns of Europe to drive the Turks out of Greece. As the “carrot” there figured again the same throne of Tsargrad: “To influence Vasily Ivanovich they represented to him that he had the right to take Tsargrad from the Turks as his lawful inheritance, being a son of the Greek Church, and that if he united with the Roman Church the pope would crown him with the imperial crown and title, and elevate the Russian metropolitan to the rank of patriarch.”
In 1525 Pope Clement VII sent a letter to Moscow again proposing participation together with the other sovereigns in driving the Turks out of Constantinople. In the 17th century the Jesuit missionary Juraj Križanić and Milescu Spathary, an alumnus of Jesuit colleges, urged the Russian government to fight the Turks.
As we see, Catholicism was very interested in drawing Russia into an anti-Turkish coalition, and over a long period western emissaries persistently pushed the Russians towards struggle with the Turks.
The eastern hierarchs constantly exhorted Tsar Aleksey Mikhaylovich to begin a campaign against the Turks with the aim of taking Tsargrad. These exhortations began immediately after the fall of Byzantium but grew especially strong in the second half of the 17th century. Metropolitan Gabriel of Nazareth even made a Russian translation of the “Tale of the Fall of Tsargrad”, timing it for the “jubilee” year of 1653. Patriarch Paisius of Jerusalem, during his visit to Moscow, persuaded Tsar Aleksey to conclude an alliance with Hetman Khmelnytsky and with the voivodes of Moldavia and Wallachia for joint action against the Turks. About the same thing, when sending Arseny Sukhanov in 1649 from Iași to Moscow, Paisius told him to remind the tsar, and in a letter to Aleksey Mikhaylovich he wrote: “The Most Holy Trinity… will graciously enable you to receive the most exalted throne of the great emperor Constantine, your forefather, that you may free the peoples of the pious and Orthodox Christians from impious hands, from savage beasts.”
It may be that this essentially provocative blessing finally confirmed Tsar Aleksey in his intention to take concrete measures to carry out the “Greek project”, the first stage of which was church reform to unify Russian and Greek church-worship practices. Of course, a “prophecy” of this kind, uttered by a patriarch in the name of God Himself, could tempt someone far less inexperienced than Tsar Aleksey.
It was precisely this – the elimination of “a certain isolation” of the Russian Church in its liturgical rites – that Patriarch Paisius of Jerusalem proposed to the tsar as the first step.
How much effort did the Jesuits need to expend at that time to intensify the pressure on the Russian tsar from the eastern patriarchs? The venality of many of them is too well known, as is the Vatican’s extreme interest in drawing the Muscovites into the struggle with the Turks by any means.
Skilful mentors instilled in the simple-minded and trusting Tsar Aleksey that the quest for the throne of Tsargrad was a holy matter, even a sacrifice, to which his Christian duty obliged him and to which God Himself called him. No wonder Patriarch Paisius, for weightiness, begins his epistle directly in the name of the Holy Trinity. The goal was achieved: the “Greek project” took possession of all the tsar’s thoughts and those of his immediate circle.
A conversation of the tsar with Greek merchants is known: “Do you want and do you expect me to free you from captivity and ransom you?” They answered: “How could it be otherwise? How could we not desire this?” The tsar said, turning to the boyars: “God will require them of me… I have taken upon myself the obligation… I will offer as sacrifice my army, my treasury and even my blood for their deliverance.” (Tsar Aleksey offered to this idea an incalculable number of lives of Orthodox Christians, his fellow countrymen, executed for resisting the reform which now with full justification may be called criminal; he split the hitherto united Russian Church, yet he never achieved the liberation of the Greeks from Muslim rule – and to this day Tsargrad is called Istanbul.)
After the departure of Patriarch Macarius of Antioch the tsar said to the boyars: “I pray God, before I die, to see him among the four patriarchs serving in Hagia Sophia (that is, in Constantinople – K.B.) and our patriarch the fifth together with them.” But of course, if the Russian tsar had ascended the throne of Constantinople, Nikon would not have been the fifth among the patriarchs but the first, and he understood this perfectly, which was the true reason for his particularly interested attitude towards the “Greek project”.
Before his patriarchate Nikon, like all Russians at that time, regarded contemporary Greeks with great suspicion, considering that true piety had been preserved only among the Russians. He expressed these views openly, without concealment, even after moving to Moscow when he became archimandrite. However, becoming patriarch, Nikon suddenly declares himself a zealous Hellenophile; a sharp about-face occurs – the denouncer of the Greeks becomes their admirer and venerater. And not long ago he used to say: “The Greeks and Little Russians have lost the faith and there is no firmness or good morals among them; peace and honour have seduced them, and they work by their own law, and no constancy has appeared in them, nor any piety.” Having entered the tsar’s closest circle, Nikon was let into the secret of the “Greek project” and drew the appropriate conclusions, with his characteristic lack of principle in an instant transforming himself from a denouncer of the Greeks into their venerater. It was precisely after this that, with the tsar’s active assistance, he was installed as patriarch. Thus was found and prepared the executor of the future reform fateful for Orthodoxy.
Nikon undoubtedly already had in mind in this situation the ecumenical patriarchate, and knowing his boundless ambition one may conclude that this breathtaking prospect was the chief and decisive factor in his “maturing” in the well-known direction and transformation into a zealous Hellenophile. It is telling that after his unworthy and unwise demarche with the demonstrative abandonment of the patriarchal see (“and how will you, tsar, manage without me now?”), when the phantom of the Byzantine throne ceased to trouble Nikon’s imagination, the mask of feigned Hellenophilia also slipped from him, replaced by complete indifference to his own reform, to the book corrections. Moreover, in his monastery he again printed books according to the old models.
The death of Patriarch Joseph untied the hands of the Hellenophile advocates of reform, and they developed stormy activity. Becoming patriarch, Nikon immediately began zealously copying Greek church practice. “It even seems that Nikon set himself the idea of making a second Byzantium out of Moscow.” Indeed, he transferred to Rus’ Greek ambos, the Greek archbishop’s staff, Greek kamilavkia and mantles, Greek church melodies; he invited Greek painters to Moscow, built monasteries on the Greek model, drew various Greeks close to himself, everywhere put Greek authority in the forefront, and so on.
Evaluating in particular this blind copying of the Greek model, Fr Pavel Florensky in the article “The Trinity-Sergius Lavra and Russia” called Patriarch Nikon’s activity “reactionary and in general anti-national”. To speak more precisely, the reformatory activity of Nikon and Tsar Aleksey should first of all be recognised as anti-Orthodox and anti-church. It becomes anti-national, anti-Russian only as a consequence of the organic unity of all Russian life of that time and Orthodoxy.
The anti-national character of the reform manifested itself especially vividly at the 1667 Council, when according to the tsar’s programme a campaign was officially launched to besmirch the age-old Orthodox Russian traditions and rites – in effect, the whole Russian past. Kaptev evaluates this conciliar activity as “a tendentious humiliation by foreign Greeks of Russian church antiquity, its public tendentious abuse”.
Here is where we should seek the origins of our contemporary disease of abusing and forgetting our historical past! No wonder Fr Pavel Florensky in one of his private letters said that “the world atmosphere has been corrupted perhaps since the 17th century”. A thorough investigation of the 17th-century Russian church reform fully confirms this surmise, for the Russian spiritual catastrophe in its consequences has not only a local Russian but a global character.
At the 1667 Council the tsar handed over the conduct of all affairs to two eastern patriarchs – Paisius of Alexandria and Macarius of Antioch – having first made sure that they would pursue the line he needed. And the patriarchs, sensing the moment, behaved at the council as authoritative supreme judges and peremptory deciders of Russian church affairs.
It is hard to imagine that these two foreign guests, obsequious and compliant collectors of alms, being in the centre of Russia in the tsar’s presence, would have dared to revile and condemn the whole Russian antiquity, even to anathematise the old Russian rite, if there had not been special sanction from the tsar for this. “The most that a Greek hierarch visiting Moscow could venture on his own would be flattering, pompous praise of the Russian tsar, of Russian piety, public recognition of the Russians as the light and support of all Orthodoxy.”
To argue with the tsar at that time was simply impossible for anyone, especially for visiting guests, even if they were patriarchs; all that remained was to “comply”. Under any authoritarian regime even minor state decrees are issued only with the sanction of the highest authority. Tsar Aleksey Mikhaylovich, having the highest conception of his royal power, “recognised himself as the viceroy of God Himself on earth”. With such an opinion of himself on the part of the tsar, who could dare to act independently, apart from the autocrat, in such an important church-state matter as the reform? Finally, Archpriest Avvakum will understand who the true author of the reform is and will denounce the tsar already in his fifth petition, written in 1669: “You are the autocrat; you will raise judgment concerning all these who have given such boldness against us… Who would dare to utter such blasphemous words against the saints if your power had not permitted it to be?.. All the matter is enclosed in you, O tsar, and stands on you alone.”
Pleasing Tsar Aleksey and pursuing the necessary line (the council according to the tsar’s plans was to finally confirm the reform), the eastern patriarchs went far in their activity. The council under their leadership recognised the old Russian rite as heretical and forbade it, and excommunicated from the church and anathematised those who adhered to the old rite. However, as Kaptev writes, “the rite recognised by them as heretical was in reality the creation of the Orthodox Greek ecumenical church, and earlier, for whole centuries, it had existed among the old Orthodox Greeks, and to accuse the Russians of heresy for it in essence meant to accuse the old Greek Orthodox Church of heresy”.
The eastern hierarchs at the council broadly and in detail reviewed the entire Russian church practice in general and the age-old folk customs, in order to condemn and destroy everything that deviated from the then Greek practice. All ancient Russian church things, even clothing, were replaced by contemporary Greek models, “so that there might be unity of mind and agreement in everything”. The tsar approved the conciliar activity of the eastern patriarchs and generously rewarded them.
It is telling that in 1666 the tsar by a special epistle asks to send him from the East the “Sudebnik” and the “Chinovnik of the entire tsar’s order of the former Greek tsars”, which he evidently needed for practical preparation for the expected coronation on the Byzantine throne. Here one may already speak not of political naïvety but of the feeble-mindedness of Tsar Aleksey Mikhaylovich, by which all his activity was marked, the consequence of which, among other things, were the “salt” and “copper” riots, and finally one of the first mad “projects of the century” – the all-embracing church reform for the realisation of global political pretensions.
Tsar Aleksey was raised in contempt for everything native and in adoration of everything foreign. He had a directly fantastic idea of the “wonders of western culture”: he was convinced of the almost all-encompassing power of the foreign master. These qualities, especially contempt for native history and culture, would develop and manifest even more in his son, Tsar Peter I.
We have already spoken of the intrigues of Catholicism in connection with the Eastern Question. There exists a curious document published by Metropolitan Makary (Bulgakov) in his “History of the Russian Church” in the section on the Time of Troubles: “From the Jesuits’ instruction to the Pretender on how to introduce the union in Russia”.
/…/ d) the sovereign himself should speak of the union rarely and cautiously, so that the matter does not begin from him, but let the Russians themselves first propose concerning some unimportant subjects of faith requiring transformation, and thus pave the way to the union;
e) to issue a law that everything in the Russian church be brought under the rules of the councils of the Greek fathers and to entrust the execution of the law to reliable people, adherents of the union: disputes will arise, reach the sovereign, he will appoint a council, and there one may proceed to the union;
f) to hint to the black clergy about privileges, to the white about rewards, to the people about freedom, to all about the slavery of the Greeks;
g) to establish seminaries, for which to call learned people from abroad, even if laymen.”
So here is who long ago cared about the uniformity of Russian and Greek worship! Long before Tsar Aleksey and Nikon the main point of the reform (its essence) had been thought out by the Jesuits, formulated and given to their agents as a working instruction. This Jesuit plan was almost fully realised half a century later in the process of the 17th-century church reform. The course of the reform strikingly coincides with all the points of this instruction.
Concerning “some unimportant subjects of faith requiring transformation”, Patriarch Paisius of Jerusalem spoke in 1649 while in Moscow, and the Greek clergy supported him; the corrector Epifany Slavinetsky proposes reforms as a learned theologian. Epifany, an alumnus of Jesuit colleges, was sent from Kiev instead of another person requested.
Regarding the fact that “everything be brought under the rules of the councils of the Greek fathers”, it is necessary to recall that after two unions with the Catholics (Lyons in 1274 and Ferrara-Florence in 1439) and two hundred years under Turkish rule, so many changes had occurred in Greek church practice that the Russians questioned the very Orthodoxy of the Greeks. Around 1480 in our country a promise was included in the archiepiscopal oath not to accept Greeks either to the metropolis or to the episcopate as being under the power of an infidel tsar.
Thus, before the reform aimed at achieving uniformity with the Greeks, it was first necessary to raise the authority of the Greeks, significantly compromised in Russian eyes. This is what the Russian government actively engaged in immediately after Aleksey’s accession to the throne, for several years and in various directions. In Moscow several South-Russian books were published in which the full Orthodoxy of the Greeks was persistently preached, the necessity of communicating with them on all church questions and of acting in full accord with them in everything.
For the creators of the reform, besides the rehabilitation of the Greeks, another side of the question was important – namely, the creation of a firm opinion about the corruption of Russian service texts and the extreme necessity of their correction. In preparing public opinion about the supposed uncorrectedness of the old Russian books a special role was played by the extensive preface to the grammar of Meletius Smotritsky (1648). Here the idea is advanced in every way that Russian church books are very uncorrected and therefore need immediate thorough correction, and to correct them one must, of course, use only Greek models.
“To entrust the execution of the law to reliable people, adherents of the union”…
They found “reliable” people: Arseny the Greek, Epifany Slavinetsky, Paisius Ligarides, Simeon of Polotsk and others.
Arseny the Greek – an alumnus of the Jesuit college in Rome, repeatedly passed from Orthodoxy to Latinism and back, for a time accepted Mohammedanism. For heresy he was exiled to Solovki, but Nikon in 1652 frees him, makes him the chief corrector of service books and even settles him in his own cell. Arseny in turn recommends to Nikon Paisius Ligarides, also an alumnus of the Roman Jesuit school.
“Paisius Ligarides is not a branch of the Constantinopolitan throne,” says Patriarch Dionysius of Constantinople about him, “I do not call him Orthodox, for I hear from many that he is a papist, a cunning man.” According to contemporary data, Ligarides is a Catholic missionary sent to the east in 1641. In Moscow he plays the role of Orthodox metropolitan of Gaza, acquires enormous influence on Tsar Aleksey and in many ways determines the decisions of the 1667 council. He is the tsar’s chief assistant in carrying out the “Greek project”; according to Kaptev, the tsar himself listened to him “as to a prophet of God”.
Simeon of Polotsk – a graduate of the Polish Jesuit college in Vilna, tutor of the tsar’s children (raised them in the Polish-Latin spirit), a skilful scribbler writing comedies for the tsar’s theatre, an active supporter of Nikon’s reform, who wrote a polemical treatise against the Old Believers by order of the tsar. Undoubtedly he did great harm to Russian literature by introducing into the literature of that time Polish-Ukrainian jargon and Polish syllabic verse alien to Russian culture. Many in Moscow accused Polotsk of unorthodoxy. Archpriest Avvakum says directly: “Wolf-like in sheep’s clothing Simeon and Epifany. I know Epifany the Roman to the sea, when he came from Rome… And Semenka the monk came from there, from the Roman pope.”
“To establish seminaries, for which to call learned people from abroad, even if laymen”…
And seminaries were established on the model of western scholastic schools, and learned people were indeed called from abroad. The brothers Likhud, alumni of the Jesuit colleges of Venice and Padua, confirmed Nikon’s reform while heading the Moscow Theological Academy for 15 years (until 1701).
As we see, the programme given by the Jesuits to the Pretender was basically fulfilled. The Pretender himself suffered defeat probably only because he took the matter too abruptly. Having ascended the Moscow throne, blinded by successes, he evidently decided that it was already possible to dispense with palliatives like the gradual introduction of the union by means of the identification of Russian and Greek worship. He writes to the Roman curia: “And we ourselves by God’s grace have accepted the union (of the churches) and will now firmly endeavour to bring all the Muscovite state into the one Roman faith and to establish Roman churches.” This was too abrupt; the pretence failed, and the Jesuits had to correct the mistakes of their agent by gradual painstaking activity.
Metropolitan Makary (Bulgakov) speaks thus of the Jesuits’ activity: “From the very moment of their separation from the ecumenical church the Roman pontiffs were constantly occupied with the thought of subjecting to themselves the Orthodox East and, in particular, Orthodox Russia, as witnessed by the uninterrupted series of their attempts presented by history. But never were these attempts so strong, so close to success and dangerous for Orthodoxy as from the 16th century. In Greece they were favoured by the fall of the empire (1453) and the subsequent decline of enlightenment; in Russia by the lack of enlightenment and the annexation of its western part to Poland (1569). The chief instrument both here and there was the newly established (1540) order of Jesuits. They quickly penetrated Poland and western Russia, founded their schools in Polotsk, Vilna and Volhynia to raise the children of the Orthodox in their spirit; everywhere they disseminated writings against the Eastern Church to ensnare in their nets even adults who had been its children from the cradle, and the unhappy union that arose in the western region of Russia at the end of the 16th century was the first fruit of these efforts. Just as quickly the worthy disciples of Loyola penetrated Greece, established their schools in Galata and even in Constantinople, passed themselves off as gratuitous teachers of youth, strove to be confessors of the people and disseminated writings pernicious for Orthodoxy; meanwhile beyond the borders of Greece, in the famous universities and academies of the West, whither Greek youths hastened for lack of their own schools, thirsting for enlightenment, they imperceptibly imbibed the same spirit, were entangled in the same nets, and Pope Gregory XIII in Rome itself founded a Greek college where he gratuitously educated all incoming Greeks and Russians. All this intensified activity of the Vatican is explained by the Lutheran reformation: having lost as a result of it an innumerable multitude of their ancient children, the popes thought to compensate their loss by subjecting to themselves the eastern church and spared no means for this.”
The general Latin orientation of Nikon’s reformatory activity has been noted by many researchers. Some historians directly pointed out that the Nikon reform was the result of Jesuit intrigues. In the words of Yu. F. Samarin, Nikon wanted “to found in Russia a private national papism”. The pope is head of the church and the state: in the unity of spiritual and political power lies the chief nerve of papism. Nikon’s papo-caesarism fully revealed itself during the period of his tenure of power. “On the relations of the tsar’s power to the patriarchal Nikon expressed a view that in no way accorded with the traditions of the eastern church confirmed in Russia by history” (S. M. Solovyov). Imitating the Catholics, he introduces into use the four-ended cross, the carrying of the cross before the patriarch, makes himself a hat in the manner of a cardinal’s, his mitres have the form now of a tiara, now of a western crown. Nikon repeatedly makes use of the device of false oath, displaying knowledge of Jesuit teaching. Moreover, according to the historian Tatishchev, Simeon of Polotsk persuaded the young Tsar Fyodor to recall Nikon from exile to Moscow and make him pope.
The opinions of Nikon’s adherents about his supposed learning and intelligence do not correspond to reality. Here is how Metropolitan Makary (Bulgakov) speaks of the book that Nikon wrote in his justification: “One must have great patience to read Nikon’s book even in parts… It is unfounded to see in this book extensive reading and learning on Nikon’s part. He had at hand the Bible, the printed Kormchaya, the explanatory Gospel and Apostle and another 2–3 books and drew from them with full hand as much as he wished, and to do this, especially from the Kormchaya with its index, was not at all difficult… But Nikon’s moral image appears in the book in the most unattractive light.”
It would be unfair to conclude about any architectural talents of Nikon in connection with the construction of the Resurrection Monastery, which he called the New Jerusalem. The well-known Arseny Sukhanov, at Nikon’s order, brought him from the East models of the Jerusalem temples; it remained for the builders only to copy. Of Nikon’s extremely negative moral image testify his cell-attendant Jonah, Prince Shaisupov and others (S. M. Solovyov).
With the passage of time many forgeries committed in the process of the Nikon reform by its creators and makers came to light. Perhaps sensational exposé material is adduced by Professor of the Leningrad Theological Academy N. D. Uspensky in the article “The Collision of Two Theologies in the Correction of Russian Service Books in the 17th Century.”
At the beginning of the reform at the 1654 council it was resolved to correct the service books according to ancient Greek and Slavonic models. Professor Uspensky irrefutably proved that the models for correction were contemporary Greek service books published mainly in Jesuit printing houses of Venice and Paris. To conceal this fact, Nikon’s correctors, falsifying, wrote in the prefaces of some books that the correction was carried out “according to ancient Greek and Slavonic” models (Sluzhebnik ed. 1655).
This is understandable, for the creators of the reform were in fact interested in achieving uniformity precisely with the contemporary Greek model, therefore ancient Greek and Slavonic charters (manuscripts) simply did not interest them. This probably also explains the very strange fact noted by Uspensky that Arseny Sukhanov, among a large number (498) of manuscripts acquired by him in the East, brought to Moscow only 7 that could be used in correcting books. Yet one of the chief aims of Sukhanov’s journey to the East was to bring the necessary sources for correcting the service books. And here he brings a huge number of manuscripts, among which are the works of pagan philosophers, information about earthquakes, about sea animals, but manuscripts that could be used in correcting service books – only 7… This expedition for manuscripts, lasting a year and a half, was dispatched by Nikon, therefore one may suppose that the messenger was given corresponding instructions. As we see, here too a forgery. Yet polemicists with the Old Belief always asserted that the correction of books was supposedly carried out according to ancient manuscripts brought by Sukhanov from the East and that there were a huge number of these manuscripts.
Thus, the solution to the apparent paradox lies in the fact that Tsar Aleksey and Nikon by no means pursued the aim of the actual correction of church books and rites, and the question of who had preserved the purity of Orthodoxy – the Russians or the Greeks – did not concern them at all.
This is confirmed by the following story. Wishing to secure support from the side of Patriarch Paisius of Constantinople, Nikon in 1654, on the eve of the council, sends him a letter with questions of a church-ritual character with a request to examine them at a council and give an answer. Nikon and the tsar evidently counted on Paisius approving their reform, and it would be convenient for them to refer to his authority. However, their hopes were not justified; in his reply epistle Patriarch Paisius expressed a sober and cautious view on the matter of changing liturgical orders and church rites, thereby making it clear that there was no necessity for reform. Despite this, Tsar Aleksey and Nikon continued the undertaking, thereby demonstrating that the theological justification of the reform did not particularly interest them, which is understandable given the political aims of the reform’s creators. There was no lack of forgery in this story with the inquiry to Patriarch Paisius either. Paisius’s reply epistle was received already after the council, yet Nikon at the council declares the receipt of a letter from the Constantinopolitan patriarch supposedly with approval of the reforms.
One more example of the tactical device of the reform’s creator Nikon. As already said, in order to bring public opinion to the consciousness of the necessity of reform, they advocate urgent correction of the various slips, errors and diverse faults supposedly accumulated in the Slavonic translations, admitted by translators and copyists. No one objected to such corrections. However, when it came to the point, Nikon at the 1654 council suddenly comes out with a stunning declaration that Russian piety itself is “doubtful” because the Russians maintain among themselves “incorrect innovations”. He demands, thus, the correction not simply of books but of the Church itself. “Nikon,” writes Kaptev, “speaks at the council not of such book corrections as would mean errors introduced into them by ignorance, slips and similar unimportant and easily correctable faults, but demands the correction of books insofar as they contain, in his opinion, newly introduced orders and rites, demands, so to speak, the correction of the Church itself, and not only of books.” This tactic too is understandable – by any means to obtain agreement to the reform, and then to do one’s own thing, copying the Greek model.
N. D. Uspensky in the aforementioned article describes the tragicomic story of Nikon’s “correction” of the Sluzhebnik. In the six years of Nikon’s patriarchate six editions of the Sluzhebnik were issued, differing from one another. As models, as Uspensky established, Kiev sluzhebniki were used, which shortly before had in their turn been corrected according to Venetian and Parisian editions of Greek sluzhebniki.
Of the six differing editions the first opponents of the book correction already wrote. Thus, in the petition to Aleksey Mikhaylovich by Fr Nikita Dobrynin it is said: “For six issues of his Nikon sluzhebniki have been forcibly sent out into the Russian state: but all those sluzhebniki disagree among themselves and not one agrees with another.”
Centuries later Kaptev states the same: “The more time passed, the greater the number of editions of one and the same book appeared, disagreeing among themselves, and the very number of these disagreements increased with the passage of time. Everyone noticed this, everyone was very troubled and scandalised by this circumstance, the more so as the opponents of Nikon’s book corrections constantly and tirelessly pointed to it as obvious proof to all that Russian church books were in reality not being corrected but only spoiled.” N. D. Uspensky summarises on this account: “When some grandiose undertaking in design leads to results opposite to the intended aims, such a situation may be called tragic.”
What, then, is the position today? As already said, a comparison of contemporary service texts with pre-reform ones permits the conclusion that the new texts are markedly inferior in soundness to the old. And this is the conclusion not only of the author of the present article, who carried out independent work in comparing texts, but of many other researchers. As early as the last century A. I. Nevostruev gave a detailed classification of the errors and inaccuracies of the reformed text: strange expressions, Hellenisms, for example “the radiance of noise”, “to understand with eyes”, “to see with a finger” and the like, confused use of grammatical forms, mixing of cases, turning the predicate into the subject and so on. The scholar adduces examples of troparia of canons with very unclear meaning, lists “sins not only against grammar, philology, logic, but also against history, exegesis, dogmatics”, pointing to a mass of errors in the texts, including the mixing of proper and common nouns and vice versa, discrepancies with biblical texts and the like. Professor M. D. Muretov also adduces numerous examples of incorrect translation and faults in the post-reform text. And the well-known philologist N. I. Ilminsky “on a whole series of examples shows the superiority in the sense of accuracy in many cases of the old translation over that renewed in the 17th century”.
The reason for such evident worsening of the new translation is simple. “Arseny the Greek, as a foreigner, could not grasp all the subtleties of translation into the Russian language, therefore his translations often yielded to the old translations in clarity, juiciness, in the aptness of one expression or another, sometimes seemed ambiguous and scandalous. Epifany Slavinetsky was an extreme adherent of literalism in translation; he sacrificed to literalism the clarity and intelligibility of the speech itself, composed his own words and their combinations very artificial and little-expressive, whence his translations are always clumsy, often obscure and little-intelligible, so that the meaning of some of our church hymns even now is assimilated with difficulty.”
The corruption of the Russian language began precisely in the 17th century in the process of the “correction” of books. Let us adduce only some examples from the Psalter, designating the old text by the letter O and the new by N.
O: “закон положит ему на пути”; N: “законоположит ему на пути”;
O: “обновится яко оpлу юность твоя” (102, 5); N: “обновится яко оpля юность твоя”;
O: “помощник во благо вpемя в печалех” (9, 10); N: “помощник во благовpемениих в скоpбех”;
O: “непpавду возненавидех и омеpзе ми” (118, 163); N: “непpавду возненавидех и омеpзих”;
O: “ибо благословение даст закон даяй” (83, 6); N: “закопополагаяй”;
O: “избави мя.., от pук сынов чужих” (143, 7); N: “из pуки сынов чуждих”;
O: “се пядию измеpены положил еси дни моя” (38, b); N: “се пяди положил еси дни моя”, – the meaning of the old translation is quite clear (a span is the distance from the end of the thumb to the end of the little finger), but of the new it is not.
O: “повелением им же заповеда” (7, 7); N: “заповедал еси” – phonetic worsening.
O: “яко услыша мя Боже” (16, 7); N: “яко услышал мя еси” – phonetic explosion.
O: “вскую остави мя” (21, 1); N: “вскую оставил мя еси” – weighting of the phrase construction, unnatural for the Slavonic language.
O: “И исцели мя (29, 2); N: “и исцелил мя еси” – the same.
Of course, one may discourse much on verbal forms – “aorist”, “pluperfect” and the like, but as is known, theory is dry, but the tree of life is green.
Errors were admitted that were more serious. The old text of the prayer from the rite of baptism: “The Lord our Jesus Christ, who came into the world and dwelt among men, forbids thee, O devil”. The new text: “The Lord forbids thee, O devil, who came into the world and dwelt among men”. The Old Believers repeatedly pointed to the blasphemous corruption of the text; the question was discussed for more than two centuries, and only in the Trebnik issued by the Moscow Patriarchate in 1979 was the pre-Nikon variant finally returned to.
The old text from the rite of baptism: “we pray thee, O Lord, let not an evil spirit descend with him who is being baptised”. The new text: “let not, we pray thee, an evil spirit descend with him who is being baptised”. And in this blasphemous corruption the adherents of the old rite constantly accused the new-ritualists, but the latter returned to the pre-Nikon variant also only after centuries. Thus this error worked for the schism: “they pray to an evil spirit”, said the Old Believers.
From the litanies for the sanctification of water on Theophany: S: “that this water may be leading into life eternal”. N: “that this water may be leaping into life eternal”. They returned to the old variant only in the “Festal Menaion” issued in 1970. It should be noted that the print runs of church books issued in Soviet times were very limited, therefore in many churches, especially rural ones, the service is performed according to pre-revolutionary trebniks, that is, with all the indicated errors.
It is hardly likely that such serious errors in the text of the fundamental sacrament were made due to insufficient professionalism of the correctors. A comparison of old and new texts leads to the thought that often a carefully masked conscious corruption of the texts was carried out on the principle “the worse the better”. In those times all secret enemies of Orthodoxy on Rus’ became voluntary supporters of Nikon’s reform, since the reform gave the possibility of mocking the church with impunity. And they mocked… Surikov showed this well in his painting “Boyarynya Morozova”.
Undoubtedly there were enemies of Orthodoxy among the correctors too, and not for nothing after the departure from the scene of his patron Nikon, Arseny the Greek, who headed the correction, was again exiled to Solovki. And what could be expected from a correction if it was headed by people like Arseny the Greek? The words of Archpriest Avvakum are amazingly close to the true state of affairs: “As Nikon said, so he did: ‘Print, Arsen, the books any old way, only not as before’ – and so he did.”
If, for example, in some cases the correctors replaced “smite” with “thou hast smitten”, “commanded” with “thou hast commanded”, then in others they did the opposite: S: “for the Lord hath saved” (19, 6); N: “for the Lord saved”. If in one place they replace an ancient speech form with a more contemporary one, then in another – the opposite. S: “for one of the princes falleth” (81, 7); N: “for one of the princes falleth” – evidently modernised. But in the same psalm: S: “in the midst of the gods he shall judge” (81, 1); N: “in the midst of gods he shall judge” – returned to a more ancient form. And such examples of “correction” on the principle “only not as before” may be adduced in multitude.
There are especially many errors and inaccuracies in the newly corrected texts of the irmoi. Let us compare the texts of the Sunday irmos of the 4th tone, song 1:
O: “Моpя Чеpмнаго пучину, немокpыми стопами, дpевле шествовав Изpаиль, кpестообpазно моисеовыма pуками, амаликову силу победил есть”.
N: “Моpя чеpмную пучину невлажными стопами дpевний пешешествовав Изpаиль, кpестообpазныма моисеовыма pукама амаликову силу в пустыни победил есть”.
An error is immediately noticeable if, for example, one says “the depth of the Caspian sea”. Therefore there is an evident error in the expression “the depth of the red sea”, since “Red” is a proper name. In the word “to traverse on foot” invented by the correctors a tautology is admitted – one always traverses on foot.
“With cross-shaped arms of Moses” – a gross error. It is known that Moses prefiguratively depicted the cross with his arms, but his arms were normal, not cross-shaped, as the correctors assure.
Through the fault of the correctors the colourful word “omrazishasya” (from the root “abomination”, “filth”) departed from the Church Slavonic language:
O: “pастлеша и омpазишася в беззакониях” (52, 2); N: “омpачишася”.
The conducted comparison of the pre-reform and post-reform Psalter with the involvement of a Greek text of the 10th century also speaks not in favour of the newly corrected text. For example, the Greek equivalent of the word “omrazishasya” has precisely the root “abomination” and not “darkness”.
Thus, it was far from for a single “az” that the zealots of traditional Orthodoxy rose against the reform. At that time people attended church often and many knew the texts by heart; one may imagine their indignation at this “correction” of the texts: it is not surprising that a schism arose.
In the period following Nikon’s abandonment of the patriarchal throne the Russian church found itself in the most grievous state. As Kaptev writes, “everything in our church life of that time from top to bottom was in complete confusion and as it were decomposition; in nothing was there stability, defined order and firmness; everything as it were tottered, everywhere discord, quarrels, struggle… It seemed that a return to the pre-Nikon church orders would then have been the most suitable way out of the tangled situation of church affairs… The matter with Nikon’s reform seemed to hang by a hair.” But after Nikon’s departure the actual manager of the Russian church becomes Tsar Aleksey Mikhaylovich, who turns all his energy to confirming the reform, subordinating to this his activity, serving the reform often in defiance of simple common sense, offering to it in sacrifice both truth and honour and literally everything, when the reform becomes some all-consuming cult of his life, an obsessive idea. And quite justifiably the same Kaptev concludes that “to Tsar Aleksey Mikhaylovich chiefly the reform owes its beginning, its conduct under Nikon and its completion after Nikon’s removal.”
The phantom of the Byzantine throne hovered over Russia even after the death of Tsar Aleksey Mikhaylovich right up to 1917. The heirs of Tsar Aleksey Mikhaylovich were already firmly “fixated” on the circle of questions of the “Greek project”, passing this baton by inheritance. The very idea of Byzantine throne-inheritance gradually received very wide dissemination in Russian society, and if earlier it was inspired from without, then in the 19th century already many Russian thinkers paid tribute to the utopian project of creating a “Great Greco-Russian Eastern Empire” with Constantinople as the chief capital. Of this write Tyutchev, Dostoevsky, I. Aksakov and other Russian public figures. Dostoevsky sees in this “our only way out into the fullness of history”, “sooner or later, but Constantinople must be ours”, he exclaims.
Even earlier Tyutchev wrote: “That which was promised by the fates even in the cradle to her, that which was bequeathed to her by the ages and by the faith of all her tsars… the crown and sceptre of Byzantium ye shall not succeed in depriving us of…”
It is understandable that in this situation the Nikon reform for the unification of Russian and Greek church practice acquired special political significance; church uniformity with the Greeks appeared as the single ideological foundation of the future great empire. The consequence of this was the further strengthening of the reform and the intensification of the struggle with the Old Belief.
It is now understandable why the Nikon reform, with its evident theological unsoundness, was beyond criticism – this was a political “taboo”.
Life dispelled the false prophecies like smoke. To everyone now it is clear that the idea of occupying the Constantinopolitan throne was an obsession, a phantom. The political “taboo” on criticism of the “Nikon-Aleksey” reform has also disappeared.
The 1971 Council lifted the curses on the old rites, but this is not a broad gesture or act of good will towards the Old Believers; this is what in justice should have been done long ago.
In the conciliar decree it is said: “May the Lord lead those separated again into one…” In confirmation of this call it is natural to expect future conciliar resolutions directed towards the liquidation of the schism, in which the first step could be a return to the pre-reform texts as the more sound ones. Besides, spiritual rebirth is unthinkable without the realisation of past errors and repentance for the untruths committed.
Many Russian Orthodox people were destroyed for faithfulness to traditional Orthodoxy. Archpriest Avvakum, who headed the resistance to the criminal reform, has now appeared before us as a great Russian man, a national hero, a martyr.