3. The Old Believers: schism in the heart of Russia
The Old Believers: schism in the heart of Russia Orthodoxy in our period suffered one of its greatest and bitterest schisms— the schism of the Old Believers. Russia was the land where the schism occurred. This was no accident; the whole controversy erupted because of Russian Orthodoxy's real or alleged departure from the more ancient Greek
Orthodox Churches in patterns of worship.
1. Patriarch Nikon The man who was instrumental in sparking the conflagration was Nikon
(1605–81). Born in 1605, he was the child of peasants in Valmanovo (a village some 60 miles from the great Russian city of Nizhy Novgorod). An adventurous early life saw him running away from home, becoming a priest, seeing all three of his children die,22 retiring to a hermitage, joining a monastery (of which he became abbot), and finally coming to the attention of Tsar Alexei I (1645–76). A year after his coronation, Alexi met Nikon when the latter was in Moscow on monastery business. The new tsar was a sincere and devout practitioner of his religion, and felt a spiritual rapport with Nikon. He transferred him from his monastery in Kozhezersky to the Moscow monastery of Novospassky in 1646; two years later, the tsar made
Nikon metropolitan Bishop of Veliky Novgorod, the celebrated city where Alexander Nevsky, one of Russia's folk heroes and Orthodoxy's saints, had reigned in the 13th century.23 Its bishop ranked second only to the Patriarch of Moscow in importance in the Russian Church. In 1652, Nikon attained to that supreme position.
There was a reform movement in the Russian Church at that time, fostered by the tsar himself. Its supporters are commonly known as the "Zealots of Piety". Among the clergy they included the tsar's confessor, archpriest at Moscow's Annunciation Cathedral, Stefan Vonifatiev
(d.1656); Mikhail Rogov, archpriest at Moscow's Archangel Cathedral; Ivan Nasedka, priest at Moscow's Dormition Cathedral; Ivan Neronov
(1591–1670), archpriest of Moscow's Kazan Cathedral; and archpriest Avvakum Petrovich (c.1620–82), a disciple of Neronov who also served at Kazan Cathedral. Other Zealots were high-ranking members of the laity.
The reformation they envisaged meant the suppression of Pagan folk customs that still survived, especially in rural Russia, the revival of effective preaching at parish level, the promotion of a strict morality, and the orderly and correct conduct of worship.
It was this last element that was to provoke controversy and schism.
When Moscow became a centre for printing, many religious texts were published which had existed only in manuscript until then. Scholars and printers were dismayed to find so many textual variations in the manuscripts. The quest for the correct text became something of an obsession. This obsession particularly affected liturgical texts, because the
issue there assumed practical dimensions of vast size: how should a congregation be worshipping? Corporate worship lay at the innermost heart of Orthodoxy. And Orthodox worshipers believed that they were simply practising the age-old form of worship bequeathed to them by their ancestors. They were not interested in innovating; they wanted to know what the correct tradition was. The textual variations in liturgical books therefore had the capacity to awaken deep disturbance, and the search for the correct text here took on a passion absent in other areas.
2. The passion for all things Greek A dominant group among the Zealots of Piety had a simple, clean-cut answer to the question of liturgical correctness. They were enamoured of all things Greek; they admired the Greek Orthodox liturgy as the absolute pinnacle of genuine worship. For these Zealots, then, the solution to the liturgical textual problem was obvious: the Greeks had the correct text.
Godly reformation demanded that Russian worship be brought into complete conformity with Greek worship. They were encouraged in this attitude by many Greeks, who pointed out to them the peculiarities of Russian worship. One argument was that Greek worship was older and more pristine, closer to the ancient sources, than Russian worship. After all, the Greeks had been worshiping God since the first century, whereas it was not until the 10th century that the Russians were converted. It sounded persuasive to many, and many still find it persuasive. A counter-argument from some scholars is that Greek worship had not been static; it had undergone certain developments over the centuries. It was therefore possible that the Russian tradition was actually based on an older pattern of Greek worship than the Greeks now practised in the 17th century. Perhaps
Russian worship was in reality more pristine! This argument, however, has not found huge support beyond the ranks of scholars sympathetic to the Old
Believers.
The Greek-loving Zealots, spurred on by Greek Orthodox contacts, were committed to conforming Russian worship to Greek ways. Among the differences they set out to eradicate were the following:
Russian Greek The sign of the cross made with the index finger The sign of the cross made with the index and straight, the middle finger slightly bent, and the thumb joined to the other two fingers fully bent. middle fingers extended and joined to the thumb, and the other two fingers fully bent.
Two alleluias in the prominent formula: "Alleluia, Three alleluias in the formula: "Alleluia, alleluia, glory to You, O God!" alleluia, alleluia, glory to You, O God!"
The Nicene Creed: "I believe in the Holy Spirit, "I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the the true Lord and Giver of Life."
Giver of Life."
Seven loaves used in holy communion and another Five loaves used in holy communion and the service known as the artoklasia ("breaking of artoklasia. bread").
Eight-pointed star on church buildings and on the Four-pointed star. bread of holy communion.
Church procession: circle left to right.
Circle right to left.
There were some other differences (e.g. the number of prostrations and bows in the Lent services), but these were the most significant. If there had been only a single change, it is possible that the controversy might have been less uproarious. But with such an accumulation of changes, it seemed to many that a revolution in worship was being forced on them. If Protestants think it was all a fuss over nothing, perhaps they should imagine how they would feel if a new Bible translation, a new hymnbook, a new style of music, and a new way of celebrating the Lord's Supper, were suddenly forced on their church, all at the same time, without consultation.
An equivalent sense of alienation and resentment was felt among many Russian Orthodox when Patriarch Nikon began enforcing the Greek forms of worship in 1653.
However, it is true that Russian Orthodox attached a greater significance to external worship-forms than most Protestants have done. For the pious
Russian, the complex of actions that together made up corporate worship was nothing less than an image of heaven. To tamper with that image was to risk damaging or destroying the Church's union and communion with God.
Hence the spiritual shock felt by many Russian believers at the visible and audible changes thrust upon their worship. Was this any longer the true image of heaven?
3. Nikon's papal aspirations Nikon's response to opposition from many clergy, monks, and laity was harsh. He had opponents of the Greek reforms branded as heretics and excommunicated. He also invoked the oppressive machinery of the Russian state: dissenters were imprisoned, exiled, and eventually even put to death.
Nikon's opponents included some of the Zealots of Piety, former friends and co-workers who could not share the patriarch's enthusiasm for Greek worship. The most prominent Zealots to oppose Nikon were Ivan Neronov and Avvakum. Neronov was excommunicated and banished to a distant northern monastery; Avvakum was banished to Siberia. Here were the beginnings of the schism of the Old Believers (or Old Ritualists)—those who held onto Russian Orthodoxy's older ways of worship. Old Believers were called raskolniki (schismatics) by their opponents. Old Believers called those who accepted the Greek worship-forms "Nikonites".
Nikon's authoritarian response to Old Belief was partly owing to his personality. A very capable man intellectually, and a gifted if long-winded preacher, he could not stomach opposition to what seemed to him his obviously correct and well-thought-out ideas. To Nikon, such foolishness was insufferable. It was not only Old Believers who suffered from his severity; anyone in the Church who failed to live up to his ideals could expect savage treatment. Archdeacon Paul of Aleppo, on a visit to Russia, wrote a detailed diary of events, in which he recorded with horror many of Nikon's deeds.
He was a real butcher among the clergy [Paul wrote]. His Janissaries24 are always patrolling the city. When they discover any priest or monk who has had too much to drink, they drag him off to prison, strip him, and whip him. Nikon's prisons are full of them, tormented with heavy chains and wooden logs on their necks and legs, or on the bakery treadmill, sifting flour day and night.
That is one of the milder things reported by Archdeacon Paul. He was also fairly unimpressed by Nikon's sermonizing:
The patriarch was not content with the worship-service; he also had to crown it with an exhortation and a voluminous sermon. God give him moderation! His heart had no feeling for his emperor, nor for the young children, standing there in the intense cold without adequate clothing. What would we say to this if he did it in our country?
So Nikon's rough, uncompromizing personality explains in part his severity toward Old Believers. The harshness, however, was also owing to Nikon's
exalted views of the Moscow patriarchate. He regarded his office almost as a kind of Russian papacy. The Church, he believed, should be a streamlined organisation with himself at the top as a virtual autocrat, ruling with ruthless efficiency. Any kind of dissent was ungodly disobedience. Some have conjectured that Nikon's motives in enforcing the Greek worshipforms on Russian Orthodoxy may have included a desire to make it easier for the Greek Orthodox world to accept his leadership as a sort of Orthodox super-patriarch. Allied to this, Nikon also wished to acquire independent political power for the Church: rather than be a purely spiritual institution, relying on the state for material support, he wanted the Russian Church to be a strong political force in its own right. To symbolize this, Nikon assumed the title Veliky Gosudar (Great Lord), previously given only to the tsar.
We may wonder how the tsar reacted to this. Alexei I at first yielded to Nikon's exaltation of his patriarchal authority; after all, Alexei was a pious man, with a profound reverence for Nikon. By 1658, however, after five years of Nikon's high-handed attitude toward religious dissent and civil government alike, the patriarch and the tsar finally fell out with each other.
Alexei failed to resolve certain conflicts between Nikon and his opponents in a way that satisfied Nikon; in anger, the patriarch shook Moscow's dust off his feet, and retreated into the New Jerusalem monastery he himself had founded in 1656, beside the river Istra outside of Moscow. He left the daily running of the Church to the Bishop of Krutitsy. But Nikon did not resign from office; he was still patriarch, and was still treated as such by his own party in the Russian Church. Mediators made many journeys between Moscow and New Jerusalem, carrying letters from the tsar and the patriarch to each other, but the breakdown in relations proved final. Alexei could not accept the quasi-political power claimed by Nikon for the patriarchate;
Nikon could not retract that claim.
4. Nikon's downfall The personal fate of Nikon, and the fate of the Greek reforms in worship he had initiated, became strangely separated. Tsar Alexei, finally wearying of Nikon's intransigence, summoned a Church council in 1667 to decide what should be done. In order to transcend Russian problems, the council was to represent the wider Orthodox world; the tsar invited the other Orthodox patriarchs to preside, although only those of Antioch and Alexandria turned up. The council decided that Nikon had behaved intolerably, especially towards the tsar; the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria had no sympathy for Nikon's aspirations towards a Russian papacy. They deposed him, banishing him to the northern monastery of Ferapontov. Nikon's attempt to elevate the patriarchate to an independent political power had failed. The old idea was restored, with patriarch and tsar each having their own spheres of authority; the patriarch's sphere, it was agreed, was strictly the spiritual affairs of the Church. A new Patriarch of Moscow, Joasaphus II (1667–72), was appointed. So ended Nikon's career, somewhat ingloriously (although a faction in the church continued to regard him as the true patriarch).
However, the same council that deposed Nikon decreed in favour of his Greek worship-reforms. Whichever of the contested customs was really the most ancient, it was clear that the Greek Orthodox Churches of that time held to the practices Nikon had embraced and enforced. The wider Greek world would no longer tolerate Russian peculiarities; these were seen, not as offences against the Greek way, but as violations of the universal
Church's worship by one faction of one country's Church. The tsar and his government swung behind the council's decree: from now on, Russian believers would have to worship in the same way as global Orthodoxy, on pain of having the state against them—not at Nikon's bidding, but in the name of the Church universal. The tsar might not in theory have spiritual authority over the Church, but he would use the state's power to enforce the views of what was believed by the majority to be genuine Orthodoxy..
The council was a devastating blow to Old Believers. They had hoped for vindication, or at least toleration, from the council. Instead they found themselves condemned both by the council and by the tsar's government.
From this point onwards, their conflict was unavoidably with the Russian state as much as it was with the reformed Russian Church. The leading spokesmen of the old ways, present at the council (including Avvakum),
were punished for their defiance—deposed from the priesthood and banished to an underground prison on the arctic coast (two also had their tongues cut out for insulting the tsar). It was here that Avvakum wrote his life story, The Life of Archpriest Avvakum by Himself, the first Russian autobiography; it has been generally regarded as a masterpiece of Russian religious literature. It is written, not in literary Russian, but in the down-toearth language spoken by ordinary people: in that respect, a Russian
Pilgrim's Progress. It also unveils Avvakum's strong, vivid, occasionally crude personality, in all its fascinating blend of gritty humanity and ardent piety—a great soul in a narrow mind, as it has been evocatively said.
From their arctic prison, Avvakum and his fellow captives smuggled out exhortations to their followers in Moscow and elsewhere, fanning the flames of opposition to the Greek reforms. As the government became increasingly appalled at the extent and depth of the resistance (see below), the treatment the prisoners received became steadily harsher, and Avvakum himself was at length executed in April 1682 (burnt at the stake), Old
Belief's most renowned martyr.
5. Persecution: Antichrist has come!
Attitudes were now hardened on both sides beyond the possibility of reconciliation. For the rest of the century, Russia was troubled by popular uprisings of Old Believers against a government they now perceived as utterly corrupt and apostate. These outbreaks were not entirely religious in motive; other more earthly grievances, local in nature, were often mingled with the opposition to the new forms of worship. Sometimes an Old
Believer uprising would get attached to a separate rebellion, most notably when Old Believers joined forces with a mutinous army unit in Moscow in 1682; the resulting clash with government forces brought terrible bloodshed as the rebellion was crushed. The most spectacular defiance of the government, however, occurred at the Solovetsky monastery, which rejected the new worship, and heroically endured an eight year siege by government troops between 1668 and 1676. When Solovetsky finally fell, the troops showed no mercy, slaughtering all those left alive after the ordeal. But such butchery was counter-productive for the government; the Solovetsky dead were hailed as martyrs by other Old Believers, inspiring them to resist with even greater resolve.
In December 1684, the government—now in the hands of Princess Sophia Alekseyevna (1682–9), acting as regent for her two young brothers,
Peter and Ivan—lost whatever little patience it had left for the obstinate dissenters. It decreed the death penalty for all Old Believers (unless they renounced their creed), and stiff punishments for anyone who gave them shelter. Old Believers responded with an overpowering sense that they were living in the end times, and that Russia had been taken over by the Antichrist. Russian Orthodox piety had always had a strong view of God's historical purposes being played out in "Holy Russia"; this now became a white-hot conviction in the Old Believers that they were taking part in the final conflict between light and darkness, Christ and Satan.
A great number of Old Believers fled as far as they could from all signs of the government's unholy presence, into the remote, unpopulated areas of Russia's vast landscape. There they created their own self-sufficient communities, some of which flourished and survived into the 20th century to face the different horrors of the Russian Revolution. In these isolated regions, Old Belief often became the dominant faith. Others fled Russia altogether. Still others, rather than flee, went on the offensive, attacking and
capturing monasteries and villages. When government troops appeared to reclaim the monastery or village, the Old Believers chose collective suicide rather than surrender, burning themselves to death. Between 1672 and 1691, there were some 37 of these mass suicides by burning, resulting in the deaths of over 20,000 Old Believers, according to some estimates.
Meanwhile the Old Believers became divided among themselves into two parties, the Popovtsy ("Priestists") and the Bezpopovtsy ("Priestless"). The Priestists were closer in spirit to the official Orthodoxy that now persecuted them; they were simply an alternative Orthodoxy, with their own clergy and sacraments. The Priestless were more radical. They held that a universal apostasy, headed by Antichrist, had corrupted the entire Church.
Consequently there was no true Church on earth any longer: no clergy, no sacraments (except baptism—the term "sacrament" was applied more widely in Orthodoxy than merely to baptism and eucharist). The only means of communion left between God and believers was therefore prayer. The Priestless divided into many smaller groups with their own distinctives.
The Old Believer schism in Russian Orthodoxy proved enduring.
Statistics are almost impossible to obtain or calculate, but one estimate is that Old Believers may have comprised 10% of the Russian population before the Revolution of 1917. The Priestist Old Believers survive today, with anything between one and ten million adherents worldwide (figures vary hugely depending on source).