On Line Library of the Church of Greece

Georges Florovsky

Ways of Russian Theology

 
1. The Time of Troubles [Smutnoe Vremia] refers to that period of internal strife and foreign intervention which resulted in utter chaos in Russia in the early 17th century.

The Russian State had been formed by the alliance of various appanage principalities under one Grand Prince. Thus the Russian princely aristocracy had deep rooted traditions of independence and autonomy and tended to think of themselves more as servitors by contract than subjects of  the tsar. The l6th century, however, had witnessed a shift in the bases of political power away from the aristocratic boyars and toward a service gentry whose position was dependent upon the favor of the tsar. In other words, all power was gradually consolidated in the tsar's hands. But although this development could be considered part of a natural socio-economic process, it was cruelly accelerated by Ivan the Terrible and his oprichnina. Tied to this was the gradual enserfment of the peasantry: military and economic necessities demanded that the  peasants' traditional freedom of movement between estates be drastically curtailed.

Thus when Ivan died in 1584 he left his feeble-minded son Fedor a reahn severely weakened by terror and with two significant social groups, the boyars and the peasantry, seething with resentment toward the throne. The actual direction of state affairs passed into the hands of Boris Godunov, a capable administrator who was able to bring some measure of economic revival to Russia, but as Fedor had no heir it was clear that the Rurik dynasty was coming to an end and the door was open for a struggle over the throne. Boris  himself became tsar upon Fedor's death in 1598 and temporarily secured his position by exiling his opponents. Then a famine from 1601 to 1603 brought economic devastation to the realm and the stage was set for the "Troubles" proper to begin.

In 1604 a pretender to the throne arose claiming to be Ivan's son Dimitrii, who had died in 1591. With the tacit support of the Polish crown he invaded Muscovy with a small army supplied by a few adventuristic Polish nobles. His own forces were not very significant, but the beleaguered and destitute peasants flocked to support him, as did the Cossacks. Still Boris was able to keep them at bay, but when he died in 1605 the boyars revolted against his son and successor Fedor Godunov and proclaimed their allegiance to the false Dimitrii, who entered Moscow and was enthroned as tsar. The Muscovite boyars never  intended to serve this dissolute and obvious fraud, and soon stirred a popular uprising against him in which the false Dimitrii was murdered. Then in June of  1606 the leading boyar, Vasilii Shuiskii became tsar. Vasilii, however, knew no peace, for peasant revolts began immediately and a second pretender appeared in 1608, also supported by Polish nobles. The final blow came in 1610 when King Sigismund III of Poland entered the conflict openly and in August of that year his troops captured Moscow.

At this point the tide began to turn as a spirit of national resistance to Polish domination gradually united the various Russian social strata. Moscow was recaptured in 1612, and the following year Mikhail Romanov was  elected tsar by a zemskii sobor [assembly of the land]: This event traditionally marks the end of the Time of Troubles, but the wounds suffered by Russia during this period were not to be easily healed, and restoration of order and reconstruction were the dominant themes at all levels of Russian society for many years to come.

See S.F. Platonov, The Time of Troubles, translated by John T. Alexander, (University Press of Kansas, 1970).

2. Ioann Neronov (1591-1670) was a priest in the Nizhnii-Novgorod region whose zeal in combatting drunkenness and moral laxity was typical of the early "reformers," as was his outspokenness. In 1632 he ran afoul of Tsar Mikhail's government by criticizing it for bringing foreign advisors into Muscovy and preparing an invasion of Poland one year before the expiration of a peace treaty signed in 1613. However, after the accession of Aleksei Mikhailovich in 1645 he was appointed archpriest of the Kazanskii Cathedral in Moscow and was one of the senior members of the circle of "zealots" around Archpriest Stefan  Vonifat'ev (see below). He again fell out of favor when he opposed the importing of Kievan scholars in 1650 and in 1653 he was exiled for opposition to Nikon's reforms and harsh, personal attacks on the patriarch. In 1655 he returned to Moscow disguised as a monk and two years later he formally accepted the reforms and was made archimandrite in the Pereiaslavskii monastery. Neronov's spirit of compromise was extremely rare among the Old Believers.

3. Archpriest Awakum was the most gifted of the early leaders of the schism and exercised a signficant spiritual intluence over the Old Believers throughout thirty years of persecution for his beliefs and for many years after his death in 1682. A generation removed from Neronov (he was born c.1620) he was also a priest in the Nizhnii-Novgorod region who came to Moscow and joined Vonifat'ev's circle in the 1640's. When Neronov was exiled in 1653 for opposing Nikon's reforms Awakum authored a petition on his behalf and was also exiled to Siberia. In 1664 he was brought back to Moscow through the interventions of the boyars, who hoped his opposition to Nikon would help them in their own struggle against the patriarch. Awakum, however, remained so intransigent on the question of the reforms that he was again arrested and at a council in 1666 (see below, note 35) defrocked and exiled to an underground cell in Pustozersk. He lived there, with two other leaders of the schism, for sixteen years, during which time his cell served as a center for Old Believer leadership and inspiration. In 1682 he was burned at the stake. While he was in exile Awakum wrote his famous Life of Archpriest Avvakum by Himself, a masterpiece of early Russian literature, a primary source for the history of the schism, and also, as Awakum served as chaplain to Pashkov's Siberian expedition in 1655, an important geographical and cultural source for the study of l7th century Russia in general. It is reprinted  in Volume II of The Collected Works of George P. Fedotov.

4. Sergei Mikhailovich Solov'ev (1820-1879) was a Russian historian and professor and rector of the University of Moscow. His main work is the monumental History of Russia from Ancient Times [Istoriia Rossii c drevneishikh vremen] (29 vols., Moscow, 1851-1879).

5. A Muscovite name for Ukrainians, used especially in the 16th and 17th centuries.

6. The year 1620 witnessed two councils on rebaptism. At the first, in Moscow in October, Latin "heresies" were condemned and it was decided to rebaptize Roman Catholics. This council was reconvened in December, and directed that Ukrainians and West Russians who were not baptized by triple immersion be rebaptized while those baptized by Uniate priests undergo a week's fast and formally abjure the Catholic faith. These rules were inserted in the 1639 Trebnik and were the law until 1667.

7. See above, chapter II, p. 60.

8. See above, chapter II, p. 59.

9. Epifanii Slavinetskii (d. 1676) was a learned monk from Kiev who came to Moscow in 1649 for translation work and later become one of Nikon's chief assistants in his service book corrections. Epifanii also was the leader of the Bible translation project begun in 1674. His works are discussed below, pp. 105-108.

10. Dionisii (1570-1633) was a noted figure in his time. Born David Fedorovich Zobninovskii, he was a priest in the village of Rzhev. After the death of his wife he became a monk at the Bogoroditskii Monastery in Starits and took the name Dionisii. In 1605 he was made archimandrite of that monastery, and began to make frequent trips to Moscow on monastery business.  There he became friends with Patriarch Germogen and worked closely with him trying to maintain order in the church during the Time of Troubles. In early 1610 Dionisii was made archimandrite of the Holy Trinity Monastery. This was shortly after the end of a sixteen month siege by the Polish invaders, who soon after captured Moscow. Although the monastery itself never fell to the Poles, it was left devastated and filled with sickness, famine and thousands of corpses. Dionisii's chief task was to  reorganize and revitalize the monastery, but he also played a heroic role in Russia's liberation. Together with his kelar' Avraamii Palitsyn, he wrote numerous epistles urging the divided factions of Russian society to unite against the foreign invaders, and these letters seem to have influenced the military leaders of the forces which finally drove out the Poles. In the period after the Time of Troubles, while Patriarch Filaret was bringing order to the administrative affairs of the church, Dionisii stood at the center of a circle concerned with spiritual rejuvenation. Book printing and correction, using Greek texts, and a concern for  morality and spirituality were the main objects of their program. Thus Dionisii's activity anticipated that of .the next generation of reformers, the "zealots" (see below).

11. Loggin was the conductor of the Holy Trinity Monastery choir who edited the Typikon for a 1610 publication. Filaret, his  ecclesiarch, also collaborated on it. Both doubtless were resentful of Dionisii's changes.

12. Metropolitan Iona (Arkhangel'skii, d. 1621) was formerly the head of the Trinity-Danilov Monastery in Pereiaslavl. In 1613 he became metropolitan of Krutitsk (a vicar of the Patriarch of Moscow) and was entrusted with the management of patriarchal affairs until the return from Polish captivity of Filaret (see below). He himself was later suspended for receiving two Latin converts without rebaptizing them.

13. Antonii Podol'skii was a West Russian monk who lived in Moscow during  the early part of the l7th century. He is known  also as the author of another treatise, Slovo o tsarstve nebesnom, Bogom darovannon i vechnom, i o slave sviatikh, and as the compiler of a chronograph, which was never published.

14. Fedor Nikitich Romanov (d. 1633), a first cousin of Tsar Fedor Ivanovich, was a popular and influential boyar who was one of three candidates for the Russian throne in 1598, when Boris Godunov was elected. Soon after he was exiled for plotting against Boris (the rumors of Boris Godunov's involvement in Tsarevich Dimitrii's death in 1591 apparently were first spread by the Romanov family) and forced to become a monk. This was political death, for once tonsured it was forever impossible to become tsar. Fedor, now Filaret, then began a new career in the Church. The first pretender returned him to Moscow in 1606 and had him consecrated Metropolitan of Riazan, and the second pretender had him elected Patriarch in 1608, although he was not formally installed at this time. Filaret's position was still hardly secure in that era of intrigue and broken fortunes, and in 1611 he was deported to Poland by King Sigismund III along with many other high ranking Russian nobles. He remained there for eight years. In 1613 Filaret's thirteen year old son Mikhail was elected the new tsar by a zemskii sobor [assembly of the land]. From that time onward there was no question as to who the next patriarch would be. An exchange of prisoners with Poland was arranged in 1618, and on June 14, 1619 Filaret entered Moscow in great solemnity and splendor with his son Tsar Mikhail falling on his knees to greet him. Ten days later he was enthroned as patriarch by Patriatch Theophanes of Jerusalem. Patriarch Filaret was wise with experience, forceful and self-assured. Tsar Mikhail, in contrast was weak-minded and timid and easily  gave in to his father's will. Thus Filaret practically ruled the Russian state as well as the Church and received the title Velikii Gosudar' [Great Sovereign] , previously reserved only for the tsars. (Patriarch Nikon also later claimed this title). In the Church Filaret's power was supreme, and according to the provisions of a special charter from his son the Church was virtually Filaret's own eparchy, a state within a state. Filaret's yeats of exile had made him extremely suspicious of foreigners, and he insisted on rebaptism as a condition of entry into the Russian Orthodox Church, even of Kievans. Although not very spiritual, Filaret proved a strong and capable administrator, and even began a project to establish a school for the clergy in Moscow, but his death in 1633 brought an erid to his plans.

15. Patriarch Theophanes of Jerusalem came to Moscow in April of 1619 and consecrated Filaret patriarch in June of that year. On his return trip he ordained the Ukrainian hierarchy (see above, chapter II, note 117). At the request of Patriarch Filaret he obtained the opinions of the other eastern patriarchs on the phrase "and with fire," and upon receiving their decision Filaret ordered the words deleted from the service books.

15a. Tsar Aleksei (d. 1676), the only son of the first Romanov Tsar Mikhail, ascended the throne on his father's death in 1645 at the age of 16. With the help of several competent advisors, during his thirty year reign he strengthened the internal state of Russia and the power of the tsar with the Law Code of 1649 (see note 27) and expanded his dominions by annexing the Ukraine east of the Dnieper River (including Kiev) and defending his acquisitions through a drawn-out war with Poland. He is  perhaps best known, however, for the affair of Patriarch Nikon and the Churoh schism which occurred during his reign. Aleksei was a pious and kind man who gave richly to the poor and homeless, and in the early part of his reign he warmly supported the activity of the "Zealots," especially that of his close personal friend Nikon. Nikon's abrasive personality and court intrigues then drew the two apart, and drew Aleksei away from the reformers' spiritual activities, until after 1667 many disciples of the Zealots who turned Old Believers called Aleksei the "Antichrist."

16. Stefan Vonifat'ev had been in charge of Tsar Aleksei's religious upbringing and was in a large degree responsible for his personal piety, as well as the numerous decrees involving religious observances put out in the early part of his reign. Stefan himself was a candidate for the patriarchal throne in 1652 but he refused out of humility. The circle of "zealots" first became divided when the Kievan scholars were brought to Moscow in 1650, with the future schismatics Neronov and Awakum distrustful of their learning and variant liturgical practices. The circle split for good after Nikon's reforms. Vonifat'ev stayed with the official church, but also remained sympathetic to the pious zeal of the Old Believers. He himself was revered by both sides and even Awakum, who rarely had a good word to say about anyone, especially those in the Nikonian Church, called  Vonifat'ev" a wise and virtuous man, always having a word of pious instruction in his mouth. " Stefan Vonifat'ev died in 1656.

17. Fedor Mikhailovich Rtishchev (1625-1673) was a pious nobleman whose many acts of charity to victims of poverty, war and famine brought him to the attention of Tsar Aleksei and thence to his court. Rtishchev used his position and the tsar's patronage to build the Holy Transfiguration Monastery (no longer in existence) on his own land outside of Moscow and a hostel for the poor in Moscow itself. He also gave material support to the Kievan monks who came to Muscovy and encouraged their translation activity.

18. See, for example, the neo-Hellenic motifs in l7th century Muscovite iconography, especially in the works of Simon Ushakov. [Author's note]. Ushakov (1626-1686) is the best known Russian iconographer of the second half of the l7th century.

19. See above, note 9.

20. Arsenii Satanovskii was educated at the Kiev Academy and then was a hieromonk at the Kiev Brotherhood Monastery. He was called to Moscow along with Epifanii Slavinetskii for work on Greek texts, but Arsenii in fact did not know Greek (see N. Kapterev, Protivniki Patriarkha Nikona, [Moscow, 1887], p. 21.) However, he did produce translations of several Latin theological texts.

21. Damaskin Ptitskii was another scholarly hieromonk from the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev. In Moscow he worked for a time at the Moscow Printing Office and at the Chudov Monastery with Epifanii Slavinetskii, but exactly what he produced in unknown, as are any subsequent details of his life.

22. See above, chapter II, note 101.

23. On Mogila's Trebnik see pp. 71-72. The fifty-first chapter dealt with the sacrament of marriage and the degrees of kinship which made marriage impossible. This chapter was borrowed entirely from the Roman Ritual of Pope Paul V. The Kormchaia kntga is a Slavic translation of the Byzantine Nomocanon, a collection of apostolic canons, the canons of the ecumenical councils, and in general the civil and ecclesiastical laws of the Byzantine Empire. It was known in manuscript form in Russia since the 11th century, but its publication in 1650 was its first printing in any language.

24. The Kirillova kniga is a collection of various polemical tracts designed to serve as a compendium of the Orthodox faith  during the religious debates of 1644 (see note 103). Its title comes from the Sermon of St. Cyril of Jerusalem on the Antichrist, which opens the book.

25. The Kniga o vere, compiled by the Kievan monk Nathaniel, contained polemics against Lutherans, Uniates and Jews. It was published in Moscow in 1648.

26. Cf. the Kievan, or "Polish" singers in the Monastery of St. Andrew who were later employed by Nikon. In general, the Monastery was populated by Ukrainian monks. [Author's note].

27. The Ulozhenie [Code of Laws] of 1649, or the Sobornoe Ulozhenie, was the product of a Zemskii sobor held in  1648-1649 to codify the laws and bring order to the government of the Russian realm. The law code was the first since the Sudebnik of 1550 and remained the basic law of Russia until 1832. More important, however, was the Ulozhenie's reorganization of the state. At that time the government was paralyzed by confusion, as was apparent to all from Russia's failure to take the city of Azov (recently captured by the Cossacks and offered to the tsar) and recent riots in Moscow. There was no delineation of the rights and responsibilities of the various classes of people and little coordination of the several government departments that issued laws in their own name. Furthermore, the patriarch was head of a realm virtually independent of the secular authorities. The Ulozhenie contained 25 chapters, dealing with state organization, judicial procedure, property, classes of persons, and a criminal statute. As regards the Church, the Ulozhenie was the first code to contain legislative norms for the Church at all, bringing ecclesiastics under the jurisdiction of lay courts, and ordering the creation of the Monastyrskii Prikaz to oversee legal claims against the Church and Church administration. It was also with this code that the enserfment of the Russian peasantry became complete.

28. After the visit of Patriarch Paisios of Jerusalem to Moscow in 1649 (see below), in which he discussed the many differences between the Greek and Russian rites with Tsar Aleksei and Patriarch Iosif, they decided to send someone to the East to study the Greek practices. This commission was entrusted to Arsenii Sukhanov, hieromonk and kelar' at the Holy  Trinity monastery. Arsenii travelled with Paisios to Iasi, then went to Mt. Athos and returned to Russia in December of 1650. He embarked on a second trip in 1651 to Constantinople; Greece, Egypt and Jerusalem, returning to Moscow with over 700 Greek manuscripts in June of 1653. In his accounts of his travels, especially Preniia o vere (a debate on the faith with an Athonite starets), Arsenii expresses much the same views on the Greek and Russian rituals that the opponents of Nikon's reforms held, and his works gained great popularity among the Old Believers. Arsenii died in 1668.

29. Arsenii came to Russia in 1649 with Patriarch Paisios, and seeing the need in Muscovy for educated clerics decided to stay there and seek his fortune. There are some indications that he opened a school for youths in 1649, but most likely this was in 1653. After Patriarch Paisios left Moscow he wrote to Tsar Aleksei denouncing Arsenii for his past and Arsenii was sent to the Solovetskii Monastery on the White Sea for penance. But when Nikon became patriarch in 1652 Arsenii was allowed to return to Moscow and installed in the Chudov Monastery, where he opened his school, and was put to work on Nikon's book corrections.

30. Patriarch Paisios of Jerusalem came to Moscow in January of 1649 seeking alms for his church. While there he spoke at length with Tsar Aleksei and Nikon, pointing out the differences between the Greek and Russian rites and calling on the tsar to be another Moses and deliver his fellow Orthodox Christians from the Turkish yoke. His prestige as patriarch of an ancient see and his flattery of the tsar seem to have greatly impressed both Aleksei and Nikon and inspired them with the "ecumenical" goal of aligning the Russian ritual more closely to the Greek.

31. See above, chapter II, note 177.

32. Makarios was patriarch of Antioch from 1647 until his death in 1672. During his patriarchate he made two trips to Russia, mainly for alms to pay the debts of his see. The first journey brought him to Moscow in 1655, and later he was present at the Council of 1666-67 (see below). He is chiefly known in history, however, for the diaries of his travels published by his son, Archdeacon Paul of Aleppo. There is an English translation of this work: The Travels of Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch, 2 vol, translated by F.C. Belfour (New York,  1969).

33. Orthodox Sunday is the first Sunday of Great Lent, on which a special service is held commemorating the victory over the iconoclasts in 843 and denouncing all heresies. It was on this Sunday in 1655 that Nikon fulminated against the "Frankish" and Polish icons.

34. The Euchologion, or "blessing book," is a service book that contains all the rites for the sacraments of the Church as well as other ceremonies for special occasions.

35. This council was held in April of 1666 and was composed solely of Russian bishops. Its purpose was to condemn the Old Believer movement, but for their opposition to the Church authorities, not for their beliefs as such. It was at this council that Awakum was defrocked and sent into exile for the second time.

36. The Council of 1666-67 was the most splendid and momentous in Russian Church history up to that time. Convoked by Tsar Aleksei in the manner of the ancient Byzantine emperors, it was presided over by two patriarchs, Paisios of Alexandria and Makarios of Antioch. At the first session, held in December of 1666, Nikon was formally tried for, among other things, desertion of his see and disrespect for the tsar, deposed to the rank of a simple monk, and exiled to the Ferapontov Monastery in Beloozero. At a second session in April of 1667 those who refused to accept the new service books were anathematized, but this time not for disciplinary reasons; the traditional pre-Nikonian Russian ritual itself was condemned (see below).

37. Simeon of Polotsk (1629-1680), poet, preacher and erudite, came to Moscow in 1663 and quickly rose high in court service. He was a leading proponent of western ideas and customs and served as a tutor for the tsar's children. See below, pp. 106-108.

38. Dionysios lived in Moscow from 1655 to 1669. From 1663 he was the chief editor of the Moscow Printing Office.

39. The Stoglav (100 chapters) council was held in 1551 under Metropolitan Makarii of Moscow (1542-1563). It climaxed a period of extreme nationalist feeling, when Ivan IV was crowned "tsar" (or emperor) and forty-five Russian saints were canonized. At the council the Russian Orthodox Church was proclaimed superior to all other Eastern Churches. See chapter I, pp. 26-28.

40. Paisios Ligarides (1609-1678) was a brilliant but deceptive scholar and an absolutely shameless opportunist. Educated at Rome and ordained a Uniate prelate, he travelled throughout the Orthodox East diving into any situation where an opportunity for riches presented itself, and held various positions in the Orthodox Crhurch (such as metropolitan of Gaza) while receiving regular missionary stipends from Rome. He played a major role in the history of the Russian Church of this time, first ingratiating himself with Nikon and then becoming the chief spokesman for his opponents and the orchestrator of the Council of 1666-1667. See below, p. 108.

41. Iurii Samarin (1819-1876) was a Russian statesman and Slavophile ideologue. Although he was not a professional scholar, he is known in the field of historiography for his brilliant master's thesis at the University of Moscow, in which he conterposed the Protestant and Catholic directions of Russian theological thought of the early l8th century as personified in Feofari  Prokopovich and Stefan Iavorskii.

42. Nikon's Razorenie or Vozrazhenie was written in 1664 in response to Ligarides' answers to the "Questions of Streshnev" (see note 88). In it Nikon refuted the accusations brought against him point by point and gave a full exposition of his ideas regarding the relationship of Church and state. It is printed in English translation in William Paliner, The Patriarch and the Tsar (London, 1871-1876), volume I.

43. Erastianism is the doctrine that the state is superior to the Church in all matters, even the purely ecclesiastical. It is named for the Swiss physician and theologian Thomas Erastus (1524-1583), who, however, did not hold such views. Erastus wrote a widely read tract in which he argued that the Church does not have the power to excommunicate, and that all crimes should be punished by the civil authorities. The term "Erastianism" first came into use in religious debates in England in 1643, where it was used as a term of abuse for those who favored state control over the Church.

44. Nikolai Ivanovich Kostomarov (1817-1885) was a poet, literary critic, historian and Ukrainian nationalist. He wrote valuable studies of Bogdan Khmelnitskii and Stenka Razin, as well as his major work, Russkaia istoriia v zhizneopisaniiakh ee glavneishikh deiatelei (3 volumes, Petrograd, 1915).

45. The "blue ilower" in Russian literature is a symbol of purity and constancy, often in a naive sense.

46. The Invisible City of Kitezh, or the "shining city of Kitezh," is a city said to have descended to the bottom of a lake east of the Volga when the Mongols fist invaded Russia. It served as a symbol of pure Orthodoxy retreating from a corrupt world, and true believers were supposed to be able to hear the ringing of its church bells from the shores of the lake.

47. Vasilii Vasil'evich Rozanov (1856-1919) was a Russian writer known for his unorthodox religious views and Slavophile tendencies. He will be discussed in the second volume of Ways of Russian Theology.

48. The Typikon [Book of Norms] is a book containing regulations for the times and performance of the Orthodox worship services and general regulations for the entire life of the monastic community from which it came.

49. Cf. Arsenii Sukhanov's remarks in his official "travel report" [Stateinoi spisok] concerning his quarrel with the Greeks. [Author's note.]

50. Fedor the Deacon, not later than 1669. [Author's note]. Fedor Ivanov was a deacon in the Annunciatipn Cathedral in Moscow. He was arrested in 1665 and defrocked and exiled at the Council of 1666. Although he repented once, in 1668 he was again arrested and sent to join Awakum in exile in Pustozersk. There he wrote a treatise on the Old Belief, "Reply of the Orthodox defenders of religion concerning the Greed and other dogmas." In 1682 he was burned at the stake along with Avvakum.

51. An anonymous epistle sent to the Old Believer community in Tiumen' in Siberia. [Author's note].

52. The priestless sects developed mostly in the sparsely populated regions of North Russia, where a parish often covered thousands of square miles and most people saw a priest perhaps once a year at best. These people conducted reader services in village chapels and thus were accustomed to living without priests. In the central regions of Russia, on the other hand, regular Church life was more firmly established and here the priestist groups emerged,  divided among themselves over how to accept the "fugitive priests" coming over from the official Church. The priestists evolved into two main groups: those who returned to the Russian Orthodox Church as edinovertsy (see chapter IV, note  97), and the descendants of the Bela Krynitsa community in Austria-Hungary, who obtained a retired Greek bishop in 1846 and instituted their own hierarchy.

53. Pelagias was a lay teacher in Rome at the end of the 4th centry. What he actually taught is not clear since his writings have not  survived, but according to Augustine, who wrote several tracts against his teachings, he stressed the freedom of the will and the goodness of human nature to the point where man is saved by his own moral efforts, apart from the grace of God. This doctrine severely clashed with the Augustinian and Roman Catholic theology of baptism, original sin and divine grace.

54. The quote is from Ivan Filippov (1655-1744), an intelligent and erudite Old Believer who held several administrative posts in the Vyg community and was its leader from 1740 until his death. He is best known for his History of the Vyg Community, [Istoril Vygovskoi pustyni], a reasoned and scientific work which is a chief source for the study of the early history of the schism. See E.V. Barsov, "Ivan Filippov, Vygovskii Istorik i nastoiatel'," in Pamiatnaia Knizhka Olonetskogo Gubernii na 1867god, 2, 54-100.

55. Andrei Denisov was born in a village of the Povonets region in 1674. He seems to have been influenced quite early by the wandering Old Believer preachers who were common in the outlying regions of Russia, for in 1691, still a teenager, he built his own hermitage in the Vyg river  valley. When others followed him into the wilderness he organized a community (the  Vygovskaia pustyn') which his father and brother Semen also joined. Until his death in 1730 Andrei Denisov courageously led this community through many trials, famine and hardships, and proved himself an able theologian in debates with the official Church authorities and an able diplomat in his dealings with the government. On the Denisov's and the Vyg community in general,  see R. Crummey The OId Believers and the World of Antichrist, the Vyg  community and the Russian state, 1694-1855 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1970).

56. Cf. his. "Lament" entitled On the Bride of Chrisr [O neveste Kristovoi], that is, the Church in exile and humiliation. [Author's note].

57. Ramon Lull (1232-1316) was a mystic, philosopher and missionary from the island of Majorca. He spent most of his life battling the Islamic faith on his native island and also compiled an esoteric and unstructured philosophy whereby he attempted to unify all forms of knowledge into one language, faith and belief. He was also an early and ardent defender of the doctrine of the immaculate conception. His principle works are Ars magna (1274), Arbor scientiae (1296) and Ars generalis ultima (1308).

58. This was the great literary enterprise of Metropolitan Makarii (c. 1482- 1564). In it he attempted to gather all material available for reading in Russia in one symposium, divided into readings for every day of the year. The daily readings consisted of the lives of the saints commemorated on that day and excerpts from their works, if any. At the end of every month other readings on religious and moral topics were added. The volumes for five months were published in St. Petersburg by the Russian Archeographic Commission (1868-1917) and the rest remain in manuscript.

59. On St. Dimitrii of Rostov, see chapter II, pp. 82-83.

60. Dometian was an old friend of Awakum and an early opponent of the reforms. He was arrested and brought to Moscow in 1665, then exiled to Pustozersk in Siberia the following year. In 1670 he returned to Tiumen' and founded a hermitage where he conducted services for his fellow Old Believers. An expedition was sent by the government to disband this hermitage in early 1679, but Dometian and his followers burned themselves rather than be captured by the agents of the antichrist.

61. Evfrosin was a disciple of the venerable Old Believer abbot Dosifei. His Otrazitel'noe pisanie o novoizobretonnom puti samoubiistvennykh smerti [Refutation of the Newly Invented System of Suicides] is an important source for the study of the Schism in the 1680's.

62. Vavila was one of the more notorious of the Kapitons in the North Volga region near Kazan'. He was captured and put to the flames by the authorities in 1666.

63. The Vinograd Rossiiskii, produced by Semen Denisov, was a martyrology of early Old Believer leaders and a devotional account of the Solovetskii Monastery's revolt against the new Nikonian service books. The Solovetskii uprising was put down with extreme force in 1674.

64. The Donatist schism occurred in the early fourth century in North Africa and involved two main problems: whether those Christians who succumbed to persecution could repent and re-enter the Church, and whether the validity of a sacrament was dependent on the worthiness of the minister. In the year 312 a certain archdeacon Caecilian was consecrated to the see of Carthage. A local groups of rigorists refused to recognize him on the grounds that one of the bishops who consecrated him had apostasized during the Diocletian persecution, and elected their own hierarch. This bishop was then succeeded by Donatus, a man of great leadership abilities. Thus two parallel hierarchies came into existence in North Africa. The Donatist groups became extremely severe and exclusive in outlook, claiming not only that former apostates could never again be Christians but also that anyone in communion with them, i.e., the entire Catholic Church, was outside of the body of Christ. This schism sapped all the strength out of the once great church of Roman Africa, and with the invasion of the Vandals (429) it was virtually destroyed.

65."Agerest enim mundus, non Africa - messis finis saeculi, non tempus Donati," Adv. litt. Petiliani, III, 2, par. 3. [Author's note] .

66. Sergei Fedorovich Platonov (1860-1933) was an eminent Russian historian and founder of the "Petersburg" school of Russian historiography. His main work is his Lectures on Russian History (first published in St. Petersburg in 1899) and he also wrote authoritative studies on Boris Godunov and the Time of Troubles.

67. For example, see the treatise addressed to Simon Ushakov by the painter Iosif Vladimirov. [Author's note]. Iosif Vladimirov, "Poslanie nekoego izugrafa Iosifa k tsarevu izugrafu i mudreishemu zhivopistsu Simonu Fedorovichu," in V.N. Lazarev, ed., Drevnerusskoe iskusstvo XVII veka, (Moscow, 1964), 24-61.

68. Johann Piscator (N.J. Visscher, d. 1625) was a Dutch Protestant Biblical commentator who was quite popular in his day. His illustrated German translation of the Bible (which is remarkable because it is not based on Luther's) was published in Holland in 1650.

69. See note 17 in this chapter.

70. "New Jerusalem" was the name given by Nikon to the Voskresenski (Resurrection) monastery, where he built a church according to Arsenii Sukhanov's description of the cathedral in Jerusalem. Semen Streshnev (see note 88) accused Nikon of disgracing the name of the Holy City by renaming this monastery. Cf. N. Gibbenet, Istoricheskoe issledovanie dela Patriarkha Nikona (St.Petersburg, 1881-1884), H, 518-550.

71. Marcin Mielczewski (d. 1651) was a member of the Rorantist chapel in Cracow and later became a member of the court chapel. In 1653 he was appointed composer to King Wladystaw IV. Mielczewski is often considered the most important Polish composer of the l7th century. The great bulk of his surviving works consists of a capella masses and psalm-motets.

72. Apparently in Russia he directed the choir belonging to G.D. Stroganov. See his Crammatika peniia musikiiskago. The Polish original was adapted and reworked for the Russian edition by the deacon I.T. Korenev. [Author's note]. The Polish edition of Diletskii's book, Grammatyka muzyczna, was published in Vilna in 1675. The first Russian edition appeared two years later (Smolensk, 1677); in Moscow a revised version was brought out. See Iurii Keldysh, Russkaia muzyka XVII veka, (Moscow, 1965), 55-64.

73. Cf. the works of the government secretary V.P. Titov. His kanty and psalmy were most often set to the words of Simeon of Polotsk and others. [Author's note]. During the l7th century, a special religious chant known as the kant was performed by Polish and Ukrainian clergy and monks. The psalm was a special form of chant related to the kant. For a discussion of Vasilii Polikarpovich Titov see Gerald R. Seeman, The History of Russian Music, (New York, 1967), I, 51-52.

74. Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) was a physician whose detailed anatomical descriptions in such works as De humani corporis fabrica libri septem (1543) greatly advanced the science of biology.

75. Cf. his dispute with Simeon of Polotsk. [Author's note].

76. Fedor Polikarpov was a student of the Likhud brothers at the Slavonic-Greek- Latin school in Moscow and later a teacher there. He also worked at the Moscow Printing Office, and was named its director in 1709. Considered a specialist in theology and Church history, many contemporary writers came to him for advice and comments, including St. Dimitrii of Rostov. Polikarpov published his own Slavonic Grammar and a history of Rossia in the l6th and l7th centuries, both commissioned by Peter the Great.

77. See chapter II, note 195.

78. Johannes Faber of Leutkirch (1478-1541). The full title of Faber's work is Opus adversus nova quaedam dogmata Gutheri (Malleus in haeresin Gutheranam].

79. Juan de Cartagena (d. 1617) was a famous preacher and head of the Franciscan order in Spain. Disputationes in universa christianae religionis arcana was published in Rome in 1609.

80. Jean Gerson (1361-1429), chancellor of the University of Paris and a renowned writer on theology and spirituality, was the author of De unitate ecclesiae (1391-1415). Baronius (1538-1607) was a cardinal and Church historian, known for his 12 volume Annales ecclesiastici (Rome, 1598-1607). Peter Besse (1568-1639) was known for Biblical commentaries. Salmeron (1515-1585) was one of the original companions of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order. His 16 volume commentary on the New Testament appeared in Madrid in 1597. Juan Perez de Pineda (1558-1637) was an editor of the Spanish Inquisition's Index librorum prohibitorum and was also known for Biblical commentaries and translations of the New Testament (1556) and the Psalms (1557).

81. Gerald Mercator (1512-1594) was the greatest cartographer of the sixteenth century. He devised a system of curved lines for latitude and longitude on maps, known as the "Mercator projection," and also was the first to use the term "atlas" for a book of maps. In addition he compiled a concordance of the Gospels and authored a commentary on St. Paul's epistle to the Romans. Henry More (1614-1687) was a British poet and religious philosopher. His chief theological works are The Immortality of the Soul (1659) and Enchiridion Metaphysicum (1671).

82. Vladimir Ivanovich Osten (1854-1911) was a professor of literature at the University of St. Petersburg. His article on Simeon Polotskii appears in Khristianskoe chtenie, 1907, no. III.

83. See chapter II, note 197.

84. Rafail Korsak, a former student at the College of St. Athanasius, succeeded Veliamin Rutskii (see chapter II, note 61) as Uniate metropolitan of Kiev and head of the Basilian order in 1637. He died in Rome in 1641.

85. See chapter II, note 144.

86. See chapter II, note 174.

87. Before the Great Council of 1666-1667 Ligarides had produced forged documents which named him the patriarch of Constantinople's legate for the council. Tsar Aleksei sent a special envoy to Dionysios to find out the truth of the matter, but because Ligarides' fall would be too harmful to Nikon's opponents and personally embarrassing to the tsar Dionysios' reply was kept secret and Ligarides continued to function.

88. Semen Lukianovich Streshnev was the brother of Tsar Aleksei's deceased mother. He had incurred the great wrath of Nikon by naming his dog after hirri and teaching it to mimic the way the patriarch gave the blessing. Nikon excommunicated him (according to the Iaw code of 1649 such an offense against the patriarch's honor was punishable as the patriarch saw fit.) Streshnev, with Ligarides' help, then composed thirty questions concerning the duties of a patriarch and Nikon's conduct in the light of these duties. These questions were published along with replies written by Ligarides sharply critical of Nikon. See N. Gibbenet, Istoricheskoi issledovanie dela Patriarkha Nikona, (St. Petersburg, 1881-1884), II, 518-550, for the text of the Questions.

89. Ivan Timofeev (d. c. 1630) was a government secretary [d' iak] under Boris Godunov. Sent to work in Novgorod in 1606, he remained there throughout the Swedish occupation of that city during the Time of Troubles. The ravages and devastation that he witnessed there inspired him to write his Annals [ Vremennik] , a rhetorical and ornate history of Russia during his turbulent era.

90. Cf. Lavrentii Zizani's Ketekhizis, and Kirill Trankvillion-Stravrovetskii's Uchitel noe Evangelie, the service manuals published in Vilna in 1617, the Lithos, the Trebnik and the short catechism of Peter Mogila, and especially the Vyklad of Fedor Safonovich. [Author's note] .

91. Sil'vestr Medvedev (1641-1691) was a minor government offcial from Kursk who came to Moscow and studied in Sixneon's school for government servitors. There he became a most zealous and devoted follower of Simeon's, and later took monastic vows and was put to work at the Moscow Printing Office. After Simeon's death in 1680 Medvedev inherited his court positions as well as the leadership of the Latin Party, and wrote numerous polemical tracts. He also was made head of the Zaikonospasskii Monastery in Moscow and opened a Latin school there, which he and his followers hoped to convert into an academy. (Their hopes were dashed when the Likhuds were brought to Moseow to found a Greek oriented academy.) Later Medvedev became involved in court intrigues and was executed for treason in 1691.

92. In 1682 Patriarch Ioakim wrote to Patriarch Dositheus of Jerusalem asking him to send to Russia some educated Orthodox scholars to open an academy and generally to offset the influence of the Latin party in Moscow. Dositheus responded by dispatching the brothers Joannicus (d. 1717) and Sophronius (d. 1730) Likhud. They arrived in Moscow in 1685 and soon after organized a Slavono-Greek-Latin academy at the Zaikonospasskii Monastery. Although their years in Moscow were turbulent, their influence on Russian higher education was enormous, for besides opening the first great Russian academy they  also had to compile all the textbooks for their courses and the first generation of properly called "scholars" in Russia were all educated by the Likhuds. They also worked in the Moscow Printing Office and organized another school in Novgorod. After the death of Joannicus Sophronius served as head of the Solotchinskii Monastery. The basic work on the Likhuds remains M. Smertsovskii, Brat'ia Likhudy: Opty izsledovaniia iz istorii tserkovnago prosveshcheniia tserkovnoi zhizni kontsa XVII i nachala XVIII vikov (St. Petersburg, 1899).

93. Ioakim (1620-1690), former archimandrite of the Chudov Monastery and metropolitan of Novgorod, was patriarch from 1674 until his death. Wholly conservative in outlook, he attempted to restore the powers of the Church, vhich had been eroding since Nikon's fall, and also strove against the Latin-Polish cultural influences flooding into Russia during Tsarevna Sofia's regency (see note 96).

94. The Likhud edition of the Zhitie prep. Varlaamiia Khutynskago contains a characteristic passage on the light of Tabor interpreted in a Palamite sense as the "uncreated emission of Divinity." [Author's note].

95. Cf. the monk Innokentii Monastyrskii's book. [Author's note] .

96. After the death of Fedor III in 1682 Peter the Great, a lad of ten, was immediately proclaimed tsar. However, within months a streltsy coup resulted in Peter's half-brother Ivan being named co-tsar and his sister Sofia being named regent for both. Thereafter Peter lived outside Moscow occupying himself with various puerile amusements. Meanwhile disaffection with Sofia was growing in many quarters, until in 1689 a gathering of the streltsy at Sofia's palace (supposedly for the purpose of murdering Peter and thus removing Sofia'schief potential rival for power) served as a pretext for a general revolt after which Sofia was shut up in a convent and the government came fully into Peter's hands. The "conspirators," i.e., Sofia's entire court, were cruelly punished and Medvedev, being a high personage in Sofia's court, was immediately arrested and executed two years later.

97. See above, chapter II, note 170.

98. Pavel Menesius (d. 1689) came to Russia in 1660 and entered the service of Tsar Aleksei's court. In 1672 he was sent to Germany, Venice and Rome to seek out the possibility of a European alliance against the Turks. On his return in 1674 he was promoted to the rank of major general and was made a tutor for the Tsarevich Peter. In 1682 Sofia sent him off to war against the Crimean Tatars, and he returned to Moscow, where he died, only after her fall (1689).

99. Patrick Gordon (1635-1699) was a Scotch Jacobite who was educated at a Jesuit college in Poland, but then became a mercenary soldier for the Swedes, Poles and the German emperor. He entered the Russian army in 1661, was sent on diplomatic missions in 1665 and 1685, and was promoted to the rank of general during the Crimean campaign of 1687. Since Gordon was an expert on ballistics and fortification, the young Tsar Peter was naturally attracted to him, and Gordon became Peter the Great's early mentor on military sciences. Patrick Gordon wrote a diary during his stay in Russia, parts of which are published in Passages from the Diary of Ceneral Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries (Aberdeen, 1859).

100. For Patriarch Ioakim see above, note 93. Adrian, the former metropolitan of Kazan', was elected patriarch in 1690 and was the last patriarch of Russia before 1917. Aged and ineffectual, he was able to do little more than protest in vain the rise of foreign influences and the breakdown of old traditions. He died in 1700.

101. Petr Artem'ev was the son of a priest from Suzdal' and a student at the Slavonic-Greek-Latin Academy. On his return from Italy he was ordained an Orthodox deacon and caused local scandals by teaching Roman Catholic doctiines on transubstantiation, purgatory and the filioque from the pulpit. He was finally denounced to the patriarch by his own father, put on trial and exiled to Solovki.

102. That is, the Slavono-Greek-Latin Academy founded by the Likhuds at the Zaikonospasskii Monastery in 1685. The Likhuds left Moscow in 1694.

103. To enhance the prestige of the new dynasty Tsar Mikhail wished to contract a marriage alliance with a foreign royal house. He himself had looked to Denmark for a royal spouse in 1623, and although nothing came of it a delegation had been sent to Denmark which included the priest Ivan Nasedka, who wrote a polemical tract entitled Exposition Against the Lutherans. In 1642 serious negotiations began to marry the tsar's daughter Irina to King Christian's son Woldemar, who would then live in Russia. At first Woldemar was to convert to Orthodoxy, but when he refused Mikahil dropped the requirement and agreed to allow Woldemar to keep his faith and furthermore to build a Lutheran chapel in Moscow for him. However, when Woldemar arrived in Moscow in 1644 Patriarch Iosif vetoed the marriage. A delicate situation ensued. As there was a real possibility of Woldemas ascending the throne in the future, Patriarch Iosif, with wide support among the conservative Muscovite society, had to insist on his conversion. On the other hand, if the marriage did not take place, the tsar would suffer an international embarrassment and loss of prestige. Therefore it was decided to conduct religious debates with the purpose of convincing Woldemar to embrace Orthodoxy. Ivan Nasedka was the chief spokesman for the Orthodox side, and portions of his earlier tract were included in the Kirillova kniga (see note 24) which was published in connection with the debates. The intense interest with which Muscovite society followed these discussions is evidenced by the tremendous - for that time - press run of the Kirillova kniga. However despite the tsar's efforts Woldemar remained an 'adamant Lutheran and after Mikhail died in 1645 he returned to Denmark still a bachelor.

104. The "German suburb" was part of the zealot program to check the influx of western ideas through the mingling of foreigners (all of whom were called "Germans" in l7th century Russia) with Russians in Moscow. In 1652 Tsar Aleksei decreed that all foreigners were to live in a suburb a half mile east of Moscow on the Iauza River.

105. Jacob Boehme (or Bohme, 1575-1624) was a German Lutheran shoemaker and mystic. His major works are The Great Mystery and On the Election of Grace, in which he develops a complex cosmology, at times dualistic and pantheistic, as well as his teaching on the true Christian life. Among his disciples were Newton, William Blake, Claude de Saint-Martin, Hegel, Schelling and Schopenhauer, and his influence was to be felt in Russia in the late l8th and early 19th centuries.

106. Jan Amos Comenius (Komensky, 1592-1670) was a widely influential and respected figure in his time. The leader of a Czech protestant community uprooted by the Thirty Years War, he wrote over 200 works on philosophical and religious themes attempting to define their position in the ever-changing realities of their existence and urging peace and cooperation among all men through universal education. His last major work Gux e tenebris [Light and Darkness] is a severely apocalyptical treatise based on a number of writings of his co-religionists who fell in recent persecutions. Comenius' most important and lasting work, however, was in the field of education, where he proposed new methods of teaching (cf. his Didactica magna) and language learning (Janua linguarum reservata). See M. Spinka, John Amos Comenius: That Incomparable Moravian (New York, 1967).

107. The only surviving son of Tsar Aleksei by his first wife, Fedor III ascended the throne in 1676 at the age of 15 and died six years later. He himself had been educated by Simeon of Polotsk, and the advisors who ran the government in the name of the young and sickly tsar were also western oriented.  During his reign western ideas and customs and Latin books and doctrines spread easily among the Muscovite aristocracy.

108. See above, note 4.

109. Stefan Iavorskii (1658-1722) was a theology professor at the Kiev Academy who came to Moscow in 1700 and became the nominal, though powerless, head of the Russian Church during most of the reign of Peter the Great. See below, chapter IV, pp. 120-121 and note 10.

110. Iov was metropolitan of Novgorod from 1697 until his death in 1716, and distinguished himself as a remarkable hierarch and a leader in education and philanthropy. On his own initiative and at his own expense he opened a series of schools with elementaty curricula in Novgorod and in other cities of his diocese as well. He also founded hospitals, almshouses, old age homes and orphanages. His only major written work is On the Birth of tke Antichrist (1707), written as a result of disputes with the Old Believers who were quite numerous in his eparchy. There is a biography of him by I. Chistovich in the journal Strannik, 1861.

111. Gavriil Dometskoi, of the Iur'ev monastery, reopened the dispute over the holy gifts in 1704 wifh a lengthy rebuttal of Evfimi's earlier work against the Latin party in Moscow. Damaskin, a monk of the Chudov monastery replied to Dometskoi's One Hundred and Five Questions with One Hundred and Five Answers, written in the form of a lettei to Metropolitan Iov. Damaskin later travelled to Mt. Athos and wrote a comparison of the Holy Mountain with the Solovetskii Monastery.

112. Feofan Prokopovich was the chief architect of Peter the Great's Church reforms. He is discussed in the following chapter, pp. 121-127.