1589-1700 - Patriarchs of Moscow
As power moved from Kiev to Moscow in the fourteenth century, the seat moved as well, establishing the tradition that the metropolitan of Moscow is the head of the church. In the Middle Ages, the church placed strong emphasis on asceticism, which evolved into a widespread monastic tradition. Large numbers of monasteries were founded in obscure locations across all of the medieval state of Muscovy. Such small settlements expanded into larger population centers, making the monastic movement one of the bases of social and economic as well as spiritual life.
Moscow, although still the greatest in Russia, began to decline until the reign of Ivan III (1462-1505). He was the first to call himself "Ruler of all the Russias" (Hospodar vseya Rossii), and made Moscow pre-eminently the capital and centre of Russia, besides constructing many beautiful monuments and buildings. His wife, who was Sophia Palaeologus, was a Greek princess from Constantinople, whose marriage to him was arranged through the pope, and who brought with her Greek and Italian artists and architects to beautify the city. But even after that the Tatars were often at the gates of Moscow, although they only once succeeded in taking it.
| Patriarch St. Job | 1589-1605 |
| Patriarch St. Hermogenus | 1606-1612 |
| Patriarch Philaret | 1619-1633 |
| Patriarch Joasaphus I | 1634-1642 |
| Patriarch Joseph | 1642-1652 |
| Patriarch Nikon | 1652-1658 |
| Patriarch Joasaphus II | 1667-1672 |
| Patriarch Pitirim | 1672-1673 |
| Patriarch Joachim | 1674-1690 |
| Patriarch Adrian | 1690-1700 |
"Two Romes have fallen and have passed away, the western and the eastern; destiny has prescribed for Moscow the position of the third Rome; there will never be a fourth." Such were the words wherein, after the fall of Constantinople, the Russian monk glorified and characterised the historical position of Moscow, which had now replaced Kiev as mistress of Russia. The third Rome took over from Constantinople the idea of the Roman imperium, which Byzantium first of all and subsequently Rome had carried out in theocratic guise. The csesaropapism of Byzantium was revived by Moscow, and the third Rome became a perfected theocracy.
After the Turks had captured Constantinople, the power of its patriarch dwindled still more. When the Bishop of Novgorod declared in 1470 for union with Rome, Philip I, Metropolitan of Moscow, frustrated it, declaring that, for signing the union with Pome at Florence, Constantinople had been punished by the Turks. This hatred of Rome was fomented to such a point that, rather than have one who favored Rome, a Jew named Zozimas was made Metropolitan of Moscow (1490-4); as, however, he openly supported his brethren, he was finally deposed as an unbeliever.
Yet in 1525 the metropolitan Daniel had a correspondence with Pope Clement VII in regard to the Florentine Union, and in 1581 the Jesuit Possevin visited Ivan the Terrible and sought to have him accept the principles of the Union. In 1586, after the death of Ivan, the archimandrite Job was chosen Metropolitan of Moscow by Tsar Feodor under the advice of Boris Godunoff. Just at that time Jeremias II, Patriarch of Constantinople, who was fleeing from Turkish oppression, visited Russia and was received with all the dignity due to his rank. In 1589 he arrived at Moscow and was fittingly received by Boris Godunoff, who promised to take his part against the Turks if possible, and who requested him to create a patriarch for Moscow and Russia, so that the orthodox Church might once more count its five patriarchs as it had done before the break with Rome.
The Grand Duke Theodor, in the year 1588, had applied to the Patriarch at Constantinople, in the name of the whole Russian clergy and people, to induce him to consent to the installation of an independent Patriarch in Russia. This question was new and unforseen in the economy of the church. The five already existing Patriarchates were appointed by the Ecumenical Councils. But to submit the establishment of a new Patriarchate to the decision of a general ecclesiastical council was almost impossible, since at that time the Roman Church had broken off all lawful communication with the Oriental, and was at enmity with the same. Notwithstanding all, the situation was too serious not to consider remedies by which this obstruction might be removed.
After a previous consultation with the three Orthodox Patriarchs, those of Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch, they came to the conclusion, that although the General Councils had appointed only five Patriarchs, still they had not thereby determined that this number was altogether necessary, and not to be exceeded. For it was founded neither in the sense of the Church, nor in the peculiarity of the same to sanction a general centralization in the Ecclesiastical Constitution. On the contrary, as in the times of the Apostles each church administered her own affairs, so also, at a later period, the same custom continued in the Church; and even in the Ecumenical Councils, several Bishoprics were placed under separate jurisdictions. Relying upon this accumulative evidence, the four Oriental Patriarchs decided that a fifth Orthodox Patriarch could be installed without scruple, and that thereby the union of the Russian with the Greek, as well as the Universal Orthodox Church, was not in the least disturbed.
Jeremias consented to consecrate Job as the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, and actually made him rank as the third patriarch of the Eastern Church, preceding those of Antioch and Jerusalem. Thus commenced a new era in the Russian Church. Governed since her origin by the Metropolitans, dependent on the Constantinopolitan Patriarchate, she now began a new life under her own independent Patriarch, who established his See in Moscow. The life of the Church gained a great deal by this change in the Ecclesiastical Constitution. Soon arose an vinconimon activity in all the branches of the Ecclesiastical administration. This patriarchate was in fact a royal creation dependent upon the Tsar, its only independence consisting of freedom from the sovereignty of Constantinople. Nevertheless, the Russian church retained the Byzantine tradition of authorizing the head of state and the government bureaucracy to participate actively in the church's administrative affairs. Separation of church and state thus would be almost unknown in Russia.
In all matters of external form the Patriarch of Moscow was a very important personage. He exercised a certain influence in civil as well as ecclesiastical affairs, bore the official title of "Great Lord" (Veliki Gosuddr), which had previously been reserved for the civil head of the State, and habitually received from the people scarcely less veneration than the Tsar himself. But in reality he possessed very little independent power. The Tsar was the real ruler in ecclesiastical as well as in civil affairs.
Under the first Romaov Czaar, Michael Theodorovic (1613-1645), numerous foreigners resided in all the larger Russian towns. In Moscow, towards the close of the seventeenth century, there came into existence a populous and practically independent German suburb (sloboda). The influence of these foreigners, most of whom were Protestants, was considerable. In the main it was civilising and social, but Protestant ideas and Protestant piety aroused imitation and thought throughout wide circles. Before long, Protestant influence was displayed in ecclesiastical and religious fields. The European influence of the great movement of the reformation and the renaissance naturally made itself felt in the ecclesiastical domain.
The Patriarchate of Moscow continued to exist until the time of Peter the Great, and the most notable name connected with it is that of Nikon. This energetic and ambitious prelate occupied the Patriarchal throne in the middle of the seventeenth century, and provoked by his reforms the great schism (or raskol) from which spring the various sects of Old Believers, who still form no inconsiderable portion of the population of Russia. The changes which occasioned this disruption relate to absurdly trivial points, such as the text and orthography of the liturgy and other sacred books, which had been mangled by generations of ignorant copyists, the shape of the Cross, and the number of fingers (two or three) to be used in making that sacred sign. Naturally, a quarrel respecting such details of ceremonial was only the outward expression of more seriously divergent tendencies.
In the time of Nikon the Russian Empire, still almost in its childhood, was the battlefield of a struggle between Polish and Russian ideas and institutions. The Poles represented Roman Catholicism and aristocracy, whereas the Russian people have always had in their composition a strong vein of anti-aristocratic and anti-sacerdotal sentiment. In spite of the period of serfdom through which he has passed the Russian Muzhik is not servile ; he thinks of God and the Czar in one category, and of the rest of the world as more or less equal in another. However superstitious he may be, he does not allow his priests to assume the position of directors or masters, and is very ready to exercise the right of private judgment. Nikon evidently wished to introduce into the Russian Church the aristocratic and hierarchical principles of the West. He was wealthy, and surrounded himself with ecclesiastical pomp, and apparently aimed at securing for the See of Moscow a supremacy analogous to that of Rome. In some ways his efforts were successful. The State aided him in his reforms, and endeavoured to coerce, though it could not suppress, the Old Believers with the secular arm.
In 1653 the Patriarch Nikon corrected the Slavonic liturgical books of the Eastern Rite by a comparison with the Greek originals, but many of the Russians refused to follow his reforms. The introduction by Ukrainian clergy of Western doctrinal and liturgical reforms prompted a strong reaction among traditionalist Orthodox believers, thus beginning the schism of the Old Believers or Old Ritualists, who still use the uncorrected books and ancient practices. As Western Europe was emerging from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance and the Reformation, Russia remained isolated from the West, and Russian Orthodoxy was virtually untouched by the changes in intellectual and spiritual life being felt elsewhere.
But his arrogance and ambition alarmed tho Czar, who had no desire to see established in Russia an ecclesiastical power which might impair his autocracy, and Nikon was deposed and banished. His fall was only a preliminary step towards the abolition of the Russian Patriarchate, which was completed by Peter the Great at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Peter not only suppressed the Patriarchate, but effectually prevented the Russian Church from becoming a rival to the secular power by giving her no primate or personal head distinct from the emperor.
In the XVIIth Century, before the time of the Raskol, it often happened that the inferior clergy in an entire province or in special districts refused to obey the orders of its archpriest and endeavored to free itself not only from the payment of legal dues, but from the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan. Already prior to the Raskol, priests were occasionally found imbued with a manifestly Raskol-like temper of insubordination despising the hierarchical piety. More than once the clergy had aspired to independence of the spiritual authority, and laymen presumed to follow their example. Indifference towards the Church naturally led on to disobedience, opposition to Church authorities and in general to suspicion of and want of respect for the clergy. The priests were looked upon as artisans for whom it was enough to be able to read and celebrate the rites. Their spiritual labours were miserably recompensed, and as a class they made no pretence of educating and guiding the people.
Priests had to toil like slaves in order that their bishops might live like princes. Nobles, pages and dignitaries had no scruples in the petty episcopal courts against plundering the country clergy who flocked in vain to the Tsar, the patriarch, and the bishops, to protest against the injuries inflicted on them. Their protests fell on deaf ears, and to losses were added jeers and insults. It is no wonder if now and then the unhappy priests, reduced to desperation, refused to pay the episcopal dues and resisted violence with violence. The populace flew to help them, and hunted away or roughly handled the episcopal tax gatherers.
In the times prior to the Raskol the relations of the clergy to the people were utterly different from what they are now. The clergy were the servant of what was then the all-powerful factor in Great Russia, the mir or village commune, whose members selected them and exacted of them a written pledge to obey the mir, which formed the parish, in all sorts of ways. Without permission of the mir they could not quit the parish nor meddle with the economy of the church, still less of the mir; the priest even had in celebrating the rites to consult the likes and dislikes of his parishioners. In their court the members of the mir tried priest and layman alike for violations even of church regulations. The priest was like any other official chosen by the community.
The most brilliant period of the Patriarchate in Russia was under the Patriarch Nikon (1G52-57). This genial man accomplished much that conduced to his greatest honor. Over the centuries, many features of Russian religious practice had been inadvertently altered by unlettered priests and laity, removing Russian Orthodoxy ever further from its Greek Orthodox parent faith. By correcting the ecclesiastical books, which, during the unhappy time of the Tartar rule, through careless copying and the ignorance of the copyists, were in a state of confusion, he rendered great service to the Russian Church. Nikon Mordvinov, a man of severe and despotic temper, was made patriarch in 1652; and he lost no time in rousing against himself all the inferior clergy, towards whom he conducted himself with excess of strictness and oppression. Nikon's reforms imported State despotism; he introduced or rather enforced the German principles of overlordship in every village; that harsh and brutal officialdom, that despotism of bureaucrats and multiplied ministries which is associated with Prussia, but which was really more rampant, and infinitely less plastic and intelligent in Czarist Russia.
Nikon's reforms were aimed to strengthen the grip of the higher grades of the hierarchy on the people, and to make himself Pope on the Roman model. But while striving to subject the clergy to the despotic power of the Patriarch, Nikon at the same time devoted all his energies to releasing them from subjection to the mirs. In his time the parish was turned as it were into a clerico-political circumscription. The reforms of Nikon drew on him the hatred of every class of the people, to whom they seemed violations of their customs and rights. The Pious Tsar Alexis in his letter to Nikon remarked that he had to find fault with him, because "he drove men to fast by force, but could not drive anyone by force to believe in God."
After rendering himself odious to the lower clergy and the people, Nikon embarked on the correction of church books and of sundry rites, and carried out his plan with his accustomed masterfulness. It was less that the plan was destestable than that its executor was; for, to begin with, the so-called reforms, no less than the opposition to them, appealed to the clergy alone, and outside its ranks textual emendations neither interested, nor were understood by anyone. The masses had no idea what it was all about. How should they when the services were in old Cyrillic, a dead language which they could understand no more then than now? The changes had already begun under his predecessors, and the innovations had already appeared outright in the newly printed books under the four patriarchs who preceded Joseph. In particular the books issued under Joseph were full of variants from the earlier printed editions, as is evidenced by the very ones in use among the old-ritualists. Nikon ordered the old books to be taken away in every parish, both in towns and villages. In so acting he was merely following the example of the patriarch Philaret, who not only everywhere removed, but even burned the order for prayer and ministration printed in Moscow in 1610.
In the Eastern Churches the parish clergy must be married men like their parishioners, whereas the higher clergy have taken monastic vows. A family man and a monk easily lose touch with each other. The lower clergy were thus all of them ready to oppose Nikon's textual innovations, so soon as they were pointed out to them; and the tactless way he went to work only hardened them in their opposition. It was at his instance, as we have seen, that in the Council of 1656, the higher clergy solemnly anathematized those who crossed themselves with two fingers. This resort to anathemas gave to Nikon's work the stamp of an abomination.
The large group of traditionalists who resisted these changes, denouncing them as the work of the Antichrist, came to be known as Raskolniki ("Schismatics"), or Old Believers.
The fame and the high confidence which Nikon enjoyed with the Czar Alexis Michailowitsch made him many enemies, so that in -the end, being condemned, he died in exile. The Patriarchate of Moscow lasted until the reign of Peter the Great (that is 110 years), there being ten patriarchs in all.
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