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History of the Church of Russia

A. N. Mouravieff, tr. Blackmore, 1842

10. Joseph, Fifth Patriarch, A.D. 1642

His successor the patriarch Joseph, who was elected from being archimandrite of the Simonoff, and consecrated by Serapion, metropolitan of the Steeps, and a synod of bishops, resembled the great Philaret in his zeal for the promotion of ecclesiastical learning; but he found the reign of Michael now drawing to its close. The breaking off of the projected marriage between the Prince of Denmark and the Tsarevna Irene, shortened the days of her affectionate father, who had ardently desired the conversion of Voldemar to the Orthodox faith. There had been several discussions in the palace about religion between Russian priests chosen for the purpose, and pastors on the part of the prince. The Patriarch Joseph himself took a lively part in these controversies, and wrote treatises in the form of questions and answers to Voldemar, in which he powerfully confuted his heresy, and demonstrated the truth of Orthodoxy. The speedy decease of the Tsar put an end to these consultations on religion: Michael himself having a presentiment of his speedy departure to God, gave in charge to the patriarch his youthful son Alexis, born during the life of his great Grandfather, of his happy marriage with Eudocia Streshneff, and so fell as it were into a sweet sleep, after having been in his own person the instrument of conferring on Russia that breathing-time and repose, which she so much required. His countenance, says the Chronicle, shone like the sun at the hour of his departure.

The first part of the reign of the Tsar Alexis, which lasted sixteen years, recalled to mind the troubled beginning of his father’s. The boyars who surrounded him led his inexperience at their will, particularly his guardian, the Boyar Morozoff, who soon after the Tsar’s union with Maria Miloslafsky, married her sister. The people were weighed down by imposts; there was no war indeed without, but local insurrections broke out in the towns from the disorganized state of the government. A mutiny of the Streltsi, our first regular body of guards, alarmed the capital, and cost the lives of two of the Tsar’s private secretaries, whom the rebels accused of having arbitrarily raised the price of the necessaries of life. This was the first promise of those furious outbreaks by which the Streltsi eventually disgraced themselves during the early years of Peter. There appeared also pretenders, giving themselves out for sons of the pseudo-Demetrius, and of Shouesky; of whom the spiritual authorities of Greece forewarned the Tsar, from the affection they bore the Russians as their brethren in the faith. One of these was given up, and capitally punished; the other kept Russia for some years longer by the power of his assumed name in a state of needless excitement, while he wandered about in Turkey, at Venice, and among the Cossacks beyond the Falls.

In the midst of these disorders, the Tsar, who was exceedingly devout and religious, after consulting with the patriarch, the bishops, and the Council of the Boyars, determined to make a collection of the canons of the Holy Fathers, and the laws of the Greek emperors, also to correct the Statute Book of the Tsar John, completing it with the oukazes of later sovereigns, and to unite the whole of this in one code, capable of serving as the law for the whole kingdom. The redaction of this new code was intrusted to the Prince Nikita Odoefsky, in conjunction with two boyars of the council, and inferior secretaries; and to aid them there were called in the Tsar’s Officers of the Table, of the Court, and of the Household, the Sons of the Boyars, and Strangers¹, chosen from all the greater towns; that, by their united efforts, this work, which concerned the provinces no less than the central government of the Tsar, might be successfully arranged. By the end of the year it was completed with the blessing of the patriarch, and was confirmed by the subscriptions of the clergy, the boyars, and all ranks of the people.

By one of the articles of the new code was instituted the Monastery Court, consisting of lay members, to judge in civil suits against spiritual persons, and in matters arising out of their manors and properties, which before were all decided in the patriarchal court. At the same time the representatives of the different civil orders and classes, who had laboured at the collection of the laws, presented a petition to the Tsar, that the bishops and monasteries should be deprived of all the landed property which they had acquired either by gift or purchase since the time of the Tsar John, in opposition to his decree prohibiting any augmentation of the immoveable property of the clergy. Although the sovereign himself in his zeal for the Church, which was remarkable, in imitation of his father’s example had already in the three years since his accession bestowed estates on many monasteries, which he continued to do even afterwards, nevertheless to satisfy the Council of the Provinces he ordered his secretaries to institute an enquiry, and make a description of the properties that had been acquired by them. These two circumstances were the occasion of his differences afterwards with Nikon.

Nikon was an extraordinary character in Russian history; alternately bright and dark great and feeble, sometimes the benefactor of the Church and State at others doing injury to both, he appears at the very commencement of the reign of the mild Alexis as a kind of destiny given him from above and inseparable from him to the end of his days, from the influence of which proceeded alike all that was glorious and all that was painful during his long reign, and which did not cease to trouble his spirit even then when the author of his trouble was himself wasting in confinement.

Born in the district of Nijgorod of parents who were simple villagers, Nikon learned to read the holy scriptures, and secretly left his home to commence his noviciate in order to become a monk in the Jeltovodsky convent. At the urgent entreaty of his father he returned to enter into the state of matrimony, was ordained a parish priest, and removed to Moscow; but his original inclination for a life of seclusion remained in the deep of his heart notwithstanding those bonds which connected him with the world. The loss of all his children he took as a call from above, and after having been married ten years, persuaded his wife to enter into a convent, while he himself went to seek the strictest kind of monastic life in the depths of the North, amid the ice of Solovetsky. But not even did the remote Lavra of Sabbatius and Zosimus seem desolate enough to his mind; he found out for himself a wilder solitude still on the neighbouring island of Anzer in the hermitage of the venerable Eleazar, and there he spent many years in prayer and fasting, mortifying his flesh by continual discipline: on two occasions however, he was obliged to leave his beloved retreat, the first time to persuade again his wife to receive the final tonsure, and the second time, in company with the venerable Eleazar, to collect alms in Moscow. These alms, which contrary to the counsel of Nikon were kept a long time without being laid out upon the embellishment of the Lavra, became the occasion of a quarrel among them, and for the third time the hermit of Anzer left his cell with a sad heart. In a leaky boat he committed himself to the rough waves, and with difficulty escaped from the storm, and got ashore on the desert island of Kia, where he planted the cross, the sign of a future monastery. A favourable wind carried him to the mouth of the river Onega, from whence he went to the monastery of Kojeozersk, and then he again secluded himself to follow the same rule as at Anzer on an island which lay near, and excited the astonishment of the brotherhood by the severity of his life. Upon the death of their superior, Nikon was persuaded by the urgent entreaties of the whole community to go to Novogorod, to the Metropolitan Aphthonius, to ask to be blessed to the degree of hegumen; after three years of conventual life, he was obliged by the necessities of their Church to visit Moscow, and there for the first time he was seen by the young Tsar. Struck by the noble height and bearing and by the manly eloquence of the hegumen, and having heard the report of his holy life, the pious monarch could not bring himself to part with such a man, and gave him the Novospassky monastery, the burying-place of his own ancestors.

This was the beginning of the worldly greatness of Nikon, but by no means the termination of his monastic austerities, for in them he continued steadfast even to his last hour. Here also was the beginning of those strong temptations of spirit, under the weight of which he gave way at last and from being exalted was led to exalt himself. The extraordinary favour of the Tsar distinguished the new archimandrite above all others. In the charms of his conversation Alexis Michaelovich found consolation to his soul, and from that time accustomed himself to be guided by his sage counsels: he found in him a zeal for the Church not inferior to his own, and the loftiest view not only of ecclesiastical but also of political matters, which in Nikon proceeded solely from the originality of his mind and from his bold openness of character. During the course of three years the archimandrite came every Friday to the chapel in the palace for the purpose of conversing with the Tsar after Divine service; on his way he received petitions from the people, and the Tsar as he left the chapel, signified his pleasure upon them, usually in favour of the petitioners. In this manner Nikon already began to enter partially into the direction of civil affairs. But when the weakness of the virtuous Aphthonius, metropolitan of Novogorod, compelled him to retire into the monastery of Khoutina, the sovereign chose Nikon to be his successor, and Paisius the patriarch of Jerusalem, who had come to Moscow in quest of alms, consecrated him at the desire of the Tsar as metropolitan of Great Novogorod. Thus by a curious concurrence of circumstances, one of the eastern patriarchs consecrated Nikon, who was destined at a subsequent period to be degraded from his dignity in like manner, through the instrumentality of the eastern patriarchs. His elevation and his fall were accompanied with equal eclat.

But Alexis had no sooner suffered Nikon to depart to take possession of his see, than he began to feel himself unhappy at his separation from a constant, true, and sincere friend, who had become necessary to him, both from the affection which he bore him personally, and for the business of the state. Every winter he invited the metropolitan to Moscow, to consult with him: and on account of these frequent journeys, Nikon asked and obtained from the Tsar the gift of the picturesque lake of Valdai, as a resting-place on the road; and there he founded on a woody island the monastery which is called the Iversky. Filled with impressions drawn from that seclusion in which he had passed the better days of his life, he conceived a wish that his new convent should put him in mind of mount Athos, the model of the monastic life, and he built it accordingly, so as to be a close imitation of a Russian monastery which was on the Holy Mountain.

Unusual authority was given by the sovereign to the metropolitan in his diocese; not only were all spiritual matters subjected to the exclusive jurisdiction of his court, but even all such civil causes as might affect persons belonging to monasteries the parochial clergy or even the manors of the Church. Nikon had, further the right of entering into the prisons, and on his own personal examination releasing any of the prisoners, if he found they were innocent. This confidence of the monarch was completely justified at the time of a famine which desolated Novogorod, when the metropolitan built four alms-houses and daily fed all the poor among the people in his own court-yard. It was justified still more in the midst of a dreadful insurrection which broke out in Novogorod and Pskoff. On this occasion the pastoral virtues of Nikon shone in full brilliancy, for while in Pskoff the irritated populace put to death their voivodes, and were with difficulty got under by force of arms, in Novogorod on the contrary the metropolitan was the only person who suffered. He concealed in his palace the prince Khilkoff the voivode, and went forth himself to the insurgent populace²; blows were showered thick upon him while thus desperately exposing himself, and he was left for dead on the square. He managed to rise however with the assistance of his servants, though with scarce any breath remaining in him, and in spite of all that his body had suffered his spirit supplied him with strength to walk in procession with the cross, and to celebrate the liturgy in that part of the city where the insurrection was raging: he was not even afraid to risk his life once more by going into the very building where the rebels were assembled. The magnanimous spirit of their pastor this time struck the rebels themselves, though they did not cease to act against the government: they cut off and blockaded the road leading to the capital, and made a convention with the Swedes to betray Novogorod into their hands. But here again Nikon succeeded in giving such information to the Tsar as enabled him to take the necessary measures of precaution, while he himself publicly in the cathedral anathematized the traitors, and then calmly awaited the conclusion of the storm. The storm at length subsided broken by his immoveable firmness, and he had the consolation of seeing the people in penitence apply to him for spiritual absolution and for the pardon of the Tsar, who had given the metropolitan absolute powers for the trial and punishment of the guilty.

Such were the acts of Nikon in his diocese, in civil affairs, while his pastoral zeal for the morals of his clergy and flock and for the due magnificence of the ceremonies of the Church was carried to the highest pitch. Gifted with a fluent eloquence Nikon constantly taught in the Church, and to hear his animated preaching full of the holy scripture the people thronged together from great distances. He substituted living addresses of his own for the reading of the select instructions appointed for each day; he also turned his attention to the Churchplate, furniture, and vestments, in which he loved cleanliness and magnificence, that they might become their high uses: he regulated also the order of divine service itself, for through an evil habit which had crept in those who ministered in divine service for the sake of expedition read at once in both the choirs, two or three voices only together. The Kathisms and Kanons³ for Vigil, and even at the Liturgy the Ecteneias and Exclamations, were run together with the singing of the choir. The metropolitan strictly forbade such irregularity in all the churches of his diocese, and the same was put a stop to in the other dioceses also by edicts of the Tsar issued at the advice of Nikon. He appointed also instead of the inharmonious singing then in use another of a sweeter kind, which he borrowed from the ancient chants of Kieff and Greece. The Tsar was so much pleased with this new style of singing that he introduced it into his own private chapel, from whence it soon began to spread to other churches and monasteries.

The aged Patriarch Joseph viewed with dissatisfaction these ecclesiastical regulations of Nikon, and considered them as mere innovations, from a weakness not unnatural in a very old man who was standing on the brink of the grave. Many of the clergy who surrounded him, the arch-priest Abbakum, the priests Lazarus and Niketas, Stephen the confessor of the Tsar, the two Neronoffs, the deacon Theodore and his brother Gregory, supported the old man in his most unfortunate prejudice, and abused his confidence in the printing of the Psalter, the Kormchay, and the Catechism, disfiguring them by gross errors and unauthorized glosses of their own. This they did the more easily, as the chief of the Palace-Court where the printing was carried on, the Prince Lvoff, was of the same sentiments with themselves. Many of the unlearned speedily began to be infected with their erroneous views, though according to the testimony of a contemporary writer, Ignatius metropolitan of Tobolsk, the older and more learned people refused to receive their new and false doctrines. In the mean time, the indispensable necessity of a correction of the Church books came to be so evident and so much felt, and the demand for increased learning among the clergy gained such strength, that the Tsar begged Silvester Kossoff the metropolitan of Kieff to send him some monks from his illustrious Academy, to compare the Slavonic translation of the Bible which had been printed incorrectly by the Prince of Ostrog, with the Greek. A private individual emulated the Tsar in his zeal: Theodore Rtischeff, a pious and learned boyar, founded near Moscow the convent of the Transfiguration, the germ of the future Academy, to consist of thirty brethren being monks whom he had collected in Little Russia for the translation of ecclesiastical books. Epiphanius Slavenetsky, priest and monk of the Pechersky at Kieff, the most celebrated theologian of his time, was one of the learned brotherhood of this convent, and under his direction were published many lives and discourses of the holy Fathers, and all the Canons of the Councils were translated from the Greek.

Nor was it only with Kieff and Little Russia that our ecclesiastical relations became closer and more frequent, but the same was the case also with the East. When Paisius the patriarch of Jerusalem left Moscow, Arsenius Souchanoff, the bursar of the Trinity monastery, was sent with him to the Holy Places of the East, to observe how the Rule of the Church was followed by the four Œcumenical Thrones, inasmuch as there had arisen differences of opinion and disputes about certain ceremonies. Arsenius returned twice from Moldavia from the patriarch of Jerusalem to the Tsar and to the Hetman of the Cossacks, on business which related to the pretender who had appeared among them. At length he left Paisius, and met at Galats another Greek pontiff, Athanasius Chartularius, who had sat for a short time in the chair of Constantinople. This Athanasius after having been graciously received in Moscow died on the road as he was returning, at Loubni, where his uncorrupted body still lies. On account of the fierce persecutions under which the Church of Constantinople was then suffering and the unhappy end of the patriarch Parthenius, Souchanoff was unable to see his successor; but in Alexandria he conferred with the learned patriarch Joannicius, and obtained from him an answer to a great number of questions relative to the Church. In Jerusalem he observed and described minutely the whole order of Divine service, among the Greeks, and returned through Damascus, where he had an interview with the patriarch of Antioch, and from thence through Georgia. Thus he gave in the description of his journey a sufficiently full account of the Eastern Church, though somewhat shaded by his prejudiced view of the Greek character, and by mistakes in some of his observations. Arsenius returned in the last year of the life of the Patriarch Joseph, when the self-willed priests about him who were dissatisfied with Nikon were already introducing evident schisms. They took advantage of some disagreeable observations of Arsenius, to rise in opposition against the metropolitan of Novogorod, under the pretext that he desired to conform in every respect with the Greek Church, while that Church herself had not retained her ancient orthodoxy. Thus by degrees there gathered clouds on the horizon of the Church.

At this time the relics of St. Sabba of Zvenigorod, the disciple of the venerable Sergius, were discovered, and the Tsar in joy and gratitude at their manifestation convoked soon afterwards by the advice of Nikon a synod, for the purpose of instituting a solemn commemoration in honour of the three great prelates who had suffered for the Russian Church, Job, Hermogenes, and the Holy Metropolitan Philip; that from their tombs near and afar off they might be brought together and united with the assembly of prelates in that cathedral of the Assumption, where they had shone conspicuous by their pastoral virtues. The Tsar Michael Theodorovich, had paid this last duty to his predecessor the Tsar Shouesky, whose remains were restored to him from their grave in Poland to be deposited in the cathedral of the Archangel; his son Michael did the same for these three prelates. The body of the great Hermogenes was solemnly translated from the Choudoff monastery to his own cathedral, and was placed above the floor close to the brazen tabernacle of the Coat of our Lord. The aged Barlaam metropolitan of Rostoff was sent to Starits for the relics of Job; the patriarch Joseph himself, feeling already the near approach of death, when he placed the first of the line of patriarchs, Job, close to his own predecessor Joasaph, asked the Tsar to give him a place himself at the feet of Job; and after a few days this his last wish was fulfilled.

In the mean time the Metropolitan Nikon, who had formerly been a monk there himself, had been despatched to the Solovetsky monastery on a mission of entreaty from the Tsar to the relics of Philip, that that great prelate would remove from the place of his rest, and come to the capital to absolve as it were by his presence the spirit of John who slept there, and who had been the cause of his martyrdom; this the mild Tsar Alexis besought of him, as if pleading to a living man for a living offender; and Philip removed, at his request, and again came over the waters of the White sea, which he had already passed over once before in his coffin, as in a funereal boat. Nikon was the steersman, and he again put in at the desert island of Kia, and the mouth of the Onega, where he had formerly been saved when he got to land from his leaky vessel, and from thence he directed his course to the convent of Bielo-ozero. Informing the Tsar from time to time of his progress, Nikon continued his way by water from the convent of St. Cyrill to Yaroslavla, and by land from thence to the Lavra. He had then no presentiment that thirty years later he himself, after having experienced all the inconstancy of human fortune the highest step of grandeur and the lowest depth of poverty, was to return an exile and a prisoner by that same road to the convent of the new Jerusalem, alive as far as Yaroslavla, and the remainder of the way after death. The young Tsar and Barlaam the aged and decrepit metropolitan of Rostoff hastened to meet the relics of St. Philip at the gates of the capital, but Barlaam gave way and died before he reached them, from the weight of years and excessive joy. Many signs of healing marked the solemn return of Philip to his former ecclesiastical diocese; he stood as it were again, though in his coffin, on the same spot from whence he had rebuked John, and they who were suffering from any plague or disease, as before they who were oppressed, now flocked to him as to a living fountain of relief.

It seemed as if Philip from his patriarchal chair again ruled the Church of all Russia, there being at that time no other head: the Patriarch Joseph and the guardian of the vacant see, the metropolitan of Rostoff, were both dead. The senior prelate of all the rest, Nikon of Novogorod, obstinately refused the patriarchal throne in spite of all the entreaties of the Tsar, by whom he was beloved, and whom he loved himself. He knew that those who had been about the person of Joseph, and a strong party among the clergy, looked on him as a despiser of Russian antiquity, from his attachment to the Eastern Church. He saw the affection of the Tsar, but he knew also how great an influence the boyars who surrounded him possessed over the mild disposition of their sovereign. And the austere character of Nikon, who trusted in the purity of his intentions, was unhappily too little tempered with pastoral condescendence and long-suffering. All this he was conscious of himself when he so firmly rejected all entreaties, but the Tsar’s affection for him prevailed. In the church of the Assumption and before the relics of Philip, with all the council and the synod assembled, he once more for the last time and in the strongest terms conjured Nikon not to leave the Church of Russia in widowhood without a pastor, and the firmness of the prelate was shaken at such an appeal; he asked, “Whether they would always honour him as their true chief shepherd and spiritual father? and whether they would suffer him to regulate the affairs of the Church?” And when he had heard them all as with one soul swear that they would, he declared at length his consent to undertake the high office, to the general joy of the Tsar, the council, and the people, and thus pronounced against himself the sentence of his own doom.

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