At the same time, the first serious breach had been created in the patrimonial state. In the Time of Troubles Muscovy had been like an estate whose master had died intestate: relatives, servants and labourers had fought among themselves to seize it, and a few neighbouring owners had joined in the fray. But then the zemlia had for the first time constituted itself as a reality, based on elective local government institutions, and had chosen a new master: they had demonstrated that the state was not just a patrimony. Platonov goes so far as to assert that ‘the old patrimonial state had yielded to a new and more complex type, the national state’.22 That was still far from being the case, as the next three centuries would show, but a movement had been made in that direction.
The Church Schism
The outcome of the Time of Troubles also enormously enhanced the standing of the Orthodox Church, which had shown that at a time of national breakdown it was capable of rousing people to a united effort and of helping to finance that revival. Besides, the first Romanov Tsar, Mikhail, being very young when he came to power, relied a great deal on his father, Metropolitan Filaret, who became Patriarch in 1619 and remained in effect co-ruler, using the title ‘Great Sovereign’ till his death in 1633. For a time it looked as if Tsardom and Patriarchate were a partnership in which the Patriarch was the senior.
However, the church itself was undergoing a period of upheaval caused by the import of new religious ideas from the West, and fuelled by memories of the horrors foreign intervention could inflict. The influence which appeared most threatening was the Counter-Reformation Catholicism of Poland, mediated through the Uniate Church. By the middle of the seventeenth century a reform movement had taken shape which aimed to outbid the intellectual sophistication of the Catholics by purifying the Orthodox Church and spreading its message to ordinary Russian people.
The Zealots of Piety (Revniteli blagochestiia) were a group of parish priests, mainly from the Volga region, who in the 1630s began to agitate for a programme of thorough-going church reform. They were concerned by drunkenness, debauchery and the persistence of pagan practices among the common people, and attributed these deficiencies to the low educational and spiritual level of the clergy, and to the negligent conduct of the liturgy, which they claimed hindered ordinary parishioners from obtaining a real understanding of the faith. In particular they criticized the custom of mnogoglasie, conducting different portions of the divine service simultaneously, so that it was impossible to follow any of them properly (this was done because parish churches had taken over the full monastic liturgy, under which each service would otherwise have lasted several hours). The Zealots recommended heightened discipline, regular fasting, confession and communion, and the frequent preaching of sermons.23
This was a reform programme not unlike that of the Cluniacs in eleventh-century France, and it had something in common with sixteenth-century Protestantism in much of Europe. At the same time it was firmly rooted in the tradition of Metropolitan Makarii and took a pride in Muscovy’s religious mission. Clerics of this tendency drew attention to themselves by their fiery preaching, notably one Archpriest Avvakum, originally a peasant from beyond the Volga, a vehement protagonist of the simple Russian virtues in contra-distinction to western khitrost’ (cunning or sophistry): he sometimes aroused the resentment of his Moscow parishioners by castigating their worldly vices. The Zealots became influential both in the Patriarchate and at court, especially following the accession of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in 1645. His personal confessor, Stefan Vonifat’ev, was a sympathizer, as were two of his leading advisers, Boris Morozov and Fedor Rtishchev.
Another peasant from beyond the Volga who rose up through the Zealots’ movement was the Mordovian monk Nikon, a tall and dominating figure who became one of Alexei’s most trusted friends and Metropolitan of Novgorod, before being elevated in 1652 to the Patriarchate. In this position Nikon assumed the title of ‘Great Sovereign’ and exercised real secular as well as spiritual authority whenever Alexei was absent, as for example during the Polish war which began in 1654.
If the Zealots of Piety thought that through Nikon they would win a decisive influence over church policy, they were to be rudely disabused. True, he implemented certain aspects of their programme, for example by banning mnogoglasie and prohibiting the sale of vodka on holy days. But his priorities were different and much more ambitious, If they were the Cluniac reformers, he was Pope Gregory VII. The Zealots’ vision was limited to Muscovy and their aim was to bring about an educated and morally pure church close to the people. Nikon by contrast wanted to create a theocracy in which the church would dominate the state and would take the lead in an imperial and ecumenical mission of expansion and salvation. Whereas Ivan Neronov, one of the leading Zealots, advised against war with Poland in 1648, because he feared the moral consequences of war, as well as further incursion of heresy, Nikon welcomed it as an opportunity to enhance the standing of both church and state, and actually encouraged Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi to rebel against Poland in the name of Orthodoxy. Nikon was in close touch with the Eastern Patriarchs, and was eager for the Russian church to play the leading role in Orthodoxy they could no longer fulfil because of their subjection to Ottoman rule.24 In a word, Nikon took absolutely seriously the notion of Moscow as the Third Rome and believed that it meant the creation of a universal Christian empire.
His contact with Greek and Ukrainian churchmen had made him aware of the many discrepancies between Russian and Byzantine liturgical practice which had been discussed at the Stoglav Council. He hastened the work of studying and correcting the printed service books, so that the Russian church would be ready for the ecumenical role he intended it should play in Ukraine and perhaps beyond that in the Balkans. As early as the spring of 1653, he issued a new psalter and a set of instructions requiring congregations to introduce a number of ritual changes, including making the sign of the cross with three fingers instead of the traditional two. From the outset there were protests from priests who disliked the alterations and who objected that they had been introduced uncanonically, without a church council. Nikon plunged ahead regardless, with assurance of the Tsar’s support, and during the next years added further amendments, none of them of dogmatic significance, but nevertheless repugnant to believers who held that ritual and faith were indissolubly connected.
In 1655 Nikon convened a church council and, with the help of his Greek supporters, pushed his liturgical reforms through. With the approval of the secular power, he set about dismissing his opponents and exiling them. By now, however, Alexei was beginning to be alarmed by the threat to his own authority represented by the Patriarchate, especially when occupied by an overweening character like Nikon. On his appointment, Nikon had made him swear to obey him in everything which concerned the church and God’s law – an exceedingly broad concept in the seventeenth century. As Metropolitan of Novogorod, he had resisted the subordination of monasteries in his diocese to the new Monastyrskii Prikaz, the state monastic administration, and had fought the encroachment of secular courts on what he considered ecclesiastic jurisdiction. As Patriarch he continued to fight these battles.
At first Alexei had acquiesced in ecclesiastical hegemony, but as he gained in experience and self-confidence he grew to resent the domineering tone of his erstwhile ‘bosom friend’, and to worry that if the church acquired too much power, it might seriously obstruct the efforts of the secular state to mobilize the country’s resources by taxation or by the assignment of land to nobles. The high-handedness which Nikon displayed in implementing his liturgical reforms confirmed Alexei’s fears and eventually undermined his relationship with the Tsar.
Affronted by Alexei’s increasingly conspicuous coolness towards him, Nikon in July 1658 suddenly and dramatically renounced the Patriarchate in the middle of a service. Declaring that he felt unworthy of the office, he took off his patriarchal robes and assumed the simple habit of a monk. This gesture of simulated humility was certainly calculated to compel concessions from Alexei, but it had the opposite effect. Alexei after much hesitation and heart-searching accepted his resignation.