THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH:
THE REFORMATION OF 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES
Kazuhiko Ranmabayashi
December 5th 1994
The Russian Orthodox Church:
The Reformation of 17th and 18th centuriesReligion had been having influence upon history for all ages and in all places. In Russia, it is the Russian Orthodox Church that influenced the Russian people for centuries, even during the time of Soviet Union. However, one of the most important times of the Russian Orthodox Church was the time between the Middle ages and the Modern age. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were the time of the church reformation in Russia, and during these two centuries, the Russian Orthodox Church experienced the zenith of prosperity and the depth of misery. How and why the Russian Orthodox Church could experience these two completely opposite things. Of course, there are some good explanations for these questions.
In the 1640s, there was a group of people who wanted to correct the Russian Orthodox Church because the dogmas of the Russian church had been changed in these several centuries. The members of this group were the chaplin of Czar Alexis I (Mikhailovich) Stefan Vnifant'ev, Ivan Neronov, Avvakum, Nikon, Czar Alexis I, and so on. They thought that the wrong dogmas have taken deep root among the ignorant low class Russian priests and people who cannot read. The group members agreed to revise a prayer book that contained wrong dogma, but they could not agree about selection of the model text. Avvakum proposed the ancient Russian style: Nikon proposed Greek (Byzantine) the original style. Alexis chose the original Greek style because Russia had to be the third Rome, and Moscow had to be the center of the Orthodox Church.
In 1652, Nikon became the Patriarch with Alexis' support, and he started the church reform. With revising a prayer book, he changed the formality of the church ceremonies: using not two (symbolizing the dual nature of Christ) but three (symbolizing the Trinity) fingers to cross, chanting "hallelujah" not two but three times, how many consecrated loaves were to be at the offertory or on the altar, the spelling of Jesus' name (from Isus to Iisus), and so on. While Nikon advanced the reform, he dealt with the people who would not accept the reform strictly: Avvakum was exiled from Moscow, and Neronov was excommunicated. In the beginning of this church reform, these incidents were only about theological argument by the members of the Orthodox Church. Opponents, outside of the church, were not doing anything because people were preforming the church ceremonies, that had been prohibited, even in Czar's palace.
However, by the Orthodox Church Conference of 1666-1667 at Moscow, the reform had been approved, and all the opponents were excommunicated. From this point, the Russian Orthodox Church's Schism began. Opponents were called Old Believers or the "raskol" (Raeff 16), and most of them were low class monks, low class priests, and low class people because changing traditional ceremonies was out of their mind and impossible for them.
By the way, Nikon was gone from the church conference of 1666 because he was put on trial, and he had the sentence:
In accordance with the rules of the holy apostles and the holy father of the church thou art deposed and cut off. Thou art no longer to be called patriarch, or bishop. Henceforth thou shalt be but an ordinary monk. (Longworth 180)
He was capable, but an authoritarianist. When he became the Patriarch, he made Alexis ,who was young at that time, to promise two things: "he demanded that Alexis follow his leadership 'as your first shepherd and father in all that I shall teach on dogma, discipline and custom,'" and "the tsar's support in all major attempts to reform the Russian Orthodox Church" (Massie 56). He called himself as "Sovereign Majesty (Lincoln 88)," and he functioned "as Russia's co-ruler during the long months when he (Alexis) was at the Polish front between May 1654 and Late 1656(Lincoln 89)." However, Alexis, who was already grown up, did not like this situation too well, and he dethrone Nikon. It was only six years, but the Patriarch Nikon had great power. This was the time that the Russian Orthodox Church had the greatest power.
At the last part of the seventeenth century, the Russian orthodox church was losing its power, which was dominate in every category of Russian society. Absolutism of the Romanovs challenged political autonomy of the church, and they were wining. The Schism took devoted support of pious believers from the church, therefore, the Orthodox Church was weakening from its base. The losing political power of the church was a common phenomenon in all Europe at that time. However, in Russia, this phenomenon was done drasticly by one man, Czar Peter the Great, son of Alexia I.
As with most Russians, Peter was a pious believer, "a devoted son," of the Orthodox Church; he never forget praying at the church. However, he had a distrust of the leaders of the Orthodox Church who were enthusiastic about politics, and his doubt was based on the fact of Nikon event. He thought that priests in the country were not working for educating and progressing the Russian people, but they were functioning completely the opposite: functioning for ignorance and conservation of the people. Also, he disdain monks. Peter had seen how theBritish and the Germans handled their churches during his journey to the West. He was ready to reform the orthodox Church.
In October 1700, Adrian who was the 11th Patriarch of Moscow died. He was an opponent of Peter; he opposed all the reforms and actions that Peter did: the Western Journey, the Westernization, employing foreigners, and so on. Peter heard about the death of Adrian from Aleksei Kurbatov on 25th of the October. Kurbatov was known as the "profit maker" (Anisimov 203), and he suggested Peter to delay the selection of new Patriarch because he had not forgotten the Nikon event, yet. As his suggestion, Peter did not select the next Patriarch, but he appointed Stefan Yavorsky who was the Metropolitan of Riazan and Murom, as the so-called "temporary guardian of the Holy Throne of the Patriarch" (Troyat 124) in December. This selection surprised all the people in Moscow because Yavorsky was an Ukrainian, from the Jesuit-inspired Orthodox academy in Kiev, and once he had been converted to Catholic. However, Peter selected Yavorsky because he was one of the Latinized clerics, who from the academy at Kiev, "where the level of church scholarship and general culture was higher than among the purely Muscovite Orthodox clergy" (Massie 789), and most importantly who, Peter thought, "would not stand in the way of his intended innovations" (Troyat 124). Moreover, Peter gave Yavorsky only the spiritual authority, and the Monastery Bureau, which had been closed in the 1670s, was restored under supervision of boyar Ivan Musin-Pushkin who got full authority over the worldly competence: administration, management and judiciary of church land. Under the Monastery Bureau, the Orthodox Church lost its extraterritoriality, and became merely a agency of Czar's government. Monastery Bureau sent tax-collectors to villages in the church land through local offices. In fact, the church land became Czar's land, and the church serfs became Czar's serfs.
Peter introduced a new tax, which was called the soul tax. Tax used to be collected from each household; however, the soul tax was collected from each person. This taxation was started to take a census in farm land, but the Orthodox Church also got the tax reform because the taxation was included on people in church except priests (January 1720). In any church, there were many subordinate workers who were cleaners, bread bakers, or gravediggers, and they were necessary people. High rank priests objected as subordinate workers are also holy people, and most of them have no money. To this objection, Peter's government conceded a little, and made a limit to the tax exemption: one priest for one hundred to one hundred fifty households, two priests for two hundred to three hundred households, three priests for over three hundred households, and one priests could have one deacon and one employee. However, everyone except theses people on the list were newly taxed, even children of these priests. Because through this tax, two third of the church people had been taxed.
As state land, most of the church income was collected, and used for the needs of the army, the navy, and foreign policy. Also, the church serfs were listed to be labors of state factories: every profitable fishing grounds and flour mills of the church were confiscated by the state. All these reforms were done after Peter lost the battle of Narva, the Russian Army was destroyed completely by Swedish Army in November 1700. He needed money to be ready for the next action, therefore, he confiscated the church property: he even collected bells from the churches in northern Russia to build guns. He was on a hurry.
However, the reform were not easy because Stefan Yavorsky, who Peter thought would not do anything against him, started to attack Peter. Yavorsky criticized Peter's morality and his personal life. In 1712, the Senate prohibited him to preach. Yavorsky had been the temporary guardian of the Holy Throne of the Patriarch until his death (1722), but he never had much influence upon any one, and he never did any real reform.
In August 1720, Peter abolished the rank of Patriarch formally. In January 1721, he established the "Spiritual College," which was renamed "the Most Holy All-Ruling Synod" in February 1722, and was officially made to have equal rights with the Senate (Anisimov 205). Yavorsky became the president, and Feodosy Yanovsky and Feofan Prokopovich became the vice presidents of the Holy Synod. Ober Procurator who watched the Holy Synod was appointed by the decree of 11 May 1722 (Anisimov 205).
With the Holy Synod, the Orthodox Church became an agent of the government, and it would not be ended until the October Revolution in 1917. Feofan Prokopovich was the man who had influenced Peter to establish the Holy Synod. As Yavorsky, Prokopovich was an Ukrainian monk from Kiev.
He was an administrator, a reformer, a polemicist, even a propagandist, and he concurred completely in Peter's desire to modernize and secularize the Russian church. For a Russian churchman, Prokopovich was a man of extraordinary learning -- he had read Erasmus, Luther, Descartes, Galileo, Kepoler, Bacon, Machiavelli, Hobbes and Lock. (Massie 790)
One of his the most important works is The Justice of the Monarch's Will (1722). In this work, he proved that Czar is superior to the church by using his rich educated knowledge: He combined the traditional Byzantine imperial right and the modern Western natural law. Also, he justified every action that Czar's government took.
Prokopovich was the finest scholar in Russia at that time, and he materialized the idea of the church reform in his work Spiritual Regulation (1721). In this work, he argued that it is very dangerous to have two rulers (Czar and Patriarch) because not only could some people use one of them to revolt, but also the people expected the support of their revolt from one of the rulers. Therefore, the Czar would have to make the Orthodox Church to be ruled by Czar and his Senate, and the head of the church is the Czar himself. The people had not forgotten the Nikon event, yet.
With this book Peter violated the secrecy of church confession. According to the decree of 17 May 1722,
If during confession someone discloses to his clerical father an unfulfilled but still intended criminal act, especially treason or riot against the master or the state, or an evil design against the honor or health of the master and the family of His Majesty, and disclosing such an evil intention shows that he does not repent of it but indeed justifies his intention and does not forsake it,... then the confessor must not only not give him absolution and remission of his openly confessed sins (for it is not a true confession if someone does not repent of all of his sins), but must promptly report him at the prescribed places pursuant to the personal decree of H.I.M. promulgated on 28 April of the present year 1722 in virtue of which, for words reflecting on the high honor of H.I.M. and prejudicial to the state, such villains are commanded to be apprehended with all dispatch and brought to the designated places. (Anisimov 210)
Priests became merely betrayers.
Also, Prokopovich, in the Spiritual Regulation, talked about the priest's education. He explained the detail of the ignorant priests who would not have respect from the people, and he suggested the duty that priests have to take compulsory education before they become priests formally. For this compulsory education, state has to establish a theological schools in each district, and for higher education, they needed a theological academy. He also said that a guide book of basic dogma for the people has to be written because generally, the textbooks were written in Greek, and were too difficult for even the people who had higher education. Prokopovich focused on education in his Spiritual Regulation because he thought that religious heresy comes from people's religious ignorance.
All these suggestions that Prokopovich made, many of them succeeded. It took long time, but the plans that building a theological school in each district was succeeded, and educated many priests. However, the theological academy was not build because of the scientific academy that Peter wanted built. A guide book of the basic dogma was written by Prokopovich himself. This guide book was easy Q&A style, and published twelve editions, more than sixteen thousand copies.
On the other hand, Peter hated and scorned the monks. To him they were "Parasites," "hypocrites," "bigots" (Anisimov 211). In 1701, Peter forbade monks to have paper and ink in their cells, so they could not write any critical paper on his policies. Peter even thought about converting monasteries into poorhouses for retired solders in January 1924.
Basically, Peter's church reform was to educate priests in the country, and peter wanted to rule the people's mind through them because "that unity of the people and the church was what Peter's autocracy feared(Anisimov 205)." Before Prokopovich's Spiritual Regulation, there were about eleven thousand five hundred of churches in Russia, but most of priests in these church had only necessary basic theological knowledge. They could read and write, but they had never been to school, and there were no schools. They were useless for Peter. Therefore, Peter had to start action for his goal with building schools. In January 1708, Peter made a law that priests' children have to go to school to learn Greek and Latin, and if they would not study, they cannot be priests. Although his fear that uneducated ignorant children become priests was understandable, this law did not work because there were no such schools that they could go. Peter's idea was not materialized until Prokopovich's Spiritual Regulation.
According to the Spiritual Regulation, children of priests have to start going to theological school before they are ten year old, to make children's minds what Peter wanted them to be. During the first three years, they could not see their parents, and they would have to live by the bell. In the curriculum, there was Latin, logic, rhetoric, theology, Mathematics, geometry, history, and geography. Teachers were sent from the academy in Moscow.
However, the children did not go to theological schools because their parents could not see the necessity of it. Priests (parents) had been letting their children to do some works, such as teaching reading, writing, and basic theological knowledge. They thought that children learn the same thing in the school, and if so, why they have to send their children to the school, which also cost so much. They also had a fear because the school taught Latin: to them, Latin was an heresy language. Most importantly, although they had some income from the people, generally, priests were also farmers: most of their income came from their farms. Children were their important labors. Parents had enough reason for not sending their children to school. They fixed the school application form to show that their children were too old to enter the school (they had to be under ten years old), or let their children get married. Then they did not have to go.
Establishing the theological school was very difficult work, but it did take root in Russia: until 1725, there were forty-six schools and about three thousand students. Peter succeeded in one of his church reform plans, compulsory education for priests.
However, there were some religious groups that did not have to go to the theological schools. Old Believers who believed the faith before the Nikon event were split from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1660s (the Great Schism), and they went to remote regions where outside the Czar's direct power. Also, they were traditionally anti-Czar. They built support in the borders with Poland, northern Russia, Don, Ural, and west Siberia. They had much support from the people because the people did not like Czar Peter's policies, rising tax for wars and his Westernization. They were anti-state, and they had fought through the age of Sophia (1682-1689), which was between the age of Alexis I and the age of Peter I. However, Peter did not attack them. For Peter, as long as their belief did not harm the government, it did not matter whether Old Believers live or not; however, he used them in exchange for their belief. When iron was found around Olonets where Old Believers lived, Peter made them to work at the mine. He said,
let them believe what they like, for if reason cannot turn them from their superstitions, neither fire nor sword can do it. It is foolish to make them martyrs. They are unworthy of the honor and would not in this way be of use to the state. (Massie 784-785)
Moreover, Peter put a double tax on them in February 1716, and they were required to wear a little yellow cloth on their backs. Many of them left their villages and went even farther away, or Peter sent them to Siberia, but still "there are enough of them already (Massie 785).
The Patriarch Nikon succeeded in gaining political power with the support of Czar Alexis I. Nikon even successfully made Alexis I promise that Nikon's spiritual power is superior to Alexis' worldly power, and he called himself as Sovereign Majesty. It was for short time, and because of his Byzantinizing reform, the Great Schism occurred, but he was the actual ruler of Russia. Though Old Believers were split out, and Nikon's supreme power was because of Alexis' youthful inexperience, this was the zenith of prosperity of the Russian Orthodox Church. However, Nikon was discharged because he invited serious failure, and after that, the Russian Orthodox Church was losing its power. Then, during the time of Peter the Great, the Orthodox Church lost its worldly power completely. He abolished the rank of patriarch, and he put all the Russian Orthodox Church under his government and establish the Holy Synod. All the church proprietaries were laid tax. Minute regulation of the Orthodox Church was written, and the regulation was enforced strictly. He even succeeded to make Old Believers work in mine, and to pay a double tax. Peter' government went over both the Russian Orthodox Church and Old Believers, and from this success, the government of the Russian Empire ruled both religions until the October Revolution of 1917.
Works CitedAnisimov, Evgenii V. The Reforms of Peter the Great: progress through coercion in Russia. Trans. John T. Alexander. New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc, 1993.
Lincoln, W. Bruce. The Romanovs. New York: The Dial Press, 1981.
Longworth, Philip. Alexis: Tsar of All the Russians. New York: Franklin Watts, 1984.
Massie, Robert K. Peter the Great: His Life and World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, 1980.
Raeff, Marc. Understanding Imperial Russia. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.
Troyat, Henri. Peter the Great. Trans. Pierre le Grand. Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whiteside Limited, 1987.