Avvakum

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Avvakum Petrov
Pustozyorsk, Russia
FeastRepose: 14 April
AttributesDressed in a priest's robes, holding the two-fingered sign of the cross
PatronageRussia
For the Russian first name, see Avvakum (given name).
Burning of Archpriest Avvakum (Old Believer icon)

Avvakum Petrov (Russian: Аввакум Петров; 20 November 1620/21 – 14 April 1682; also spelled Awakum) was a Russian

Boyarynya Morozova are considered masterpieces of 17th-century Russian literature
.

Life and writings

He was born in

a wide range of reforms in Russian liturgy and theology. These reforms were intended mostly to bring the Russian Church into line with the other Eastern Orthodox Churches
of Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Avvakum and others strongly rejected these changes. They saw them as a

corruption of the Russian Church, which they considered to be the true Church of God. The other Churches were more closely related to Constantinople in their liturgies. Avvakum argued that Constantinople fell to the Turks because of these heretical
beliefs and practices.

Avvakum's Exile in Siberia (1898), by Sergey Miloradovich

For his opposition to the reforms, Avvakum was repeatedly imprisoned. First, he was exiled to Siberia, to the city of

Pustozyorsk, above the Arctic Circle, in 1667.[1] For the last fourteen years of his life, he was imprisoned there in a pit or dugout (a sunken, log-framed hut). He and his accomplices were finally executed by being burned in a log house [ru].[2]
The spot where he was burned has been commemorated by an ornate wooden cross.

Avvakum's autobiography recounts hardships of his imprisonment and exile to the

Tsar Alexis, his practice of exorcising demons and devils, and his boundless admiration for nature and other works of God. Numerous manuscript copies of the text circulated for nearly two centuries before it was first printed in 1861.[3]

Legacy

Despite his persecution and death, groups rejecting the liturgical changes persisted. They came to be referred to as Old Believers.

English translations

  • The Life Written by Himself, Columbia University Press, 2021 (The Russian Library). Translated by Kenneth N. Brostrom.

References

  1. ISBN 978-1-349-60553-8
    .
  2. ^ Из пыточной истории России: Сожжения заживо
  3. ^ Малышев В.И., История первого издания Жития протопопа Аввакума. – «Рус лит.», 1962, № 2, с. 147

Further reading

  • P. Hunt, Russia’s 17th century Crisis of Modernization: The Autobiographical Saint’s Life of the Archpriest Avvakum, The Seventeenth Century, 38:1, 155-171. A Review Article of Kenneth Brostrom’s Translation of the “Life.”
  • P. Hunt, The Theology in Avvakum’s “Life” and His Polemic with the Nikonians, The New Muscovite Cultural History, eds. M. Flier, V. Kivelson, N. S. Kollman, K. Petrone (Bloomington, In: Slavica, 2009), 125-140.
  • P. Hunt, The Holy Foolishness in the “Life” of the Archpriest Avvakum and the Problem of Innovation, Russian History, ed. L. Langer, P. Brown, 35:3-4 (2008), 275-309.
  • Priscilla Hunt, Avvakum’s “Fifth Petition” to the Tsar and the Ritual Process, Slavic and East European Journal, 46.3 (2003), 483-510

External links

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