Patriarch Nikon of Moscow
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Nikon | |
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Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus' | |
Church | Russian Orthodox Church |
See | Moscow |
Installed | 1652 |
Term ended | 1666 |
Predecessor | Patriarch Joseph of Moscow |
Successor | Patriarch Joasaphus II of Moscow |
Personal details | |
Born | Никита Минин 7 May 1605 Veldemanovo near Nizhny Novgorod, Tsardom of Russia |
Died | 17 August 1681 Church of St. Nicholas in Tropino, Yaroslavl, Tsardom of Russia | (aged 76)
Buried | New Jerusalem Monastery |
Nikon (
Early life
Son of a Mordvin peasant farmer named Mina, he was born on 7 May 1605 in the village of Veldemanovo , 90 versts (96 km or 60 miles) from Nizhny Novgorod. His mother died soon after he was born, and his father remarried. His stepmother mistreated him. He learned reading and writing with the parish priest. At the age of 12 he ran away from home to Makaryev Monastery where he remained until 1624 as a novice.
Then he returned home due to his parents' insistence, married, and became a parish priest in a nearby village.
His eloquence attracted the attention of some Moscow merchants who were coming to the area because of a famous trade fair held on Makaryev Monastery grounds. Through their efforts he was invited to serve as a priest at a populous parish in the capital.
He served there about ten years. Meanwhile, by 1635, his three little children died. He saw that as a providential sign and decided to become a monk. First he persuaded his wife to take the veil and then withdrew himself to a desolate hermitage on the isle of Anzersky on the White Sea. On becoming a monk he took the name Nikon.
In 1639, he had a quarrel with the father superior, and fled the monastery by boat; a tempest broke out and his boat was cast ashore on
Meeting with the Tsar
In his official capacity, he visited Moscow in 1646, and paid homage to the young Tsar
Zealots of Piety
While serving at
In the wake of the Time of Troubles, the members believed the problems of the time were the manifestation of a wrathful God, angry with the Russian people's lack of religiosity. The group called for the rebirth of the Russian Orthodox faith, and a renewal of the religious piety of the masses. This group included Fyodor Rtishchev, Abbot Ivan Neronov of the Kazan Cathedral, Protopope Avvakum, and others.
In 1649, Nikon became
Elected as patriarch (1652)
On 1 August 1652 he was elected
It was only with the utmost difficulty that Nikon could be persuaded to become the arch-pastor of the Russian Church. He gave in after the Tsar himself and the
Nikon's reforms
When Nikon was appointed, ecclesiastical reform was already in the air. A number of
Nikon launched bold reforms. He consulted the most learned of the Greek prelates abroad, invited them to a consultation at Moscow, and finally the scholars of
Nikon criticized severely the use of such new-fangled icons; he ordered a house-to-house search for them to be made. His soldiers and servants were charged first to gouge out the eyes of these heretical counterfeits and then carry them through the town in derision. He also issued an ukase threatening with the severest penalties all who dared to make or use such icons in future.
Later research[citation needed] was to determine that Muscovite service-books did belong to a different recension from that which was used by the Greeks at the time of Nikon, and the unrevised Muscovite books were actually older and more venerable than the Greek books, which had undergone several revisions over the centuries, were newer, and contained innovations.
In 1654, Nikon summoned a synod to re-examine the service-books revised by the Patriarch Joasaf, and the majority of the synod decided that "the Greeks should be followed rather than our own ancients." A second council, held at Moscow in 1656, sanctioned the revision of the service-books as suggested by the first council, and anathematized the dissenting minority, which included the party of the protopopes and Paul, bishop of Kolomna. The reforms coincided with a great plague in 1654.
Construction of
His building program
He enriched the numerous and splendid monasteries which he built with valuable libraries. His emissaries scoured Muscovy and the Orient for precious Greek and Slavonic manuscripts, both sacred and profane.
Among the great monasteries he founded were Valday Iversky Monastery, the New Jerusalem Monastery, and Kiy Island Monastery.
Political power
From 1652 to 1658, Nikon was not so much the minister as the colleague of the Tsar. Both in public documents and in private letters he was permitted to use the
Nikon made it his mission to remove the Church from secular authority, and permanently separate the Church from the state. He believed that the Church and state should work in harmony, while remaining separate from each other. He stated that "There are two swords of authority, that is, the spiritual and the secular" and that "the supreme Bishop is higher than the Tsar".[4] He also sought to organize the Church with a hierarchy similar to the state's – with the Patriarch in complete control.[citation needed]. On a personal note, Nikon and Aleksei officialized their bond as the Tsar made the Patriarch godfather of all his children.[5]
Nikon especially protested Sobornoye Ulozheniye (Russian Legal Code) of 1649, which reduced the status of the clergy, and made the Church in effect subservient to the state. Also, according to this Code, the taxation of monastery lands was used for the benefit of the state.[6]
But his actions raised up a whole host of enemies against him, and by the summer of 1658 they had convinced Alexius that the sovereign patriarch was eclipsing the sovereign tsar. Alexius suddenly grew cold towards his own "bosom friend," as he called him.[7]
Nikon leaves Moscow (1658)
Almost as a test of wills and, perhaps, hoping to dramatize his own importance and indispensability, Nikon publicly stripped himself of his patriarchal vestments in 1658, and went to live at the New Jerusalem Monastery, that he, himself, founded in the town of Istra, 40 kilometers west of Moscow. But he actually did not officially resign from his position.
For nearly two years Tsar Alexius and Nikon remained estranged and their conflict unresolved. In February 1660 a synod was held at Moscow to elect a new Patriarch to the throne, vacant now for nearly two years. The synod decided not only that a new patriarch should be appointed, but that Nikon had forfeited both his archiepiscopal rank and his priests orders.
Against the second part of the synod's decision, however, the great ecclesiastical expert Epiphanius Slavinetsky protested energetically, and ultimately the whole inquiry collapsed. The tsar was unwilling to enforce the decrees of the synod being unsure of its ecclesiastical validity.
For six years longer the Russian Orthodoxy remained without a patriarch. Every year the question of Nikon's deposition became more complicated and confusing. Almost every contemporary Eastern Orthodox scholar was consulted on the subject, and no two authorities agreed. At last the matter was submitted to a pan-Orthodox synod.
Condemned by synod (1667)
In December 1667, Nikon was tried by a synod of church officials, known as the Great Moscow Synod. It was presided over by "two foreign Patriarchs ... [and consisting of] thirteen metropolitans, nine archbishops, five bishops and thirty-two archmandrites." The two patriarchs at the synod were Paisius of Alexandria, and Macarius III of Antioch. Symeon of Polotsk was one of the key theologians preparing the documents of the synod.
According to Robert Massie, during the proceedings, Nikon staunchly defended his belief that the church's authority and power were, and ought to be, supreme;[8] however, Nikon was rather insisting that the church's authority and power ought to be supreme only in ecclesiastical matters.
On 12 December 1667, the synod pronounced Nikon guilty of reviling the tsar and the whole Muscovite Church, of deposing
Nikon survived Tsar Alexis, with whom something of the old intimacy had been resumed in 1671. In 1681, the new tsar Fedor (Alexius's son), on hearing that Nikon was dying, allowed him to return to Moscow and, under a partial pardon, take up residence in his former Moscow home, the
References
- ^ Никон (Минов) // Nikon (Minov) www.hrono.ru (in Russian)
- ^ Запрещение патриархом Никоном фряжских икон // The banning by Patriarch Nikon of Western-style icons (in Russian) Archived 5 July 2015 at the Wayback Machine historydoc.edu.ru
- ^ Никон (Минов) // Nikon (Minov) www.hrono.ru (in Russian)
- ^ Palmer, William (1871). The Patriarch and the Tsar I. The Replies of the Humble Nicon, by the Mercy of God Patriarch, against the Questions of the Boyar Simeon Streshneff and the Answers of the Metropolitan of Gaza Paisius Ligarides. London: Trübner. p. 662.
- ^ Mouravieff, Andreij Nikolaevich (1842). A History of the Church of Russia. Oxford: John Henry Palmer. p. 203.
- ^ Ограничение привилегий церкви в Соборном Уложении 1649 года // The limiting of Church privileges in the Legal Code of 1649 Archived 13 April 2014 at the Wayback Machine Russian legal and educational site (in Russian)
- ISBN 978-0-14-029788-1
- ^ Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great, His Life and World (1980), p 60.
- ^ Massie, p.60.
- ^ Ioann Shusherin (2007), From Peasant to Patriarch: Account of the Birth, Upbringing, and Life of His Holiness Nikon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Written by His Cleric Ioann Shusherin, translated by Kevin Kain; Katia Lenintova, Lanham: Lexington Books, p. 104
- public domain: Bain, Robert Nisbet (1911). "Nikon". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 19 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 691–692. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
Further reading
- Lobachev, Sergei V. "Patriarch Nikon's Rise to Power." Slavonic and East European Review (2001): 290–307. in JSTOR
- Meyendorff, Paul. Russia, ritual, and reform: the liturgical reforms of Nikon in the 17th century (RSM Press, 1991)
- Shusherin, Ioann. From Peasant to Patriarch: Account of the Birth, Uprising, and Life of His Holiness Nikon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia (2008)
- Spinka, Matthew."Patriarch Nikon and the Subjection of the Russian Church to the State." Church History 10#4 (1941): 347–366. in JSTOR