Patriarch Nikon

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(1605 - 1681), patriarch of Moscow and all Russia; implemented a program of church reform that inspired vociferous opposition, ultimately culminating in the schism and the emergence of Old Belief.

Nikita Minich or Minov (as a monk, Nikon) was born to a peasant couple in the village of Veldemanov near Nizhny Novgorod. His mother died shortly after his birth, and the child was sent to a local tutor who taught him to read. As a youth, he continued his studies at the Makariev Zheltovodsky monastery, not far from Nizhny Novgorod. The author of Nikon's Life reports that the young man was an avid student and attracted to the monastic life. Nonetheless, in 1625 he obeyed his dying father's request to return home. He married a year later and obtained a position as a deacon at a nearby village church. Soon he was ordained a priest, and he and his wife moved to Moscow.

In 1636 Minich persuaded his wife to enter a convent. He himself departed for the Anzersky skete in the far north. Upon arrival he took monastic vows and the name Nikon. In 1649 a disagreement with the elder Eliazar prompted Nikon to transfer to the Kozheozersky monastery. Within three years he was made abbot. In 1646 Nikon traveled to Moscow on monastery business. There he attracted the attention of the young Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. The tsar ordered him to remain in Moscow and made him abbot of the New Savior monastery. Energetic and talented, Nikon soon became a confidant and spiritual advisor of the tsar. He also became an important figure in the Zealots of Piety, the circle of reformers gathered around the tsar's confessor, Stefan Vonifatiev.

In March 1649, Nikon was named metropolitan of the important of see of Novgorod. He maintained contact with the reformers in Moscow and sought to implement their program in Novgorod. Mnogoglasie, the practice of simultaneously performing different parts of the liturgy in order to complete it more quickly, was abolished. Greek and Kievan chants replaced the traditional style of singing. Metropolitan Nikon's sermons at the episcopal cathedral attracted great crowds. In 1650 severe grain shortages caused famine and inflation in Novgorod. The people responded with violence, and Nikon played an important role in bringing the situation under control without bloodshed.

In the spring of 1652, Metropolitan Nikon was entrusted with the task of traveling to the Solovetsky monastery, collecting the relics of St. Philip, and returning with them to Moscow. The translation of St. Philip's relics exemplified the views of the Zealots of Piety. As metropolitan of Moscow, St. Philip had died a martyr's death for publicly rebuking the cruel and unchristian acts of Tsar Ivan IV ("the Terrible"). St. Philip's example highlighted the duty of the clergy to remind the laity, including tsars, of their Christian duties. The translation of his relics emphasized the dignity and importance of the church. Nikon was on the return path to Moscow when he received a letter from Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, informing him that Patriarch Joasif had died and assuring him that he would be selected as the next patriarch. A church council convened and duly elected Nikon. On July 25, 1652, Nikon was consecrated patriarch of Moscow and all Russia.

Nikon was chosen patriarch to direct a reform program advocated by the Zealots of Piety and supported by the tsar. If all reformers concurred on the need to elevate popular piety and reform popular religious practices, the revision of the liturgical books to bring them into conformity with contemporary Greek practice and the exercise of power within the church were more sensitive issues. Consecrated patriarch, Nikon moved decisively to advance the liturgical reform with all possible speed. In February 1653 a revised edition of the Psalter was printed, minus two articles present in earlier editions. An instruction calling for sixteen full prostrations during a Lenten prayer was modified, and a section teaching that the sign of the cross should be made with two fingers was removed. Correctors (spravshchiki) at the government Printing Office, men long associated with the work of the Zealots of Piety, protested the changes. They promptly were removed from their posts and replaced by supporters of Nikon. By the end of the year, Patriarch Nikon assumed direct control of the Printing Office.

In addition, according to later accounts of Nikon's opponents, shortly after the appearance of the new Psalter, the patriarch sent a communication to Ivan Neronov, archpriest of the Kazan Cathedral, calling attention to the revisions and ordering that they be introduced into the liturgy. Confronted with what he perceived to be an error, Neronov prayed for guidance and then discussed the order with his associates, including Archbishop Paul of Kolomna and the archpriests Avvakum, Daniil, and Login. Avvakum and Daniil gathered evidence against the revisions in the newly printed Psalter and presented a petition to the tsar. The tsar ignored it. By the end of 1653 the archpriests Login and Neronov had been defrocked and exiled. Avvakum escaped defrocking through the personal intervention of the tsar but was transferred to the distant post of Tobolsk.

Patriarch Nikon's reform activities were not limited to liturgical reform. During the six years of his active patriarchate, he worked to bring the church under episcopal control, freeing the clergy and church affairs from the interference of secular authorities and creating a hierarchy of authority flowing from the patriarch to the laity. As contemporaries noted, however, Nikon freed the prelates and other clergy from secular powers only to subordinate them to his own. Too often he neglected to consult a church council before he acted, provoking resentment and resistance where he needed support. Nikon also was energetic in the area of monastic reform, sternly punishing those who flouted the monastic rule. Perhaps Nikon's more important contributions in this area were the three monasteries he founded: the Monastery of the Cross, the Monstery of the Iveron Mother of God, and the Monastery of the Resurrection (or New Jerusalem). Richly endowed, both materially and spiritually, the latter two were centers of learning as well as piety. All were subordinated directly to Nikon. Finally, Nikon did not ignore the shortcomings in the popular practice and celebration of religion. He initiated campaigns against the wandering minstrels and jesters, with their profane music and ribald jokes, and also against icons he deemed painted in an improper manner. Such campaigns manifested his zeal to dignify popular piety and reform popular religious practices, but they often offended the powerful as well as the humble.

Scholars have disagreed as to whether Nikon's goal was to assert the superiority of church over state, or simply to achieve the symphony between church and state that is the Byzantine ideal. In reality, Nikon's power depended on the tsar's favor. As long as Nikon enjoyed the confidence and support of the tsar, those whom he offended in his zeal were powerless against him. By 1658, however, the tsar's attitude towards Nikon had cooled. On July 10, 1658, feeling snubbed by the tsar's failure to invite him to an important state reception, Nikon celebrated the liturgy in the Cathedral of the Dormition, donned simple monastic garb, announced to those assembled that he would no longer be patriarch, and walked away.

Nikon's action was without precedent. After two years, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich convened a church council to address the situation. All agreed that a new patriarch should be chosen, but no consensus could be achieved on what to do with Nikon. Nikon complicated the matter by asserting that he had renounced the patriarchal throne but not his calling, and that he alone had the power to establish a new patriarch.

In 1666, after lengthy exchanges, the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch agreed to travel to Moscow to participate in a church council to resolve the affair. Before the eastern patriarchs arrived, delegates assembled and reaffirmed the correctness of the reform program itself. Those who opposed the reform were condemned as heretics. Thus officially began the church schism. The eastern patriarchs arrived, and on November 7 another church council convened for the purpose of deciding the case of Nikon. On December 12, 1666, Nikon was found guilty of abandoning the patriarchal throne; of slandering the tsar, the Russian Church, and all the Russian people as heretics; of insulting the eastern patriarchs; and of deposing and exiling bishops without a church council. He was removed officially as patriarch, stripped of his priestly functions, demoted to the rank of a simple monk, and exiled to the Ferapontov monastery in the far north. In 1676 he was transferred to the Kirillov monastery, also in the north. In 1681, as a result of the intercession of Tsar Fyodor Alex-eyevich, Nikon was given permission to return to Moscow. He died on the return journey, on August 17, 1681, and was buried in the Monastery of the Resurrection.

Bibliography

Lobachev, S.V. (2001). "Patriarch Nikon's Rise to Power." Slavonic and East European Review 79(2):290 - 307.

Lupinin, Nickolas. (1984). Religious Revolt in the Eighteenth Century: The Schism of the Russian Church. Princeton, NJ: Kingston Press.

Meyendorff, Paul. (1991). Russia, Ritual, and Reform: The Liturgical Reforms of Nikon in the Seventeenth Century. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Press

Michels, Georg B. (1999). At War with the Church: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Russia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Palmer, William. (1871). The Patriarch and the Tsar. 6 vols. London: Trübner.

Soloviev, Sergei M. (2000). History of Russia, Vol. 21: The Tsar and the Patriarch: Stenka Razin Revolts on the Don, 1662 - 1675, tr. and ed. T. Allan Smith. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press.

—CATHY J. POTTER

Nikon, Patriarch (Nikita Minin, 1605–1681), patriarch of Moscow and all Rus' (1652–1666), best known for initiating liturgical reforms that were strongly opposed by the Old Believers. Nikon's quest for power and wealth generated hostility among the Kremlin elite and eventually led to his deposition by Tsar Alexis I Mikhailovich (ruled 1645–1676).

Nikon's meteoric rise from his peasant background began with his acceptance as a novice by the Makar'ev Monastery (outside Nizhniy Novgorod), which was then a vital center of the Orthodox revival favored by the Romanovs. Nikon met influential churchmen at the monastery who supported his promotion to the rank of hegumen (abbot) and probably also brought about his fateful encounter with Tsar Alexis at the Kremlin in 1646. Impressed with Nikon's bold vision of religious reform, the tsar appointed him to key church positions, first as archimandrite of the Novospasskii Monastery in Moscow and then as metropolitan of Novgorod.

After Nikon's election to the patriarchate in July 1652, he quickly embarked upon the revision of liturgical books that would bring Russian forms of worship into line with those of the Greek Orthodox world. Among Nikon's principal innovations were the three-finger sign of the cross (instead of the customary two-finger sign) and the printing of new liturgical books based on Greek and Ukrainian manuscripts. Under Nikon's orders, the church councils of 1654 and 1656 excommunicated Old Believers who refused to accept these innovations.

The boyars resented Nikon's close personal relationship with the tsar as well as the patriarch's growing secular ambitions, evidenced by his systematic accumulation of monastic estates, construction of luxurious palaces, and purchase of sumptuous vestments and carriages. Relations with the boyars became even more strained when Nikon ruled as regent in the tsar's absence during the Russo-Polish War (1654–1667). Boyar intrigues finally convinced the tsar that Nikon intended to expand church power at the Kremlin's expense. When Nikon retired from the patriarchal court to a monastery in July 1658, in protest of boyar insults, the tsar refused to allow his return to Moscow.

Nikon did not abdicate, however, and continued to rule as patriarch on his estates. When the Kremlin made preparations to depose him, Nikon argued in a nearly thousand-page "Refutation" (Vozrazhenie) that secular authority had no right to dictate ecclesiastical affairs. Even after his demotion to the rank of monk and his subsequent exile in December 1666, Nikon maintained his title and refused to recognize the legitimacy of his patriarchal successors.

Nikon captured the imagination of both his contemporaries and later generations. Old Believers denounced him as a precursor of the Antichrist or as the Antichrist himself. Popular rebels saw the exiled patriarch as a victim of Kremlin intrigues and dreamed of restoring him to power. And many ordinary Russians made pilgrimages to Nikon's grave. Historians have mostly viewed Nikon as a visionary leader who strove for the parity of church and state. Had he been successful, the abolition of the church's autonomy under Peter I (ruled 1682–1725) might have been prevented.

Bibliography

Hemer, Christiane. Herrschaft und Legitimation im Russland des 17. Jahrhunderts: Staat und Kirche zur Zeit des Patriarchen Nikon. Frankfurt am Main, 1979.

Kapterev, N. F. Patriarkh Nikon i tsar' Aleksei Mikhailovich. 2 vols. Moscow, 1996.

Palmer, William. The Patriarch and the Tsar. 6 vols. London, 1871–1876.

Tumins, Valerie A., and George Vernadsky, trans. and ed. Patriarch Nikon on Church and State: Nikon's "Refutation." Berlin and New York, 1982.

—GEORG MICHELS

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Patriarch Nikon.

Nikon (Russian: Ни́кон, Old Russian: Нїконъ), born Nikita Minin (Никита Минин; May 7, 1605 Valmanovo, Russia—August 17, 1681), was the seventh patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. This was one of the most important periods in the Church's history, as Nikon introduced many reforms which eventually led to a lasting schism known as Raskol in the Russian language.

Contents 1 Rise to power 2 Nikon's reforms 3 His haughtiness and downfall 4 References

Rise to power

Son of a Mordovian peasant farmer named Mina, he was born on the May 7, 1605 in the village of Valmanovo, 90 versts (96 km or 60 miles) from Nizhny Novgorod. Misery pursued the child from his cradle, and prematurely hardened a character not naturally soft; he ran away from home to save his life from an inhumane stepmother. But he gave promise betimes of the energy and thoroughness which were to distinguish him throughout life, and contrived to teach himself reading and writing. When he was but twenty his learning and talents obtained for him a cure of souls.

Nikon's residence at the New Jerusalem Cloister is representative of his austere aesthetic views.

His eloquence attracted attention, and, through the efforts of some Moscow merchants, he was transferred to a populous parish in the capital. Shortly afterwards, seeing in the loss of his three little children a providential warning to seek the higher life, he first persuaded his wife to take the veil and then withdrew himself first to a desolate hermitage on the isle of Anzersky on the White Sea. Having quarreled with the father superior, he attempted to flee southward, but a tempest broke out and his boat was cast ashore on Kiy Island, where he would later establish a great monastery. He eventually reached the Kozhezersky monastery, in the diocese of Novgorod, of which he became abbot in 1643.

On becoming a monk he took the name of Nikon. In his official capacity he had frequently to visit Moscow, and in 1646 made the acquaintance of the pious and impressionable Tsar Alexius, who fell entirely under his influence. Alexius appointed Nikon archimandrite, or prior, of the wealthy Novospassky monastery at Moscow, and in 1648 metropolitan of Great Novgorod. Finally (1 August 1652) he was elected patriarch of Moscow. It was only with the utmost difficulty that Nikon could be persuaded to become the arch-pastor of the Russian Church, and he only yielded after imposing upon the whole assembly a solemn oath of obedience to him in everything concerning the dogmas, canons and observances of the Orthodox Church.

Nikon's reforms

Nikon's attitude on this occasion was not affectation, but the wise determination of a would-be reformer to secure a free hand. Ecclesiastical reform was already in the air. A number of ecclesiastical dignitaries, known as the party of the protopopes (deans), had accepted the responsibility for the revision of the church service-books inaugurated by the late Patriarch Joasaph, and a few other very trivial rectifications of certain ancient observances. But they were far too timid to attempt anything really effectual.

Aleksey Kivshenko. Patriarch Nikon and Epifany Slavinetsky revising service-books.

Nikon was much bolder and also much more liberal. He consulted the most learned of the Greek prelates abroad; invited them to a consultation at Moscow; and finally the scholars of Constantinople and Kiev convinced the eyes of Nikon that the Muscovite service-books were heterodox, and that the icons actually in use had very widely departed from the ancient Constantinopolitan models, being for the most part imbued with the Polish baroque influences. Later research was to vindicate the Muscovite service-books as belonging 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 and ironically, were newer and contained innovations.

Nikon at once (1654) 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 dissentient minority, which included the party of the protopopes and Paul, bishop of Kolomna. The reforms coincided with a great plague in 1654 and Russians were also greatly concerned about the upcoming year 1666 which many considered the year of the apocalypse.

Heavily weighted with the fullest ecumenical authority, Nikon's patriarchal staff descended with crushing force upon those with whom he disagreed. His scheme of reform included not only service-books and ceremonies but the use of the new-fangled icons, for which he ordered a house-to-house search 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. Construction of tent-like churches (of which Saint Basil's Cathedral is a prime example) was strictly forbidden, and many old uncanonical churches were demolished to make way for new ones, designed in the "Old Byzantine" style. This ruthlessness goes far to explain the unappeasable hatred with which the Old Believers, as they now began to be called, ever afterwards regarded Nikon and all his works.

His haughtiness and downfall

Nikon had Metropolitan Philip canonized and his relics transferred to the Moscow Kremlin as a reminder to the tsars about the crimes they had committed against the church (painting by Alexander Litovchenko).

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 sovereign title. Such a free use did he make of his vast power, that some Russian historians have suspected him of the design of establishing a particular national papacy; and he himself certainly maintained that the spiritual was superior to the temporal power. 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.

But his severity 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). Nikon thereupon publicly divested himself of the patriarchal vestments and shut himself up in the Ascension Convent (July 19, 1658). In February 1660 a synod was held at Moscow to terminate the widowhood of the Muscovite Church, which had now been without a pastor 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 this decision, however, the great ecclesiastical expert Epifany Slavinetsky protested energetically, and ultimately the whole inquiry collapsed, the scrupulous tsar shrinking from the enforcement of the decrees of the synod for fear of committing mortal sin. 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 orthodox scholar was consulted on the subject, and no two authorities agreed. At last the matter was submitted to an ecumenical council, or the nearest approach to it attainable in the circumstances, which opened its sessions on the November 18, 1666 in the presence of the tsar.

On the 12th of December the council pronounced Nikon guilty of reviling the tsar and the whole Muscovite Church, of deposing Paul, bishop of Kolomna, contrary to the canons, and of beating and torturing his dependents. His sentence was deprivation of all his sacerdotal functions; henceforth he was to be known simply as the monk Nikon. The same day he was put into a sledge and sent as a prisoner to the far northern Ferapontov monastery. Yet the very council which had deposed him confirmed all his reforms and anathematized all who should refuse to accept them, like protopope Avvakum. Nikon survived the tsar (with whom something of the old intimacy was resumed in 1671) five years and was allowed to return to Moscow, expiring on his way there, after crossing the Kotorosl River in Yaroslavl, the August 17, 1681.

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

Orthodox Church titles
Preceded by Joseph	Patriarch of Moscow 1652–1658	Succeeded by Joasaphus II

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