Patriarch Nikon in the matter of correcting church books and rituals

When Patriarch Joseph died (April 15, 1652), everyone in Moscow could guess that his successor at the patriarchal see would be none other than Novgorod Metropolitan Nikon, who even during Joseph’s life was the chief adviser to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in church affairs and rose above everyone, as much as by his personal merits, as much or even more by the sovereign’s unlimited power of attorney and love for him. The patriarchate was prophesied for Nikon even at that time, as soon as he became a metropolitan. A legend has been preserved that when he, having arrived in Novgorod, went to the Khutyn monastery to see his predecessor, Metropolitan Atheonius, who was living there in retirement, a man of holy life, but, due to old age and unconsciousness, voluntarily left his see, and began to ask him for his blessing, Atheonius answered: “you bless me,” and after a long argument between them about this, he finally said: “Bless me, patriarch.” Nikon remarked: “no, holy father, I am a sinful metropolitan, not a patriarch”... “You will be a patriarch, and bless me,” Apheonius explained his thought, and indeed he was the first to accept the blessing from Nikon, and then blessed him. There were already sufficient grounds for such a prediction about Nikon’s patriarchate. But it so happened that after the death of Patriarch Joseph, Nikon was not in Moscow for quite a long time: he traveled to the Solovetsky monastery to transfer from there the relics of St. Philip to the capital. And there were people who wanted to take advantage of Nikon’s absence and prevent him from reaching the patriarchal throne. The famous archpriest of Yuryevets-Povolsky Avvakum says in his autobiography that the confessor of the sovereign, also a person who had great power with Alexei Mikhailovich, the archpriest of the Annunciation Cathedral Stefan Bonifatiev fasted for the whole week “with the brethren” and prayed to God to grant Russia a new patriarch. And, at the end of the week, the brethren, together with the Kazan Metropolitan Cornelius, submitted, with their own signatures, a petition to the Tsar and Tsarina “for the confessor Stephen, so that he could be among the patriarchs.” Who were these people whom Habakkuk calls “brothers”? These were, as can be seen from the autobiography and from other writings of Avvakum, the archpriest of the Kazan Cathedral in Moscow Ivan Neronov, a very powerful man in the Moscow clergy and close to the tsar, he himself - the archpriest Avvakum, the archpriests - Daniel of Kostroma and Murom Lovgin, and in general the very same persons who later became Nikon's first opponents in the matter of correcting church books and rituals and the first the culprits of the split. Thus, even before Nikon became patriarch, these people already harbored feelings of hostility towards him, although at that time, according to the testimony of Avvakum himself, he was and was considered their friend. These people, especially Vonifatiev and Neronov, who, under the weak Patriarch Joseph, were accustomed to running affairs in church administration and court, now wanted to retain all power over the church and, not without reason, feared Nikon, having become sufficiently familiar with his character. Whether or not Vonifatiev knew about the petition filed about him by his “brothers” to the Tsar and Tsarina, he was so wise that he refused the honor requested of him, and even he himself allegedly pointed out to the Tsar Metropolitan Nikon as a worthy candidate for occupying the patriarchal see. Then the tsar sent a message to Nikon (this was already towards the end of May), in which, informing him of the death of Patriarch Joseph and magnifying Nikon himself as his “beloved favorite and brother’s friend, mental and physical,” he wrote to him: “come back, for the Lord’s sake, to quickly rob us for the patriarchate in the name of Theognostus (i.e., known to God), and without you we will not undertake anything,” and even further: “and You, holy master, pray that the Lord our God will give us a shepherd and a father who is fit for the Light, the name above; but we wait for you, the great saint, to make a choice; and three people know this man: me, the metropolitan of Kazan, and my spiritual father (i.e., Vonifatiev), who is not an example, but they say: the husband is holy.” Nikon, without a doubt, understood that it was about him. And, returning to Moscow on July 9, when the relics of St. Philip were brought to it, he hurried with bows and affection to his friends, Bonifatiev and other brethren, so that there would be no hindrance from them in achieving the patriarchate. So, at least, Habakkuk says 1. To elect a new patriarch, a “rite” was drawn up according to which it was to be carried out. The rite said that the pious tsar, not wanting to see the church as if widowed, sent letters to all corners of his state, to all the saints, and informing them of the death of Patriarch Joseph, invited them to gather in Moscow to elect a new supreme shepherd, and that, as a result of this, four metropolitans arrived in Moscow: Nikon of Novgorod, Cornelius of Kazan, Rostov Varlaam, Sara Serapion and three archbishops: Markell of Vologda, Serapion of Suzdal and Misail of Ryazan, with many archimandrites, abbots, protereans and priests, and other bishops, who for some reason could not come, sent voluntary letters of consent to the holy cathedral. The tsar ordered the assembled saints: “to write twelve spiritual men for election to the patriarchal throne.” The saints fulfilled the will of the king, and, having written, “sent to him the names of 12 spiritual men.” On the 22nd day of July, the Tsar sent his boyar Vasily Vasilyevich Buturlin and the Duma clerk Volosheninov to tell the saints and the entire cathedral that from those 12 men they should elect one most worthy to be patriarch, “a reverent and reverent man,” and then come to the golden chamber to notify the sovereign about this. The saints, with the entire cathedral, carried out this royal will, and when they came to the golden chamber, the Kazan Metropolitan Cornelius announced to the sovereign on behalf of everyone that out of 12 spiritual men they had elected Nikon, Metropolitan of Novgorod, to the patriarchal throne, and then invited the sovereign to go, “for such a great cause,” to the cathedral church and pray that the Lord God, through the intercession of the Most Rev. Mother of God and St. miracle workers of Moscow, “he accomplished a great deed.” The Emperor ordered the saints and other clergy to go ahead to the cathedral church and, having talked with his boyars about the election of a patriarch, he went there himself. In the church, prayers were performed by the entire cathedral: Presv. Trinity, Incorporeal Spirits, Most Holy. Theotokos with akathist, St. apostles and saints the wonderworkers of Moscow - Peter, Alexy, Jonah and Philip. At the end of the prayers, the tsar, having consulted with Cornelius of Kazan and the entire cathedral, sent “a newly elected patriarch” to the Novgorod courtyard of the Metropolitan of Sarsk and the Archbishop of Ryazan, and with them the boyar Buturlin, the okolnik Prince Romodanovsky and the Duma clerk Volosheninov. So all this should have happened according to the rite of election drawn up in advance, and there is no reason to doubt that this really happened. But this was followed by an unexpected retreat from rank. According to the rank, it was assumed that as soon as Nikon heard from the deputation sent to him the order of the sovereign to appear in the cathedral church, on the occasion of his election to the patriarchate, he would immediately appear, make a speech to the sovereign, accept congratulations from him and from everyone, etc. However, it did not turn out that way: Nikon did not want to go to the cathedral church, which the deputation announced to the Tsar and the entire cathedral. They sent for Nikon not once, not twice, but many times: Nikon did not submit. Finally, the sovereign sent his most important boyars and bishops to take Nikon against his will and bring him to the council: Nikon was brought. And the tsar began with all his synclite, clergy and people to beg Nikon to be patriarch in Moscow and Russia; but Nikon did not agree, calling himself humble, unreasonable and unable to shepherd the verbal sheep of the flock of Christ. Much time passed in vain prayers. Finally, the tsar and everyone present in the church fell to the ground and with tears begged Nikon to accept the patriarchate. And Nikon could not bear it, at the sight of the king in such a position, he cried himself along with everyone and, remembering that the king’s heart, according to scripture, was in the hand of God, turned to him and to everyone who was in the church with these words: “You know that from the beginning we received St. Gospel, broadcasts of St. apostles, rules of St. fathers and royal laws from Orthodox Greece, and therefore we are called Christians; but in reality we do not fulfill either the commandments of the Gospel or the rules of St. apostles and saints fathers, nor the laws of the pious Greek kings.... If you want me to be your patriarch, give me your word and make a vow in this cathedral church before our Lord and Savior and His Most Pure Matter, the angels and all the saints, that you will maintain the Gospel dogmas and observe the rules of St. apostles and saints fathers and the laws of pious kings. If you promise to obey me, as your long-time archpastor and father, in everything that I proclaim to you about the dogmas of God and the rules, then, in this case, according to your desire and request, I will no longer renounce the great bishopric.” Then the king, and all the boyars, and the entire consecrated council pronounced before the saint. Gospel and before St. with miraculous icons, a vow to fulfill everything that Nikon proposed. And Nikon, calling the Lord as a witness, Most Rev. Theotokos, angels and saints, expressed his consent to be patriarch. True, we know all this about Nikon’s election only from his own story. But, setting out this story, Nikon said: “The Lord God is a witness that such things have happened,” and boldly repeated this story before Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich himself and before his enemies, who could expose him in lies, and even before that he boldly pointed out this event even in printed liturgical books 2 . On July 23, the newly elected patriarch was named according to the previously drawn up rite, and on July 25, Nikon was ordained to the rank of patriarch by Kazan Metropolitan Cornelius and other bishops in the Assumption Cathedral, in the presence of the sovereign himself. On the same day, the tsar gave dinner in the faceted chamber for the new patriarch and all the spiritual authorities, and some of the noblest boyars were also present. At ordinary times, Nikon got up from the table and rode around the Kremlin on a donkey, and the donkey under the patriarch was driven by the boyars who were with him at the table: Prince Alexei Trubetskoy, Prince Fyodor Kurakin, Prince Yuri Dolgoruky, and the okolniks: Prince Dimitry Dolgoruky, and Prokopiy Sokovnin. The saints who participated in the installation of Patriarch Nikon gave him a desk document with their signatures and seals, and in it, among other things, they said: “with great need I begged him to the highest hierarchal throne,” which confirmed his own legend about that 3. Nikon was then barely 47 years old from birth, and he ascended the patriarchal throne while still in the full strength of his strength. The first main task, or even the most important task, of Nikon's patriarchate - the correction of liturgical books and church rituals - began in the days of Patriarch Joseph, and at the same time those two principles or rules were identified that later Nikon was constantly guided by while doing this work. Our liturgical books were edited under all hitherto former patriarchs when they were prepared for printing. But they corrected only according to Slavic “good translations” or lists (we do not mention the unfortunate attempt of St. Dionysius and his collaborators). And just as good Slavic lists, even the most ancient ones, were not devoid of errors and differed quite a bit from each other in particulars, it is very natural that in the printed books that appeared under our first patriarchs, all these errors and differences were repeated, sometimes reaching the point of contradictions. Towards the end of the life of Patriarch Joseph, we finally clearly understood the idea that it was not enough to correct church books using Slavic copies alone, but we also needed to correct them according to the Greek text. And so Tsar Alexei Mnkhailovich himself turned to Kyiv with a request to send learned men who knew Greek to Moscow so that they would correct, according to the text of seventy interpreters, the Slavic Bible, which they then intended to print again. Learned people soon arrived in Moscow, and although some met them here with hostility for their very learning, although they were not instructed to immediately begin correcting the Bible, they managed, even during the life of Patriarch Joseph, to correct one book, “The Six Days,” from the Greek text, which had already ended in printing, and printed their corrections at the end of the book, so as not to reprint the whole thing. This was the first church book printed in Moscow, corrected not only according to the Slavic lists, but also according to the Greek text, and this expressed the first principle that Nikon later adhered to: to edit liturgical books according to the “good” Slavic lists and together according to the Greek text 4 . In our worship services, for a long time, extreme disorder has been tolerated, resulting from “multiple voices” and “holy” singing. Services were performed at once by many voices: one read, another sang at the same time, a third spoke litanies or exclamations, and sometimes two or three read at once and completely different things. And under the prevailing Khomov singing, words were stretched out to the point of meaninglessness, with a change in stress in them, with a change in semi-vowel letters to vowels, with the addition of new vowels. The hundred-domed cathedral and Patriarch Hermogenes rebelled against such lawlessness, and now, under Patriarch Joseph, some even secular people rebelled, such as Fyodor Rtishchev, and the two most authoritative Moscow archpriests: Neronov of Kazan and Vonifatiev, the royal confessor of Blagoveshchensk. They were joined by Metropolitan Nikon of Novgorod and the Tsar himself. But Patriarch Joseph hesitated at first; but then he turned to the Constantinople Patriarch Parthenius with a request, so that he, together with other Greek hierarchs, would decide: “Is it appropriate to observe unanimity in services in secular churches and monasteries? " And when the answer was received from Constantinople that the reading in the churches should be done unanimously and that the singers should sing in agreement, and not with an inappropriate roar, then Patriarch Joseph, with a council of his Russian archbishops, in the presence of the sovereign himself and his synclite, decreed that in all churches they should sing orderly, serenely and unanimously and read in one voice, quietly and slowly. This expressed the second principle, which Nikon also constantly adhered to: in all important and perplexing cases, when correcting church rituals, ask for the advice and decisions of the eastern high priests 5 . New circumstances arose that forced us not only not to stop, but, on the contrary, to continue with greater energy the work begun on correcting church books and rituals. Under the pious Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, Greek bishops and other clergy came to Moscow even more often than before to give alms and sometimes stayed with us for quite a long time. Looking with curiosity at our churchliness, they could not help but notice and indeed noticed in our church some differences from the ranks and rituals of the Greek Church and some novelties or “innovations”, which especially seemed to them the use of two fingers for the sign of the cross: since this innovation, despite the decision of the Stoglavy Council, had hitherto weakly penetrated the people, who from ancient times from their ancestors were accustomed to cross themselves with three fingers, now precisely, with Patriarch Joseph, having been included in some of our teaching and liturgical books, began to spread and become more established and most striking to the co-religionists who came to us from the east. Among the other newcomers to us was the Patriarch of Jerusalem Paisius, who was received in Moscow with the greatest respect. He also noticed our innovations, and reproachfully pointed them out to the Tsar’s favorite, Nikon, and others. The alarmed Tsar and Patriarch Joseph, bidding farewell to Paisius, sent their elder Arsenniy Sukhanov with him to the east so that he could study church rites and rituals there and compile information about them. But Arseny, who twice returned from his journey, on behalf of Paisius, who stopped in Moldavia, for the last time (December 8, 1650) brought with him to Moscow a list of articles, in which he outlined in detail his heated dispute with the Greeks about the double finger for the sign of the cross and about some other church objects in which the Russians then differed from the Greeks, and together he brought a reliable one, which he himself had examined the news that on Athos the monks of all Greek monasteries, having gathered as one, conciliarly recognized the two-fingered heresy, burned the Moscow books in which it was published as heretical books, and wanted to burn the elder himself, from whom those books were found. All this should have alarmed the tsar and the church authorities in Moscow even more and showed them to what extent those ritual differences that the Greeks found among us and directly called innovations could lead to. Together with Arseny, Metropolitan Gabriel of Nazareth, whom Alexey Mikhailovich loved very much and tried in every possible way to let him live in Russia, arrived in Moscow, with letters from the Jerusalem Patriarch Paisius, to the Tsar and to Patriarch Joseph: and this Metropolitan also expressed his reproaches for our church innovations 6 . What could our church government do? Patriarch Joseph was already decrepit and weak, and soon died. But Nikon, so powerful under Patriarch Joseph, and now having become his successor, could Nikon be calm and not respond with all jealousy to all these reproaches of the Greeks? And he really responded. Immediately upon entering the patriarchal see, Nikon, as it is said in the preface of the service book he published, “abandoned himself from everyone and devoted himself to the work of examining the Holy Scriptures, and entering the book depository, with much labor, spent many days in examination.” In the book depository he found an authentic charter on the establishment of the patriarchate in Russia, signed by the patriarchs - Jeremiah of Constantinople and Job of Moscow and many other saints, Russian and Greek; I also found an authentic charter or book about the establishment of the patriarchate in Russia, signed and sent in 1593 by all the Eastern patriarchs, with many Greek bishops. In the last charter he read that the Moscow Patriarch is the brother of all other Orthodox patriarchs, is the sole ruler of them and co-throne, and therefore must agree with them in everything. What most caught Nikon’s attention in this letter were the following words: “since the Orthodox Church has received perfection not only in the dogmas of theology and piety, but also in the sacred church charter, then justice demands that we consume every new thing in the church, knowing that new things are always the cause of church confusion and division, and that we follow the rules of St. fathers, and what they learned from them was kept intact, without any addition or subtraction.” After reading this entire charter, Nikon fell into great fear, whether any deviation from the Orthodox Greek law had been allowed in Russia, and began, first of all, to examine the creed. He read the symbol of faith, inscribed in Greek letters on the sakkos, which, 250 years earlier, was brought to Moscow by Metropolitan Photius, and compared the Slavic symbol with this symbol, as it was set out in new Moscow printed books, and was convinced that there were disagreements in the Slavic symbol with the ancient Greek. St. looked at it in exactly the same way. liturgy, that is, the service book, and found that some things had been added to it, others had been taken away or transformed, and after the service book I saw many inconsistencies in other books 7 . After this, imbued with the consciousness of his duty to be in agreement with the Eastern patriarchs in everything and to consume all sorts of new things that could lead to disagreements in the church, unrest and division, and having personally convinced that we really have such new things in printed church books and in even the symbol of faith itself, Nikon decided to begin correcting our liturgical books and church ceremonies. The first attempt of this kind was made by Nikon, about seven months after his accession to the patriarchal see, and concerned only two innovations. But at the very first attempt, ardent opponents of Nikon and the work he began were revealed. Before the onset of Lent in 1653, Nikon sent out the following memory to all Moscow churches: “according to the legend of St. apostle and saint father, it is not appropriate to do throwing on your knees in church, but you should bow to your waist; I would also naturally cross myself with three fingers.” Archpriest Avvakum conveys the memory in such a condensed form, but regarding bows he conveys it not clearly and accurately, of course, not without intention. Nikon, as we will see later, did not at all indicate that the Orthodox should not bow to the ground in the church at all, but only that in St. Pentecost, while reading the famous prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian, the Orthodox did not make only numerous earthly bows (up to 17 in number), as was done with us then, but they made waist bows, except for only four earthly ones. This memory was also sent to the Kazan Cathedral to Archpriest Ivan Neronov. Neronov immediately invited Archpriest Avvakum, who lived with him, and his other relatives. “We,” says Avvakum, “we got together in thought; we saw how winter wanted to be: my heart was cold and my legs were trembling. Nero ordered me to go to church (i.e., the Kazan Cathedral), and he alone hid in miracles, prayed for a week in a tent. And there, from the image, a voice came to him during prayer: “It’s time.” Having suffered, it is fitting for you to suffer unremittingly." He said to me, also to the Bishop of Kolomna, then to the archpriest of Kostroma; Daniel and I wrote extracts from the books about the folding of the fingers and about bowing and gave them to the sovereign: “We don’t know where he hid them,” it seems to Nikon. gave” 8. That’s who were Nikon’s opponents and how they started the fight against him! What prompted them to this fatal struggle? We have already mentioned that the archpriests, Kazan Neronov and Blagoveshchensk Vonifatiev, were under Patriarch Joseph the most authoritative people in the Moscow clergy, strong before the patriarch and the tsar, and that other, mostly non-resident archpriests flocked to them and under their protection, such as: Avvakum of Yuryev, Daniil of Kostroma, Loggin of Murom, who formed around them "brotherhood". Among their relatives and friends, the temporary archpriests also considered Nikon, the tsar’s new favorite, while he was an archimandrite and even the Novgorod metropolitan. But when Patriarch Joseph died, these imaginary friends of Nikon, taking advantage of his absence from Moscow, led intrigues to prevent him from becoming patriarchate. Nikon, upon returning to Moscow, learned about the intrigues, and as soon as he became patriarch, he did not, as Archpriest Avvakum put it in his autobiography, allow his former friends to join him in the crusade. Nero was unable to endure such humiliation and insult. Neronov himself, in a letter to the sovereign's confessor Vonifatiev, testifies that the voice from the image of Spasov came to him precisely in 1653, during the first week of Lent. But, remarkably, the content of this voice is no longer conveyed by what it previously conveyed to Habakkuk and the other brethren. The voice seemed to be like this: “John, be of good courage and do not be afraid to death; It is fitting for you to strengthen the king in My name, so that today Russia will not suffer, as will the units (i.e., the Uniates).” (Material for the historical split, 1.99 – 100). You can’t help but think whether this voice really existed, when Neronov himself conveys it differently, is it not an invention? We then liked to refer to similar revelations from above for one purpose or another, and, as we will see, even Nnkon himself referred more than once, and simple-minded people believed. with their entourage, and they were only waiting for an opportunity to take revenge on Nikon. The opportunity, it seemed to them, had presented itself. Nikon sent “Memory” to the clergy: they wrote a refutation of it from the books, exposing it, of course, as heretical, and submitted their manuscript to the sovereign, hoping to offend Nikon and harm him. But they made a mistake in their calculations: Nikon remained in full force, but only became even more irritated against his former friends. And the struggle began primarily for personal reasons, which, as we will soon see, at the very beginning took on the most drastic character on both sides. But it is worthy of note that this time Nikon did not seem to pay attention to the actions of his enemies, did not demand them to trial for their resistance to the archpastoral order, and did not persecute them at all. Meanwhile, on April 16 (1653), another of the highest saints of the east, the former Patriarch of Constantinople Athanasius, arrived in Moscow with a fairly large retinue. He ascended the patriarchal throne three times; but remained on it: the first time (1633) only forty days, the second (1634 - 1635) about a year, and the third time (1651) only fifteen days. Recently, Athanasius lived in the Volosh region, in the city of Galati, where he managed the monastery of St. Nicholas, from where he came to us. On April 22, the Emperor received Patriarch Athanasius with all his retinue no longer with the same solemnity as he had previously received Patriarch Paisius of Jerusalem: he was a real patriarch, but this patriarch was without a pulpit. He received him - not in royal attire, not in the golden chamber, not on the throne, but in ordinary dress and in the dining hut. Athanasius struck the king with his forehead and presented him with his gifts: the image of the Savior in the icon case, a carved wooden cross, the relics of the Evangelist Matthew, St. peace, and said a speech. The king called Athanasius to his hand, asked him about salvation and invited him to sit down, and the clerk immediately announced to Athanasius the royal salary, which consisted of: a silver goblet with a gilded lid, a damask, two smooth satins, two forty sables and one hundred rubles in money. Having released Athanasius, the king sent him food and drink to the Kirillov courtyard, through his steward. In June, with the permission of the sovereign, Athanasius, with all his retinue, went to the Trinity - Sergius Lavra, where he was greeted with the same honors and gifts with which Patriarch Paisius had previously been greeted. Upon returning from the Lavra, during the procession to the Sretensky Monastery (June 23), Athanasius personally asked the sovereign, pointing to his dilapidated holy clothes, to give him new ones, and the sovereign ordered him to be given, according to previous examples, two hundred rubles for the omophorion, sakkos and miter. In August, Afanasy served, at the request of the sovereign, in the Novospassky monastery, and for this he received from the sovereign a silver-gilded cup worth forty-two hryvnias, forty sables worth fifty rubles and eighteen rubles in money. In October, Athanasius submitted a petition so that the sovereign would grant him a charter, according to which the monks of his Galati Nikolaev monastery could come to Moscow for alms every year while he, Athanasius, was alive, and after his death two years later on the third year. And in the same petition he also wrote: “Yes, sir, order me, your pilgrim, to print 500 letters of permission in my yard, because when I was traveling to you in Moscow through the army of Zaporozhye Cossacks, at that time, sir, many Cherkasy people came to me for confession and, according to their custom, asked me for letters of permission, and I have no one was to be sent to Kyiv to print them. And when I, your pilgrim, go back from Moscow, those Zaporozhye Cossacks will again begin to ask me for letters of permission, and others will come to confession again. Tsar Sovereign, please have mercy” 9. This petition was respected. In October, on the 29th, Patriarch Athanasius celebrated the liturgy in the sovereign's courtyard at the Savior - the image not made by hands, in the presence of the king himself and the entire royal family - and the Greeks sang in both choirs. And he was honored to receive a salary from the tsar, queen and princesses - 1,200 rubles in sables. In November, on the 19th, he asked the sovereign for 50 rubles for a panagia and for his monastery for icons, as well as church vestments and vessels. At the end, on December 13, Patriarch Afanasy with all his retinue was on a farewell vacation with the sovereign, and the sovereign then granted him 2,000 rubles in sables. Getting ready to set off, Athanasius gave him one letter - a petition, in which he thanked the king for his mercies, and expressed his new needs to him, and, among other things, wrote “your royal mercy, like the sun, shines throughout the entire universe; You, sir, are now the king of all Orthodox Christians on earth, and the great lord, His Holiness Nikon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus', by the grace of God, is the head of the church and the correction of the existing Orthodox Christian faith, and brings the verbal sheep of Christ into one flock... Only you, the great sovereign, we have a pillar and confirmation of the faith, and a helper in troubles, and a refuge for us, and liberation. And for my brother, sir, and co-servant, the great lord, His Holiness Nikon, to consecrate the Cathedral Apostolic Church of Sophia - the Wisdom of God (of course, in Constantinople) "... In the last days of December, Athanasius left Moscow 10. And in February of the following 1654, he informed Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich from Chigirin that Hetman Bogdan Khmelnitsky had arranged for him, Afanasy, for a time in one of the monasteries, namely Lubensky: here, a little over a month later, on April 5, Afanasy died 11. But for us, Patriarch Athanasius’s visit to Moscow is important in the main respect that he, like other Eastern high priests who came to us before, “sneered” at Patriarch Nikon “for not correcting divine scripture and other church faults,” and thereby again aroused his zeal for the correction of our church books and rituals. In addition, Athanasius, during his stay in Moscow, wrote an essay for Nikon entitled: “The order of the bishop’s celebration of the liturgy in the east,” so that Nikon could clearly see what deviations from that order were allowed in Russia 12. Even while Patriarch Athanasius was in Moscow, Nikon’s first open clash took place with his opponents and, above all, with Archpriest Neronov. This clash was described by Neronov himself in some detail in his “painting,” which he sent to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, and somewhat more briefly in his petition, which he subsequently submitted to the patriarchs. In July 1653, Nikon convened a cathedral of the cross in his church, to which Archpriest Neronov was invited, and at the cathedral he listened to the reply of the Murom governor to the Murom archpriest Loggin, as if he had blasphemed the image of the Savior and the image of the saint. Theotokos and all saints. Loggin, who was right there, gave an explanation against the reply: “I did not blaspheme the St. not only in word, but also in thought. images, which I worship with fear, and I only said to the wife of the governor of Murom, in his house, when she came up to me for a blessing: are you henbane? My words were picked up by the guests and the governor himself, and they began to say: you, archpriest, are a blasphemous whitewash, and without whitewash even images cannot be painted. I answered: with what compositions are the images written, such are the scribes; but if you put such compounds on your faces, you won’t want to. The Savior Himself and Rev. The Mother of God and all the saints are more honest than their images.” Nikon, having listened to Loggin and “not having experienced the truth, wrote back; that governor, condemned Loggin to torture by the evil bailiff, taking revenge on himself from the former denunciation from that Loggin archpriest in his careless and highly intelligent and proud life of Nikon” (this means that Nikon was not the first to start the enmity, but he was the first to be insulted by the Murom archpriest, who allowed himself to sharply reproach his patriarch for negligence and pride). Neronov could not stand it and said to Nikon: “Why give Loggin to the cruel bailiff? We must first carry out a search... This is a great matter, God’s and the king’s, and the king himself, in truth, should be at this council.” To this Nikon allegedly answered: “I don’t even need the royal help and I don’t need it, but I spit and blow my nose at it.” And Neronov screamed: “Patriarch Nikon! you are furious that you are speaking such blasphemous words against the sovereign majesty...; all St. councils and pious authorities demanded pious kings and princes to help themselves and the Orthodox faith. And on the same day, Neronov with the Yaroslavl archpriest Ermil, referring to the Rostov Metropolitan Jonah, as if he had heard those unworthy words of Nikon about the tsar, reported them to the sovereign's confessor Stefan and the sovereign himself. A few days later, Nikon again convened the spiritual authorities for a council and complained to them about Neronov as his slanderer before the sovereign, and claimed that he had not said such words about the sovereign. Rostov Metropolitan Jonah first said: “It was as Archpriest John says,” but immediately locked himself up and said: “Patriarch Nikon did not say such words.” Then the angry Neronov began to spew out a whole stream of reproaches at Nikon, in the presence of the entire cathedral, barely allowing Nikon to say a few words. Nikon: “I judge only by the Gospel.” Nero: “The Gospel says: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you; and you hate those who want good for you, and those who are slanderers and whisperers, those you love, and favor, and listen to. Whoever tells you who, even five hundred or a thousand miles away, you believe; and about the pilgrims you say, having listened to slander: this is what they do, wicked, and the archpriests Stefan (Vonifatiev) and John (Neronov) indulge them, thieves...” Nikon: “I judge by the rules of St. apostles and saints fathers." Neronov: “the rules say not to believe slanderers, to check them with true witnesses, and to punish the caught slanderers without mercy; but slanderers clearly slander good people to you, and you believe them.” Here Protodeacon Patriarch Gregory interrupted Nero with his reproaches against his wife and son; but Neronov continued to Nikon with new insolence: “hitherto you called Protodeacon Gregory and the others who are now in your cross as his advisers, enemies of God and destroyers of the law of the Lord; and now you have good people at your council. Previously, you had a council with Archpriest Stefan and his favorite advisers, and you often came to Archpriest Stefan’s house and kindly talked about every good deed when you were abbot, archimandrite and metropolitan. Those lovers of God were sent by the sovereign to Patriarch Joseph, so that he, on his sovereign's advice, would appoint some as metropolitans, archbishops and bishops, others as archimandrites, abbots and archpriests - and you and the sovereign's confessor Stefan were in the council then and never punished them, and when appointing them you did not say: unworthy. Then all of you were blameless, but now your people have become unworthy. And why did Archpriest Stefan become your enemy? Everywhere you blaspheme and reproach him, and you ruin his friends, you separate archpriests and priests from their wives and children. Until now, you have been our friend, and you rebelled against us. You have ruined some and put others in their place, and nothing good can be heard from them. You accused others of torturing people, but you yourself are constantly torturing: you ordered the elder of Solovetsky to be beaten mercilessly on Sunday. You despise the authorities, but you yourself are constantly tormented 13 . So you reproach the newly laid book (i.e., the Code), trample it with a staff and call it not good; and you put your hand to it when they were putting it together: at that time you called it good. You put your hand out of earthly fear, but now at the council you are daring against that book, because the sovereign gave you freedom. But those who loved God were not afraid of poverty, sorrow and death, they suffered for the truth and stood strong, just as now the lovers of God suffer sorrows, troubles, and ruin from you. Nikon: “Priests and deacons and all the clerks of your cathedral filed a petition against you.” Neronov: “They told me to read at the council what I was accused of. Truly, patriarch, you are lying; Did the widowed priest Lavrentiy, whom you previously sent as head of the Joseph’s monastery, and now released, inform you about me, so that he could make up a lie against me?” Here again the protodeacon could not stand it and began to shout in the cross with his advisers: “You call the great saint a blasphemer, and an idle talker, and a tormentor, and a false figure.” Neronov: “The patriarch himself has allowed all sorts of absurd words to be spoken against the true servants of God, and I don’t know what to call this council of yours... Why are you, Gregory, shouting and screaming? I'm not in St. I sinned the Trinity, and did not blaspheme the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, but I blaspheme your council...” 14. What does this first public clash between Archpriest Neronov and Patriarch Nikon show, which we presented from the words of Neronov himself? Neronov first stood up for one of his supporters, the Murom archpriest Loggin, who had previously boldly reproached Nikon for his pride, and reproached Nikon for cruelty. Then he informed the king about Nikon, who allegedly said indecent words about the king. And then he sharply reproached Nikon for believing only slanderers without any investigation: that before he was a friend of Vonifatiev and his friends, consulted with them about everything, and now he has become an enemy of Vonifatiev, reviles him everywhere, and ruins his friends, archpriests and priests, puts others in their places, has chosen new advisers for himself, whom he previously called enemies of God; that he previously signed the Code out of fear, but now condemns it; that, finally, Neronov is lying about him and he himself set up a slanderer against him. And among all these reproaches to Nikon, there is not a word against his correction of church rites, which was already beginning then; there is not a shadow of any attachment to the old rituals, which Nikon allegedly encroached on. In everything, one can see only personal enmity, hatred, embitterment of Neronov and his friends against Nikon because he betrayed them, deprived them of their former power, became their enemy, and persecutes them. It was this hatred that guided them most of all later, when they allegedly began to stand up for the old rituals. Nero's bitterness knew no bounds, and he completely forgot himself when at the council he allowed himself to so boldly condemn and disgrace his patriarch to his face, and finally blasphemed the entire council. It is not surprising if St. Cathedral, based on Rule 55 of St. of the Apostles, which reads: “If anyone from the clergy annoys the bishop, let him be deposed,” determined that Archpriest Nero should be sent to a monastery for humility. Or, as he himself talks about this in more detail: “and for those words of mine I was exiled to the Spassky monastery on New under the command, and on the same day I was transferred from the Spassky monastery to Simonov and given under a strong command: I was not ordered to go to church, and at night the guards held me with candles and for seven days none of the people were allowed to come to me, neither at home nor outsiders. On the last day they brought me to the city of the Tsar - Borisov's court, and here they beat me mercilessly; and when they took me from the monastery, they quickly rode on a cart, trying to shake me to death. And they brought me to the cathedral church, and Patriarch Nikon ordered Metropolitan Sylvester of Krutitsa to take off my skufia. And when they took off the skufia, the patriarch again sent me to Simon’s monastery, and they put a large chain around my neck. On the 4th day of August he sent me to the Vologda district on Lake Kubenskoye, to the Kamensk monastery, under a strong leadership; and in the letter about me it was written to the authorities: for the great outrage I was ordered to serve in black services.” 15 As soon as Neronov fell into disgrace, his friends, who formed the “brotherhood” around him, did not sleep. They decided to intercede for him before the sovereign. Archpriests Avvakum and Daniil of Kostroma wrote a petition about this and took it to the sovereign's confessor Stefan. But the cautious Stefan had already begun to separate from his perky friends, who had started an unequal struggle with the powerful patriarch, and, in the words of Avvakum, “weakened in every way,” and “did not bear the petition to the sovereign.” The brothers, however, found another way to the sovereign and submitted their petition to him, and the sovereign handed it over to the patriarch. Meanwhile, Avvakum went to accompany Nero to the stone island. And when he returned, he went on August 13th to the all-night vigil in the Kazan Cathedral, intending, as happened before, to read at the appointed time, instead of Archpriest Nero, a teaching to the people from the explanatory gospel. But the Kazan priests did not allow him to read and said: you are the archpriest in Yuryevets, not for us, and the patriarchal archdeacon ordered us to read the teachings to the people ourselves. Avvakum was very upset and did not go to the Kazan church, but “held his all-night vigil” in the dryer, located in the courtyard of Archpriest Neronov; lured several parishioners of the Kazan church to himself, and through them he called others from the church to the drying place, saying: “at some time, even the stable - other churches are better.” The Kazan priests could not stand this and reported everything to Patriarch Nikon. Avvakum's act was very important and contrary to the canons of the church: he arbitrarily organized a special chapel, arbitrarily separated himself and separated others from the church into an unauthorized gathering. By order of the patriarch, Boris Neledinsky was immediately sent with the archers. They surrounded Habakkuk’s chapel, when the all-night vigil in it had not yet ended, seized Habakkuk himself and the pilgrims, thirty-three in number, and immediately took the petitioners, that is, those who wrote and signed the petition about Nero, so that all those taken were up to forty people or more. Avvakum was taken to the patriarchal courtyard, and the next day in chains he was taken on a cart to the Androniev Monastery. And “brothers”, i.e. The captured pilgrims and petitioners were sent to prison and kept there for a whole week. The next Sunday, the patriarch ordered them all to be brought to church, and during the liturgy he read to them from the rules of the church, which they had violated with their unauthorized gathering, and anathematized and excommunicated everyone. And the three archpriests, more guilty than others, both of this arbitrariness and of drawing up a petition to the king for Nero, against the patriarch, and according to their very clergy, were given a special punishment. First of all. Nikon “shaved his head” in the cathedral church, in the presence of the tsar himself, to the Kostroma archpriest Daniil and, having removed his one-row uniform, sent him to the miracle monastery to work in a grain store, and after a while he exiled him to Astrakhan. Then, in the same way, in the cathedral church and in the presence of the tsar, during the big mass outing, the Murom archpriest Loggin, took off his one-row coat and caftan and, in chains, sent him to the Epiphany monastery, and then sent him to Murom, ordering him to live in the village with his father under his command. It was Avvakum’s turn. Ten days later, after his imprisonment in the Andronievo monastery, he was brought on foot to the patriarchal order and remained here the whole day before the judges to be questioned about the petition, and then again released to the same monastery. He spent only four weeks there. On Nikitin’s day (September 15), when a procession of the cross was taking place in Moscow, Avvakum was brought to the Assumption Cathedral. The patriarch himself performed the liturgy; Habakkuk was kept at the threshold of the church; everyone was waiting for the time when the patriarch would begin to “cut” the archpriest’s hair. But when it came, the sovereign suddenly left his place, approached the patriarch and begged him not to cut Avvakum’s hair. The Patriarch conceded: Avvakum, more guilty than others, was given leniency; he remained archpriest. He was transferred only to the Siberian Prikaz and then exiled, with his wife and children, to Tobolsk, where the local archbishop gave him a priestly position 16. If Archpriest Nero was subjected to church punishment not at all for zeal for the faith, but for the greatest insult to the patriarch in the face of the whole council, then the other three archpriests, Daniel, Loggin and Avvakum, also suffered in the same way not for zeal for the faith, but for the fact that they decided to defend before the king, in reproach to the patriarch, their extremely guilty patron, and even more so because they dared to organize an arbitrary gathering. It is not known in detail how the trial of these three archpriests and those pilgrims who were taken in Avvakum’s chapel took place; but they were undoubtedly tried according to the rules of the church (review, rules of the Holy Apostles 31.55 and St. Basil Vel. 1 and others), and if the guilty were offered a threefold admonition, and they did not repent, then they were condemned quite fairly, although, without a doubt, when punishing them, it would have been possible to treat them not with such cruelty and not to betray them to such shame 17. Archpriest Neronov was informed in his captivity what fate befell his closest friends - the archpriests. And he wrote to the sovereign (dated November 6, 1653) a petition letter about these “imprisoned, and abused, and expelled,” claiming, contrary to the truth, that they were condemned by a secular court, and not according to the rules of the church, that these sufferers had served for many years before, and no vice was noticed in them, and Nikon himself did not make any report against them then; and now they have been slandered, and Nikon believed the slander against them. Then Nero asserted that it was not his own sorrows and suffering that forced him to cry out to the sovereign, but fear, lest piety should be violated, and the wrath of God should not be poured out on Russia, and begged the tsar to calm the storm that was confusing the church, to stop the warfare that was destroying the sons of the church. The king himself did not answer Nero; but his confessor Stefan, of course, on his instructions, wrote twice to his former friend, the Kazan archpriest, and persuaded him to humble himself, to be in obedience to the patriarch, to reconcile with him and informed him that Patriarch Nikon justifies himself in his actions against him, expects true repentance from him and his friends and is ready to forgive them. But the indomitable Nero responded with reproaches (from February 27, 1654) to Vonifatiev: why did you insult me?.. I cannot accept your advice; we have not sinned in anything before your father Nikon the Patriarch..., but your father Nikon the Patriarch is justifying himself in vain: he humbles us incorrectly, not according to the scriptures, but fulfills his passion, and torments us for the truth... He is waiting for us to ask him for forgiveness: let him himself ask us for forgiveness and repent before God for offending me tuna... and so on. On the same February 27, Neronov sent an extensive message to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Here, first of all, he begged for the same “imprisoned, abused, expelled without any truth” friends of his, condemned as if by a worldly court, and not according to the rules of the church, and reminded the king of the times of the Antichrist, when Christ’s slaves would be persecuted, bearing the sign of the heavenly king. Then he pointed to the famous “Memory” or decree of Nikon, which contained two of his orders: regarding bowing to St. Pentecostal and regarding three-fingered for the sign of the cross. The first order was directly called “non-worshipping heresy,” and completely unfairly: because the so-called heresy of non-knee worshipers was to never prostrate during prayer and to always pray while standing; and Nikon did not at all prohibit the use of prostrations either in church or in home prayers; he only prescribed that in St. Pentecost, while reading the prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian, only bows to the ground (17 in number) were not made, but only four bows to the ground were made, while the rest were all waist bows. 18 Against the second order, Nikon defended the two-fingered sign of the cross, and referred to Meletius of Antioch, Theodoret, Maximus the Greek: what these proofs are, we have already seen before. 19 Further, he assured that he had not sinned in anything “before the imaginary ruler,” (i.e., Nikon) and that he spoke to him one truth, standing up for the honor of the Tsar’s Majesty, which he reproaches and sets aside for nothing, and for his suffering brothers, and begged the Tsar to convene a council, at which not only bishops would be present, but also other clergy and virtuous laymen of any rank. At the end of the message he expressed himself: “I am not seeking permission from the Patriarch, sir, because he did not condemn me according to the rules of St. apostles and saints fathers (a complete lie!), but for the sake of passion; I told him the truth, and for that he hated me, and not only me, but all the brethren - the servants of Christ.” Having read this message, the king gave an order that Nero should not write to him in the future. And Vonifatiev, transmitting this order to Neronov, informed him together that the king was surprised at his stubbornness, and neither the king nor the queen approved of him; that “the tsar-sovereign laid down his soul and all of Russia on the patriarch’s soul,” and saw nothing bad about the patriarch; that regarding bows, the king agrees with the sovereign patriarch and with the authorities, and the sign of the cross will be as it was from ancient times. But Neronov remained adamant even now, and on May 2 he answered Vonifatiev: don’t let you be bullied about the patriarch - he does everything good; but I was also tempted, brethren, because he took upon himself the tormenting dignity, and torments the brethren torturously, cut some, cursed others... Do not blame it on stubbornness that I do not ask the patriarch for forgiveness: I do not admit that I have sinned against him... If the patriarch seeks obedience from us, then listen to Christ the Savior, who commands not to repay evil for evil and to substitute another for the one who struck the cheek... and etc. 20 But it’s time for us to part ways, for a while, with Neronov and his friends and turn to the matter to which all the attention of Patriarch Nikon was then directed. The order he made personally on his own before the onset of Lent in 1653 and directed only against two ritual innovations, served as a kind of touchstone for him to find out how they would respond to his planned correction of church rites and liturgical books. And he understood and was convinced from the resistance shown by Neronov and his brethren that it was not enough to act here with his patriarchal power alone, but it was necessary for him, the patriarch, to have support for himself in a stronger church power - the conciliar. Imbued with this conviction, Nikon asked Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich to convene a council, which was also a request from Neronov to the Tsar at the same time. The council was convened in March or April 1654, and took place in the royal chambers. 21 The council was “presided by the faithful and Christ-loving sovereign Tsar and Grand Duke Alexei Mikhailovich, autocrat of all great and small Russia, and the wise great sovereign His Holiness Nikon, Patriarch of Moscow and all great and small Russia,” and was present: five metropolitans: Macarius of Novgorod, Cornelius of Kazan, Rostov Jonah, Krutitsky Sylvester, Serbian Mikhail; four archbishops: Vologda Markell, Suzdal Sophrony, Ryazan Misail, Pskov Macarius; one bishop - Kolomna Pavel; eleven archimandrites and abbots, and thirteen archpriests, in total, except for those who presided, 34 people, “I also stand before the royal sigklit.” Nikon opened the cathedral with a speech. Having first expressed general thoughts that there is nothing more pleasing to God than to learn from the commandments of God and firmly establish themselves on them, and that, according to the words of the pious king Justinian, God gave the two greatest gifts to people out of His goodness: the priesthood and the kingdom, of which one is to serve the divine, and the other to rule over human (affairs), but both, coming from the same beginning, adorn human life, and that they then only can fulfill their calling if they take care of preserving the divine commandments and church rules among people, Nikon continued: “therefore we must also keep the commandments handed down from our Lord and Savior, from St. apostles and from St. fathers who gathered at seven ecumenical and Orthodox local councils. So, since (Nikon spoke with the words that most amazed him in the letter of the Eastern Patriarchs on the establishment of the Russian patriarchate), since the Orthodox Church has received perfection not only in the dogmas of knowledge of God and piety, but also in the sacred church charter, then justice demands that we consume every new thing in the fence of the church, knowing that new things are always the cause of church confusion and division, and that we follow the charter St. fathers, and what they learned from them was kept intact, without any addition or subtraction. And we, according to the first rule of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, accept with delight the divine rules of St. apostles, St. Ecumenical and Local Councils and St. fathers, as enlightened by one and the same Holy Spirit, and whom they cursed, and we excommunicate whom they overthrew, and we overthrow whom they excommunicated, and we excommunicate whom they forbade, and we forbid. Following these apostolic and conciliar rules, St. The great council, which took place in the days of the pious Tsar and Grand Duke Fyodor Ivanovich of All Rus', proclaimed and approved the following.” Following this, Nikon ordered to read, if not read himself, the entire conciliar Act or charter of the eastern eparchs who gathered in Constantinople in 1593 and established the patriarchate in Russia. During the reading of this charter, all those present again heard the words already cited by Nikon, that all new things should be consumed in the church and everything devoted to St. fathers, to preserve without any damage, addition or subtraction, and at the same time they heard the symbol of faith set out in the charter by the Eastern saints, and could not help but notice those, although not many, additions and changes that were in the symbol that was then used among us. When the reading of the grama ended, Nikon continued: “Therefore, I must announce to you the new church rites. In the service books of the Moscow press, it is stipulated that the bishop’s prayers, with which the apostles resolve many human sins, should be read by the priest on his own behalf for himself before performing the liturgy; but in the Greek service books and in our old ones, written over a hundred, two hundred, three hundred years or more, those prayers are not found; Even before the start of the liturgy, it is supposed to say dismissal (after hours) to the whole church, which is not supposed to happen either in the Greek or in our old ones; Yes, there are differences both in the actions during the liturgy and in the liturgy. Therefore, I ask for a decision: should we follow our new printed service books, or the Greek and our old ones, which together show the same rank and regulations? Then the tsar and his eminence metropolitans, the archbishops and the bishop, and the entire consecrated council, all unanimously answered: “It is worthwhile and righteous to correct against the old ones - the Harateans and the Greeks.” Then followed a series of proposals and questions from Nikon and decisions or answers from the cathedral. Nikon: “In our statutes it is written to open the royal doors during the liturgy, only for the small exit and for the great one, but now with us they are constantly open from the beginning of the liturgy until the great exit. Tell me: should we act according to the charter or according to our rank? And the Greeks act in accordance with our charter." Council: “and we affirm to be the same as the Greek and our old books and statutes command.” Nikon: “in our statutes it is written - on Sunday, to begin the liturgy at the beginning of the third (currently, ninth) hour; and with us now, when a cathedral prayer service takes place, the liturgy begins at the beginning of the seventh and osmago (i.e., the first and second) hours. What do you say: according to the charter of St. fathers to begin the liturgy, or according to our custom at the beginning of the seventh and osmago hours, which is not written anywhere?” Council: “to be according to the rules of St. fathers." Nikon: “according to the 7th rule of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, when consecrating a church, the relics of St. should be placed in them. martyrs, and here in Russia all churches are consecrated without relics; Only particles of relics are sewn into the antimension, but relics are not placed under the altar; and in our old consumer books there is a decree that three parts of St. should be placed under the altar. relics: What do you say about this? Cathedral: “to be according to the rules of St. fathers and according to the charter, as written in the ancient consumer books.” Nikon: “according to the 15th rule of the Laodicean Council, without small vestments (surplice), no one should ascend to the pulpit in church to read and sing; But among us, simpletons, without blessing, both bigamists and triplets, read and sing in churches. What do you say? Cathedral: “also be according to the rules of St. fathers." Nikon: “in the Greek statutes and in our old ones it is written about bowing on the Great Pentecost, but in our new statutes it is not in accordance with the Greek and our old ones - and this must be truly tested.” Council: “to be in accordance with the ancient statutes.” Nikon: “in our old consumer books and service books and in Greek it is indicated to serve on antimensions; but now this is not being done - the antimension is placed under cover. And judge about this.” Council: “good is to be corrected in accordance with the old and Greek books.” Then the pious Sovereign Tsar and Grand Duke Alexei Mikhailovich and the Great Sovereign, His Holiness Patriarch Nikon, ordered the writing of this conciliar code, for the sake of its complete strengthening, in order to henceforth be the correction of church books, when printing them, according to the ancient charatean and Greek books, statutes, consumer books. service books and books of hours. And Nikon, together with the metropolitans, archbishops and bishop, with the archimandrites, abbots, archpriests, and the entire consecrated cathedral, approved the conciliar code with the signatures of their own hands, “as if in previous years this existence would certainly exist” 22. This was our first council on the matter of correcting our church books and rituals. He not only recognized the need to correct them, but approved the very beginning or rule of how to carry out this correction. Patriarch Nikon did not at all impose his thoughts on the council; he only reminded his co-pastors, the fathers of the cathedral, of their sacred duty to preserve unchangeably everything devoted to St. apostles, St. cathedrals and St. fathers, and consume all sorts of new things in the church, and then pointed out some new things in our then books and church customs and asked what to do. And the council itself unanimously decided: to worthily and righteously correct our newly printed books according to the old ones - Charatean and Greek. Nothing could be said against such a decision: because there was no better way to correct our church books. One could only disagree that these or those rituals that Nikon pointed out were new, and this kind of disagreement was actually stated by one of those present at the council, Bishop Pavel of Kolomna. Together with others, he signed the conciliar code, but signed as follows: “Humble Bishop Pavel of Kolomna and Koshir; and what he said at the holy council about worship, and that charter of the haratean for justification he laid down here, and another in writing.” By his signature under the act of the council, Paul indisputably testified to his agreement with the code of the council, and by adding to his signature he clearly expressed one thing in which he did not agree with the other fathers of the council, which he spoke against at the council. It should be noted that this was not the first time that Bishop Paul now expressed his contradiction to Nikon on the issue of bowing. Even last year, when, before the onset of Lent, Nikon published “Memory” regarding prostrations to the ground, Paul was among the people who, together with Archpriest Nero, rebelled against this “Memory”, wrote objections to it and submitted it to the sovereign. That is why Paul’s objections at the council regarding bows could have irritated Nikon especially: in them he could see a repetition of the previous objections of the entire party hostile to him 23 . Or perhaps Paul allowed himself, in a dispute with the patriarch, to make some harsh outbursts against him, similar to those that Archpriest Nero had allowed himself before, at another council, or perhaps he even dared to stubbornly reject the need for correction of church books. Be that as it may, only Nikon unleashed a terrible punishment on the unfortunate bishop: he overthrew him from the pulpit, took off his robe, subjected him to severe corporal punishment and sent him to prison - as a result of which Paul went crazy, and no one saw how the poor man died, whether he was kidnapped by animals, or fell into the river and drowned 24. Did Nikon himself, single-handedly and without trial, overthrow Bishop Paul, as Nikon’s accusers said at the council of 1666, or was the overthrow of Paul carried out collectively, according to the rules, as Nikon asserted at the same council, indicating that the case for the overthrow of Paul was in the patriarchal court: in any case, with such a cruel punishment of the bishop, Nikon extremely harmed both himself and the very cause for which he stood up: because even more He hardened his opponents against himself and aroused sympathy for them among the people 25. Execution befell Paul soon, if not immediately, after the council, at which he dared to object to Nikon. Neronov, in a letter from his captivity dated May 2 of the same 1654 to Tsarina Marya Ilyinishna, had already begged her to intercede with the sovereign for “the father of Bishop Paul and the brethren: Daniil the archpriest of Kostroma, and Avvakum the archpriest of Yuryev, and Loggin the archpriest of Murom and others,” as if they had suffered completely innocently, and in a letter dated July 13 to the Tsar confessor Bonifatiev expressed: “Bishop Paul, as I hear from lovers of God, and the soulless creature, seeing the one suffering for the truth, disrobed, showing thus the church’s beauty of tearing apart” 26. In addition to these testimonies from our home, there is also reliable testimony from one foreigner. In August 1654, on the 17th, the Patriarch of Antioch Macarius arrived in Kolomna with his retinue, which included his son, Archdeacon Paul of Aleppo. “Here,” as this same archdeacon writes, “by order of the tsar and his ministers, we were ordered to stay in the bishop’s chambers, because the bishop was exiled by the sovereign and patriarch to Siberia for some guilt.” Patriarch Macarius lived in these chambers with his retinue, due to the epidemic that was then raging in Moscow, for more than five months in a row, until the opportunity opened up to go to Moscow. And during all this time, the same Archdeacon Paul testifies, the cathedral archpriest was in charge of the episcopal part in Kolomna: “all the peasants (the bishop) brought taxes to him, and the clergy of the diocese brought their affairs; he was everywhere the ruler and chief of the clergy, having received power over them from the tsar and the patriarch,” and this continued until the appointment of a new bishop in Kolomna, Alexander 27. The contradiction that Nikon heard from Bishop Paul at the council itself, discussing the need to correct our church books and rituals, convinced Nikon that in such an important matter it was not enough to rely on the council of his Russian bishops and clergy alone, but it was necessary to call for help from the council of Eastern Orthodox hierarchs. Nikon's letter to the Constantinople Patriarch Paisius dated June 12, 1654 has been preserved in two copies. Here Nikon, having spoken about the sacred duty of every spiritual shepherd and head of the church region to preserve “dangerously, purely and immaculately” all the faithful dogmas and deanery of the Orthodox Church, wrote: “now we, having diligently examined our books, have discovered the differences in them, whether from prescribers, or from translators who do not know the Greek language, we are not aware.” Then he asked Patriarch Paisius to judge, together with the other patriarchs and bishops, the council and with all attention about the differences and innovations noticed in our books, for which purpose he listed these innovations, the same ones, and in the same order as he had previously proposed for discussion at the Moscow council. In conclusion, having mentioned that some of us, unlearned and ignorant of the Greek language, consider these innovations not as differences, but as the truth, breathe disobedience, start debates with the pious and kindle the fire of hatred, Nikon asked Paisius to speed up the answer and advice, both regarding the listed innovations, and about “what they did to those who are offended by these and rebellious ones who hide” 28. The letter was sent to the Patriarch of Constantinople with Manuel the Greek, perhaps this is the same one; but only in the message sent by Nikon, instead of a list of the few innovations he indicated at the recent Moscow Council, he outlined up to 27 questions to which he asked for an answer, including regarding these innovations, and directly named Bishop Paul of Kolomna and Archpriest Ivan Neronov as disobedient people who adhere to other books, liturgy and signs. The Greek Manuil Konstantinov, with his uncle Yuri Volodimerov and other comrades, arrived in Putivl on the 17th, and in Moscow on the 28th of February 1654, and on the 8th of March he presented himself to the sovereign. Manuel brought from Tsaryagrad, on the instructions of Alexei Mikhailovich, a lot of patterned goods and precious stones, for which he received several thousand rubles from the sovereign’s treasury. In May, he began to prepare for the return journey, and on May 11, a decree was issued to give Manuil the Greek a cart and guides to Putivl and to the border, and on May 15, a royal charter was prepared for Hetman Khmelnitsky so that Manuil would not be detained anywhere in Little Russia and would be escorted to the Volosh border 29 . From this we can conclude that Manuel the Greek left Moscow no later than June or July, and Nikon’s letter to Patriarch Paisius, signed on June 12, was sent to Tsar Grad, probably soon after its signing. At the same time that the charter of Patriarch Nikon was sent to Constantinople, and even before it was sent from Moscow, they had already begun to prepare all the measures necessary to fulfill the decree of the Moscow Council on the correction of our church books. The Council decided to correct these books according to the old, charatean Slavic copies. The Tsar and Patriarch ordered that Slavic books written on the charter be collected in Moscow from all the ancient Russian book depositories, and such books were sent from the monasteries: Trinity - Sergius, Joseph - Volokolamsk, Novgorod - Yuryev and Khutyn and from others. The Council decided: to correct our church books not only according to the Slavic - Charatean lists, but together also according to the ancient Greek ones. The Tsar and Patriarch, finding that there were few old Greek books in Russia, sent for them, with much of their alms, to Athos and other ancient places to the east, the elder Arseny Sukhanov, already known to us. We saw that he returned from his first trip to the east in June 1653, and brought with him his “Proskinitary”, from which the Russians could really be convinced that the Orthodox of the East differed from them in many ways in the conduct of church services and in some church customs. Now Arseny was entrusted with a completely different task: he was entrusted not with describing how the Greeks of that time performed church services and observed church rites, who had been suffering under the unbearable yoke of Muslims for about two centuries, but rather with collecting ancient Greek books, from which one could see how the ancient Orthodox Greeks performed church services and, following their example, all Orthodox Christians should perform them. We also saw that, on his first trip to the east, Arseny had heated debates with the Greeks about faith, sharply defended the two-fingered sign of the cross used in Russia, reproached the Greeks for various apostasies, and then we noticed that not only Arseny, but also other Russian scribes of his time looked at both the two-finger and the Greeks in exactly the same way. Now Arseny, having lived, upon returning from the east, for quite a long time in Moscow, at the same time as Nikon, who had previously looked at the Greeks in the same way and crossed himself with two fingers, recognized the new things that had appeared in our church, began to denounce them and tried to restore our ancient three-fingered sign of the cross, now Arseny changed in his thoughts, became, together with others, on the side of Patriarch Nikon, and not him opponents, and he became completely like-minded. That is why Nikon entrusted his new assignment to Arseny, and upon the fulfillment of this assignment by Arseny, he appointed him one of the handlers of church books and soon made him a cellarer of the Sergius Lavra. Arseny was sent for Greek books with a lot of treasury at the very beginning of 1654, and therefore even before the Moscow Council, which took place this year: because on February 4 he was already in Iasi, from where he sent the king a reply, which has been preserved to this day, and in July he was already in Constantinople, as the patriarch informed our sovereign (on July 29, 1654). Paisius through the Greek Yuri Konstantinov 31. Arseny did not limit himself to Mount Athos alone, but this time visited, in addition to Constantinople, Jerusalem and other places in the east. Arseny found most of the book treasures on Athos in the monasteries of Vatopedi, Hilandar, Iveron, Pantokratorov, Russian, Pavlovsk and others, and from there up to 500 ancient Greek books were delivered to Moscow. Among them were biblical books, works of St. fathers and actual liturgical books: service books, missals, charters, books of hours, triodion, menaion and others. Some of these books were written over 400 years, others over 500, or 600, or 700 years or more, and one gospel even over 1,050 years. In addition, at least 200 ancient books were sent by the hierarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, Chalcedon, Nicene, Nek, Ohrid, Serbian and others, to whom requests were sent from Moscow; and from Jerusalem the patriarch sent the gospel, written 600 years earlier 32. In November 1654, Arseny sent an official letter to the sovereign from the Voloshsk land, and therefore was already on his way back, and in January 1655, he probably returned to Moscow: at least at that time, Archimandrite Anthimus of the Esphigmen monastery arrived in Moscow and brought books and a charter from Athos, in which the abbots, priests and elders of all the monasteries of St. the mountains wrote that “they received the elder Arseny, sent from the sovereign, and released him honestly, and fulfilled his sovereign command, and showed the book treasures, and gave 498 books, and with those books they sent Archimandrite Anthimus to the sovereign of Esphigmen” 33. However, not all books from Athos have now been brought: the abbots of some monasteries, for example, Pavlovsk, Khilandar, themselves brought books from their monasteries already in July of that year 34. In order to correct our church books from ancient Greek or again translate books from Greek into Slavic, people were needed who were well acquainted with both languages. And Nikon found such people. These were: Hieromonk Epiphanius Slavenitsky, summoned back in 1649 from the Kiev fraternal school; builder and then cellarer of the Sergius Lavra Arseny Sukhanov; Archimandrite of the Iveron Athos Monastery Dionysius, who, however, came to us with St. mountains already in 1655 on June 26, to manage the Greek St. Nicholas monastery in Moscow, and known under the name of the Holy Mountain, and the elder Arseny the Greek 35. The latter, who enjoyed the confidence of Patriarch Nikon perhaps more than all of them, came to us in 1649 in the retinue of the Jerusalem Patriarch Paisius, under the name of the charterer. In Moscow, Arseny attracted attention because he knew many languages, and the sovereign wanted to keep him, to which Paisiy agreed. But Paisiy personally hardly knew Arseny and could not vouch for him, having accepted him into his retinue only in Kyiv during his journey to Moscow. Therefore, when he set off on the return journey and, stopping in Putivl, heard various unfavorable rumors about Arseny from the Little Russian elders and people of the Voloshsky governor who came here, he considered it necessary, in his letter of gratitude to the king, dated July 1, 1649, for all his mercies, to write the following words: “Let it be known to you, pious king, about Arseny, who remained in your kingdom: test him well to see whether he is confirmed in his pious Christian faith. Previously he was a monk and priest, and became a busurman; then he fled to the Poles, and among them he became a Uniate; he is capable of all kinds of evil idleness: try him well, and you will find all this. The elders who came from the hetman told me everything in detail: tell me to ask what those elders and people of Matvey, the Voloshsky governor, told me, whether it will be so or not, as I wrote to my brother and co-servant, Patriarch Joseph. It’s better to stop this rumor while he (Arseny) himself is here, so that the temptation of the church does not occur. And if I find out anything else truly, I will write to Your Majesty: for I must, whatever I hear, inform about it. It is not appropriate to leave thorns in the field, lest it be all overgrown with them: those who adhere to heresy and are two-faced in faith must also be removed. I found him in Kyiv and took him with me, but he is not my elder... I did not know this about him, but now having learned about it, I am writing to Your Majesty, so that you guard yourself from such people, so that such filthy and evil people do not desecrate the Church of Christ 36 . Soon after, on July 23rd, the same news about Arseny the Greek was sent to Alexey Mikhailovich and Arseny Sukhanov 37. As a result, the tsar ordered the boyar Prince Nikita Ivanovich Odoevsky and the Duma clerk Mikhail Volosheninov to question Elder Arseny, and on July 25 they asked him where he was born and raised, where and when he took monastic vows and whether he was a priest, whether he had been to Rome and Poland, and Arseny testified: “he is originally a Greek from the Turkish region; His father Anthony was a priest and builder in the great new village of the city of Trikala, and had five sons, who are all alive. Two of them, Andrei and Ivan, live in peace, the third is Dimitri as archpriest, the fourth is Athanasius as an archimandrite, and the fifth is Arseny. Those who know him, Arseny, are here in Moscow, visiting Greeks from the same city as him: one is called Pamphilus, the other Ivan; doesn't remember their nicknames. He was baptized in infancy, and, they say, the archbishop of the same city was his successor. He studied literacy and the church circle from his father; and then, at the age of fourteen, his brother Archimandrite Athanasius took him with him to the Venetian land to study, and in Venice he learned grammar. And from Venice the same brother took him to study in Rome, where he stayed for five years, and studied at school the teachings of Omirov and Aristotle and the Seven Councils. When it came to Osmago and the ninth council, they demanded from him, Arseny, an oath with an oath that he would accept the Roman faith: for otherwise that teaching is not revealed to anyone and is not ordered to be taught. Seeing this, he feigned illness and left Rome so as not to fall away from the Greek faith.” Here Arseny was asked with whom he lived in Rome, and from whom St. received communion. Christ's Mysteries, or he received the sacrament. And Arseny said: “he lived in Rome near the Greek Church of St. Athanasius the Great, where the Orthodox metropolitan of the Greek faith lives with five or six Greek elders. It was with them that he lived, Arseny, and received the sacrament of Christ from that metropolitan, but did not receive the sacrament in Rome. And that metropolitan holds only seven councils, and does not hold the Osmago even the ninth, and does not join the pope. Only when the pope orders him to be at the cathedral, does he go to the cathedrals to see the pope and pray to God for the pope.” Apseny was noticed that he was telling a lie, as if he lived in Rome near the Greek Church, and that Metropolitan is not a Uniate, when the whole world knows that the Pope brings all the Gentiles in Rome to his faith through Unia and other measures, not only students in schools, but also prisoners brought there, and when the Metropolitan goes to the Pope at councils and prays for him, and that to him, Arseny, as a former accomplice of that Metropolitan and Uniate should have brought pure repentance to God and obeyed the sovereign and told the truth. Arseny answered: “He is telling the truth that while in Rome, he was not a member of the Uniate and did not receive the sacrament. Not wanting to join the Roman faith, he moved from Rome to the Venetian city of Badov, and there he studied philosophy and medicine for three years. And from Badov he came to Tsar - the city to his brother, Archimandrite Athanasius, and wanted to take a haircut. But they didn’t want to tonsure him, thinking that he was in the Roman faith, and he said that he had never been in the Roman faith either in Rome or in Venice, and in front of everyone he cursed that Roman faith three times. His brothers wanted to marry him, but he did not agree and cut his hair at the age of 23. The next year he was made a deacon, and soon afterwards a priest, by the Larian bishop Callistus. After that, soon the same bishop installed him on the island of Kafa as abbot of the Mother of God monastery, and he was abbot there for six months. From the monastery he, Arseny, went to the city of Khiya to buy books about the seven councils, but did not get any books and went to Tsargorod, and while staying with one great man, the Greek Anthony Vaba, he taught his son grammar. From Tsargorod he came to the land of Mutyansk to the governor Matvey and lived with him for three months. From Matvey, the voivode came to the Moldavian land to the voivode Vasily and lived with him for two years. From Moldova he moved to Poland, to the city of Lvov, and then he was told that there was a school in Kyiv, but without a royal charter he would not be accepted into that school. And he, Arseny, went to confront King Vladislav in Warsaw about this. The king was then sick with stone disease, and Arseny, who was recommended to the king as a skilled doctor, cured him, and Vladislav gave a letter from himself to Metropolitan Sylvester Kossov in Kyiv so that Arseny was accepted into the school.” They told Arseny: “It became known to the sovereign that he, Arseny, was a Uniate, and, having left the monkhood and the priesthood, was a Busurman, and from Busurmanship he was again in the Uniate, and now he would tell the truth about that.” Arseny: “someone is telling lies about him; He was never a Uniate or a Busurman. And if anyone convicts him that he was a Uniate and a Busurman, then let the royal majesty order him to be skinned; He doesn’t ask the sovereign for mercy in that.” It was noticed to Arseny that he, without a doubt, concealed his busurmanism; and when it is revealed, he will have nothing to justify himself with. Arseny repeated his previous speeches and continued: “At that time there was Patriarch Parthenius in Constantinople, who wanted to install him, Arseny, as a bishop over two bishoprics, the Mofonian and the crown. But the vizier, having learned that he, Arseny, had lived in Venice for a long time, and allegedly brought a lot of treasury from there in order to buy those bishoprics from the patriarch and with them join the Venetians, with whom the Sultan was then at war, ordered to seize him, Arseny. And he had a lot of torture, and they took off his dress and kamilavka; They put a turban on him and threw him into prison. He sat in that prison for about two weeks, and left it for the land of Mutyansk, but he was not a busurman.” Then it was announced to Arseny that Patriarch Paisius himself wrote about his Uniatism and Busurmanism to the sovereign and His Holiness Joseph, who heard about it from the Kyiv elders who came from the hetman. Arseny: “those Kyiv elders told Patriarch Paisius lies about him. He was neither a Uniate nor a Busurman; and how, according to the vizier’s accusation against him, he was in prison and there was torment for him, he told Patriarch Paisius about this and confessed everything to him, and the patriarch forgave him for everything.” They objected to Arseny that Patriarch Paisius did not know about this at all until now, as he himself writes; and if he had known, then he would not have left him, Arseny, for rhetorical teaching in the Moscow state... Apseny: “he is sinful before God and guilty before the sovereign, that he did not inform the royal majesty of such a matter, but he was besotted involuntarily. When he came to the Volosh land after that, Metropolitan Joasaph of Yanino corrected him, Arseny, in his faith and anointed him with myrrh. And he announced this to Patriarch Paisius and brought repentance. And the patriarch forgave him and blessed him, and gave him a farewell and blessed charter, and that patriarchal charter is now with him, Arseny. But he did not notify the sovereign because Patriarch Paisius forgave him and ordered him to serve. He did not stay in Moscow of his own free will: the great sovereign knows about this.” This was the end of the investigation of Arseny the Greek, which we deliberately presented in its entirety so that everyone could judge how guilty Arseny is. Although it is likely that he accepted the union in Rome, as all Greeks who studied at the Roman Greek College should have accepted it, he himself did not admit it and, upon returning to his homeland, cursed the Roman faith three times in front of everyone. If he was cursed, he was cursed involuntarily, and then he repented of it, was added to the church through confirmation by the Metropolitan of Ioannina, and received a farewell and blessed letter from Patriarch Paisius himself. In Moscow, however, they were not satisfied with this. On July 27, by order of the sovereign, all of Arseny's junk in the Rostov courtyard where he stayed was described, including many Greek printed books, liturgical books, St. fathers - Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostom, John of Damascus, ancient writers - Homer, Aristotle, and educational books, grammar, lexicon and others. And on the same date, a decree was given to the boyar and the butler, Prince Alexei Mikhailovich Lvov, to exile the Greek elder Arseny to the Solovetsky monastery “to correct the Orthodox Greek faith”: and on July 30, a decree was sent from the tsar to the Solovetsky monastery, so that when the Greek elder Arseny was brought “to correct the Orthodox Christian faith,” they would give If he was under the strong supervision of the registrant Nikodim, and they were ordered to take great care of him, they would not let him out of the monastery anywhere, and they would give him brotherly food and clothing and shoes. On September 3, the abbot and the brethren of the Solovetsky monastery informed the sovereign that Elder Arseny the Greek had arrived to them, and the sovereign’s will would be fulfilled 38 . In the Solovetsky monastery they closely watched Arseny, questioned him in detail and compiled a brief biographical information about him. It turns out that in his youth, when he studied in Latin schools, he actually changed his faith and was in a union, as he confessed in confession to his confessor, the priest Martyrius, because otherwise they would not accept him into those schools. But, returning to Greece, he again converted to Orthodoxy and was even ordained a priest, taking monastic vows. Arseny lived in Solovki for about three years “in good obedience to the monk Nicodemus” and managed to learn Slavic grammar and the Russian language. After such a long trial, the Solovetsky monks were convinced that Arseny was not a heretic at all, and “what they found sound in him, they praised him for: they found in him a sound confession of faith, without addition and without subtraction.” But they noticed that he poorly performed external rituals: bows, fasts, etc. He even allegedly prayed not with three, but with two fingers, as the Solovetsky monks prayed then, and generally praised Russian church rituals, and about the Greeks he said: “We have lost a lot in Turkish captivity... there is no fasting, no bowing, no cell prayer”... 39. Nikon could have heard such good reviews of the faith of Arseny the Greek in the Solovetsky monastery itself, when he came there for the relics of St. Philip, and then he could convey them to the sovereign. And the monastery authorities were obliged to report to Moscow how they found Arseny, who was sent from there to their monastery for testing. Finally, Arseny the Greek himself beat the sovereign with his forehead: “he was exiled to the Solovetsky monastery, and, according to the rules of St. Father, the lesson of the prohibition had passed for him, according to the second local council, and the sovereign would have granted it, ordered him to be freed from under the beginning and to be in a monastery where the sovereign would indicate” 40. It is not surprising if Nikon, based on the testimony of the Solovetsky monks about Arseny’s orthodoxy after his three-year trial, as soon as he became patriarch, decided, with the permission of the sovereign, to call Arseny to himself as a learned man, orthodox and capable of serving with his knowledge for the benefit of the church; gave him a cell in his patriarchal house, made him the librarian of his patriarchal library and one of the reference books and translators of books from Greek. And Neronov, perhaps not knowing about this evidence of Arseny’s orthodoxy, or simply out of bitterness against Nikon, already in 1654 reproached him for why he took Greek Arseny, whom Patriarch Paisius allegedly called a heretic, as his reference book 41 . It must be added that, for the most convenient supervision of the printing of newly corrected books, the tsar ordered back in 1654 to transfer the printing yard, with all its institutions and book handlers, which had hitherto been under the jurisdiction of the order of the Great Palace, to Patriarch Nikon at his direct and complete disposal 42 . A very important circumstance for Nikon in correcting the books was the subsequent arrival in Moscow of two new patriarchs: Macarius of Antioch and Gabriel of Serbia. Macarius, back in 1653, on March 15, wrote to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich that he had arrived in Moldova and was living with the Moldavian governor Ioann - Vasily, and after Easter, God willing, he intended to go to Russia, which is why he asked that the sovereign would allow him this and ordered the Putivl governors to receive him and escort him to Moscow. In February of the following year, news was received in Moscow that Patriarch Macarius was already in the Mutyansk land with the governor Matthew, that the Serbian and Bulgarian Patriarch, Archbishop Gabriel of Pek, had arrived there, and both patriarchs lived in the same monastery. Here they met and decided among themselves that the Serbian patriarch would go to the king first 43 . By May 1, 1654 he had already arrived in Putivl, and calling himself the archbishop of the Vatopedi Ascension Monastery, the Patriarch of Serbia and Bulgaria, announced that he was going to Moscow for alms according to a grant from Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, given to the said monastery back in 1641, which is why he was immediately released from Putivl to Moscow by the governor Stepan Pushkin. But when the news of this was received in Moscow, then from here a decree was sent to the Putivl governor so that in the future he would not let anyone from the Greek authorities into Moscow because the sovereign was not in Moscow, he went to war against his enemy, the Polish king, and the interpreter of the embassy order Afanasy Bukalov was sent to meet the Serbian Patriarch Gabriel in order to stop him and return him to Putivl. From Putivl, Gabriel made a request to Patriarch Nikon and only at his request received permission to go to Moscow, where he arrived on May 28th. Then on June 5, in an embassy order, Patriarch Gabriel announced that in his region there were 8 metropolitans and 32 bishops; he left his land from the violence of the infidels to live in Russia, and now his place is not occupied by anyone; He brought with him letters to the Tsar and Patriarch Nikon from the Patriarch of Antioch Macarius and from Hetman Khmelnitsky, and in addition he brought written books - Typik and Collection of the Patriarch of Constantinople Michael Kavasila on the Latin heresy, and the life of the story of St. Serbian kings and patriarchs, with a view to whether Patriarch Nikon would find it useful to print these books; I also brought three books with which I bow to Patriarch Nikon: a scroll of the lives of Serbian saints, notebooks of Cyril the philosopher and teacher of the Slavs, and a book of St. Basil the Great with three printed liturgies. Indeed, Gabriel no longer found the Emperor in Moscow; and a little over a month and a half later, on the occasion of the outbreak of a pestilence in Moscow, Nikon and the royal family also left it. Gabriel had to witness here the terrible devastation caused by the raging epidemic. Among other victims, she kidnapped many of the clergy, so that some churches were left without singing. In the absence of Nikon, they began to make requests to the Serbian high priest to appoint new priests and deacons. He approached Nikon, and Nikon sent him (in December 1654) a charter, which authorized him to ordain proteges as priests and deacons in accordance with the patriarchal decrees in force in Moscow 44 . By the 20th of July of the same 1654, Patriarch Macarius of Antioch also arrived in Putivl and a few days later set off further. But when he had already passed Kaluga, he was met by the translator of the embassy order, Ivan Boyarchikov, sent from Moscow, who explained to him that a epidemic was raging in the capital, and on behalf of the sovereign he asked to stop for a while in Kolomna, and meanwhile, on August 4, the sovereign gave an order to prepare in Kolomna for the placement of the Patriarch of Antioch and his retinue “the bishop of Kolomna courtyard” and to give the patriarch and his retinue “grain and fish stocks from the reserves of the Kolomna bishop.” The patriarch had to live in Kolomna for more than five months. And since this city did not have its own bishop at that time (Paul had already been exiled to prison), Patriarch Macarius often performed services in Kolomna churches, and after the end of the epidemic that devastated Kolomna and its district, he ordained many priests and deacons for the Kolomna diocese. Macarius arrived in Moscow only on February 2. 1655, eight days before the sovereign returned to it from the Lithuanian region. By appointment of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, both patriarchs were presented to him on the same day - February 12. First, Antiochian Macarius introduced himself and was received in the golden chamber with the greatest honors, as the Jerusalem patriarchs Paisius and Theophanes had previously been received, and immediately received permission from the sovereign to go to Patriarch Nikon for introduction. After Macarius, the Serbian Patriarch Gabriel introduced himself to the sovereign; but he was received in the same way as metropolitans and archbishops were received before, and received the same gifts from the sovereign, and then he also went to appear to Nikon and also found Macarius with him. Here, all three of them together, they were invited to the royal table, on the occasion of the name day of Tsarevich Alexei Alekseevich. Naturally, we gave the Patriarch of Antioch complete preference over the Serbian one, since the latter was not recognized in patriarchal dignity by the entire Eastern Church. Both patriarchs, Antioch and Serbian, remained with us for a long time; both, with the permission of the sovereign, traveled in a trinity - Sergius and other monasteries, as well as to Novgorod; both were very often invited by Nikon to perform divine services with him. But, most importantly, both, especially the Antiochian one, served Nikon as best they could in correcting church books and rituals 45 . The opportunity for this soon presented itself. The week of Orthodoxy has arrived. The divine service on this day was performed in the Assumption Cathedral with extraordinary solemnity. It was attended by three patriarchs, Moscow, Antioch and Serbian, five other Russian bishops and many archimandrites, abbots and other clergy. The church was crowded with worshipers, including the king himself. When the liturgy ended, along with the rite of Orthodoxy, which took place immediately after the Trisagion. Patriarch Nikon, accompanied by the clergy, went out to the pulpit, where a lectern had already been prepared. “One of the deacons,” as described by an eyewitness to the event, Paul of Aleppo, whose words we will use, “opened a book of conversations before the patriarch, from which he began to read a conversation corresponding to the day about the worship of St. icons And having read it all from beginning to end, he added to it his own explanations and very extensive exhortations: he spoke against the new icons. Some Moscow painters, little by little, when painting icons, adopted the style of Polish and Frankish painters, and icons painted in this way were called new. Nikon, being a great zealot and loving Greek rites to the extreme, sent his people, who took the icons of the new letter from everywhere they were found, even from the houses of the noble dignitaries themselves, and brought them to the patriarch. This happened last summer (i.e. 1654), in the absence of the king, before the pestilence appeared. Nikon ordered his servants to gouge out the eyes of the collected new icons and in this form carry them around the city and announce a royal decree threatening severe punishment for those who dared to paint such icons in the future. The Muscovites, who were very devoted to icons, no matter how they were painted..., seeing this, became very indignant and said that the patriarch had sinned gravely. Showering him abuse, they held gatherings at which they directly called him an iconoclast. When, with such a state of mind, a pestilence was discovered and a solar eclipse occurred, everyone began to say that this was the Lord’s punishment for the wickedness of the patriarch, swearing at the saint. icons. The anger towards Nikon was so great that they even attempted to kill him... Now, when the tsar was already in Moscow and present in the church, the patriarch boldly spoke against the new icons and argued at length that it was unlawful to paint icons according to Frankish models. At the same time, pointing to some new icons brought to the lectern, he referred to our Bishop the Patriarch as evidence that those icons were painted not according to Greek, but according to Frankish models. Then both patriarchs anathematized and excommunicated everyone who would henceforth paint or keep French icons in their house. Moreover, Nikon took the new icons presented to him one after another and, showing each one to the people, threw them onto the iron floor with such force that the icons broke, and finally ordered them to be burned. Then the king, an extremely pious and God-fearing man, who listened in humble silence to the patriarch’s sermon, said to him in a quiet voice: “No, father, don’t order them to be burned, but rather order them to be buried in the ground.” This is what was done. Every time Nikon picked up any of the illegal icons, he said: this icon was taken from the house of such and such a nobleman, the son of such and such (all noble people). He wanted to shame them publicly so that others would not follow their example.” One can judge to what extent Nikon's sermon, accompanied by such actions and the testimony of the Patriarch of Antioch, must have amazed those present in the church. But Nikon did not stop there: after preaching against the new icons, he began preaching against another innovation, against the two-fingered sign of the cross. “He spoke,” continues Paul of Aleppo, “with the same fervor as before, that the Muscovites incorrectly put the sign of the cross on themselves: when they are baptized, they fold their fingers not the way we fold them, but as the saints bless. To confirm his thoughts, Nikon again referred to our ruler: he told Nikon even before that one should not be baptized in the same way as Muscovites are baptized. Our Lord, now called by Nikon as a witness, turning to the people, said through an interpreter: “in Antioch, and not in another place, the followers of Christ began, for the first time, to be called Christians, and from there all church rites began. But neither there, nor in Alexandria, nor in Constantinople, nor in Jerusalem, nor on Mount Sinai, nor on St. woe, neither in Moldavia, nor in Wallachia, nor among the Cossacks, no one is baptized the way you do, but everyone agrees to use a different sign” 46. More than eight months have passed since Nikon, with Manuel the Greek, sent a message to the Constantinople Patriarch Paisius on church issues; but there was no answer. In Moscow they might have thought that either the message was not delivered to its destination, given the difficulties of communications with Constantinople at that time, or Paisius himself had already been overthrown from the department, given the constant change of Constantinople patriarchs at that time. Be that as it may, only Nikon decided, without waiting for a response from Constantinople, to convene a new council in Moscow. Two modern, albeit very brief, legends have been preserved about this cathedral. The first belongs to Archdeacon Paul of Aleppo and is especially precious because it clearly indicates the time when the council took place. The council took place, according to Paul, during the fifth week of Lent (which in 1655 covered the dates from March 25 to 31). And this evidence is all the more indubitable because Paul kept a kind of diary of events that more or less concerned his father, Patriarch Macarius, from the time of his arrival in Moscow, and described in his essay both what remarkable happened before this fifth week of Great Lent, and what happened after. About the council itself, Paul conveys the following: “the council was convened on the occasion that our bishop (Makariy) drew Nikon’s attention to various novelties and shortcomings in their church rites. For the Russians a) do not celebrate the liturgy on the antimension, like we do, with images and a particle of St. relics, but simply on a piece of white canvas; b) from the prosphora assigned for the Lamb, not nine particles are taken out, but only four; c) erroneous changes are made to the creed; d) applied to icons only once or twice a year; f) do not distribute antidor in the church; g) they mistakenly perform the sign of the cross, folding their fingers in a different way than they should; h) they mistakenly think about the baptism of Poles, believing that they need to be baptized a second time (when converting to Orthodoxy). At the same council, other shortcomings in (Russian) rites and ceremonies were examined. The Patriarch of Moscow generally listened a lot to the advice of our bishop, and in this case he translated the service book from Greek into Russian so well and with such explanations that, it seems, even children could now understand the meaning of Greek rites. Nikon printed several thousand copies of this translation and sent them to all churches in the country. He also ordered the printing of more than 15,000 antimensions from the priest. images, and, putting into them particles of St. relics, sent to all churches... In conclusion, the fathers of the cathedral declared that the second baptism of the Poles is illegal, relying on the opinion of our Bishop the Patriarch and on the decrees contained in the Euchology and Nomocanon: since the Poles believe and are baptized in St. Trinity, and are not as different from us as other heretics and Lutherans, for example. Swedes, English, Hungarians and other Frankish sects who do not observe fasts, do not venerate icons, do not make the sign of the cross, etc. Nikon, loving everything Greek, eagerly set to work on such corrections and said at the council to the bishops, abbots of monasteries and presbyters present at the council: “I myself am Russian, and the son of a Russian, but my faith and convictions are Greek.” To this, some of the members of the higher clergy answered with humility: “the faith given to us by Christ, its rituals and sacraments, all this came to us from the east.” But others - since in every nation there are stubborn and rebellious people - were silent, hiding their displeasure, and said to themselves: “We do not want to make changes either in our books, or in our rites and ceremonies that we have accepted from ancient times.” Only these dissatisfied people did not have the courage to speak openly, knowing how difficult it was to withstand the wrath of the patriarch, as he did with the bishop of Kolomna, whom he exiled to prison. Having agreed with the opinion of the council about the illegality of rebaptizing the Poles, Nikon immediately handed over to our lord the patriarch six priests brought into captivity from Poland,” as can be seen from the description, Uniate ones, whom the Antiochian high priest later joined all of them to the Orthodox Church not through baptism, but through confirmation 47 . Another modern legend about this Moscow cathedral is found in the preface to the Service Book, printed by Patriarch Nikon. It says here that three patriarchs were present at the cathedral, Nikon of Moscow, Macarius of Antioch and Gabriel of Serbia “with metropolitans and archbishops, with archimandrites and abbots and with the entire consecrated cathedral.” Neither the tsar nor the bishops are mentioned: because the tsar, not long before the council, on March 11, on Sunday of the second week of Lent, left for war; and the bishop of our only bishopric at that time, Pavel of Kolomna, was deposed and exiled to prison last year, but a successor had not yet been appointed to him 48 . It is further said that at the council they examined ancient Greek and Slavic handwritten books, to which the Patriarch of Antioch Macarius added his missal and other books - and “the ancient Greek literature was in complete agreement with the old Slavic books; in the new Moscow printed books, with the Greek and Slavic ancient ones, there are many disagreements and errors.” It must be admitted that although the council lasted a whole week, such a comparison of ancient books with newly printed Moscow books was not made at the council itself, but was previously prepared by learned investigators Epiphanius Slavenitsky, Arseny the Greek and others, and at the council it was only read or shown to the fathers and verified by them. Finally, it is said that the cathedral, having chosen one from all the books - the Service Book, and “in all things corrected and agreed with the ancient Greek and Slavic,” ordered it to be printed in Moscow and at the same time legalized: to correct, in accordance with the ancient Greek and Slavic books, other liturgical books in which errors were found. Of course, the correction of the Service Book was first prepared by the inspectors, and at the council it was only examined, checked and approved. But justice requires us to note that in the legend we have presented about the cathedral of 1655. a chronological error was made, it is said that the council took place after the tsar and Nikon received a response conciliar message from the Constantinople Patriarch Paisius to the questions sent to him, and that this message was even read, at the opening of the cathedral, along with the code of the Moscow cathedral of 1654. This could not have happened, because, as we will now see, the said message was delivered to Moscow more than a month after the end of the council we are considering. In general, the compiler of the preface to Nikon’s service book, which, together with the service book, was published after receiving the conciliar message from Patriarch Paisius, trying to present as briefly as possible the entire work that had begun to correct church books, cared little about chronological accuracy, and did not always follow the order of events: he says, for example, that the tsar and Nikon only received and read the conciliar message or act from patriapxa Paisius, “deigned” to send elder Arseny Sukhanov to Mount Athos for Greek books, while Arseny was sent there at the beginning of 1654, and at the beginning of 1655 he had already returned to Moscow 49. By May 1, 1655, the Greek Manuil Konstantinov arrived in Putivl, the same one with whom last year a letter was sent from Moscow to the Constantinople Patriarch Paisius on church issues. From Putivl, Manuil hurried to Smolensk to introduce himself to the sovereign who was there, and from there he arrived in Moscow, and on May 15, in an embassy order, he stated: he, Manuil, was sent to the sovereign Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and to His Holiness Patriarch Nikon by the Tsargrad Patriarch Paisius “with charters and a cathedral book and about necessary sovereign affairs with a verbal order." He left Tsaryagrad on the 27th day of last December (i.e. 1654), and although the patriarch ordered him to go in a hurry, “he could not hurry after the military people,” and so on. Paisius' letter to the king, which Manuel brought, was written on December 20, 1654. In it, after the usual greetings, Paisius first informed the Tsar that he “received a letter from His Holiness Nikon and from the Holy Council of the Catholic Church with questions about what is needed for Orthodox Christians.” Then he asked the tsar for an apology that “he hesitated about the church needs that His Holiness Nikon wrote about: soon it was impossible to do it alone, without the sacred council, and the bishops, due to the distance, could not come soon.” Finally he said: “as soon as the priest. the council came to us, we judged and accomplished that holy matter about church needs, and now we are sending the same Manuel to you “with your royal and hierarchal needs” 50. From these authentic and undoubted documents it is obvious that the response message of Patriarch Paisius, or more precisely, the conciliar act, the conciliar book, was received in Moscow only on May 15, 1655, next. a month and a half after the Moscow Council, which took place at the end of March. However, although Paisius’ message was received in Moscow even after the aforementioned council, it did not lose any of its power and significance. It served, on the one hand, as new reinforcement and justification for the decisions of this council, and on the other, as new support and motivation for Nikon to zealously continue the work he had begun. And therefore deserves our full attention. Patriarch Paisius of Constantinople, after a fraternal greeting to Patriarch Nikon, began his message with the following words: “We thanked a lot and thank God every day after we received the letters of your blessedness through our beloved son Manuel. From them we learned your greatest reverence for God and the fiery zeal that you have regarding the objects of our Orthodox faith and the rites of our church. And you combine this, as evidenced by the common prayer of those coming from your country, with extreme prudence and prudence, with impeccable humility and all sorts of other good actions that adorn the true shepherd of Christ’s sheep. May the name of our Lord Jesus Christ be glorified forever, that from generation to generation He raises up people worthy to serve for the edification of His church and the welfare of His flock. May His grace protect you for many years, may you feed your sheep as you began until the end, and may you present your flock blameless to the chief shepherd Jesus. This is how we recognize you, and with joy we answer your questions, according to the grace that the Holy Spirit deigns to give us, whom we always call upon for every undertaking. But I only pray to your Excellency that if any of our answers seem to you at the beginning to be inconsistent with your customs, then do not be embarrassed, but write to us again to find out our thoughts, that we may always be united, both in the same faith and in the same baptism, and in the same confession, always saying the same thing with the same lips and the same heart and not differing from each other in anything... I see from your letters Blessedness, that you strongly complain about the disagreement in some rituals noticed in local churches, and you think whether various rituals harm our faith. We praise the thought: for whoever fears small crimes protects himself from great ones. But we correct the fear: for we have the commandment of the Apostle to flee only heretics, according to the first and second punishment, as depraved (Tit. 3:11), as well as dissenters, who, although they seem to agree with the Orthodox in the main dogmas, nevertheless have their own special teachings, alien to the general belief of the church. But if any church happens to differ from another in certain statutes that are not necessary and insignificant in the faith, that is, relating not to the main members of the faith, but to unimportant things, such as: the time of serving the liturgy, or with what fingers the priest should bless, etc., then this does not create any division between the believers, as long as the same faith is immutably preserved. Our Church did not from the beginning accept all the rules of rites that it contains today, but little by little. Before, as St. Epiphanius of Cyprus, read eleven psalms in church, and then more, and had different degrees of fasting and meat-eating... And before Saints Damascus, Cosmas (Mayum) and other hymns, we sang neither troparions, nor canons, nor kontakions. But since the same faith was immutably preserved in all churches, this difference in faith was not then considered anything heretical or discordant. Therefore, even now we should not think that our Orthodox faith is perverted if someone follows a course that is not much different from another - in things that are not essential, that is, not related to the dogmas of faith; if only in what is necessary and essential it is in agreement with the conciliar Church.” Having thus expressed his general thoughts on how he looks at the differences in church ranks, and then pointing to the book “Orthodox Confession”, from which one can learn what the necessary and essential members of our faith are, Patriarch Paisius proceeded to present the very answers to the questions sent to him from Moscow. We will not analyze the milestones of these answers, but will dwell only on those of them that, at that time, were the most important. In the first and most extensive answer, Paisius briefly explained not only the composition, but also the mysterious signification of the order of the divine liturgy, which was then maintained throughout the east, and, in conclusion, added: “This is the order that we maintain in our liturgy, and which we hope you also maintain. Or, if you differ in anything, then agree with us on this law, which we have invariably preserved as faithful from the beginning, so that with one mouth and one heart we may glorify, both, the one God and Father and the Only Begotten Son of Our Lord Jesus Christ with the Most Holy Spirit.” This same thought, only in a little more detail, was repeated by the Tsaregrad high priest in his seventh answer to our patriarch: “you write about the strife occurring among you regarding the rite of divine mystery. We pray in the name of our Lord I. Christ, may your blessedness tame them with your mind: for it is not fitting for the servant of the Lord to be greedy (2 Timothy 2:24), especially in things that are unimportant in faith and are not dogmas. Exhort everyone to accept the order about which we are writing to you, which is contained in the entire Eastern Church and has come down to us, according to legend, from the beginning without the slightest change... Just as our ancient books, containing the liturgy of Chrysostom and Vasiliev and found in various book depositories, so the new ones do not differ from each other in anything. But if yours do not agree with ours on things that are necessary, and not on those that the statute leaves at the will of the abbot: write to us, and we will discuss this council.” In the next two replies, the eighth and ninth, Paisius wrote: “about Bishop Paul of Kolomna and about Archpriest John Neronov, you say that they do not agree with you regarding books and liturgy, nor regarding the sign of the cross, and reject our prayers, as if they were performed for the sake of the fear of man, and not for the sake of the fear of God, and that it is as if at the liturgy the patriarch prays differently than others priests... we answer: all these are signs of heresy and schism, and whoever speaks and believes so is alien to our Orthodox faith... So, either let them unfeignedly accept everything that our Orthodox Church holds and dogmatizes, or, if, according to the first and second punishment, they do not correct themselves, then reject and separate them from the sheep of Christ, so that they do not feed them with deadly food, and you will have us and our entire council agree to that. For at what council and from what ancient father did they discover that the prayers of our church are performed according to people-pleasing, that they are insufficient and unsatisfactory, and why do they require their addition? Beware of such wolves: under the image of correction, wanting, apparently, to correct the shortcomings of the church, they seek to introduce into it their poisonous tares..., they bring to us their novelties and their apocryphal prayers, as corrections. Therefore, they must be cut off from the church, as rotten and incurable members, remaining unrepentant; We consider such prayers as blasphemy, since they cast suspicion on the prayers of our saints and try to introduce new orders that we never learned from the fathers who betrayed our faith.” To the question (24) about what fingers a Christian should use to depict a cross on himself, Paisius answered: “We all have an ancient custom, according to legend, to be baptized with the first three fingers, folded together, in the image of St. The Trinity, by whose enlightenment the mystery of the incarnation was revealed to us, and we are taught to glorify the one God in three persons, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and may we be crucified on the cross together with our Lord Jesus, the Son of God, who descended from heaven and became man and suffered in the flesh for our salvation. This seems blessed, because by the union of three fingers we remember the sacrament of St. Trinity, and when we depict the cross of the Lord on ourselves, we remember His suffering and resurrection, and through them and for their sake we call on God’s help.” To the question (25), with what fingers should the apostle and priest teach blessing to Christians, he answered: “since God promised Abraham with an oath, that all the nations of the earth would be blessed because of his seed, which is Jesus Christ; then the church blesses everyone, inscribing with the priestly hand the name of the Messiah: Isa. Xs. No matter what fingers one uses to depict these four letters, there will be no difference: as long as both the one blessing and the one being blessed have in mind that the blessing descends from Jesus Christ through the priestly hand. But it is more appropriate to fold the fingers in the form in which Christ himself is depicted, that is, to fold the second and third fingers so that they form Is., and the first, fourth and fifth so that they represent Xs.” To the question (26th) about bowing when reading the prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian answered: “The statute of bowing that you keep is the same one that we hold; The only difference is that we first make three great bows, then twelve small ones, and finally one great one, and there are sixteen bows in all, and not seventeen, like yours.” The message sent by Patriarch Paisius to Moscow contained the decision not of him alone, but of the whole council, and therefore the message was signed, following the patriarch, by 24 metropolitans, 1 archbishop, 3 bishops and several other clergy who occupied the main church positions under the patriarch, including the teacher of the great church Meletius Sirig, famous for his learning, who, on behalf of Patriarch and the Council, and composed this message 51. At the same time, Paisius also sent our patriarch his private letter, in which, informing about the council that had taken place in Constantinople and the conciliar replies being sent to Moscow, he asked that these replies be conveyed to “all the sacred persons, so that they perform the following and all sacred rites according to the order of the great (i.e., patriarchal) church, so that we do not have a single difference, as true children of the same mother, the Eastern Apostolic and Catholic Church." Further, Paisius wrote to Nikon: “I hear here that in your church rites there are some other things that do not agree with the rites of the great church, and I am surprised that you do not ask about them. And, above all, in the very symbol of St. Fathers of Nicene, you seem to have some applications and words that we do not have... Out of much love for God we wish that all differences between us may be corrected.” For this purpose, Paisius sent to Moscow the Greek Creed, literally copied from the one compiled by the fathers of the first and second ecumenical councils 52. The decision of the Moscow Council, which took place in March 1655, to print the missal was soon carried out. On the 31st day of August of the same year, the service book was already released from the Moscow printing house, and eleven months later it was published again. And since this was the first newly corrected book, the reference workers or publishers, of course, with the permission of Nikon himself, in the preface to it set out a fairly detailed story of how the whole matter of correcting our books began and was carried out, of which the first was now published. But Nikon wanted to give the Orthodox not only a newly corrected service book or the rite of the Divine Liturgy, and then other newly corrected books, but also wanted to give an interpretation of the liturgy and other church rites and rituals, so that the Orthodox could better understand their mysterious meaning. Therefore, he ordered the translation of the book “The Tablet” from Greek, which, at his request, was sent to him back in 1653 from the Ecumenical Patriarch Paisius. This book, compiled by the Greek hieromonk John Nathanael, was translated into Slavic by one of the references, namely Elder Arseny the Greek, and in October 1655 it was completed printing. With the Tablet, Nikon ordered to print the entire message to him of the Ecumenical Patriarch Paisius with the answers of the Council of Constantinople regarding our church books and rituals: this message served as the main support and justification for Nikon, in the eyes of all Orthodox, in the work he began to correct the books. He also ordered that several articles be published with the same Tablet on two issues that were considered the most important: on the issue of the sign of the cross and on the issue of the symbol of faith. Those were - a) the word of the monk Subdeacon Damascene Studite on the week of the cross: here, by the way, the doctrine of three-fingered for the sign of the cross is set forth; b) the word of the unknown “about the hedgehog with which the fingers of the gum hand depict a cross”; here, for the first time, the doctrine of two-fingeredness is refuted in some detail, the testimonies of Meletius of Antioch, Theodoret, and Maximus the Greek are analyzed, and convictions are offered to the Orthodox to leave two-fingered fingers and be baptized with three fingers; this, perhaps, is the very word that, as we mentioned, Nikon said on the week of Orthodoxy, in the Assumption Cathedral; c) Nikolai Malaksa, Archpriest of Nauplia, about the folding of fingers for the bishop’s and priest’s blessing; d) Maximus the Greek on the immutability of the creed; e) monk Zenobius of Otensky - against the addition to the symbol: “true”..., and in general about the immutability of the symbol; f) Neilos Cabasilas and other teachers about the same thing, with the addition of convictions for the Orthodox not to allow any changes in the creed. However, having printed the book “The Tablet”, with the appendices we have listed, back in October 1655, Nikon did not allow it to be published until it was examined and approved by the council 53. But the patriarch was in no hurry to convene the council. At this council, he also intended to pronounce a verdict against the doctrine of double-fingeredness, which his opponents most stubbornly defended, and therefore he wanted to first test, in order to enlighten them, some more extraordinary measures. In 1656, February 12, the day of memory of St. Meletius of Antioch, and together with St. Alexy of Moscow, a festive matins was celebrated in the Miracle Monastery, at which the tsar himself with his entire synclite, the patriarch with other bishops and many people were present. When, at the time prescribed by the charter, the well-known legend about St. was read from the Prologue, as a lesson to the Orthodox. Meletius of Antioch, how he first showed the people three fingers, and there was no sign, then he folded two fingers and bent one to them, and fire came from his hand - a legend on which defenders of two fingers usually rely - then Nikon publicly asked Patriarch Macarius how to understand this legend. And Macarius exclaimed: “Men of all Orthodoxy, hear: I am the successor and heir of this St. Meletia to the throne; you know how this St. Meletius the first three fingers were separated from each other, but there was no sign from them; These three are connected again, and they are also a sign of display. And if anyone does not depict the image of a cross on his face with these three fingers, but should create, connecting two last fingers with the great finger, and having two great middle ones extended, and thereby depict the image of the cross, such an Armen imitator exists, because the Armenians imagine a cross on themselves” 54 . It is worthy of note that the Greeks were the first to call double-fingering an Armenian custom among us, as we saw from the debates between Elder Apseny Sukhanov and the Greeks about faith; and already after the Greeks, to whom the Armenians were better known than to us, the Orthodox Russians began to call it that way. Another twelve days passed; The week of Orthodoxy has arrived (February 24). All the bishops who were in Moscow with the noblest clergy, the tsar with his entire council and countless people gathered in the Assumption Cathedral for the celebration. At the time when the rite of Orthodoxy began, and the church, pleasing its faithful children, uttered a curse on those who resisted, two patriarchs, Macarius of Antioch and Gabriel of Serbia, and Metropolitan Gregory of Nicea stood before the king and his synclite, before the entire consecrated cathedral and people - and Macarius, folding the first three great fingers in the image of the Holy One. Trinity and showing them, he exclaimed: “With these first three great fingers, every Orthodox Christian should depict the image of the cross on his face; and whoever works according to Theodorite’s scripture and false tradition is cursed.” The same curse was repeated, following Macarius, by the Serbian Patriarch Gabriel and the Nicene Metropolitan Gregory 55 . This is who and when the first anathema was uttered against the stubborn followers of two-fingers. It was expressed not by Nikon, not by Russian bishops, but by three hierarchs - representatives of the East. And one can imagine how this anathema, pronounced at the very triumph of Orthodoxy, must have affected the Orthodox. At the beginning of April, the Moldavian Metropolitan Gideon arrived in Moscow from the Moldavian governor Stefan with a request to accept the Moldavian land under the Russian state, and in Moscow, instead of three, there were already four eastern saints. Nikon decided to address all of them at once with a written message on behalf of himself and other Russian bishops, and, pointing out that in Moscow “nets are raising prues” regarding the folding of their fingers for the sign of the cross, and some are baptized with three fingers of the right hand, and others with two, he begged these saints to announce where the truth is and how one should be baptized. In a reply message to Nikon, Patriarch Macarius of Antioch wrote: “tradition received from the beginning of the faith from St. apostles, and St. father, and St. seven councils, create the sign of the honorable cross with the first three fingers of the gum of the hand, and whoever from Orthodox Christians does not create the cross, according to the tradition of the Eastern Church, holding it from the beginning of the faith even to this day, is a heretic and an imitator of Armen. And for this reason, his imams were excommunicated from the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and cursed: the announcement of the truth was signed with his own hand.” Following the Patriarch of Antioch, the same curse was repeated and signed with his own hand by the Serbian Patriarch Gabriel, and after him it was repeated, each separately, and signed by the metropolitans, Gregory of Nicea and Gideon of Moldova. Nikon immediately ordered this response message of the four saints, together with his message to them, to be printed and placed as an appendix to the book “Tablet” 56. When, in this way, the eastern hierarchs who were in Moscow pronounced their verdict on those baptized with two fingers, not only orally, on the week of Orthodoxy, but also in writing, Nikon considered it timely to convene his Russian priests to a council, so that they too would make a decision on the same issue. The council took place on April 23, 1656. In addition to the patriarch, three metropolitans were present at the council: Macarius of Novgorod, Cornelius of Kazan, Jonah of Rostov; four archbishops: Markell of Vologda, Lavrenty of Tver, Joseph of Astrakhan, Macarius of Pskov; one bishop - Alexander of Kolomna; twenty-two archimandrites, seven abbots, one builder and one governor. Nikon opened the meetings of the council with a rather extensive speech. Having said first how the eastern saints who came to Moscow, Athanasius of Constantinople, Paisius of Jerusalem, Gabriel of Nazareth and others, scorned and reviled him for various irregularities in church books and rituals, including for the use of two fingers in the sign of the cross; As he began to correct the books, collected many ancient charatean manuscripts, Slavic and Greek, Nikon announced that, on the basis of them, he had already corrected some church books, and along with them he ordered the book “Tablet”, which he was now presenting to the council for consideration, to be translated and printed, with the necessary appendices. In particular, Nikon drew the attention of the council fathers in his speech to the doctrine of two fingers, and said that it was introduced into our books “from Theodorite’s writings through ignorance” and in recent times: “before that, all the first three fingers were depicted in the image of St. The Trinity, as many are still seen today, do not know the Theodorite Scripture, as in simple husbands and in all wives, holding on to the ancient custom”; explained that by combining, according to Theodorite’s tradition, a great finger with two small ones, the sacrament of the Most Holy One is wrongly confessed. Trinity, and by the union of two fingers, the index and middle, the sacrament of the incarnation is wrongly confessed; recalled that the Constantinople Patriarch Paisius answered with his council about folding the fingers for the sign of the cross, as the Patriarch of Antioch Paisius interpreted the legend about St. in the church of the Chudov Monastery. Meletius of Antioch, how in the week of Orthodoxy three eastern saints pronounced a curse on those baptizing with two fingers, and how they repeated the same curse, together with the Moldavian Metropolitan, in their written response, and invited the council of Russian saints and clergy to say their word on the same subject. Those present at the council first began to testify to the book of the Tablet, “consecrating it for many days, examining every thing and every word with great diligence,” and found it not only “immaculate,” but also worthy of all praise and surprise, and thanked God a lot for such a priceless treasure. Then, having discussed what is said about the sign of the cross in three articles placed in the appendix to the Tablet, in the message of the Constantinople Patriarch Paisius, in the word of Subdeacon Damascus and in the response message of the four eastern hierarchs who were in Moscow, and on the other hand, taking into account that before the printing of psalters and other books in which the doctrine of two fingers was introduced, there was an ancient the custom of making the sign of the cross with three fingers, which many still adhered to, and then, during the days of the cathedral, the cathedral decreed the following rule: “if anyone from here, knowing, disobeys, make the image of the cross on his face, like the ancient saint. The Eastern Church has accepted it, and as now there are four patriarchal universes, with all the Christians who exist under them, everywhere found everywhere, and as they were here before Orthodoxy, before the printing of the word of Theodorite in the psalters with the Moscow seal, depicting the first three great fingers of the gums of the hand, in the image of the holy and consubstantial and inseparable and equally worshiped Trinity, but to create this unpleasant thing for the church, connecting the two small fingers with the great finger, in which the inequality of the Holy Trinity is announced, and the two great-middle ones are stretched out in existence, in them are to be enclosed two Sons and two compositions, according to the Nestorian heresy, or otherwise depict a cross: this imams subsequent Holy Father of the seven ecumenical councils and other local rules and St. the Eastern Church by the four Ecumenical Patriarchs, excommunicated from the Church in every possible way, together with the writings of Theodorite, as at the fifth (council) we cursed his false attribution to Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria and to the right faith, existing according to the Nestorian heresy, we also curse.” This rule, as well as the entire book “Tablet” with appendices, was signed by everyone present at the cathedral on June 2, 1656: the cathedral dragged on for so long! And Nikon printed and placed the legend about this council, with a statement of his speech to it, at the very beginning of the same Tablet, under the title: “The Word is Disciplinary”... and ordered the book to be published from the printing house 57. Thus, back in 1656, representatives of not only the Eastern Orthodox, but also the Russian bishopric already pronounced a curse on the followers of the two-fingered sign of the cross who disobeyed the church and, in general, on those who did not agree to be baptized in the way that St. church. In the same year, on May 11, on the Sunday before the Ascension, we also had a council, in the Patriarch’s Cross Chamber, on the issue of rebaptizing Latins and Poles, which was closely connected with the general issue of the correction and printing of church books that was taking place in our country at that time. It is known that, according to the “conciliar statement” and “decree” of Patriarch Philaret Nikitich, all Latins were rebaptized in our country, if they converted to Orthodoxy, and all Belarusians, even Orthodox, but baptized through pouring, and that these codes and decree were included, under Patriarch Joasaph, in printed missals: now, when, among other books, they began to revise the missal, it is necessary it was necessary to decide whether to leave these articles in it during the new edition, or omit them. On the other hand, then Little Russia had just joined the Moscow state and Belarus was annexed, where all the inhabitants, even the Orthodox, were baptized through dousing; then they brought many captive Poles to Moscow, some of whom expressed a desire to convert to Orthodoxy, and the question constantly arose of how to look at all these Oblivians, whether it was fair to baptize them again. That is why, even at the Moscow Council of 1655, they dealt with this issue, and although the fathers of the council and Nikon himself then agreed with the opinion of Patriarch Macarius that the Polyakov should not be rebaptized, they did not actually carry out their decision 58 . It was considered necessary to re-discuss this subject. All Russian bishops were invited to the new council; Among others, the Metropolitan of Kazan arrived. The Antiochian Patriarch Macarius even now insisted that the Latins should not be baptized a second time when converting them to Orthodoxy, and had a heated argument with the Russian hierarchs. He tried to convince them with a reference to their own books of the law and, in addition, to confirm his thought, he presented an extract from some ancient Greek book brought from Athos, which presented a detailed presentation of the subject, and thereby forced the Russian bishops to unwittingly submit to the truth. This extract, signed by Patriarch Macarius, was submitted to the sovereign, translated into Russian, printed and distributed, and the sovereign issued a decree that prohibited the baptism of Poles and other followers of the same faith. Dissatisfied with all this, Macarius, who soon left Moscow, sent another letter to Nikon about the same subject from Tergovishchi (dated December 25, 1656). He wrote that as soon as he reached Ugrovlahia, he tried in every possible way there to find something to solve the question that was occupying him, and that the Ugrovlahia Metropolitan Stefan pointed out to him, Macarius, some ancient Greek and Slavic nomocanon, which completely clarified the truth to him. Calvinists and Lutherans must be rebaptized: because they are true heretics, they do not have the priesthood and do not recognize it as a sacrament, they reject the Gospel tradition, and their baptism is incorrect and not sacred. But the Latins should not be rebaptized: they have the priesthood and accept all seven sacraments and all seven ecumenical councils, they worship St. relics and icons and all of them were baptized correctly in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, with the invocation of the Holy Trinity. To rebaptize them would mean falling into the heresy of the second baptists and contradicts the creed, which says: “I confess one baptism.” We recognize their priesthood, and never again consecrate Latin priests when they convert to Orthodoxy: we must also recognize their baptism. They are only schismatics; and schism does not make a person unfaithful and unbaptized, but only makes him excommunicated from the church. Mark of Ephesus himself, an opponent of the Latins, never demanded their rebaptism and recognized their baptism as correct, etc. 59 . Meanwhile, after the publication of the first newly corrected book - the Service Book, the correction and printing of other church books continued. In March 1656, the Lenten Triodion came out of the printing house, and in the afterword of the book, the references testified that they corrected it, with the blessing of Patriarch Nikon and the entire consecrated cathedral, “from the Greek and Charatean Slavic and Serbian ancient books, but nothing of their own.” In May of the same year, Irmologii, again translated from Greek, was published, and the translators, asking themselves for forgiveness for the shortcomings that would be noticed in this book, said in their defense: “many and other books that were corrected during the making of it, not a little hindered us from correcting them,” which means that the work of correcting books was then carried out on a large scale. In the same year, the newly corrected Book of Hours was released from the press, and the Trebnik, another most important liturgical book after the Service Book, was prepared for printing. Due to its importance, it was revised at the council that took place in October 1656, and the conciliar act says: “translating from the ancient Greek - written books on the charters of St. The book Trebnik, read at the council with all diligent attention and judged to be published in the printing house, the ranks and deeds of the mind were right to be. When this book, the Consumer, corrected by God’s grace and our current conciliar action, will be published, no one will begin, except by sowing the corrected books, to administer the church sacraments.” In 1657 the following Psalter was printed, after “diligent correction from the Greek books”; The Altar Gospel and the Apostle, and Irmologius was published again. In 1658, the Breviary, corrected and examined at the cathedral, was finally printed, and the corrected ones were published again: the Service Book and the following Psalter 60. Along with correcting church books, Nikon tried to correct church rites and customs and harmonize them with the rites and customs of the Greek Church: for this purpose, he very often invited the Patriarch of Antioch Macarius to serve with him, carefully looked at his service, noticed its features, asked about each feature and asked him: “when you notice something wrong in our rituals, tell us so that we can comply with you in performing them correctly." And, according to the instructions of Macarius, Nikon actually corrected some rituals: for example, he introduced or restored in the Russian Church the custom of distributing the antidoron at each liturgy; considered it fair to pour wine into the oil during the ritual of consecrating the oil on Maundy Thursday, in relation to the Gospel story about the Good Samaritan who poured oil and wine on the wounds of the sick, and so on 61. But even more than the instructions of Macarius, Nikon gave faith to the ancient Greek books. In one of these books brought from St. Mount Athos, he found evidence allegedly from Euodia, Patriarch of Constantinople, that the consecration of water on the feast of the Epiphany should be performed only once, and precisely on the eve of the holiday, and not in the church, but on the river. And, despite the fact that hitherto it was the custom both here and in the east to perform the blessing of water twice: on the eve of baptism in the church and on the very day of baptism on the river, and also, despite all the convictions of Macarius not to deviate from this custom, Nikon decided to retreat. On December 16, 1655, with the permission of the sovereign, he convened a small council, which was attended by two metropolitans - Jonah of Rostov and Pitirim of Krutitsy, one archbishop - Lavrenty of Tver and one bishop - Alexander of Kolomna and nineteen archimandrites, abbots and Moscow archpriests. At the council it was decided: “according to the ancient tradition of St. of the Eastern Church on the evening of the Epiphany of the Lord, after the Divine Liturgy has been performed, go to the baptismal woman (at rivers or springs) and there perform the blessing of water according to the order, but on the very day of Epiphany do not go to the baptismal woman and do not perform the blessing of water - for there is one baptism, according to the Apostle, and not two, and the ancient rite of the Eastern Church commands this. If anyone does not listen to this ancient tradition of the church, let him be guilty of church execution, that is, curse and excommunication.” Nikon immediately sent the council resolution to all dioceses for proper guidance. Likewise, in Moscow, together with Patriarch Macarius and in the presence of the sovereign, he performed the blessing of water only at the evening of Epiphany in the coming year 1656 62 . Subsequently, the council of 1667 overturned this decision of Patriarch Nikon. Very interesting is the story of Paul of Aleppo about how Nikon changed the Russian monastic hood (more precisely, the kamilavka along with the hood) to Greek. Nikon really liked the latter, in its form, while he really didn’t like the Russian one. But Nikon was afraid to put on a Greek hood, so as not to be criticized by the people for deviating from the ancient custom. And what did you come up with? He ordered to prepare for himself a Greek kamilavka and a hood, only white and with an image of a cherub on it, embroidered with gold and pearls, and secretly transfer it to the sacristy of the Assumption Cathedral. The great holiday in honor of St. Peter arrived (December 21, 1655), always celebrated in Moscow with special solemnity. In the Assumption Cathedral, the liturgy was performed by all three patriarchs with many clergy, in the presence of countless people and the sovereign himself. When the liturgy ended and the patriarchs, undressed, came out of the altar to greet the sovereign, Macarius of Antioch, previously asked by Nnkon and holding in his hands a new hood and kamilavka prepared for the latter, said to the sovereign: “We are four patriarchs in the Orthodox world, and we all have the same clothes; with our consent and permission, this brother of ours was proclaimed Patriarch of Moscow in place of the Pope of Rome; Dad’s peculiarity was that he differed from us in his white clothes. If it pleases your Majesty, then I would like your patriarch, like us, to put on and wear this kamilavka and hood that I made for him.” The Tsar answered: “Good, father,” and, having accepted the kamilavka and hood from him, kissed them and ordered Nikon to take off the old kamilavka and hood and put on new ones. Nikon was delighted: because the new headdress suited his face and posture perfectly. The priests and other clergy who were present, as well as all the people, immediately began to grumble for such a departure from the old Russian custom; but they grumbled quietly, fearing the sovereign’s wrath. And after a while, all the rulers, all the monks also wanted to change their kamilavkas and hoods to Greek ones; many turned to Patriarch Macarius himself with a request to provide them with such hoods. Soon news came to Moscow that in the Trinity-Sergius Monastery all the monks, numbering up to five hundred, also wished to change, with the blessing of the patriarch, the old kamilavkas and hoods to new Greek ones. And when Patriarch Macarius visited Novgorod (at the end of August and beginning of September 1655), two archimandrites of the most important Novgorod monasteries, Khutyn and Yuryev, asked him for the same thing, and Macarius allowed and blessed 63. In this way, the Russians, due to their habit of well-known church rites and customs, naturally greeted with distrust and murmur any changes in them made by Nikon, little by little they put up with the latter and accepted them. They made peace, but not everyone. We saw that back in 1653, as soon as Nikon published his first “memory” of prostrations, four archpriests, who were previously considered his friends, and then became his enemies, stood up to him when he ascended the patriarchal see and seemed to be proud before them; they saw how sharply they expressed their reproaches and resistance to Nikon and how severely he punished them. The most important of these archpriests, Ivan Neronov, was exiled (Aug. 4, 1653) to Lake Kubenskoe in the Spaso-Kamensk monastery under strict orders for black services. Meanwhile, he was received into the monastery by the abbot, Archimandrite Alexander, with signs of special honor. The abbot gave him not only a cell, but also a servant, ordered him to bring the best food to his cell from the monastery kitchen, and in the church he placed him above even the cellarer. Neronov soon began to interfere in monastic affairs, to tell the abbot what to read during church services, to reproach him for lawlessness in the church, for his trips from the monastery, for feeding fish to the monks during fasting, and to reproach the monks for their drunkenness and negligence in worship. These reproaches during Passion Week became so intensified that on Great Friday, at the end of the service, the archimandrite came out of the altar with the priests and deacons and began shouting: “How long must we endure from Archpriest John? He opposes the church." And they forbade him to go to church, drove all the servants away from him and left him alone in his cell. But not so much these as other actions of Neronov in the Kamensk monastery should have upset Patriarch Nikon, to whom the abbot of the monastery now sent a report about Neronov. Neronov, living on Lake Kubenskoe, in the Vologda district, not very far from Moscow, conveniently sent his letters to Moscow to the Tsar, Tsarina, the Tsar's confessor Vonifatiev, and other close friends, and in these letters he constantly blasphemed Nikon as an enemy of God, and rebelled against the correction of church rites that he had begun. “God-lovers from all four countries, people and nobles from many cities came conveniently to Neronov, in the Kamensky monastery, for the sake of visiting,” and, no doubt, heard from him the same blasphemous speeches against the patriarch. One of his closest like-minded people, Archpriest Loggin, also found an opportunity to visit Neronov here, although he was exiled to the Murom region under the strict supervision of his father 64 . The abbot of the Moscow Chrysostom Monastery, Theoktist, who was the first of the monastic clergy to adhere to the four archpriests, Nikon’s enemies, came here to Neronov and stayed with him, as a student and scribe. After this, it is not surprising if Nikon, having received a report about Neronov from the abbot of the Kamensky monastery, gave an order (July 1, 1654) to exile Neronov to the distant north to the Kandalaksha monastery and there to keep him on a chain, in irons, and not give him ink. Having set off on his journey, Neronov stopped for a while in Vologda, and sent from here (July 13) two messages: one to the royal confessor, whom he informed that “he is coming to be tortured, we will imprison him in distant countries”; another, circumferential, to all the “brothers, lovers of God of the reigning city of Moscow and other cities and all the countries”, convincing their spiritual friends not to grieve for him, but to rejoice, so that they put on all the weapons of God against the wiles of the devil, and guard themselves from evil workers. In addition, while in Vologda and visiting the St. Sophia Cathedral, Neronov allowed himself, at the end of the liturgy, to make the following speech here publicly: “priests and all the children of the church! New heretics have appeared among us (as he called Nikon); they torture Orthodox Christians who bow according to the traditions of their fathers, and also interpret the folding of fingers (for the sign of the cross) in a depraved manner according to their own intent.” Then, in the cross bishop’s church, before the council of all authorities, he said: “the pious Tsar, Emperor Alexei Mikhailovich, gave you his will (i.e. Nikon), and you, being arrogant, commit all sorts of outrages, and you say to him, the sovereign: I am doing according to the gospel and according to the traditions of our fathers. But you are doing as it is said in the Gospel: the Jews have quarreled with the true Christ... Let the time come, and you yourself will flee from Moscow; we are being persecuted by no one except God’s will. And even now I tell you all that if he sends us into the distance, then soon he himself will be running. And if you remain silent about this, you will all suffer. I’m not telling you alone, but everyone in Moscow and other places: it’s an evil for everyone to suffer for silence.” When those speeches were reported to the clerk of the retreat house in Vologda, he was afraid and hastened to escort Neronov out of Vologda on his further journey 65 . Unfortunately, the evil sowed by Nero in Moscow had already spread quite a bit, and hostility against the patriarch was soon revealed. The king was at war at that time; By the end of July, on the occasion of a pestilence that appeared in Moscow, Patriarch Nikon left Moscow, along with the royal family. The epidemic intensified; people prayed in churches. On the 25th day of August, together with the people, the Moscow governor, Prince Pronsky and his comrades, to whom the tsar entrusted his capital, were present at the liturgy in the Assumption Cathedral. When Pronsky left the church, he saw near it a lot of people from different settlements. The zemstvo people, holding in their hands the icon “The Savior Not Made by Hands,” on which the face had been scraped off, approached the boyar and began to say: “This image was taken at the Patriarch’s courtyard from the tax collector of the Novgorod hundred, Sofron Lapotnikov, and the image from the Tiuna hut was given to him for correspondence; the face was scrubbed, and the image was scrubbed according to the patriarch’s decree.” (This, obviously, was one of those images of Latin writing that, as we have already mentioned, were taken, by order of Nikon, from the owners, scraped out and then returned to them for painting Orthodox icons). Lapotnikov added: “I had a vision from this image; it was ordered to show it to worldly people, and worldly people should stand up for such a reproach.” And voices were heard from the crowd: “Now the wrath of God is upon everyone for such a reproach; this is what the iconoclasts did. The patriarch is to blame for everything, he keeps the slave heretic, Elder Arseny, gave him free rein, ordered him to be at the reference of printed books, and that monk spoiled a lot of books (and yet Arseny could not even then spoil the books even if he wanted to; neither the correction nor the printing of books had yet begun in August 1654; there was only a council in Moscow, which decided to correct the books; they had only just been sent to Constantinople that is the question: this is how Nikon’s enemies exaggerated the matter and deceived the people!); lead us to final destruction, and that monk for many heresies, instead of death, was exiled to the Solovetsky monastery. It was fitting for the Patriarch to be in Moscow and pray for Orthodox Christians; and he left Moscow, and the priests, looking at him, many fled from the parish churches; Orthodox Christians die without repentance and without communion. Write, boyars, to the Tsar, the Tsarina and the Tsarevich, so that the Patriarch and Elder Arseny do not go anywhere before the Tsar’s decree.” Pronsky and his comrades tried in every possible way to calm the people and said: “The most holy patriarch left Moscow by the sovereign’s decree, and when the sots came to beat him with their foreheads so that he would not leave Moscow at the present time, the patriarch told them that he was going by the sovereign’s decree, and not of his own free will.” The crowds dispersed calmly; but on the same day they again gathered at the red porch with icon boards, on which the faces were scraped off, and shouted: “We will carry these boards to all hundreds and settlements, and tomorrow we will come to the boyars on this matter.” Pronsky hastened to write to the queen, prince and patriarch Nikon, who were still in the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, and, on their orders, called the sots and elders and the best people of the black hundreds and settlements to him, and convinced them not to bother with the advice of bad people, to persuade their brothers to leave such an evil undertaking, and the factory owners of the theft were handed over to the boyars. The breeders turned out to be three merchants of the living hundred Zaika, Bayev and Nagaev; and who stood behind these merchants, who set them and their accomplices against Nikon, remained unknown 66. A few days later, at the beginning of September, some woman Stefanida from Kaluga appeared with her brother Tereshka, and both began to divulge that they had a vision and were ordered not to print books and to seal the printing house. Pronsky interrogated them and sent questioning speeches to the queen with the prince and Nikon, from whom he received the answer: “that woman and her brother Tereshka disagreed in their speeches: the woman pointed in a vision to the great image of Paraskeva, called Pyatnitsa; and her brother Tereshka pointed to the image of the Most Pure Mother of God; Yes, the wife said that her brother was mute from birth, and Tereshka said to himself that he spoke mute, but was not mute. And it’s significant that they lied, and you wouldn’t believe such fabulous enemies in the future. And what did they say in their speeches in order to seal the books: the printing house was sealed for a long time and books were not ordered to be printed for the pestilence, and not for their idle lies” 67. More than a year has passed since Nero was exiled to the remote Kandalaksha monastery. And although it was ordered to keep him there on a chain and not give him ink, from there, in 1655, he had written relations with the royal confessor Vonifatiev and with the Pleshcheev brothers in Moscow, and sent, with his own hand, some notebooks to the archimandrite of the Pereslavl Danilov Monastery Tikhon. On the tenth of August of the same year, Nero escaped from his imprisonment with three of his workers and spiritual children. On the way, he was received with honor by the Archimandrite of the Solovetsky Monastery, Ilya, and, supplied with everything needed on the road, was released on the pilgrim boat. Before reaching Arkhangelsk, he went ashore and with one of the workers set off on foot to Moscow, where he arrived safely, while the other two workers, who took a different route, were detained in Kholmogory and imprisoned. In Moscow, Neronov stayed directly with the royal confessor Vonifatiev, and lived with him for many days, secretly from the patriarch; I saw many of my like-minded people here and visited their homes. Vonifatiev reported to the sovereign about Neronov’s arrival, and the sovereign not only did not tell Nikon about it, but also sent a letter to Kholmogory to release two of Neronov’s workers from prison. Thus, Vonifatiev and the tsar, although, apparently, sided with Nikon in the matter of correcting books, but secretly patronized Neronov in his opposition to Nikon. On the 25th day of December 1655, i.e. on the very feast of the Nativity of Christ, Neronov was tonsured into monasticism by the Archomandrite of the Pereslavl Danilov Monastery Tikhon in the cathedral monastery church, on the advice and on the handwritten signature of the sovereign's confessor, Archpriest Stefan, and was named Gregory. After the tonsure, he lived for another forty days with Archpriest Stephen in his cell, at the Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos, which is in the sovereign’s vestibule. And then, at the beginning of February 1656, he retired to live in the Spaso-Lomov Ignatiev Hermitage, where his parents were buried, and where he often went in the past. Meanwhile, Nikon, as soon as he received the news of Nero’s escape from the Kandalaksha monastery, sent out his orders and messengers everywhere to capture him; severely punished the abbot and monks of the Kandalaksha monastery and even Archimandrite Elijah of the Solovetsky monastery; but all the punishments and searches led to nothing. Nikon learned about Neronov’s whereabouts when he, having become a monk, settled in the Ignatieva Hermitage. The patriarchal boyar children immediately came there to take the fugitive; but he withdrew to the neighboring entire Telepshino, where the peasants hid him and did not want to hand him over to those sent by the patriarch, despite all their efforts, and even insulted them 68. Then Nikon decided to convene a council in Moscow to judge Neronov in absentia. The council took place on May 18, 1656, on the Sunday after the Ascension. At the council, along with Patriarch Nikon, the Patriarch of Antioch Macarius was also present - and this was his last personal participation in our councils of that time, because ten days later he left Moscow for his homeland, generously endowed by the tsar and our patriarch 69. Also present were the metropolitans: Gregory of Nicea, Gideon of Moldova, and from the Russians - Macarius of Novgorod, Cornelius of Kazan, Jonah of Rostov, archbishops: Joseph of Suzdal, Lawrence of Tver, Joseph of Astrakhan, Macarius of Pskov, and Bishop Alexander of Kolomna, as well as many archimandrites, abbots, archpriests, priests and deacons. Neronov was accused of the fact that he: a) being exiled to a monastery, did not ask for forgiveness from the holy cathedral, but fled from the monastery and, secretly going around different places, outraged souls not confirmed in the faith; b) wrote many false things about the sovereign Tsar Alexy Mikhailovich, about Patriarch Nikon and about all four ecumenical patriarchs, dismissing Greek Orthodoxy, and reproached the old saints. books written on charters two hundred, three hundred, five hundred or more years ago c) without asking for a blessing and without reconciling with St. church, took monastic vows from his like-minded person, Archimandrite Tikhon of the Pereslavl Danilov Monastery (this is the second person from the monastic clergy who openly joined the four archpriests hostile to Nikon). As a result of all the above-mentioned faults, the council decided to cut off Nero, with his like-minded people, from St. church and decreed: “Ivan Neronov, who is now Gregory in Chernetsy, and with his like-minded people, who do not repent of the holy council, from the holy consubstantial Trinity and from St. May the Eastern Church be cursed" 70 . And if the Moscow Council of 1656, which began on April 23 and ended on June 2, uttered an anathema, as we saw, on those who disobeyed the church in folding their fingers for the sign of the cross, then the present council pronounced a curse in general on the like-minded people of Nero, as not submitting to the church in everything in which Nero did not obey the church and in which he has not yet obeyed followers: with this council the real separation of Russian schismatics from the Orthodox Church began, the Russian schism began. The monk Grigory Neronov, living in the Ignatius hermitage or hiding in another place, may not have heard about the cathedral curse on him. But when, after some time, he arrived in Moscow, people close to him began to beg him to show himself to Patriarch Nikon, although others advised him to beware. Gregory decided to go to Nikon, taking with him the recently published book “The Tablet,” which made a deep impression on him. It was printed in it that one must be baptized with three fingers, that all four patriarchs wrote to Nikon about this, and the disobedient were betrayed to an oath, and Gregory began to think: “Who am I, the accursed one? I don’t want to create discord with the ecumenical patriarchs, I won’t be disgusted with them: why should I be under oath with them?” And on January 4, 1657, Gregory came to the patriarchal courtyard, stood at the chamber of the cross and bowed to Nikon as he walked to the Divine Liturgy. Nikon asked: “What kind of old man are you?” “I am the one,” answered Gregory, whom you are looking for, the Kazan archpriest John, monastically Gregory. Nikon went to church, and Gregory, walking in front of him, said: “Whatever you are up to alone, the matter is not strong; for you there will be a different patriarch, your whole work will be remade: then you will have a different honor, holy lord.” Nikon entered the cathedral church, and Gregory stopped on the church threshold. At the end of the liturgy, the patriarch ordered Gregory to follow him to the cross. Here Gregory began to say: “You, saint, ordered a search for me throughout the whole state and imposed torture on many because of me... Here I am before you: what do you want to do with me? I do not resist the Ecumenical Patriarchs, and I did not submit to you alone... You wrote against me, as printed in the book “Tablet”, to the Ecumenical Patriarchs that we are creating rebellion and opposing you in church matters; and the patriarchs answered you that it is appropriate to be baptized with three fingers, but they commanded those who did not submit to be cursed and excommunicated. If you agree with them, then I don’t oppose it; just make sure that the truth is true: I don’t want to be under the oath of the ecumenical patriarchs.” Nikon did not answer anything, but was silent. Gregory continued: “What honor to you, holy master, that you are terrible to everyone, and about you, threatening each other, they say: do you know who he is, whether he is a fierce beast, a lion, or a bear, or a wolf? I’m amazed that the sovereign-tsar’s power is no longer heard, but everyone is afraid of you, and your envoys are more terrible than the tsar’s.” And Nikon answered: “I can’t stand it, father.” And then, giving Gregory the petitions (which were presented to the king by the archpriests Avvakum and Daniel and the brethren), he said: “Take it, Elder Gregory, and read it.” Gregory continued: “Saint, we have heard from you many times before: the Greeks and Little Russians have lost their faith, and they do not have strength and good morals. And now you have holy people and teachers of the law. Arseny the devil is vicious; Paisiy, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, wrote about him to the sovereign that he, Arseny, was a heretic, and ordered him to beware, because he contained many heresies; he was both in the Roman church and in Hellenic evil. And the pious king, after consulting with Patriarch Joseph, exiled Arseny to the Solovetsky monastery. And you took him from the Solovetsky monastery during the Troubles and made him a teacher and ruler for printing. There are many witnesses that he is a vicious person." Nikon answered: “Elder Gregory is lying against him,” then, out of hatred, Trinity Elder Arseny Sukhanov lied against him, saying that there was a cellarer in the Sergius Monastery, when he was sent, by the sovereign’s decree, and with the blessing of Joseph the Patriarch, to Jerusalem and other states. Gregory: “It would be good for you, saint, to imitate our meek teacher, our Savior Christ, and not to maintain your rank through pride and torment. Christ, our teacher, is humble in heart, but you are very angry.” Nikon: “I’m sorry Elder Gregory, I can’t stand it.” After talking a few more in the same way, Gregory asked to be shown a place to live. And Nikon sent his boyar son to the Trinity courtyard to announce that they would clear the cell there for Gregory and that he would not need anything, and that they would not watch him, where he would go and who would come to him. The sovereign soon returned from the campaign against the Swedes, and when, after his usual meeting in the cathedral church (this meeting took place on January 14, 1657), the authorities saw him off, he, seeing Elder Gregory right there, cheerfully said to Nikon: “bless him with your hand.” But Nikon remarked: “Please, sir, be silent; there have been no prayers of permission yet.” “What are you waiting for?” - asked the sovereign, and went to his chambers. The next Sunday, during the Liturgy, Nikon ordered the keymaster to bring Elder Gregory into the cathedral church, through the prayer behind the pulpit, and asked him: “Elder Gregory, are you communing with the holy cathedral and apostolic church?” Gregory: “I don’t know what you’re saying; I was never excommunicated from the church, and there was no council against me... You swore an oath on me with your insolence, out of your passion, being angry with me, just as you cursed Archpriest Mikhail of Chernigov and took off his skufia for the fact that in the book of Cyril he had inadvertently stated that there would be no torment for Christians. "... And Nikon, without answering anything, wept bitterly and began to read the permits prayers. Gregory also cried while prayers of permission were read over him, and with permission he received Holy Communion. gifts from the hands of Nikon. On the same day, the patriarch hosted a meal at his place, “for the joy of the world,” at which he seated Gregory above all the Moscow archpriests, and after the meal, having presented Gregory with gifts, he sent him away in peace. In the following days, Gregory, visiting Nikon, asked for permission for the prisoners who were suffering for his sake - Gregory, and the patriarch immediately sent letters to free them all, and gave Gregory all the letters that he had written to him - Nikon to the Tsar, to Archpriest Stefan and to the other spiritual brothers, and said: “Take, Elder Gregory, your letters” 71. Nikon, obviously, wished to sincerely reconcile with Gregory and, after he reunited with the church and submitted to church authority, was ready to do him any leniency; but that’s not how Gregory answered him. One day the latter said to Nikon: “foreign (Greek) authorities do not blaspheme our service books (Neronov meant the service books that he himself adhered to, printed before Nikonov’s service book), but they also praise.” And Nikon answered: “The wallpaper is good (that is, it was previously printed and newly corrected), but it doesn’t matter what you want, according to what you serve.” Gregory said: “I am sticking to the good old ways,” and, having received the blessing from the patriarch, he left 72. That's when unity of faith began in the Russian Church! Nikon himself blessed him and allowed the first and main leader of the schism that appeared among us, Elder Gregory Neronov, as soon as he submitted to the church, to perform divine services according to old printed service books. And Gregory? He did not want to reconcile with Nikon in his soul and was angry with him. On the day of the Great Martyr Tatiana, January 12, next. already in 1658, the tsar and the patriarch were at the all-night vigil in the cathedral church; Elder Gregory was also there. When Nikon went to the altar to put on his vestments, the sovereign, leaving his place, approached Gregory and said: “Do not move away from us, Elder Gregory.” And the elder answered: “How long, sir, will you tolerate such an enemy of God? He has confused the entire Russian land and trampled your royal honor, and your power will no longer be heard - everyone fears him as an enemy.” And the sovereign, as if ashamed, soon left the elder without telling him anything. At the end of the service, Gregory said to the patriarch: “It’s time for me, Vladyka, to go to the Ignatius hermitage.” And the patriarch let him go, giving him satisfied alms. Some time later, in the same year 1658, Elder Gregory again came to Moscow from his desert and, having received the blessing from the patriarch, came every day to his cross and cell, and was received with honor: this continued for many days. But unexpectedly, someone reported to Nikon that Gregory had burned the newly printed service book, and he was immediately ordered to find Gregory. Those sent from the patriarch did not find Gregory in his house, but captured many who were there, clergy and laity, dragged them to the patriarchal court, interrogated them and put them in chains. Hearing about this, Gregory, who was sitting at that time with the Ryazan Archbishop Hilarion, hurried to the devious Fyodor Mikhailovich Rtishchev and shouted at him: “Judas the traitor! I had a conversation with you about how the new missal should be burned, not the case.” Rtishchev assured Gregory with an oath that he was not a slanderer against him, and both went to the patriarch, who was attending the all-night vigil in the cathedral church. When the matter was explained, Nikon, at the request of Gregory, immediately ordered the release of everyone taken in his house, and the next day he sent a table from himself to Gregory, enough food and drink to treat the innocent victims. On the 21st day of January 1658, at the all-night vigil in the Assumption Cathedral, Nikon ordered to triple the alleluia and add: “Glory to you, God.” Gregory, who was right there, began to reproach Nikon and say that the reverend. Euphrosynus of Pskov was with the ecumenical patriarchs, asking about this thing, and commanded to double the alleluia. Nikon called the legend about Euphrosyne false. But Gregory did not calm down. He “begged the Assumption archpriest and his brethren not to sing alleluia in the cathedral church on the wings. They listened to the elder, said alleluia on wings twice, and on the third: “Glory to you, God.” The Patriarch did not harm them for this; Only when reading the psalter did the podiac troil alleluia, according to the commandment of the patriarch. All the days the elder came to the cathedral church, and the archpriest and the brethren spoke hallelujah on the wings twice until the elder left Moscow. The Patriarch sent tables to the elder all the days and, releasing him into the desert, gave him sufficient alms.” With such permission to double the alleluia even in the Dormition Cathedral, at the request of Elder Gregory, after he joined the church and submitted to church authority, Nikon once again showed that he was ready to allow his opponents to use the so-called old rites, if only these opponents were in the same faith with the church and in submission to its divinely established bishopric. Nikon and Neronov saw each other and now said goodbye for the last time: at the beginning of May, Elder Neronov was already in his desert, and on July 10 of the same 1658 Nikon left the patriarchal see, retiring to the Resurrection Monastery, and Nikon’s activity in correcting church books and rituals ended forever 73. What is to be said about all this activity, from its beginning to its end, if we look at it without prejudice. Nikon did not start anything new when he decided to begin correcting our church books: the correction of these books had been done before, during their printing, under each of the former patriarchs. Nikon only wanted to correct the books better than they had been corrected before. Previously, books were corrected according to the same Slavic lists, which were recognized as “good” by one or another reference book. Nikon wished to correct our church books not only according to the Slavic, but also according to the Greek lists, and, moreover, according to the ancient lists, Slavic and Greek, in order to cleanse these books of all the errors, additions and innovations that had crept into them over time, especially in the last two centuries, and for many no longer seemed like innovations - in order to restore our worship in the very form in which it existed in ancient times. churches, Russian and Greek, - in order to bring our church into full agreement with the Greek and in general with the entire Eastern Orthodox Church, even according to church rites. And Nikon began to correct such books not out of whim or malicious intent, but out of urgent need. He was reproached by the hierarchs who came to us from the east for various deviations of our church from the Greek one, which especially seemed to them about the two-fingered sign of the cross. He himself became personally convinced, soon after ascending to the patriarchal see, that such deviations actually occur in our printed books and even in the Creed. He knew what importance the Greeks attributed to some of these deviations, how they recognized as heretical and burned Moscow books on Mount Athos, in which the doctrine of two fingers for the sign of the cross was printed. It was necessary to eliminate all these types of disagreements between our church and the Greek one, so that they would not lead to serious clashes and even a rupture between both churches. And Nikon began his great work - correcting our church books, but not by himself, but by the decision and instructions of two councils, Moscow and Constantinople. Nikon corrected the book of the Service Book, but did not print it before subjecting it to the careful examination of the entire council. He printed the book Tablet, but did not publish it until it was completely revised and approved by the council. He prepared the book Trebnik for printing and, before printing, also subjected it to careful discussion at the council. Nikon pronounced anathema on the rebellious, those who disobeyed the church by folding their fingers for the sign of the cross; but he did not say it alone, but together with a council of Russian bishops, and after well-known eastern hierarchs had uttered anathema against these disobedient ones. Nikon anathematized Neronov and his like-minded people who resisted church authority; but he betrayed with the consent of the entire council, at which the eastern saints were present, including the Patriarch of Antioch, and following the instructions of the Constantinople patriarch and the council regarding Nero. It turns out that all of Nikon’s activities in correcting church books and rituals were not carried out by him alone, but with the consent, approval and with the live participation of representatives of not only the Russian, but also the Eastern clergy and the entire church. Nikon was attacked that he was extremely strict towards his opponents. But he could be too strict and even unfair, he could have other shortcomings, he could harm the success of his business with his ardor; and the very matter of correcting church books, nevertheless, remained pure, legal and holy - not to mention that strict and severe punishments were generally in the spirit of that time, and that Nikon’s opponents, by their insolence against him, deserved such severity. Who were these opponents of Nikon? The first and main opponent was the archpriest of the Moscow Kazan Cathedral Neronov, with a small circle of like-minded people and friends, which included three out-of-town archpriests: Daniel from Kostroma, Loggin from Murom, Avvakum from Yuryev and one bishop - Pavel from Kolomna. But the activity of these like-minded people of Neronov was not extensive under Nikon and did not last long. They rebelled, together with Neronov, only against Nikon’s first two orders about bowing and about triplets for the sign of the cross, when Nikon had not yet begun correcting the books, and they were all immediately exiled to different imprisonments. The archpriests were exiled back in 1653: Daniil to Astrakhan, where he died in prison; Loggin in Murom, where he also probably died soon, since no more news of his activities was preserved; Avvakum - first to Tobolsk, and then even further into the depths of Siberia to the Lena, where he remained while Nikon occupied the patriarchal see; and Bishop Paul was imprisoned about half of 1654. to the Novgorod borders, and the schismatics themselves did not have any more news about him: it’s true that he died soon. Neronov alone, although he was also exiled back in 1653 to the Spasokamensky monastery, and then to the remote Kandalaksha monastery, did not cease to fight against Nikon constantly, throughout the time he was correcting church books and rituals, and with his letters to Moscow and other places, with his oral conversations, he acquired many followers and like-minded people, of whom are known by name: the Zlatoust abbot in Moscow Theoktist and Danilovsky abbot in Pereslavl Tikhon. Other figures of the schism had not yet spoken out: they became famous after Nikon was removed from the patriarchal see. How significant the number of those who sympathized with Neronov was, especially in Moscow, was revealed after his escape from the Kandalaksha monastery, when all Nikon’s efforts to find and capture the fugitive remained in vain, and he was safely hiding in the capital itself for several months. On the 18th day of May 1656, Nikon, with a council of Russian and some Greek bishops, finally uttered an anthema against Nero and his like-minded people, and the Russian schism of the so-called Old Believers began. But this beginning was fragile: because after just over seven months Nero himself, the head of the schism, joined the Orthodox Church, accepted the three-fingered sign of the cross, submitting to the voice of the Eastern patriarchs, praised the book of the Tablet published by Nikon, and even convinced his followers to do the same 74. True, Nero, even after joining the church, wanted to stick to the old printed books; but Nikon, together with the council, having cursed those who did not submit to the church because of the old books and rituals, did not at all curse these books and rituals themselves, and therefore allowed Nero, when he submitted to the church, to hold on to the old printed books, even called them good and said that it makes no difference whether one uses old or newly corrected books to serve God; allowed, in particular, to double and triple the Alleluia in the Assumption Cathedral itself during the same services. From here we can conclude that if the ministry of Patriarch Nikon had continued, and he had not soon left his see, then he, perhaps, would have allowed all like-minded people of Neronov, adherents of old printed books, the same thing that he allowed Neronov: if only they would submit to the church and church authority. And then, preserving the unity of the Orthodox faith and submitting to the same church hierarchy, Russians, some would perform services according to newly corrected books, and others according to books corrected and printed before, despite all the differences between them, just as before Nikon, some performed services according to old service books and missals, corrected and printed under Patriarchs Job, Hermogenes and Philaret, and others according to newly corrected ones. service books and missals printed under the Patriarchs Joasaph and Joseph, although there are significant differences between those and other missals and missals 75 . Thus, the schism that began under Nikon would little by little cease, and in its place the so-called unified faith would be established. Unfortunately, after Nikon was removed from the pulpit, circumstances completely changed. The preachers of the schism found themselves, during the period between the patriarchate, strong patronage; began to sharply attack the church and its hierarchy, incite the people against it, and with their outrageous activities forced the church authorities to take canonical measures against them. And then the Russian schism that exists to this day arose again, formed and established itself, and which, therefore, in the strict sense, began not under Nikon, but after him. Shusherin. Life of Nikon., p. 11, Moscow. 1871; Avvak. Autobiography His - in the Material. for the history of Russians, schism, published. Brotherhood of St. Peter Metropolitan, vol. V, pp. 17 – 19; A.E. IV, No. 57, pp. 77.81. Archpriest Ivan Neronov also later told Nikon himself on behalf of his brethren that before the patriarchate he was their friend, and did not argue when, on the advice of the sovereign confessor Stefan, persons were appointed metropolitans, archbishops, bishops, archimandrites, abbots and archpriests (Mater, for the history of the schism, 1, 47). Exits of Sovereigns, p. 261; Nikon's letter to Constantinople. Patriarch Dionysius, in Zpisk. Departments of Russian and Slavic. Archaeology, II. 511 – 513 Nikon’s objections to Streshnev and Paisiy 1 and 26, ibid pp. 480 – 481; preface to the Service Book of 1655 - in the addition to the description. Staropechat. books of Count Tolstov and Tsarsk., No. 89. The rite of election, naming and dedication of patriarchs. Nikon has been preserved in the original to this day (Moscow Main Archive, Min. Foreign Affairs, Spiritual Affairs, year 7160 (1652), July). After this, everything that is said in the Life of the Suzdal Metropolitan Hilarion, compiled no earlier than the beginning of the 18th century, as if two more candidates were elected to the patriarchate together with Nikon, hieromonk of the Transfiguration Monastery on Yunga Anthony and a third, unknown by name, as if the lot had been cast as to which of them should be patriarch, as if the lot fell on Anthony, and Anthony only refused such an honor due to old age and illness and lost it to Nikon, all this does not deserve any attention. (Life of Hilarion, Metropolitan of Suzdal, p. 5, Kazan 1868). Palaces. Discharges, III, 322 – 323; Exits of sovereigns p. 261. On the naming and dedication of patriarchs. Nikon is set out in full detail in the above-mentioned order (see note 2). A copy of the desk chart given by Patr. Nikon - to Moscow. main arch. min. foreign affairs, spiritual affairs, year 7160 (1652) July. This charter lists all twelve men originally elected as candidates for the patriarchate, namely two metropolitans: Nikon of Novgorod and Cornelius of Kazan; three archbishops: Vologda Markell, Ryazan Misail and Pskov Macarius; six archimandrites of the monasteries: Chudova Ferapont, Andronieva Sylvester. Savva - Storozhevsky Hermogen, Nizhny Novgorod Pechersk Stefan, Rostov Epiphany Jonah, Suzdal Spassky Joseph, and one abbot of the Borovsky Paphnutian monastery Pavel. For more details, see our History. R. Church, in volume XI. More details - in the same place, in volume XI. More details about Patriarch Paisius and Arseniy Sukhanov - in the same place, in volume XI. About Metropolitan Gabriel of Nazareth, who came to us together with Arseny (Dec. 8, 1650), but left Moskva before his departure (Feb. 24, 1651) - Moskov. chapters, archive. Min. Foreign Cases, Greek cases, connectives. 29 No. 11; Sukhanov. Proscinitary, pp. 12 – 13, ed. in Kazan. About the reproaches of this Metropolitan Nikon - see “The Word is Responsible” in the Tablet, ed. Nikon, L. 1. This is the preface to the service book, ed. Nnkon in 1655, reprinted completely by Stroev in addition. to description old stove books gr. Tolstov and Tsarsky. No. 89. The Life of Habakkuk - in Mater., for the history of the schism, V, 18 - 19. It should be noted that other patriarchs who came to us from the east before and after Athanasius, and sometimes the Greek metropolitans, following their example, also distributed letters of permission from themselves, in Little Russia and Russia, to people of all ranks, even to members of the royal family, and Orthodox Russians with faith and gratitude accepted or acquired such letters for themselves. But some of the outsiders were tempted by this. For example, the famous Serbian priest Yuri Kryzhanich wrote: “I saw permits printed in Kiev in Russian, which were sold in Rus' by the Byzantine Patriarch Athanasius. How and at what price he sold them, I don’t know. I only know that some people sold such letters of release to noble people for money; here they are absolved from all sins, without mentioning a word about confession or repentance. And poor people treasure these certificates as a great treasure, and bequeath to put them with them in the coffin... I saw one metropolitan who, wherever he came to a noble person, would first of all ask him if he would like to have absolution from his sins. He expresses his desire, and the Metropolitan, having sanctified the water in this man’s house, sprinkles him and his entire family; then he puts his hands and a book on the owner’s head and reads over him a long and detailed absolution, without any prior confession. About the arrival of the former Tsaregrad patriarch to Moscow. Afanasy - in Moscow. main archive Minister. foreign affairs, Greek Cases, Connections 29, No. 8, last half, and bundles. 31, No. 27. Demolished. Exits State Court. page 302. D. Yu. and Z. Russia, X, No. 6, art. XIII, p. 331; Archid. Paul of Aleppo, Journey to Antioch. Patr. Macarius to Russia, to Reading. M. Histor. General 1676, 1, department IV, 61–63. “The word is responsible” Patr. Nikon in his Tablet, l. I. Original manuscript of Patr. Athanasius, in Greek, is kept in Moscow. Synod. library, No. 245. At the same time, this work, by order of Nikon, was translated into the Sdavenian language, under the title: “Interpretation of the Divine Liturgy, when the priest officiates, according to the rank and custom of the Eastern Church Athanasius, the former ecumenical patriarch, was vouchsafed (to officiate?) in Moscow in 1653 summer, month of July, index 6.” The manuscript of this translation is kept in the same Synod, library, No. 698. Thus, Neronov himself testifies that the cruel punishments for which he reproached Patriarch Nikon so much, now and after, were then in the custom and in general among the spiritual authorities (as well as secular), and not among Nikon alone: such was the spirit of the times. Subsequently, Neronov complained that Pavel, Metropolitan of Sarah and Don, persecuted and tormented him, Neronov, even “more than Nikon” (Material, for the historical schism. 1, 239). Material. for the history of the schism, 1.41 – 51.234 – 237. Material. for history schism, 1.50 - 51. And that Nero was condemned not by Nikon alone, but by the entire council, on the basis of the apostolic rule - which Nero deliberately kept silent about in his story - see ibid. 1.128 - 129. Letter from Archpriest Avvakum to Neronov - in Mater. for the history of the schism, 1, 20 – 26; letter from the priest of the Kazan Cathedral to Neronov - ibid., 1, 26 - 31; Life of Habakkuk - ibid., V, 22. It must be admitted, however, that these archpriests themselves, with their extremely daring antics against Nikon, unwittingly called him to drastic measures. We have already seen how archpriest Nero rudely reviled his patriarch in front of the whole cathedral, and we mentioned that archpriest Loggin reproached the patriarch to his face for his supposedly “careless and highly intelligent and proud life.” Now let’s add that the same Loggin, when they cut his hair in the cathedral church and took off his single-row coat and caftan, during the big exit, “Reproaching Nikon, he spat across the threshold into the altar in Nikon’s eyes, and, grabbing his shirt, threw it into the altar in Nikon’s eyes”... (Abakkuk: Autobiography - in Mater, for the history of the schism, V, 21). Nnko the Montenegrin gives the following definition (91st) of the heresy of non-knee worshipers from “Damascene’s Exposition on Heresies”: “at all times of their prayers they do not want to bow down to their knees, but they say their prayers while standing.” The very name of heresy in relation to non-knee worshipers is obviously not used in the exact sense: because there is no heresy here at all. See our History Russian. Church VIII, 116 – 129. All the above letters are in the Material. for the history of the schism, 1, 34 – 41, 51 – 94. The council took place after February 27 and before May 2: because Nero, in a letter to the king dated February 27, only asked for the convening of a council, and in letters to the queen and the royal confessor dated May 2, he already mentions the disfavor that befell Bishop Pavel Kolomensky, and makes an objection to what Nconom said at the council regarding bows (Material for the historical schism, 1, 66, 79. 87 – 88). In addition, it is known that the king himself was present at this council; and on May 18 he left Moscow for Lithuania to join his army, from where he returned only at the beginning of the next year (Palace. Rez. III, 412). The act of this council was originally published in the appendices to the Tablet of Nikon, and recently (1873) it was published again by the Brotherhood of St. Metropolitan Peter from the original copy, sealed with the handwritten signatures of those present at the council, kept in Moscow. synod. library for No. 379. Information about this cathedral is presented in the preface to the service book of 1655. Signature of Paul, Bishop of Kolomna, see the original list of the cathedral Code, ed. Brotherhood of St. Peter. Among the manuscripts taken from Abbot Theoktistus, who lived under Neronov in the Spasokamenny monastery, was “A letter from Bishop Paul of Kolomna to Archpriest Ivan Neronov on eight columns” (Materials for the history of the Russian schism, 1, 331): evidence that there were close relations between these persons. This is what is said in the definition of the council of 1666 about the overthrow of Nikon (Collected State Gram IV, No. 53, p. 184). Likewise, one of the bishops present at this council, namely Chernigov, Lazar Baranovich, expresses that the “overthrow” of Paul “caused his sudden death from insanity” (Letters of Lazar Baranovich, letter 38, Chernigov. 1861). But the matter is conveyed differently by schismatic writers. Archpriest Avvakum says in his biography that “Nikon finally burned him (Paul) with fire within the Novgorod borders” (Materials for Russian history, V, 18). Fyodor Ivanov, a former deacon of the Moscow Annunciation Cathedral, writes in one place that Nikon “sent him (Paul) into exile to Khutynia to the monastery of St. Barlaam; and there was a certain Archimandrite Baryashko, and he tormented that bishop Pavel, pleasing Nikon, the enemy of Christ... Pavel that blessed bishop began to disfigure Christ for the sake of; Nikon saw and sent his servants there to the Novgorod borders, where he, walking, wandered. They found him and killed him to death, and burned his body with fire, according to Nikon’s orders” (ibid. VI, 284). In later times, Semyon Denisov, in his florid “Russian Grapes,” wrote that Paul was exiled to the Paleostrovsky monastery and remained there “for quite some time,” and that then “the Novochinites (and not Nikon specifically) from there to the Novgorod countries, who, after much languor, took the sacred bishop in a log house made to fiery death” (Article about Paul Col.). Among the manuscripts taken from Abbot Theoktistus, one was marked as follows: “On the column - about the eruption of the Kolomna bishop - written on both sides.” (Materials for the history of the Russian schism, 1, 334). Was this not a copy of the original case about the overthrow of Paul, to which Nikon referred at the council? Mater. For history Russian split, 1, 79, 100 – 101. Paul Aleppo. The Journey of Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch, Books. VI, dept. 8. 9; book XI, dept. 6, according to the English translation, in vol. I, pp. 310, 318 – 319, vol. II, p. 130. For what and where the bishop of Kolomna was exiled, Paul of Aleppo wrote only from rumors, not entirely accurate, and precisely the following: “one bishop of Kolomna became stubborn and did not want to sign the conciliar act (on correcting church books), and said: “from the time we became Christians, just as we inherited the faith from our fathers and grandfathers, who were distinguished by their strict attachment to their rituals and constancy in their faith, we also zealously stood for our faith and will not accept a new one.” Hearing this, the tsar and patriarch exiled the bishop, along with his monks, servants and all his property, into captivity, in the depths of Siberia, 1,500 miles away, to the shores of the sea, called the ocean, which washes the globe. Since ancient times, there have been monasteries built for exiles here. The bishop was brought to one of these monasteries to eke out a life that was preferable to death: the situation of the monastery is so gloomy and life in the midst of constant darkness and hunger is unbearable” (vol. II, Art. 318). The first list of this letter, completely complete, was preserved in Moscow. Synod. library and recently published in the book: “The Act of the Moscow Cathedral, which took place in the summer of 1654,” appendix., No. 1, Moscow. 1873. The second list, without several initial lines and the entire last half, where the indicated new items are listed, was preserved in Moscow. Main archive Min. Foreign Cases, cases Greek, bundle 32, No. 23. Moscow. main archive, minister foreign Affairs, affairs Greek, connective. 32, no. 7. And the questions that Nikon addressed to Patr. Paisia, we learn from the latter’s response letter. Preface to printed Moscow Missal of 1655. And about Arseny’s previous trip to the east and debates with the Greeks about faith, see our History. R.C. in volume XI. In his reply, Arseniy wrote: “By your sovereign’s decree, I was released to Mount Athos, and on the 4th day of February, sir, I, your pilgrim, arrived in Iasi and was with your sovereign’s charter at the Moldavian governor Stefan.” This unsubscribe is in Moscow. main apxhive min. foreign grandfather, affairs Greek, connect. 32, No. 9. And the said letter from Patr. Paisiya to the king - there is a link there. 33, no. 3. Letter from Nikon to Constantinople. Patr. Dionysius - in a note, Russian. and Slavs. archaeol. II, 519; Preface to printed Moscow. Service 1655. Archdeacon Paul of Aleppo also writes: “The patriarch and the king, after consultation, sent Arseny to St. mountain with generous alms for the monasteries and with letters to the abbots about sending ancient Greek church and liturgical books that they have. It should be noted that the real patriarch and king are very inclined towards Greek church ceremonies and rituals, noting that various changes and errors crept into their own church liturgical books over time... Arseny went and took from Athos about five hundred large books of various kinds. We met him when he arrived in Wallachia (and Arseny was in Wallachia in the first months of 1654). After that, he went to Constantinople and saw all the sights there. On the way back, he acquired, by order of his patriarch, many cypress boards for icons; cypress wood is very valuable here... For these services Arsenia, patriapx. gave him one of the most honorable positions in church administration, made him a cellarer or vicar of the Holy Trinity Monastery of St. Sergius.” (Travel of Macarius, Patr. Antioch., book X, department 7, in vol. II, pp. 78 – 79). Moscow. Chief, architect Min. foreign Deeds, deeds Greek. ligaments 33, no. 3. In the expense books of the printed order, receipts of both Apseny Sukhanov and Apseny the Greek and Dionysius of the Holy Mountain were preserved in receiving salaries from the printing house for the position of inspectors (Rumyantsev. Ancient editions of Moscow, printing house pp. 13, 32, note 67). About the time of arrival of Archimandrite Dionysius of the Holy Mountain - Moscow. chapters arch. min. foreign Affairs, affairs Greek, connective. 33, no. 22. Moscow. chapters arch. min. foreign Del; affairs Greek, ligament. 27, no. 7. In 1666, February 10, Tsar Alexy Mikhailovich ordered the Ambassadorial Prikaz to send an extract “about the elder Apseny the Greek, who was at the book reference,” “to the patriarchal court to the authorities.” This extract, by the way, says that on July 23, 1649, the builder Arseny Sukhanov wrote to the Tsar and the sovereign of the Trinity Epiphany Monastery; “on the second day of July, in Putivl, the Patriarch of Jerusalem Paisius, the treasurer, Elder Joasaph, told him, Arseny, about that Elder Arseny, that he was a Greek by birth and was a black priest, and then, by some unknown chance, he was a Busurman, and from the Busurman faith he left for the Polish land, and was in the Uniate faith, and came from Poland, lived in Kiev. And how the Patriarch of Jerusalem came to Kyiv, but his didaskal was gone, and the patriarch, instead of his didaskal, took that elder Arseny with him to Moscow. And now Patriarch Paisiy grieves much so that that old man Arseny from Moscow does not leave again for the Busurman faith” (Moscow Main, Architectural Min. Foreign Affairs, Greek Affairs, bundle. 44, No. 34). The real case about the interrogation of Elder Arseny the Greek and his sending to the Solovetsky monastery is in Moscow. main arch. min. foreign affairs, affairs Greek. Bundles 27, No. 33. It is also included in its entirety in the extract about this Arseny the Greek, which in 1666 was sent from an embassy order to the authorities at the patriarchal court (ibid. link 44, No. 34). Orthodox Interlocutor 1858, III, 328 – 363. This petition by Apsenia the Greek is also included in the extract, or certificate about him, which was sent in 1666 from the embassy Order to the authorities at the patriarchal court (Moscow Chief Architect. M.I.D. delaGrech., Link. 44, No. 34. Nikon answered Neronov: “They are lying against him (Arseny the Greek); then the Trinity elder Arseniy Sukhanov lied against him, but with hatred, that there was a cellarer in the Sergius Monastery, when he was sent by the sovereign’s decree and with the blessing of Joseph the Patriarch to Jerusalem and other states” (Material for the historical Russian schism, I, 64, 150). Rumyantsev. Ancient Moscow buildings printed yard, p. 33, approx. 69. Moscow. main archive. M.I.D., affairs Greek., ligament. No. 34; ligaments 32, no. 8. About the arrival of Antiochus. Patr. Macarius to Russia and about assigning him a temporary stay in Kolomna, there are also connections. 32, no. 21. And about his stay in Kolomna and then in Moscow and other places in Russia - his son, Archdeacon Paul of Aleppo, left a detailed account in the book: “The Journey of Macarius, Antioch. Patriarch", published in English translation in London 1836, in two volumes. Paul of Aleppo, who in general seems to somewhat exaggerate the respect that was shown to his father in Moscow, Patr. Macarius, says that he was received by the king even with greater honors than the previous patriarchs were received, and this is especially proven by the fact that Jerusalem was the first to meet. To Patriarch Paisius, the king stepped down from the throne only on the third step, and now he walked a significant space to meet the patriarchs. Macarius, and when he released Paisius, he did not go with him and did not lead him by the hand to the door, as he did with Macarius, and so on. (book VIII, section 3 in volume I, pp. 373 – 386). In the next section of the same book, Paul talks about the king's reception of the Serbian patriarch. Gabriel, about the presentation of both patriarchs, Macarius and Gabriel, Patr. Nikon, and describes in detail the royal dinner in which they all took part (vol. I, pp. 386 - 394. See also Palace. Classes, III, 457 - 458. Pavel. Aleppo Let's go. Macaria, ant. Patriarch, Prince IX.department 12, in vol. II, 48 – 51. Pavel. Aleppo Let's go. Macarius, book. X, dept. 10, in vol. II, 85 – 86. About the Tsar's departure for war - Palace. Discharge. III, 459 – 461. About the deposition and imprisonment of Paul of Kolomna, see above note. 24 – 27 and the very text to which they relate. Preface to the Service Book of Patr. Nikon is reprinted in full - in the Addendum to the description of the old stoves. kiig Gr. Tolstoy and the merchant Tsarskago. ed. Stroev, No. 89. There is also a third legend about the Moscow Cathedral of 1655, allegedly borrowed from a handwritten story of 1668, passed, in copies, from hand to hand between the spoken Old Believers. It is placed in a booklet compiled by Pavel Belokrinitsky and printed, without indicating the place and time of printing, under the title: “Part III, Church History.” It says here, firstly, that Nnkon addressed his questions to all the Eastern patriarchs, bribed them, the mendicants, with rich gifts in order to persuade them to his newly invented traditions, and, having received response charters from the patriarchs, according to his desire, he opened the council of 1655, and at it, at the very first meeting, he announced these response charters of the patriarchs (pp. 23 - 37). But Nikon - a) did not at all address his questions to all the eastern patriarchs, but turned only to one Patriarch of Constantinople, Paisius, with his council - and b) opened the council of 1655 in Moscow before receiving a response letter from Paisius. It is said, secondly, that at this council, Bishop Pavel of Kolomna competed with Nikon for two whole sessions and defended the non-involvement of the Most Holy One against him. The Virgin Mary to original sin, the hundred-domed cathedral, the special alleluia, the three-part cross, the name Jesus, the seven-prosphorion, the two-fingered sign of the cross, and so on - in which the very speeches of Paul are superimposed (pages 37 - 91). But - a) Pavel Kolomna was not present at all and could not be present at the council of 1655, because, as we have seen, back in 1654 he was defrocked and exiled to prison; b) Nikon did not raise questions at all about the involvement of the Most Rev. the Virgin Mary to the original sin, nor about the hundred-domed cathedral: at least, this is not known from anywhere; c) those long speeches against Nikon that Paul allegedly spoke at the council, judging by their style and especially by language, could not have belonged to him, but are characteristic only of a literate person of the present time, which is easy to verify from reading these speeches; and if such long and artificial speeches had really been spoken by Paul, none of those who heard them would have been able to remember them exactly so that they could then write them down on paper. It is said, thirdly, that Paul of Kolomna was supported at the council, by the way, by Alexander, Bishop of Vyatka (pp. 49, 67). But - a) the Vyatka diocese did not yet exist: it was opened only in October 1656, as can be seen from the original document (Mater, for the historical schism, I, 8 - 14); b) Alexander was not yet a bishop at that time: he was ordained bishop of Kolomna, two months after this council, on June 3, 1655, according to an eyewitness (Paul of Aleppo. Travels. Macarius, book XI, section 6, in vol. II, 130). It is with such stories and fables that illiterate or semi-literate people are deceived in order to arouse in them hatred towards Patriarch Nikon and the work he began to correct church books. Moscow, main, archive. min. foreign Affairs, affairs Greek., Ligaments. 38, No. 14. At the end of this case it is mentioned that when the tsar released Manuel the Greek at the end of August, he sent 300 rubles worth of sables to Patriarch Paisius. and the queen - also for 300 rubles, then there was some kind of parcel and letter from Nikon to Paisius. Until now this is the message of the patriarchs. Paisius and the Cathedral of Constantinople was known only in the Slavic translation, printed in the appendix to the Tablet of Patras. Nikon. But recently it was discovered in the original and published, both in the Greek text and in the Russian translation (Christian Readings 1881, 1, 303 - 553, 539 - 595). From here, anyone can learn more about the contents of this important monument. This letter from Paisius to Nikon was published in the preface to the service book, ed. Nikon. The time of printing of the Tablet in October 1665 is indicated in the preface to this book (p. 18). Nikon himself testifies to this incident in his “Annunciative Word”, printed. at the beginning of his Tablet (fol. 10 vol. - 11 vol.). And about this, see in the same place (fol. 11 vol. - 12 vol.). Metropolitan Gregory of Nnkei arrived in Moscow on June 27, 1655 (Moscow Chief Architectural Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Greek Affairs, Links 33, No. 24). Track. could be present in Moscow. The Assumption Cathedral at the triumph of Orthodoxy, only in 1656, and not in 1655. There L. 9 rev. – 10. The message is printed in the appendix. to the tablet without counting the sheets. About the time of arrival in Moscow of the Moldavian Metropolitan Gideon - in Poln. Collection Laws, I, p. 384. A.E. IV, 332. At the end of January 1656, from among the captured Poles, he was baptized a second time in Moscow, with the permission of the patriarch himself. Nikon, Great Hetman Pavel Pototsky; “his successor at baptism was the test of the sovereign, and then His Majesty gave Pototsky all his lands for management, leaving only a few members of his family as a pledge of his loyalty.” (Paul of Aleppo. Travels. Macarius, book XIII, department 11, 14, in vol. II, 237, 255). Paul Aleppo. Travel. Macarius, book XIV, dep. 8, Tue. II, 296 – 297. Original letter in the Slavic language of Patr. Macarius to Nikon from Tergovishchi is located in Moskov. Synod. bib., according to the catalog of manuscripts of 1828, No. 3. Additional to description old stove books gr. Tolstova and Tsarskago, Nos. 91, 92, 94; Chronological Index Slavic - Russian. books of church press, Nos. 712, 722, 723, 725, 737, 738 – 740; Described. old stove books gr. Tolstova, No. 121; Description handwritten Moscow Synod. Bible, III, 1, No. 379. Council decree on the printing of the newly corrected Trebnik - in Mater. for history Russian schism, 13 – 14. Pavel Allep. Let's go. Macarius, book X, dep. 12; book XIV, dept. 7, in vol. II, 94, 290. Paul Aleppo. Let's go. Macarius, book. XIII, dept. 11; book XIV, dept. 7, in vol. II, 237, 290; A.E. IV, 838. The resolution of this small council, signed by the persons present at it, in the later list, is in our library. Paul Aleppo. Let's go. Macarius, book. XIII, dept. 8, in vol. II, 227 - 229. In the manuscript of the Moscow Synodal Library, No. 93, from the very beginning there was placed “a book recording the vestments and actions of the great sovereign, His Holiness Nikon, Archbishop of the reigning city of Moscow and All Great and Little and White Russia Patriarch.” The book briefly records Nikon's activities and services from December 10, 1655, with interruptions, until the Week of Orthodoxy in 1658 (l. 1 - 129). Here, when describing the patriarchal service of the liturgy on the 21st day of December 1655, in the Assumption Cathedral, it is only said that, after his dismissal, “the Antiochian patriarch was unmasked. Macareus presented the Sovereign His Holiness Patriarch (Nikon) with a white hood of the Greek translation, and the Serbian Patriarch Gabriel presented him with a Greek cap (kamilavka),” and that Nikon, returning from the cathedral to his chamber of the cross, accompanied by his retinue, “bestowed his archdeacon and hierodeacon with Greek hoods and kamilavkas.” (fol. 4 vol. – 6). Materials for history. Russian Schism, I, 106, 112 - 118. Some of the residents of Murom, after Archpriest Loggin was condemned and removed from them, submitted a request about him to the Archbishop of Ryazan and Murom Misail, in which, as usually happens, they praised in every possible way the one they asked for, and condemned their opponents who contributed to his condemnation. And it was said that Loggin, a teaching man “all day and night and hour,” preached the word of God, admonished the ignorant, and “the enemies of God, church rebels who opposed the tradition of St. the apostle, denounced and drove away from the flock of Christ”; that these evil people, not tolerating his denunciations, rebelled against their shepherd and made a denunciation against him (already known to us), and the cathedral priest Ivan Sergeev, wanting to be archpriest in Loggin’s place, “having lured out a scripture from outside people, for archpriest Loggin to reproach,” attached this scripture to the denunciation, and that, after Loggin was removed from Murom, disorder broke out in the city: “There is division in the Orthodox faith among Christians,” and church rebels rose up against the persecutors of piety, so that many had to flee. As a result of all this, they asked to return Archpriest Loggin to Murom (Printed in the “Historical Description of the Ryazan Eparchy,” pp. 97 – 112, ed. 1820). But this request, of course, remained unsatisfied: Archpriest Loggin was tried and condemned at the council by the patriarch himself. Nikon, and the local diocesan apostle could not change this decision. Materials for history. Schism, I, 94 – 108, 119. 283. Columns of the Order of secret affairs in the state. archive, No. 67. demolished. note 46 and the text to which it refers. Additional to A.I. III, No. 119, Art. VI, p. 446. Material. for history Russian schism, I, 137 – 144, 283; Orthodox Sobesedn, 1858, II, 586 – 589. Patriarch Macarius of Antioch left Moscow on March 25, 1656, having received from the sovereign, at parting, sables worth three thousand rubles, in addition to various other gifts. But as soon as he reached Bolkhov, he had to, at the invitation of the sovereign, return to Moscow, and finally left it on May 29 of the same year, after Trinity Day on Thursday (Paul of Aleppo. Travel. Macarius, book XIV, section 3, 6, 10. in vol. II, 275 - 277, 286 - 289, 303). The Serbian Patriarch, Archbishop Gabriel, who was very burdened by the strictures of life that he had to obey in Moscow, asked to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and on February 5, 1656 he had a farewell audience with the sovereign, and by the end of March he completely left Moscow. At parting, the sovereign granted him sables only for four hundred rubles, as he usually did to archbishops and metropolitans, and then, at the special requests of Gabriel, he ordered money to be given to him for a sakkos and a sacristan, and presented him with a miter, a staff and several church books, as well as from the stables of his pacer (Moscow. Chief Architect. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Greek affairs, Bundle 32, No. 15). Paul Aleppo. Let's go. Macaria, book. XIV, dept. 9, in vol. II, 300. The original act of this council is also printed in the Material. for history Russian schism, I, 124 – 133. In the “cloud notebook.” and acting pat. Nikon” it is written that on the 18th day of May (1656), in the seventh week after Easter, the good news for the liturgy in the cathedral church was very long: “before the council was with the authorities in the cross (patriarchal) chamber in good news for the former archpriest Rev. Mother of God of Kazan by Ivan Neronov.” At the end of the cathedral, Nikon served in the cathedral church, together with Patr. Macarius, the liturgy, and during the small exit, with the Gospel, he ordered his archdeacon “to ascend to the pulpit and honor all the written guilt of the former archpriest Ivan Neronov, that he was an archpriest to him, the great sovereign, I do not repent to the entire consecrated cathedral, and St. the whole cathedral reproaches. And after reading his Nero wines, he ordered the archdeacon to exclaim: cursed be he. And the sovereign patriarch and the patriarch of Antioch commanded the entire consecrated cathedral to sing: let him be cursed. And in these the clerks sang in their krylos: let him be cursed. And then the podyaki sang among the church: let him be damned. And the authorities all sang in cathedral: let him be damned. And pack clerks and clerks three times.” (Manuscript of the Moscow Synod. Bible No. 93, l 65 vol. – 68). Materials for history. Russian schism, I, 145 – 157. Nero himself later spoke briefly about the same thing in his petition (ibid. p. 238). About the meeting of the Tsar in the Assumption Cathedral on January 14. 657 is recorded in the cloud notebook. and acting pat. Nikon (l. 127 – 128 Material. – ibid. I, 157. Neronov also spoke about himself in his petition to the council of 1666: “until now we have kept the old printed books, service books and consumer books, but we have not blasphemed the newly printed ones, only we have not accepted them” (ibid. 242). Material. for history Russian Schism, I, 157 – 168. Among the manuscripts taken from the former abbot of Zlatoust, Theoktistus, was “a signature from Gregory Neronov in his hand that he believes in the Tablet” (Material for the history of the Russian schism 1, 338). Theoktist gave the following testimony regarding this manuscript: “that Elder Gregory praised the spiritual Tablet and the addition of three fingers behind his Gregory’s hand, I took those replies from those people to whom they were written” (ibid. p. 342). And Neronov himself said in his petition: “Assure me (Nikon) with the testimony of divine scripture and the message of His Holiness Paisius, the Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarch, about the folding of the finger and about the confession of the Orthodox faith and about other church dogmas, about which I, poor one, was in doubt” (ibid. p. 288). We already had people then who, although they greeted the newly corrected books printed under Nikon with prejudice, soon began to look at both new and old printed books equally and perform church services according to both (Life of Suzdal Metropolitan Hilarion, pp. 31 - 35, Kazan, 1868).