*The dual coronation of Ivan and Peter was the last time the Cap of Monomakh was used to crown a Russian autocrat. Peter's eighteenth- and nineteenth-century successors all took the imperial title as emperors and empresses. Many of them had new, much larger crowns made for themselves, culminating in the Imperial Crown of Russia ordered by Catherine the Great and used to crown the last seven Russian monarchs. Nevertheless, the Cap of Monomakh still carried enormous symbolic power, and although it was never again placed on a sovereign's head, it was carried in every coronation procession to symbolize the unbroken line which traced from the new monarch back to the Eastern Empire of Constantinople.
capita] of the Orthodox tsars, and to the Orthodox Church, with its chanting priests, wafting incense and oppressive conservatism. He hated the ancient Muscovite pomp and ceremony which could call him "next to God" but could not protect him or his mother when the Streltsy turned against them.
While Sophia ruled, Peter left Moscow, growing up in the countryside outside the city. Later, when Peter was master of Russia, his aversions had significant consequences. Years were to pass when the Tsar never set foot in Moscow, and, ultimately, Peter stripped Moscow of its rank; The ancient capital was replaced by a new city created by Peter on the Baltic. In a way, the Streltsy revolt helped to inspire the building of St. Petersburg.*
*A striking parallel to Peter's hatred of Moscow can be found in Louis XIVs abhorrence of Paris. In 1648, when Louis (like Peter in 1682) was ten years old, the revolt of the French parliament and nobility known as the Fronde erupted. Armies were raised to suppress the upheaval and then subsequently turned against the crown. At the height of the tumult, the boy King and his mother were besieged by a Paris mob. At night, with the sound of angry cries and the rattle of muskets in his ears, Louis was spirited out of Paris to Saint-Germain, where the King spent the night on a bed of straw.
Louis' biographers stress the powerful and lasting impression made on the boy by this event. Thereafter, he despised Paris and rarely set foot in the city. He built Versailles, and the great chateau became the capital of France, just as Peter avoided Moscow and built a new capital on the Neva. But as Peter's childhood ordeal was worse, so his reaction to it was far more sweeping. Louis built a great chateau close to Paris from which to rule; Peter built an entire city, far away.
5
THE GREAT SCHISM
Sophia was regent, and her regency began with an immediate test of her talent for rule. The Streltsy, who had brought her to power, now swaggered arrogantly through Moscow, assuming that any demand they might make would be instantly granted. The schismatic members of the Orthodox Church, or Old Believers, assumed that the triumph of the Streltsy over the government would bring a return to the old religion, a revival of the traditional Russian ritual and liturgy which had been condemned two decades before by the church establishment and suppressed by the power of
the state. Sophia, no less than her father, Alexis, and her brother, Fedor, regarded the Old Believers as heretics and rebels. Yet, because many of the Streltsy—including their new commander, Prince Ivan Khovansky—were fervent Old Believers, it seemed likely that these two forces would combine to press their will on the fledgling regime.
Sophia handled the situation with courage and skill. She received the leaders of the Old Believers in the banqueting hall of the Kremlin palace and from her throne argued and shouted them into silence before dismissing them. Then, calling the Streltsy into her presence in detachments of a hundred at a time, she bribed them with money, with promises and with wine and beer which she herself served them from a silver tray. With these blandishments, she weaned the soldiers away from their aggressive support of the schismatic clergy, and once the Streltsy were pacified, Sophia ordered the leaders of the Old Believers seized. One was executed and the others dispersed into exile. Within nine weeks, Prince Khovansky was arrested, charged with insubordination and his head lay on the block.
This time Sophia had triumphed, but the struggle between the Old Believers and the established powers in church and state was not concluded; it persisted not only through her regency and the reign of Peter, but until the end of the imperial dynasty. It was rooted in the deepest religious feelings of the people, and is known in the history of the church and of Russia as the Great Schism.
Christianity, if practiced in the ideal, seems especially suited to the Russian character. Russians are pre-eminently a pious, compassionate and humble people, accepting faith as more powerful than logic and believing that life is controlled by superhuman forces, be they spiritual, autocratic or even occult. Russians feel far less need than most pragmatic Westerners to inquire why things happen, or how they can be made to happen (or not to happen) again. Disasters occur and they accept; orders are issued and they obey. This is something other than brute docility. It stems rather from a sense of the natural rhythms of life. Russians are contemplative, mystical and visionary. From their observations and meditations, they have produced an understanding of suffering and death which gives a meaning to life not unlike that affirmed by Christ.
In Peter's time, the Russian believer exhibited a piety of behavior as complicated and rigorous as his piety of belief was simple and profound. His calendar was filled with saints' days to be observed, and with innumerable rites and fasts. He worshipped with endless signs of the cross and genuflections before altars in churchs and before icons which he hung in a corner of his house. Before sleeping with a woman, a man would remove the crucifix around her neck and cover all the icons in the room. Even in winter, a married couple who made love would not attend church before taking a bath. Thieves on the point of theft bowed to icons and asked forgiveness and protection. There could be no oversight or error on these matters, for what was at stake was far more important than anything that could happen on earth. Punctiliousness in religious observance guaranteed eternal life.
During two centuries of Mongol domination, the church became the nucleus of Russian life and culture. A vigorous religious life flourished in the towns and villages, and numerous monasteries were founded, especially in the remote forests of the north. None of these efforts was impeded by the Mongol khans, who traditionally cared little about the religious practices of their vassal states as long as the required taxes and tribute continued to flow to the Golden Horde. In 1589, the first patriarch of Moscow was created, signaling the final emancipation from the primacy of Constantinople.
Moscow and Russia had achieved independence—and isolation. Confronted on the north by Lutheran Sweden, on the west by Catholic Poland and on the south by Islamic Turks and Tatars, the Russian church adopted a defensive stance of xenophobic conservatism. All change became abhorrent, and huge energies were devoted to the exclusion of foreign influences and heretical thoughts. As Western Europe moved through the Reformation and the Renaissance and into the Enlightenment, Russia and her church remained pure—petrified in their medieval past.
By the middle of the seventeenth century—twenty years before the birth of Peter—the weight and strain of this cultural backwardness began to tell on Russian society. Despite the objections of the church, foreigners were coming to Russian, bringing new techniques and ideas in war, commerce, engineering and science. Inevitably, other principles and concepts crept in with them. The Russian church, suspicious and frightened, reacted with such extreme hostility that wary foreigners were forced to seek the protection of the tsar. Yet, the intellectual ferment continued to bubble. It was not long before the Russians themselves, including some within the church, began to look with doubtful eyes on their orthodoxy. Questions were raised: The church challenged the church, and the church challenged the tsar. Separately, each of these struggles was a disaster for the church; together, they led to a catastrophe-the Great Schism—from which the Russian Orthodox Church would never recover.
In personal terms, these struggles took the form of a dramatic three-way confrontation among the Tsar Alexis and two extraordinary churchmen, the overbearing, iron-willed Patria
rch Nikon and the fanatical, fundamentalist Archpriest Awakum. Ironically, Tsar Alexis was the most pious of all the tsars; he surrendered more power to a man of the church—Nikon—than any tsar before or since. Yet, before the end of his reign the Russian church was fatally divided and weakened and Nikon was draped m chains in a cold stone cell. Even more ironic was the struggle between Nikon and Avvakum. Both were men of simple origins from the forests of northern Russia. Both rose quickly in the church, came to Moscow in the 1640's and became friends. Both saw as the great goal of their lives the purification of the Russian church. Disagreeing violently as to what constituted purity, each passionately convinced that he alone was correct, the two great antagonists flailed and thundered at each other like mighty prophets. And then, almost simultaneously, both fell before the reasserted power of the state. In exile, each still believed himself the dedicated servant of Christ, had visions and worked miraculous cures. Death found one at the stake and the other by the side of a lonely road.
Nikon was the tall, rough-hewn son of a Russian peasant from the trans-Volga region of the northeast. Originally ordained a secular priest of the "white" clergy, he had married, but later he separated from his wife and became a monk. Shortly after arriving in Moscow as archimandrite or abbot of the New Monastery of the Savior, the six-feet-five-inch monk was introduced to the youthful Tsar Alexis. Awed by Nikon's spiritual intensity as well as his physical presence, Alexis began to meet him regularly every Friday. In 1649, Nikon became Metropolitan of Novgorod, one of the most ancient and powerful sees of Russia. Then, in 1652, when the incumbent Patriarch died, Alexis asked Nikon to accept the patriarchal throne.
Nikon did not accept until the twenty-three-year-old Tsar fell on his knees and begged him tearfully. Nikon agreed on two conditions: He demanded that Alexis follow his leadership "as your first shepherd and father in all that I shall teach on dogma, discipline and custom." And he asked the Tsar's suppoprt in all major attempts to reform the Russian Orthodox Church. Alexis swore, and Nikon took the throne determined on a broad program of reform. He intended to rid the clergy of drunkeness and other vices, establish church supremacy over the state and then, at the head of this pure and powerful Russian church, assert its pre-eminence over the entire Orthodox world. His initial move was to attempt to change the liturgy and ritual by which millions of Russian people worshipped daily, purging all sacred books and printed liturgies of the many deviations, alterations and simple errors that had crept into them over centuries of use, and making them consistent with scholarly Greek doctrine. The old, uncorrected books were to be destroyed.
Changing the ritual and liturgy provoked a storm of controversy. Devout Russians considered crucial such matters as how many hallelujahs were to be shouted at various points in the service, how many consecrated loaves were to be at the offertory or on the altar, the spelling of Jesus' name (from Isus to Iisus) and, most notably, whether, in making the sign of the cross, one extended the newly decreed three fingers (symbolizing the Trinity) or the traditional two fingers (symbolizing the dual nature of Christ). If one was convinced that the world was only a preparation for paradise or the inferno, and that personal salvation depended on the punctilious observance of church ritual, then crossing oneself with two fingers instead of three could mean the difference between spending eternity in heaven or in hellfire. Besides, the fundamentalist clergy argued, why accept the practices and wording of the Greek church over the Russian? Since Moscow had succeeded Constantinople as the Third Rome and Russian Orthodoxy had become the true faith, why bow to the Greeks in matters of ritual, dogma or anything else?
In 1655, Nikon sought and received support from a source outside Russia. He invited Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch, to come to Moscow, and the Syrian churchman made the long journey, bringing with him his son and secretary, Paul of Aleppo. Paul kept a diary of the journey, and from it we have many firsthand views of Nikon and Alexis.* They arrived in January
*Paul of Aleppo's journal, The Travels of Macarius. is an extraordinarily rueful catalogue of lamentations, grumbles, groans, sulks and whines at having to put up with the hardships of life in seventeenth-century Russia.
Worst of all were the length and conditions of the Russian church services which they, as visiting churchmen, were required to attend. "All their churches are void of seats," complained Paul. "There is not one, even for the Bishop. You see the people all through the service standing like rocks, motionless, or incessantly bending with their devotions. God help us for the length of their prayers and chants and masses. . . . Custom has made them insensible of weariness. . . . We never left the church but tottering on our legs after so much standing. ... We remained very weak with pains in our backs and legs for some days. ... We suffered from the severe cold, enough to kill us as we had to stand upon the iron pavement. What surprised us most was to see the boys and little children of the great officers of state standing bareheaded and motionless without betraying the smallest gesture of impatience." In one service all the names of all the soldiers who died fighting
1655 and were greeted by the regal figure of the Russian Patriarch, Nikon, "robed in a green velvet mandya embroidered with figures in red velvet, with cherubim in the center in gold and pearls. On his head was a white latia of damask, surmounted with a gold arch bearing a cross of jewels and pearls. Above his eyes were cherubim in pearls; the edges of the latia were laced with gold and set with pearls."
From the beginning, the travelers were as much impressed by the piety and deferential humility of the young Tsar as by the commanding magnificence of the Russian Patriarch. On his own, Alexis made "a habit of attending on foot the festivals of the principal saints in their own churches, abstaining from the use of his carriage. From the beginning of the mass to the end, he stands with his head uncovered, bowing continually, striking his forehead on the ground in weeping and lamentation before the saint's icon; and this in the presence of the whole assembly." On one occasion, Alexis accompanied Macarius on a visit to a monastery thirty miles from Moscow, and there "the Emperor took our master [Macarius] by the arm and led him to the temporary hospital that he might bless and pray over the paralyzed and sick. On entering the place, some of us were unable to remain there for the disagreeable, putrid smell, nor could we endure to look at the afflicted inmates. But the Emperor's only thought was his wish that our master should pray over and bless them. And as the Patriarch blessed each, the Emperor followed him, and kissed the patient's head, mouth and hands, from the first to the last. Wonderful indeed appear to us such holiness and humility while we thought of nothing but escaping from the place."
On the matter of changing the ritual and liturgy which had so stirred up the Russian church, Macarius stood firmly behind Nikon. At a church synod summoned by Nikon in the fifth week of Lent 1655, Nikon pointed out the errors to his fellow Russian churchmen and repeatedly called upon Macarius to confirm his judgment. Macarius invariably sided with Nikon, and the Russian clergy, whether convinced or not in their hearts, publicly were forced to agree.
Like other lordly monarchs—for such he had become—Nikon was a great builder. As Metropolitan of Novgorod, he founded
*against the Poles over the past two years were read. "The archdeacon read with great slowness and composure while the singers continually chanted 'Everlasting Remembrance' until we were ready to drop with the fatigue of standing, our legs being frozen under us."
In conclusion, Paul decided, "anyone wishing to shorten his life by five or ten years should go to Muscovy and walk there as a religious man."
convents and rebuilt monasteries throughout his vast northern see. In Moscow, using tiles and stones given him by. the Tsar, he constructed a magnificent new patriarchal palace inside the Kremlin. It had seven halls, broad balconies, great windows, comfortable apartments, three private chapels and a rich library of books in Russian, Slavonic, Polish and other languages. In one of these halls, Nikon dined on a raised platform while the other clergy were served at lower tables, exactly as,
not far away, the Tsar was dining surround by his boyars.
Nikon's greatest architectural monument was his huge Monastery of the Resurrection, known as "The New Jerusalem," constructed oh the Istra River, thirty miles west of Moscow. The Patriarch meant the parallels to be exact; the monastery was erected on the "Hill of Golgotha," the stretch of river nearby renamed the Jordan and the central cathedral of the monastery was modeled after the Church of the Resurrection which houses the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem itself. On the cathedral, with its dome 187 feet high, its twenty-seven chapels, its bell tower, its high brick walls, gilded gates and dozens of other buildings, Nikon spared no expense, proclaiming in architecture what he was also proclaiming in other ways: that Moscow was the true site of the New Jerusalem.
Nikon was a stern enforcer of discipline on both laity and clergy. Attempting to regulate the daily life of the common people, he banned cursing, card playing, sexual promiscuity and even drinking. Further, he insisted that every faithful Russian spend four hours a day in church. Against the erring clergy, he was relentless. Paul of Aleppo reported: "Nikon's janissaries are perpetually going the rounds of the city, and whenever they find any priest or monk in a state of intoxication, he is taken to prison. We saw his prison full of them in the most wretched condition, galled with heavy chains and with logs of wood on their necks and legs. When any of the higher clergy or a superior of a monastery has committed a crime, he is sentenced to irons and condemned to sift flour for the bakehouse day and night until he has completed his sentence. Whereas formerly the Siberian convents were empty, this Patriarch has filled them with the heads of monasteries and higher clergy and with dissolute and wretched monks. Lately, the Patriarch has gone so far as to deprive the High Steward of the Supreme Convent of Troitsky of his great dignity, although he ranked as the third dignitary of the kingdom after the Emperor and the Patriarch. He has sentenced him to be a com grinder in the convent of Sievsk for the crime of taking bribes from the rich. By his severities, Patriarch Nikon makes all fear him and his word prevails."
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