Patriarch Nikon’s Church Reform and the Christian North

Abstract

The coexistence of opposite ideological centres of the old-belief and Nikon’s Reform shows the richness and variety of Russian northern artistic and spiritual life in the Early Modern times. The consequences of these dramatic events in the Russian church indicate the impressive scale of these renovations, spreading to vast territories and affecting the whole way of living and religious expression. In many aspects, these painful processes could be compared with the northern European Reformation. They reflect the attempt of the West and East to synchronize to the new way of thinking in the new world, where the growth of national self-identity had formed new cultural geographical spaces. The leading religious trends of these spaces gave a new meaning to the previous relationships between “centre” and “periphery” (Rome and the German/Scandinavian North; Moscow and the White Sea and Dvina). The faith of the Reformation in the West and the Russian old-believers was based upon personal devotion. It manifested in the increasing role of individuality and led to an alternative (modern) societal organization, in which the sacred medieval hierarchy had been discredited.5 The rejection of hierarchy resulted in various mystical branches of Protestantism and Russian religious non-conformity, which made possible the absorption of some Protestant ideas in Russia, such as the idea of “Pope-Antichrist”6 or the sect of “weepers”. The spiritual changes were closely connected to the political background. Some consequences of this are clearly visible in the social history of northern Europe and, especially, Russia, where most of the rebellions were organized by old-believers (at Solovetsky monastery in 1668–1676; by Stepan Razin in 1670–1671; in Moscow 1682; by Emelian Pugachev in 1773–1775). As a result, both the Reformation in Europe and the Russian Reform resulted in the separation (subordination) of the Church from the State, opening a new epoch and proclaiming new values and trends in the development of Christian civilization.