Nikon’s Reforms and the Old Believer Schism

Nikon was patriarch of Moscow from 1652 (Russian Local Council of 1971, Act on the old rites preamble, resolutions 1–3 and the paragraph that follows them). In Lent, the archpriest Avvakum writes, the new patriarch sent word to the archpriest Ivan Neronov that people were no longer to bow to the knee in church but only to the waist, and were to cross themselves with three fingers. Avvakum says that he and the archpriest Daniel copied out passages from the Fathers on the sign of the cross and on bowing and gave them to Tsar Alexis of Russia (Avvakum, Life pp. 52–54).

Paul of Aleppo, archdeacon and son of Patriarch Macarius of Antioch (Paul of Aleppo, Travels of Macarius vol. 2, translator’s preface), was in Moscow with his father and reports the change from the side of those who made it. The Muscovites, he notes, did not cross themselves with three fingers joined, as his own people did (Paul of Aleppo, Travels of Macarius vol. 2, pp. 50–51). Macarius had pointed out to Nikon where Russian usage departed from Greek (Paul of Aleppo, Travels of Macarius vol. 2, pp. 85–86). Nikon held a synod, had the order of the liturgy translated from Greek and printed in thousands of copies, and told the clergy: “I am a Russian, son of a Russian; but my faith and my religion are Grecian.” Some of the clergy, Paul adds, refused in their hearts to alter the books and rites they had received and did not dare to say so (Paul of Aleppo, Travels of Macarius vol. 2, pp. 85–86).

Avvakum tells that Daniel was shorn and Neronov exiled (Avvakum, Life pp. 54–55), and that he himself was sent with his wife and children to Siberia (Avvakum, Life pp. 58–59). After his return, by his account, he was brought before the patriarchs in the Chudov monastery. They asked why he alone held out when Palestine, the Serbs, the Albanians, the Wallachians, Rome and Poland all crossed themselves with three fingers. He answered that Rome had fallen long ago, that the patriarchs’ own orthodoxy had been weakened under Turkish rule, that in Russia the faith had been pure until Nikon, and that the first shepherds and a Moscow synod under Tsar Ivan had taught the sign with two fingers (Avvakum, Life pp. 120–123). He was banished to Pustozersk (Avvakum, Life pp. 124–125).

The council, at which Patriarchs Paisius of Alexandria and Macarius of Antioch sat with Joasaph of Moscow, issued its decree in May 1667 (Moscow Council of 1667, decree of May 1667 (Materialy 2, p. 213)). It orders all to accept the books corrected under Nikon by the tsar’s command, to sing the alleluia three times and to make the sign of the cross with the first three fingers, and it anathematises anyone who resists, as a heretic and disobedient, until he repents (Moscow Council of 1667, decree of May 1667 (Materialy 2, pp. 214–220)). It also cancels what the council under Tsar Ivan had written about the two-finger sign (Moscow Council of 1667, decree of May 1667 (Materialy 2, pp. 220–221)).

Those who kept the old rites call themselves Old Believers. In 1971 a council of the Russian Orthodox Church recognised the old rites as salvific and equal in honour to the new, and declared the anathemas of 1656 and 1667 to be as if they had not been (Russian Local Council of 1971, Act on the old rites preamble, resolutions 1–3 and the paragraph that follows them).