RUSSIAN CHURCH DIVISION AND RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE

2021 ◽  
Vol 67 (1/2021) ◽  
pp. 189-199
Author(s):  
Bendin Alexander Yurievich

The article focuses on the origins and further evolution of the Church Schism in Russia as well as on the legal status of the representatives of the Old Believers in Russia. Church reforms initiated by patriarch Nikon and the local Church Council in 1666-1667 banned all elements of the old Russian church tradition and outlawed Old Believers. Russian legislation viewed Old Believers as church and state criminals. However, in spite of strong discrimination from state and official church, Old Believers remained mostly loyal to Russian state. Gradual improvement of the legal status of the Old Believers started in XVIII century. Decree on religious tolerance issued by the emperor Nikolas II on 17 April, 1905, proclaimed Old Believers as legally recognized church organization.

2019 ◽  
pp. 153-171
Author(s):  
Илья Письменюк

Статья посвящена участию и роли греческой иерархии в развитии старообрядческого раскола на Руси. Начавшийся в середине XVII в. раскол стал одной из самых печальных страниц в истории Российского государства и Русской Православной Церкви. Это событие было вызвано церковной реформой и книжной справой, организованной патриархом Никоном с ориентацией на греческое православие. Противники данных преобразований, отказавшиеся признать новый русский обряд, учинили раскол и вошли в историю под названием старообрядцев. Тематика раскола Русской Церкви достаточно подробно исследована в отечественной историографии с акцентом на личностные характеристики патриарха Никона, царя Алексея Михайловича, а также лидеров старообрядчества. Однако, с учётом прогреческого характера церковной реформы патриарха Никона, в науке остаётся достаточно слабо освещённым вопрос участия непосредственно греческой иерархии в событиях раскола и роли, которую они в нём сыграли. Последнее особенно касается участия греческих патриархов в деяниях Большого Московского собора 1666-1667 гг., который под влиянием данных иерархов наложил на старый обряд церковную анафему, чем утвердил церковный раскол на многие столетия вперед. Кроме того, отдельное внимание в статье уделяется религиознополитическому контексту эпохи и состоянию греческого православия, оказавшегося после падения Византийской империи под властью турок-османов. The article is devoted to the participation and role of the Greek hierarchy in the development of the Old Believer schism in Russia. The schism that began in the middle of the 17th century became one of the saddest pages in the history of the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church. This event was caused by the Church reform and the bookends organized by Patriarch Nikon with an orientation towards Greek Orthodoxy. Opponents of these reforms, who refused to recognise the new Russian rite, caused a schism and went down in history under the name of Old Believers. The subject of the Russian Church schism has been studied in sufficient detail in domestic historiography, with emphasis on the personal characteristics of Patriarch Nikon, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, and the leaders of Old Believers. However, given the progressive nature of Patriarch Nikon's church reforms, the question of the participation of the Greek hierarchy directly in the events of the schism and the role they played in it remains rather underreported in scholarship. The latter applies especially to the participation of the Greek Patriarchs in the acts of the Great Council of Moscow in 1666-1667, which under the influence of these hierarchs imposed a church anathema on the old rite and thereby confirmed the church schism for many centuries to come. In addition, special attention is given to the religious and political context of the era and the state of Greek Orthodoxy after the fall of the Byzantine Empire under the rule of the Ottoman Turks.


Slavic Review ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Cherniavsky

For nearly two hundred years the history of the Raskol, the Russian Church schism of the seventeenth century, was a secret one. To be sure, the Old Believers wrote, and in enormous quantities, but they wrote—by hand—secret manuscripts, copied secretly and circulated secretly. And, except for official condemnations of schismatic teachings and the publication of laws directed against the raskol'niki, more or less serious historical investigation started only in the last years of the reign of Emperor Nicholas I and was confined to printed but highly restricted memoranda passed around in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Even the nature and the chronology of early Raskol historiography raise questions about the nature of the schism. Why was the history of the Raskol secret for such a long time? Why were the Old Believers persecuted by the government for so long? Was it all, as the government maintained, because they were ignorant, illiterate, superstitious, fanatical, and disobedient toward the Church?


1935 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-56
Author(s):  
W. W. Sweet

There is nothing inherent in Christianity itself which calls for a close relationship with the state. Primitive Christianity “demanded the complete separation of church and state,” asserting that each must be recognized as having its own distinct and independent mission to perform. For the first three hundred years of Christian history the church existed entirely apart from the state, and indeed had not even a legal status. Then came a time during which the church became little more than a branch of the state, and in this period it lost practically all independence of development, and was largely diverted from its proper work to serve political ends. It was as a result of this danger that the church developed, during the next period in its history, the doctrine of its independence of state control, and in the great investiture struggle, maintained it with success, against Roman emperors and German kings. Then the church having secured its independence of state control, and having perfected its organization to a high degree, and having grown strong and aggressive, it went a long step further and asserted the right of the church to control the state. But it needs no argument to prove that both the control of the church by the state and the control of the state by the church are equally foreign to the teaching of Christianity as such.


Author(s):  
D. V. Rybin

This publication examines the unexplored topic of the Senate jurisprudence regarding the legal status of Lutheran priests in the Baltic States at the end of the XIX century. The author defines the significance of the policy of state pressure on Protestant pastors in the context of the general attack of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Synod on non-Orthodox religious organizations under K. Pobedonostsev. Consideration of the issue from the position of the higher court of the Empire has not previously been undertaken in the scientific literature. During the preparation of the work, mainly narrative material was used the memoirs of the Chief Prosecutor of the Senate. Due to the small number of cases and the semi-secret nature, the materials of the Senate were not particularly reflected in the collections of decisions and sentences. The problem-chronological approach was applied to study this subject. As a result, the reasons of the weak pressure on Protestant pastors the author associates with the deep rootedness of Lutheranism in the popular environment, the brutal activity of the police and the church, fears of a quarrel with the Lutheran countries of Europe, etc. Few sentences against pastors who seduced the Orthodox into another faith reached the Criminal Cassation Department of the Senate, where they met with resistance a group of senators led by the famous lawyer, humanist A.F. Koni. Among the numerous schismatic and sectarian affairs that A.F. Koni, as chief prosecutor and senator, draw attention to the so-called pastoral affairs, which have not been sufficiently researched in the domestic scientific literature, and yet they well illustrate the church-state policy of the Russian state on the outskirts of the empire on the eve of the first Russian revolution. The author concludes that pastoral affairs are interesting not only from the point of view of the struggle of Russian infidels and the domestic educated intelligentsia for freedom of conscience in Russia, but they also allow to look from the inside at the work of the bureaucratic apparatus of the empire, to understand the work (internal kitchen) of the Governing Senate: internal intrigues, the indirect influence of the monarch and the chief prosecutor of the Holy Synod on senators and, accordingly, the decision on religious matters, informal consultations of the Minister of Justice with the chief prosecutor of the criminal cassation department (probing the atmosphere in the case, including through an intermediary), the selection of a senator-rapporteur on a particular important case, etc. Thanks to A.F. Koni, attempts to persecute pastors did not develop, and after 1900 the persecution of priests on religious grounds in the Baltics stopped. The subject is interesting and requires further development and study.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10-4) ◽  
pp. 184-195
Author(s):  
Victoria Mashkovtseva

The article considers the legal status of children of old believers in the second quarter of the XIX century. Based on the analysis of the regulatory framework and unpublished sources from the funds of Russian state historical archive and the Central archive of the Kirov region is characterized by major limitations in the area of family law in effect at the time of the reign of Nicholas I. Special attention is paid to the system of punishments for committing illegal actions by old believers, as well as the role of the family in the confrontation between old believers on the one hand and representatives of the authorities and the Russian Orthodox Church on the other.


10.33287/1192 ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 16-24
Author(s):  
O. В. Мірошниченко

The paper is devoted to the main stages of the legal status the Old Believers in Ukraine, in particular in the Katerinoslav’s region. The main reason for the appearance of them is the settlement of new, annexed lands to the Russian Empire. As you know, the Old Believers appear after the reform of the church, which was conducted by Patriarch Nikon. Since its inception and for more than one century, the Old Believers have been a “disagreeable” mass of the population of the Russian Empire, with which both the government and the dominant church have fought. As the history of oppression, persecution, and conclusion did not yield the expected results: the Old Believers continued to practice the old faith. The paper describes the time of the XVIII-XIX centuries. In the XVIII century the territory of the Katerinoslav’s Governorate was settled by Old Believers and they influenced the other national and religious communities of the province. Relations between Old Believers and the authority was very tense and inconstant. For two centuries, there has been a warming of relations, to a noticeable confrontation on the part of officials. The authorities were not consistent in their actions towards the Old Believers, each of the rulers had their own plans and thoughts about the Old Believers. But they all tried to quickly eliminate the manifestations of a split in society by all available methods. A certain liberalization came during the reign of Catherine II, but with the accession to the throne of Nicholas I, the loyalty to the Old Believers ended. The repressive policy of the government regarding the followers of the old faith were suspended for Alexander II, and it was only in 1905 the Old Believers gained religious freedom.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-129
Author(s):  
N. Maryukhno ◽  

The article examines the socio-political theology of Ivan Prokhanov as a prominent Russian religious and social figure of the early twentieth century, chairman of the All-Russian Union of Evangelical Christians. His critique of the сaesaropapism as structure in the Russian state-church relations of the imperial period is studied. It is proved that Ivan Prokhanov sharply denounced the negative manifestations of caesaropapism, and above all the resistance of the Russian Orthodox Church to constructive reform in accordance with Christian evangelical values. The positions on the church-religious life of the evangelical theologian Ivan Prokhanov and the Ober-Procurator of the Holy Synod Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the leader of the reactionary resistance to any changes, the ideologue of the counter-reforms Alexander III, were compared. In his sharp critique of caesaropapism, he relied on the Christian doctrine of man and society, believing that the legal precondition for overcoming its negative consequences was the separation of church and state, and the need for evangelical awakening of the Russian Orthodox people to gain spiritual freedom.


2001 ◽  
Vol 44 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 185-211
Author(s):  
Jelena Byś

The relation ship of the state to the Church in the course of history has always been problematic. This is true especially in Eastern Europe. This article presents the most significant historical events which influenced the relations between the state and the churches in Russia from Russia’s baptism in 10th century till the October Revolution of 1917. The text reveals the gradual emergence of cesaropapism, imported from Byzance and aiming at the full subordination of the churches to the state authorities. Several historical periods can be traced to this development. The first period begins at the end of the first millennium when Russia of Kiev was baptized, and lasts till the 14th century when Russia of Moscow arose. This time is marked by the building up of the church organization and its laws which developed from the beginning in close connection with the state law. The second period embraces the church history in the Moscow Russia, i.e. under Russia tsars, from the 14th till the 17th century. The state authority and the church authority seem to have a certain tendency to be balanced. Later on, however, as the Russian state is strengthened, the tsar began to have a decisive voice as well in church and religions matters. In the third period (18th cent. - 1903) there exists a system of severe control and supervision over the churches in Russia by the absolutist monarchy. The Russian imperium devided all confessions into three categories: the orthodox one, dominant and looked upon as loyal to the state; foreign confessions, Christian including (catholic and protestant) or non-Christian were tolerated. But sects of the orthodox origin were persecuted. The law regarded these sects as dangerous and harmful and a betrayal of the orthodox faith, and prohibited public worship, the faithful were deprived of their civil rights. As late as the end of 19th century, the idea of religious tolerance and freedom was unknown in the Russian law. At the beginning of the 20th century, Russian confessional law made a great step forward when acts guaranteeing religious freedom appeared. This development during the years 1903-1917 is characteristic of the fourth period. For the first time in Russia’s history, freedom of conscience and freedom of confession were stated by the law. The intolerance which ruled in the 17th – 19th centuries was transformed into tolerance of all confessions; even of those which were earlier persecuted. Nevertheless, the Temporary Government of Russia supported the dominant position and privileges of the Russian Orthodox Church.


Author(s):  
Maria Avanesova ◽  
Vladimír Naxera

This paper is devoted to the topic of relations between the Russian state, Russian society, and the Orthodox Church after the year 2008, when Patriarch Kirill was elected head of the Church. Such relations in Russia have gone through a significant transformation since the beginning of the Post-Soviet period. In the era of Patriarch Alexy II, the Church gradually began to claim a larger political role, the culmination of which was marked by Kirill’s election. At present, the Russian Orthodox Church operates to a certain degree as an institution of Russian political power. Its representatives, led by Kirill, often play a role that is more political than religious. By drawing from primary sources, official documents, media reports, and also speeches made by religious and political representatives, this article attempts to highlight the main issues and areas of cooperation between the state and the Church (e.g. the education system, elections in 2011 and 2012) and explain the ways in which this alliance is advantageous for both parties in relation to the Russian public. The last part of the article deals with how this connection between church and state is perceived by various sections of the Russian public, which is illustrated using several examples from previous years, e.g. the scandal surrounding the members of the feminist punk rock protest group Pussy Riot.


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