The Old Believers and the New Religion

Slavic Review ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Cherniavsky
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Old Believers ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Historical Investigation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Internal Affairs ◽  
The Government ◽  
Church Schism ◽  
New Religion ◽  
The Church

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?

scholarly journals Ukrainian Old Believers and Russian Government (the end of the XVIII - the beginning of the twentieth century).

10.33287/1192 ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 16-24
Author(s):  
O. В. Мірошниченко
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Russian Government ◽  
Old Believers ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The Church

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.

scholarly journals “His Wife Has Married...”: To the Problem of the Fate of Soldiers’ Wives in the 17th Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 44-58
Author(s):  
Varvara Vovina-Lebedeva
Keyword(s):  
Military Service ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Her Family ◽  
The Family ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Peasant Family ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

Introduction. The article deals with one important problem in the history of the 17th-century peasant family: the relationship between a woman and her family, as well as the family of her husband, in cases when this peasant was taken to military service for a long time. Methods and materials. The article is based on unpublished materials of the description of the Shenkurskaya and Podvinskaya chetverts of Vazhskiy uyezd in 1665. The author explores different situations of taking peasants in soldiers and further interaction of the volost with the families of these soldiers. The fates of soldiers’ wives are a subject of special attention. Analysis and results. The paper considers various cases that are recorded in the census book: the case of soldier’s wife living in the same yard with relatives of her husband or with her own relatives, the case of soldier’s wife death, the case of “begging inside the parish”. One of these variants was a new marriage of the soldier’s wife. The cases when it took place after the death of the first husband were always recorded. We assume that numerous cases of women’s marriage without remarks of her first husband’s death reflect the practice of a cohabitation among the peasants, which was not consecrated by the church, but was actually recognized by the government and by volost residents.

Involvement of the Greek hierarchy in the development of the Old Believer schism in Russia

2019 ◽  
pp. 153-171
Author(s):  
Илья Письменюк
Keyword(s):  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Russian Orthodox Church ◽  
Old Believers ◽  
Sufficient Detail ◽  
Russian State ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come ◽  
Church Schism ◽  
The Church

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.

Hymnody and Liturgy

2019 ◽  
pp. 491-506
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hehn
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
North American ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Metrical Psalmody ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

This chapter outlines the history of Presbyterian worship practice from the sixteenth century to the present, with a focus on North American Presbyterians. Tracing both their hymnody and their liturgy ultimately to John Calvin, Presbyterian communions have a distinct heritage of worship inherited from the Church of Scotland via seventeenth-century Puritans. Long marked by metrical psalmody and guided by the Westminster Directory, Presbyterian worship underwent substantial changes in the nineteenth century. Evangelical and liturgical movements led Presbyterians away from a Puritan visual aesthetic, into the use of nonscriptural hymnody, and toward a recovery of liturgical books. Mainline North American and Scottish Presbyterians solidified these trends in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; however, conservative North American denominations and some other denominations globally continue to rely heavily on the use of a worship directory and metrical psalmody.

The Development of the Canon Law Since 1500 A. D.

1940 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivan A. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Canon Law ◽  
The Body ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
Ecclesiastical Authority ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Church ◽  
Straight Rod

The body of law dealing with discipline, polity, and sacramental administration which has grown up in the history of the church is ordinarily styled Canon Law (jus canonicum), because it is a collection of canons. Canon (derived from the Greek kanon) means a rule, in a material and moral sense. Its original meaning was a straight rod. In apostolic times it signified the truth of Christianity as an authoritative standard of life and a statement of doctrine in general. It is, therefore, easy to understand how the word kanon later came to mean the ecclesiastical legislation which governed the conduct of the faithful. The excellent definition given by Archbishop Cicognani. states that “The Canon Law may be denned as ‘the body of laws made by the lawful ecclesiastical authority for the government of the Church’.”

The 1912 Duma Elections: The State, the Opposition and the Clergy

Orthodoxia ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 111-124
Author(s):  
F. A. Gayda
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Difficult Situation ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Church

This article deals with the political situation around the elections to the State Duma of the Russian Empire in 1912 (4th convocation). The main actors of the campaign were the government, local administration, liberal opposition and the clergy of the Orthodox Russian Church. After the 1905 revolution, the “official Church” found itself in a difficult situation. In particular, anti-Church criticism intensified sharply and was expressed now quite openly, both in the press and from the rostrum of the Duma. A consequence of these circumstances was that in this Duma campaign, for the first time in the history of Russian parliamentarianism, “administrative resources” were widely used. At the same time, the authorities failed to achieve their political objectives. The Russian clergy became actively involved in the election campaign. The government sought to use the conflict between the liberal majority in the third Duma and the clerical hierarchy. Duma members launched an active criticism of the Orthodox clergy, using Grigory Rasputin as an excuse. Even staunch conservatives spoke negatively about Rasputin. According to the results of the election campaign, the opposition was even more active in using the label “Rasputinians” against the Holy Synod and the Russian episcopate. Forty-seven persons of clerical rank were elected to the House — three fewer than in the previous Duma. As a result, the assembly of the clergy elected to the Duma decided not to form its own group, but to spread out among the factions. An active campaign in Parliament and the press not only created a certain public mood, but also provoked a political split and polarization within the clergy. The clergy themselves were generally inclined to blame the state authorities for the public isolation of the Church. The Duma election of 1912 seriously affected the attitude of the opposition and the public toward the bishopric after the February revolution of 1917.

Crypto-Christianity and Religious Amphibianism in the Ottoman Balkans

2020 ◽  
pp. 55-67
Author(s):  
Noel Malcolm
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Economic Incentive ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Catholic Priests ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Ottoman Balkans ◽  
Tax Payers ◽  
The Church

Christianity—secret adherence to Christian religious practices by people who outwardly professed Islam—is known to have occurred in several parts of the Ottoman Empire; this essay concerns the crypto-Christians of Kosovo, who were very unusual in adhering to Roman Catholicism. Distinctions are made here between crypto-Christianity and a range of other practices or circumstances that have been partly confused with it in previous accounts: the fact of close social coexistence between Muslims and Christians; the existence of religious syncretism, which allowed the borrowing and sharing of some ritual practices; and the principle of ‘theological equivalentism’ (the claim, made by some Muslims, that each person could be saved in his or her own faith). These things were not the same as crypto-Christianity, but they involved different kinds of religious ‘amphibianism’, creating conditions in which crypto-Christianity could survive more easily. The story of Catholic crypto-Christianity in Kosovo and northern Albania begins with reports from Catholic priests in the seventeenth century. Contributory factors seem to have been the economic incentive for men to convert to Islam to escape the taxes on Christians, and the fact that women (who were not tax-payers) could remain Christian, as Christian wives were permitted under Islamic law. This essay then traces the history of the crypto-Catholics of Kosovo, who survived, despite the strong official disapproval of the Church, into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

On the Settlement of Disputes About the Christian Holy Places

1973 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Zander
Keyword(s):  
Common Elements ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Religious Issues ◽  
Holy Places ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Settlement Of Disputes ◽  
State Of Israel ◽  
The Church

Disputes about the Christian Holy Places have played a major part in the history of the Middle East and indeed of Europe for many centuries. The main issues of these conflicts are still unsolved, and the fact that the Sanctuaries are now under the control of the State of Israel has added a new dimension to the problems.This study tries to investigate the question of the jurisdiction over the Christian Sanctuaries as it presents itself today. It does not deal with the Holy Places of Judaism and Islam since their treatment, in spite of many common elements, requires different considerations.The disputes about the Christian Holy Places are essentially disputes among Christian communities, and not, as might be assumed, controversies between Christians on one side and members of other religions—Moslems or Jews—or the government of the country, on the other. They spring ultimately from the divisions of the Church; and although political and national interests frequently played a part, they must be seen first and foremost in the context of the religious issues involved.

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