AVVAKUM, PETROVICH. - Russian protopope; one of the first and most important leaders of the internal schism of the Russian Church (raskol); b. in 1620-21 at Grigorovv, in the governorate of Nizhny Novgorod, he was burned alive at Pustozersk on 14 April 1681.

The son of a pope, A. entered the clergy from his youth. A deacon in 1641, a priest in 1643, he was appointed archpriest (protopope) at Yuryevets-Povolzhsky in 1652. His excessive zeal earned him the enmity of his parishioners, and within two months he had to take refuge in Moscow, where he was assigned to the service of "Our Lady of Kazan." From the Lent of 1653, in agreement with some other priests of the capital, he entered into a struggle with the patriarch Nikon, who was beginning his liturgical reforms by ordering the sign of the cross to be made with three fingers instead of two, and by suppressing the metanias (or Eastern genuflections) during the recitation of the prayer of St. Ephrem. To A. and his companions these innovations, already in use in Russia and now taken over from the Greeks, seemed alterations of the patrimony of the faith contained in the current liturgical forms. This was enough to begin the schism or raskol, of which A. was the first leader and the first doctor.

A. was atrociously persecuted. From 1653 he addressed a petition to the tsar Alexis Mikhailovich (1645-1676) against the innovations of the patriarch Nikon; and immediately the series of his exiles began. Sent first to Tobolsk, then to Dauria, he was recalled to Moscow in 1664. Soon relegated to Mezen, he was made to appear at the Synod of Moscow of 1666, where he was degraded and excommunicated as a "slanderer of the Church and of the tsar." In Sept. 1667 he was definitively interned at Pustozersk, where he remained until his execution. Condemned to be burned in a cage, he endured his horrible fate without a word, after having made the sign of the cross with two fingers. Three of his disciples were burned with him.

Around 1672-73 A. wrote his autobiography, in which he recounts, with a sincerity beyond all suspicion, his life and the persecutions he endured; a document of the first order for knowledge of the origins of the raskol and of the internal life of the Russian Church in the 17th century. Besides this autobiography, he left about sixty writings, which can be divided into three groups: 1) exegetical discourses; 2) petitions, addressed mainly to the tsar; 3) polemical or didactic letters addressed to his followers.

Bibliography6 works

BIBL.: Most of A.'s writings were published by N. Subbotin, Materiale per la storia del raskol nel primo periodo della sua esistenza (9 vols. in Russian), especially in vols. I, V, VI and VIII, Moscow 1875-90; V. Miakotin, Il protopope A., St. Petersburg 1893; A. Borodin, Il protopope A., 2nd ed., ibid. 1900, with an abundant bibliography; P. Smirnov, Questioni interne nel raskol nel XVII secolo, ibid. 1899. Information in the following Russian encyclopedias: Diz. biogr. russo, I, ibid. 1896, pp. 17-21; Enc. teol. ortodossa, by A. P. Lopukhin, I, ibid. 1900, coll. 90-94; Nuovo diz. enciclopedico (left unfinished), ibid. [after 1912], I, coll. 117-20. To supplement the Russian sources, which are not very accessible, everything necessary will be found, with a rich supply of information, in the publications of P. Pascal: L'Autobiografia d'A., translated into French: A. et les débuts du raskol. La crise religieuse en Russie au XVIIe siècle, Paris 1938, one of the most interesting works on Christian life in old Russia.

Martino Jugie

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Avvakum, Petrovich

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