Avvakum, Petrovich (AVVAKUM, PETROVIC) - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. II, p. 339

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

AVVAKUM, PETROVIC. — Russian protopope; one of the first and most important leaders of the internal schism of the Russian Church (raskol); born in 1620–21 at Grigorovv, in the governorship of Nijni-Novgorod, he was burned alive at Pustosersk on 14 April 1681.

The son of a pope, A. entered the clergy from his youth onward. Deacon in 1641 and priest in 1643, he was appointed archpriest (protopope) at Jurevets-Povolg in 1652. His excessive zeal aroused the hostility of his parishioners, and after two months he was forced to take refuge in Moscow, where he was assigned to the service of «Our Lady of Kazan». From Lent of 1653 onward, in agreement with several other priests of the capital,

he entered into conflict with Patriarch Nikon, who was beginning his liturgical reforms by ordering that the sign of the cross be made with three fingers instead of two, and by suppressing the metanie (or Eastern prostrations) during the recitation of the prayer of St. Ephrem. To A. and his companions, these innovations, already in use in Russia and now abolished by the Greeks, appeared to be alterations of the heritage of the faith contained in the current liturgical forms. This was enough to initiate the schism, or raskol, of which A. was the first leader and first teacher.

A. was atrociously persecuted. As early as 1653 he addressed a petition to Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich (1645–1676) against the innovations of Patriarch Nikon; and the series of his exiles began immediately. Sent first to Tobolsk and then to Dauria, he was recalled to Moscow in 1664. Soon afterward confined to Mezen, he was brought before the Synod of Moscow in 1666, where he was deposed and excommunicated as a «slanderer of the Church and of the tsar». In September 1667 he was definitively interned at Pustosersk, where he remained until his execution. Condemned to be burned in a cage, he endured his horrible fate without uttering a word, after making 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; it is a first-rate document for knowledge of the origins of the raskol and of the internal life of the Russian Church in the seventeenth century. In addition to this autobiography, he left about sixty writings, which can be divided into three groups: 1) exegetical discourses; 2) petitions, addressed principally to the tsar; 3) polemical or didactic letters addressed to his followers.

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., there 1900, with an extensive bibliography; P. Smirnov, Questioni interne nel raskol nel XVII secolo, there 1899. Information is found in the following Russian encyclopedias: Diz. biogr. russo, I, there 1896, pp. 17–21; Enc. teol. ortodossa, by A. P. Lopukhin, I, there 1900, cols. 90–94; Nuovo diz. enciclopedico (left unfinished), there [after 1912], I, cols. 117–20. To supplement the Russian sources, which are not readily accessible, everything necessary, together with a rich body of information, may be found in the publications of P. Pascal: L'Autobiografia d'A., translated into French as 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 ancient Russia.

Martino Jugie