Raskol

RASKOL. - A religious movement that broke away from the Russian Church in the second half of the 17th century. However, the followers of the r. ("schism") always rejected the appellation of raskolnik ("schismatic") as insulting, replacing it with that of starovēr ("old believer") or staroobrjadec ("old ritualist"); the latter also entered official and literary terminology.

I. ORIGINS

The immediate cause of the r. was the liturgical reforms carried out by the patriarch Nikon (v.). Nikon corrected Russian liturgical practice and books according to those then used by the Greeks, also suppressing the particular Russian customs consecrated by long and legitimate usage.

This aroused the lively opposition of a part of the clergy and of the laity, led by the archpriests Avvakum of Jurjevec, Daniel of Kostroma, Longinus of Murom, John Neronov, by the priest Lazarus of Romanov and by the deacon Theodore, all known for their piety and religious zeal. In 1666-67 a council assembled in Moscow with the participation of the Eastern patriarchs, which definitively approved Nikon's reforms and excommunicated their opponents. Avvakum, Lazarus and Theodore did not submit and were sent to prison at Pustozersk, on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. But even from there they continued to direct the movement, which their clandestine followers propagated by word and by writing. Therefore Avvakum, Lazarus and Theodore, by order of the tsar, were burned alive on 14 April 1682 and many of their followers were imprisoned or exiled. Taking advantage of the troubles that broke out after the death of the tsar Theodore (year 1682), the raskolniki, supported by the Moscow garrison (strēlcy), attempted to have Nikon's reforms abolished. But the revolt was put down and in 1685 draconian administrative and penal measures were issued against the r. To escape the reprisals and to be able to observe the ancient rites, numerous raskolniki withdrew into the forests, into the sparsely populated neighboring regions, into Siberia and even abroad. The most fanatical preferred collective suicides in the flames (about 20,000 between 1685 and 1690). These ruthless measures did not prevent the clandestine propaganda of the r., but they determined its definitive and irreconcilable opposition against ecclesiastical and civil authority.

II. DOCTRINE

The r. does not have a compact and precise doctrine, but certain principles are generally accepted by all. The Sacraments are valid only if administered according to the liturgical books prior to Nikon's reforms. The Antichrist has already come upon the earth. The official Church, called by them "nikonina," is no longer the true Church, and the State, which protects it, is the servant of the Antichrist. Furthermore, the raskolniki make the sign of the Cross by joining two fingers and not three; they admit only the Cross with eight ends (that is, with three crossbars: for the title, for the hands, for the support of the feet). The recitation of the psalms ends with two Alleluias and not with three.

The name of Jesus is written Isus and not Iisus. For the Mass they use 7 prosphoras (hosts) instead of 5. In general, in the sacred functions they observe the ritual particularities prior to Nikon's reforms. But this ritual conservatism was an expression of the r.'s attachment to the traditional Russian forms of piety, morality and asceticism; thus the r. also constituted a reaction against the freer customs that had then penetrated into Russia from Poland and against the influence of the theological school of Kiev on Russian ecclesiastical life. The progressive penetration of religious, cultural and social ideas from the West into Russia then increasingly estranged the r. from the State and from the Russian Church.

III. INTERNAL SCHISMS

The end of the world awaited by the Raskolniki was slow in coming, and therefore they had to organize their own religious life and concretely determine their attitude toward the official Church and toward the State that protected it. The writings of Avvakum, more occasional than systematic, admitted of more or less radical interpretations, and within the Raskol there existed no undisputed authority to settle controversies. This necessarily led to the progressive division of the Raskol into various tolk ("interpretations") and soglasie ("concords"). Paolo of Kolomna, the only bishop who firmly adhered to the Raskol, died a prisoner as early as 1657. Thus for the Raskolniki there arose the problem of from whom to obtain new priests, who could succeed those ordained before Nikon. On this point the Raskolniki split into two factions: popovey ("Presbyterians") and bezpopovey ("priestless").

1. Popovey ("Presbyterians")

They admit into their communities the priests who pass over to the Raskol from the official Church, who then in administering the Sacraments follow the ancient ritual. This practice was adopted for the first time around 1700 by the community of Větka on the river Soža, then in Poland, directed by the monk-priest Feodosij. Later it spread to the nearby community of Starodubje and to many others in Russia.

In 1771, during the plague in Moscow, the popovey opened their own cemetery in the suburb of Rogož. Around the cemetery there then arose a church, monasteries, charitable institutions; the community of the Rogož cemetery soon became the moral head of others, especially of those formed on the rivers Kerženec (province of Nižnij Novgorod) and Irgiz (province of Saratov) and among the Cossacks on the lower Don. But the popovey repeatedly sought to procure a bishop of their own as well. The community of Bělokrínica in Bukovina, then an Austrian domain, obtained for itself in 1846 Ambrose, former metropolitan of Bosnia, who ordained the bishops Cyril and Arcadius, initiating the so-called hierarchy of the metropolis of Bělokrínica or Austrian hierarchy. Its main center in Russia became the community of the Rogož cemetery in Moscow.

In 1905 the hierarchy of Bělokrínica had 12 dioceses in Russia. But a part of the popovey did not accept the new hierarchy, contenting themselves with the ministry of fugitive priests.

2. Bezpopovey ("priestless")

They are the radical faction of the Raskol. According to them, the Antichrist has already been present in the official Church since the time of Nikon; therefore in it there is no longer true faith, nor priesthood, nor Sacraments.

To communicate with God there remains only prayer and works of penance; one must do without those Sacraments that can be administered only by priests. Nor is the authority of the State, ally of the Antichrist, legitimate. Differences in the practical application of these principles determined the split of the bezpopovey into several sects. a) Pomorcy ("men of the sea"). — They take their name from Pomorje ("marshland"), a coastal region of the White Sea, whose sparse population, scattered over a large territory, had already grown accustomed to practicing religion without priests. From the beginning of the Raskol, numerous followers withdrew there or were exiled there, among them some surviving monks of the Soloveckij monastery (on the island of the same name in the White Sea), stormed in 1676 by Tsar Alexis. The main nucleus of the pomorcy formed around 1695 on the river Vyg under the direction of Daniel Vikulov; for this reason they were also called danilovey ("Danielians"). The community grew rapidly thanks to the brothers Andrew and Simon Denisov. On the rivers Vyg and Leksa there formed numerous propagators of the Raskol throughout Russia and Siberia. The pomorcy rebaptized adherents coming from the official Church and, having no priests to bless marriages, obliged all to celibacy. But the impossibility of obtaining this from everyone led to tolerance of marriages contracted in the official Church and even of free unions. b) Fedosijevcy ("Theodosians"). Around 1706 a group that had formed in Poland under the guidance of Feodosij Vasiljev separated from the pomorcy. The cause was certain ritual divergences, and then the refusal to introduce the prayer for the Tsar, as the community of Vyg did in 1739. Although Theodosius himself admitted the legitimacy of marriages celebrated in the official Church, after his death the fedosijevcy returned to rigorism. During the plague of 1771 they founded near Moscow a cemetery called Preobraženskoje and later also monasteries with attached charitable institutions through the work of the Moscow merchant Elijah Kovylin; the aforementioned cemetery became a center of the entire sect. Not even when the measures of Nicholas I (1825-55) greatly reduced its administrative autonomy did the Preobraženskoje cemetery lose its importance. c) Filipovey ("Philippians"). They are so called from their founder, the monk Philip, who abandoned the community of Vyg when the prayer for the Tsar was introduced there, considering this a compromise with the Antichrist. Philip founded his own monastery on the nearby river Umba. In 1773, at the arrival of a punitive expedition, he burned himself alive with his 70 monks. His successor Terence did likewise with 90 monks. The filipovey admit neither Church nor State nor marriage; suicide to escape the "kingdom of the Antichrist" is considered martyrdom for the faith. From the aforementioned three main factions of the bezpopovey issued a swarm of small sects, which either pushed the original principles to extremes or relaxed them, or else fanatically attached themselves to some particular custom or rite.

IV. RELATIONS WITH THE STATE

The attitude of the civil authority toward the Raskol was fluctuating. In the 17th century an attempt was made to uproot the Raskol with severe administrative and penal measures, but without result: indeed the persecutions caused its dispersion and thus also the spread of the Raskol throughout Russia. Peter the Great ordered the registration of all the Raskolniki; by paying special taxes they were tolerated, but propaganda was forbidden to them. Those who remained hidden were dealt with severely.

This tolerance grew under Catherine II and even more under Alexander I. Tsar Nicholas I intensified the police control of the Raskol; but after his death there begins the period of the progressive abolition of the restrictions on the Raskol's civil rights, which ends with the granting of freedom of worship in 1905. These liberal measures increasingly reconciled the majority of the Raskol with the State.

V. RELATIONS WITH THE CHURCH

At the beginning the Church sought not only to prevent the spread of the r., but also to win it back. In the 17th century, besides pastoral measures (canonical censures, erection of new dioceses, admonitions, instructions), the Church often resorted to the intervention of the secular arm and insisted on the rigorous application of penal sanctions. In 1721 the Holy Synod instituted the office of synodal missionary and invited the leaders of the r. to disputations, guaranteeing them personal safety, but without success.

In the second half of the 18th century the ecclesiastical authority too mitigated its intransigence toward the r. In 1800 the Holy Synod, on the proposal of Metropolitan Platon of Moscow, decreed that the raskolniki, returning to union with the official Church, might preserve their ritual particularities and have their own priests, but not bishops. For this form of union Metropolitan Platon coined the name edinověrie ("one faith"). In the 19th century the Church intensified its propagandistic activity in the midst of the r., and from 1866 onward numerous confraternities also arose for the moral and material aid of the missionaries. Between 1841 and 1891, 311,279 raskolniki returned to the Church, but the majority of them preferred simple adherence to the official Church rather than the form of edinovérie. In 1908 the edinovérie counted 444,407 faithful and 415 churches. With the growth of tolerance for the r. on the part of the government, adhesions to the official Church became less numerous (4,000-6,000 a year), but more sincere. However, defections of the faithful of the official Church toward the r. also continued. Especially immediately after the Edict of toleration (1905) several thousand passed openly to the r. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 the r. was persecuted together with the official Church. But not even under the common persecution has the union been achieved.

VI. EVALUATION

The negative or polemical attitude in the literature on the r. not only gave way in the course of the 19th century to a more objective study, but tendencies also appeared to idealize the r. too much, seeing in it more the social-political movement than the religious one. The r. was certainly from the beginning an essentially religious movement, although in time it also assumed certain aspects of a reaction against the innovations in Russian social and cultural life. It is the most serious internal crisis of the Russian Church, almost equally harmful to both sides. With the r. the official Church lost a considerable part of its faithful, ready to sacrifice themselves to the death for their religious convictions. This element, deeply attached to traditional piety and morality, could have served as a filter against the rationalism which in the 18th century, together with technical progress, began to penetrate into Russia from Western Europe. The alliance of the Church with the state administration in combating the r. greatly harmed the prestige of ecclesiastical authority and diminished its influence on popular religious life. On the other hand the raskolniki, isolated from civil and religious society, shut themselves up in their exaggerated conservatism, opposing also healthy cultural and religious progress. In this way precious spiritual energies dried up in sterile formalism or were wasted in internal struggles, which shattered the r. into numerous sects, in some of which very little of Christianity remained. For its moral and ascetic rigorism the r. can be compared to Jansenism; however, it differs completely from it in its dogmatic content. For the r., the Catholic Church is devoid of truth and grace just like the official Russian one. As for the actual number of the raskolniki, there are no precise and reliable statistics. To avoid the burdensome police control many did not openly declare themselves as such, and the data collected by the state administration were not published in full. In 1904 the high procurator of the Holy Synod indicated 1,984,172 of all denominations for the whole of Russia, observing that this figure was incomplete. According to the raskolniki themselves, the figure at that time would have been well over 10 million.

Giuseppe Olfr