The enormous size of Russian eparchies (dioceses) - compared, for example, with those of the Greek Church - is one obvious reason why the hierarchy had so little impact on the day-to-day life of its flock. The leaders ofthe Church had long recognised the problem, but, over the course of the seventeenth century, Church Councils consistently resisted proposals to create new dioceses by subdividing existing jurisdictions, presumably because bishops feared the loss of revenue and power that reform would inevitably entail. In 1619, for example, the Russian hierarchy consisted of Patriarch Filaret, four metropolitans, six archbishops and one bishop.[288] Obvious pastoral needs, created by the territorial expansion of the Russian state and the challenge of religious dissent, however, led to the creation of some new jurisdictions, Tobol'sk in Siberia (1620), Viatka (1656), Belgorod (1667), Nizhnii Novgorod (1672) and four in 1682 - Ustiug Velikii, Kholmogory, Voronezh and Tambov. By 1700, the size of the hierarchy had risen to twenty-four - the patriarch, fourteen metropolitans, seven archbishops and two bishops.
By and large, seventeenth-century parish priests, like their predecessors, lived far from their bishops both geographically and socially. Anecdotal evidence indicates that the parish priesthood was usually an ascribed occupation, handed down from father to son with the approval of the local community. At best, its members' education consisted of the customary instruction in reading and writing, using familiar religious texts, and hands-on training in the liturgy. The parish clergy were intimately interconnected with local society. As a married man - unlike his celibate bishop - a priest had to provide for his family through farming and collecting the customary fees for his services. He was vulnerable to pressure from officials of the crown, at the mercy of the nobles who owned land nearby, and could easily become the enemy of his parishioners if he attempted to challenge the syncretism of Christian and traditional folk beliefs and practices that shaped their lives.
In the second half of the century, however, these conditions began to change. Patriarchs and bishops began to insist that all candidates for priestly office be literate and receive formal ordination charters from them. Moreover, having installed new priests, the hierarchy attempted to make sure that they followed the official policies of the Church.[289] The success of these initiatives naturally varied widely from place to place depending on the energy of the bishop and the responsiveness or resistance of the parish priests involved. In addition, as Daniel Kaiser's studies show, diocesan courts conscientiously investigated alleged breaches of canon law on marriage, the family and sexual mores and, in most cases, strictly upheld the Church's traditional teachings.[290]
In the seventeenth century, monasteries remained a vital force in Russian Orthodoxy: at the same time, the emergence of competing centres of authority, especially the patriarchate, probably reduced their relative power within the Church as compared with earlier centuries. Monasteries such as the Holy Trinity, the Kirillo-Belozerskii and the Solovetskii were still very wealthy and influential, each one a complex hierarchical organisation of monks and lay dependents that functioned largely independently of outside control. Foundations like these stood out as exceptional, however: the vast majority of the 494 men's and women's communities which owned populated land in 1653 were very small.[291] All, large and small, depended heavily on the patronage of laymen and women of all stations, from the imperial family to peasants and townspeople.
In the seventeenth century, monastic estates continued to grow in spite of repeated legal prohibitions on new acquisitions of land. The pace of acquisition through bequests, however, slowed to a trickle after mid-century.[292] In addition, all members ofthe hierarchy, above all the patriarch, likewise controlled extensive tracts and the revenues they produced.[293] A summary of the landholdings of the hierarchy, the monasteries and the lay elite in 1678 provides a rough indication of the relative wealth of the leaders of the Church. At that time, the patriarch owned lands with 7,128 peasant households, the six metropolitans a total of 7,167 - of which the Metropolitan of Rostov owned 3,909 - and six archbishops a total of 4,494. Monasteries and churches owned lands with almost 100,000 peasant households, led by the Holy Trinity with close to 17,000. To be sure, the overwhelming majority of monasteries on the list had fewer than 200 households. By comparison, the members of the boyar council, the tsar's most prominent officials and courtiers, controlled a total of 46,771 households. The richest layman on the list, I. M. Vorotynskii, owned 4,609. Thus the data from 1678, however flawed they may be, show the great wealth, in laymen's terms, of the hierarchy and the largest monasteries. No wonder the provincial gentry and townspeople considered them 'strong people' against whose power and privileges they complained so bitterly in the 1630s and 1640s!
Liturgy and public ceremony also brought the leaders of the Church and the secular elite together. In the most dramatic example, tsar and patriarch acted out the 'symphony' of Church and state in the public rituals of Epiphany and Palm Sunday, commemorating Christ's baptism and entry into Jerusalem. These ceremonies, created by sixteenth-century Muscovite churchmen from the repertoire of ecumenical Christian symbolism, underwent some alterations in detail and emphasis during the seventeenth century. Their central message did not change. Moscow, capital ofthe only powerful Eastern Orthodox monarchy, was the centre of the Christian world and its ruler, consecrated and supported by the Church, justified his authority by defending the true faith. The ceremonies' symbolic complexity, however, left the issue of the relative importance of tsar and patriarch in the economy of salvation open to differing interpretations.[294]
These great festivals formed only a small part of the ritual tapestry that shaped the life ofthe hierarchy and the imperial court. As Orthodox Christians, the tsars and their families and attendants took part in all the main services of the liturgical calendar, celebrating the most solemn feasts such as Easter in the cathedrals of the Moscow Kremlin with full magnificence. And the imperial family continued the tradition of regular pilgrimages to the Holy Trinity and other monasteries to venerate their saintly founders.[295]
Pressure for reform
After the relatively uneventful tenure of Patriarch Filaret, the Muscovite Church began to feel pressure for change from within and from without. Like their counterparts in Roman Catholic and Protestant Europe, would-be reformers among the clergy strove for consistency and good order in the celebration of the liturgy and attempted to raise the moral tone of parish life. Many of their complaints were not new. In 1636, for example, Ivan Neronov and other parish priests in Nizhnii Novgorod sent a petition to Patriarch Ioasaf, asking for his support in restoring order and dignity to services of worship. The petitioners recited a litany of long-standing abuses - mnogoglasie (the practice of chanting up to 'five or six' different parts of the service simultaneously) and other liturgical short-cuts. They also complained at length about rowdy behaviour during services.[296] In a series ofpastoral instructions, Patriarch Ioasaf strongly supported their demands for pious behaviour during the liturgy. Ten years later, his successor, Iosif, issued a general decree that all priests, deacons and 'all Orthodox Christians fast. . . and refrain from drunkenness, injustice and all kinds of sin'. Worshippers 'should stand in God's church with fear and trembling . . . silently . . .' and pray 'over their sins with tears, humble sighs and contrite hearts ...'
288
P. M. Stroev,
290
Most recently, Daniel H. Kaiser,' "Whose Wife Will She Be at the Resurrection?" Marriage and Remarriage in Early Modern Russia', SR 62 (2003): 302-23.
291
Ia. E. Vodarskii, 'Tserkovnye organizatsii i ikh krepostnye krest'iane vo vtoroi polovine XVII - nachale XVIII v.', in
292
S. V Nikolaeva, 'Vklady i vkladchiki v Troitse-Sergiev Monastyr' v XVI-XVII vekakh. (Po vkladnym knigam XVII veka)', in
293
Vodarskii, 'Tserkovnye organizatsii'; Iu. V Got'e,
294
Robert O. Crummey, 'Court Spectacles in Seventeenth Century Russia: Illusion and Reality', in Daniel Clarke Waugh (ed.),
295
I. Zabelin,
296
N. V Rozhdestvenskii, 'K istorii bor'by s tserkovnymi bezporiadkami, otgoloskami iazy- chestva i porokami v russkom bytu XVII v.',