During his tenure in Novgorod, Nikon made it clear that, in his opinion, the ecclesiastical hierarchy was the natural leader in the campaign to revitalise Russian Orthodoxy. He did everything he could to increase his own effective power and ceremonial dignity as metropolitan and to emphasise that the ultimate responsibility for the spiritual well-being of Russia lay with the Church's leaders, not the secular ruler. For example, in 1652, as part of a campaign to canonise martyred leaders of the Russian Church, he brought the relics of Metropolitan Filipp, already recognised as a saint, from the Solovet- skii monastery to Moscow. While in Solovki, he publicly read Tsar Alexis's statement of contrition for the sin of his predecessor, Ivan IV in ordering Fil- ipp's murder. At the same time, it is difficult to be sure how accurately Nikon's fullest statements of his theories on the relations of Church and state reflect his views during his active ministry since he wrote them years later while in self-imposed exile. For example, in his Refutation, he repeatedly attacked the Ulozhenie of 1649 for usurping the Church's legal autonomy and property rights.[306] In 1649, however, he had signed the new law code - under duress, he later insisted - and his scruples had not prevented him from accepting the patriarchal dignity in the hope, he subsequently claimed, of reversing the policies to which he expressed such strong aversion.
Once enthroned as patriarch with the enthusiastic support of the tsar and the rest of the reformers, Nikon immediately took steps to assert his authority. According to his later testimony, at his consecration he made the tsar, the boyars and the bishops swear to obey him as their pastor. In his capacity as patriarch, Nikon evidently saw himself as the personification of the Church. He strove to transform its organisational structure into an effective hierarchical administration with the patriarch at the top: he reacted with particular ruthlessness to any sign of opposition from other members of the hierarchy. Like Filaret, he added extensive lands to the patriarch's own domain and, in addition to building or repairing other churches, maintained three important monasteries -the Iverskii, the Kretnyi and the Voskresenskii (also known as the New Jerusalem) - as his own foundations. A man of imposing appearance, he impressed visiting clergymen with his magnificent vestments, his long sermons and his dramatic manner of celebrating the liturgy. Moreover, beginning in 1653, with the tsar's consent, he began to use the epithet, Velikii gosudar' (Great
Sovereign), previously used by only one patriarch - Filaret, father of a tsar and effective head of state.
He also continued the reformers' campaign to purify Russian Orthodoxy. Within weeks of his consecration, to protect the faithful from temptation, decrees prohibited the sale of vodka on holy days and required all non- Orthodox foreigners in Moscow to move to a new 'German Quarter' on the Iauza River further from the centre of the city.[307]
The long-standing campaign to publish accurate liturgical books and distribute them throughout Russia, however, quickly took a fateful turn. The tsar, the new patriarch and some of their collaborators decided that the best way to revitalise Russian Orthodoxy was to forge closer ties with ecumenical Eastern Orthodoxy, especially the Greek mother Church. In 1649, the latest of a long line of Greek visitors, Patriarch Paisios of Jerusalem and a scholar of dubious background, known as Arsenius the Greek, appeared in Moscow and tried to convince the tsar and Nikon that, in so far as they differed, Greek liturgical practices were faithful to the Orthodox tradition and Russian customs were erroneous local innovations. To test this claim, a Russian monk, Arsenii Sukhanov, made two journeys in 1649-50 and 1651-3 to investigate the condition of the Greek Church. His findings included a report that monks on Mount Athos had burned Russian liturgical books as heretical and his experiences led him to conduct a bitter debate with visiting Greeks in Moscow in 1650 on the orthodoxy of Russian practices.[308] Following the advice of the Greeks took the tsar and Nikon down a dangerous path, for, as their contemporaries were well aware, it was the Greeks' apostasy at the Council of Florence that had thrust Orthodox Russia into the centre of world history. Moreover, in the mid-seventeenth century, the main centres of Greek Orthodox learning and publishing were in the Roman Catholic world, especially Venice.
Against this background, on 11 February 1653, the Printing Office published a new edition of the Psalter which omitted the customary article instructing worshippers on the correct way to cross themselves. Then, within days, Nikon filled the gap with an instruction (pamiat') to the faithful to use the so-called three-finger sign of the cross, holding their thumb, index and middle fingers together. Muscovite tradition, embodied in the protocols ofthe Stoglav Council of 1551, held to the two-finger sign with only the index and middle fingers extended. Then, in early 1654, a council of the Russian Church approved the principle of revising Russian liturgical books 'according to ancient parchment and Greek texts (po starym kharateinym i grecheskim knigam)'. New editions followed one another in rapid succession - missals (Sluzhebniki) in 1654 and 1655 and, in 1654, the Skrizhal, a treatise on the nature of liturgy along with Nikon's justification of his reforms.
In addition to the sign of the cross, the most controversial changes in the details of the liturgy included the four-pointed instead of eight-pointed cross on the sacred wafer and on church buildings; the triple rather than double Alleluia after the Psalms and the Cherubic hymn; the number of prostrations and bows in Lent; a new transliteration of 'Jesus' into Slavonic (Iisus instead of 'Isus'); and small, but significant alterations in the wording of the Nicene Creed.
As Nikon's contemporary opponents and the best modern scholars have argued, the new editions of the service books were based, not on ancient manuscripts, but on very recent Greek editions and mandated the substitution of contemporary Greek practices for traditional Russian usages.[309] The standardisation of Russian and Greek liturgies arose from the desire, shared by Tsar Alexis's government and Nikon, to build a more united Orthodox commonwealth with Russia at its head. The Orthodox hierarchy in Ukraine had made similar changes decades earlier without significant opposition. Recently, scholars have also argued that Nikon's liturgical reforms arose from a new understanding of the nature and function of liturgy as a commemoration of Christ's life, death and resurrection in which words, gestures and ritual objects may legitimately have several different levels of meaning simultaneously.[310]
Whatever their deeper meaning, the new service books altered some of the most frequently repeated words, gestures and visible symbols in the liturgy. Even more jarring was the autocratic manner in which Nikon introduced the new editions: against the advice of the Patriarch of Constantinople and his royal protector, he insisted that only the reformed usage was acceptable. In 1656, he repeatedly branded the two-finger sign of the cross and other traditional Russian practices as heretical.[311]
306
William Palmer,
309
On the reforms, N. F. Kapterev
310
Karl Christian Felmy,