Though all the changes introduced by Nikon affected only the outward forms of religion, some of which were not even very old, the population and much of the clergy resisted him from the beginning. The uneducated Muscovite clergy refused to relearn prayers and rituals, while the mass of the faithful was deeply troubled by Nikon's contempt for practices regarded as holy and essential to Russia's salvation. His former friends spoke out against him, especially Avvakum Petrovich, who would lead the struggle against Nikon and proclaimed that the patriarch's decisions were inspired by the devil and filled with the spirit of Antichrist. This was the origin of the Raskol, or great schism within the Russian Orthodox Church. Yet what really brought about Nikon's downfall was the hostility of the tsar's family and the powerful boyar (aristocratic) families, who resented the high-handed manner in which he exercised authority in the tsar's absence. They also objected to his claims that the church could intervene in affairs of state but was itself immune to state interference. Nikon believed that the church was superior to the state because the heavenly kingdom was above the earthly kingdom. He also published a translation of the Donation of Constantine (a medieval forgery that claimed that the emperor Constantine had bestowed temporal and spiritual power on the pope) and used the document to support his claims to authority.
When Alexis returned to Moscow in 1658, relations between tsar and patriarch were no longer what they had been. Grown in self-confidence and incited by relatives and courtiers, Alexis ceased to consult the patriarch, though he avoided an open break with him. Nikon finally struck back after several boyars had insulted him with impunity and the tsar failed to appear at two consecutive services at which Nikon officiated. On July 20 (July 10, O.S.), 1658, in characteristically impetuous fashion, he announced his resignation to the congregation in the Assumption (Uspensky) Cathedral in the Kremlin, and shortly afterward he retired to the Voskresensky monastery.
Nikon had apparently hoped by this act to compel the tsar, whose piety was well-known, to recall him and to restore his previous influence. This did not happen. After several months in self-imposed exile, Nikon attempted a reconciliation, but the tsar either refused to answer his letters or urged him to formalize his resignation. Nikon refused to do so on the ground that he had resigned merely from the Moscow see, not from the patriarchate as such. For eight years, during which Russia was effectively without a patriarch, Nikon stubbornly held on to his post, while Alexis, troubled by lack of clear precedent and by the fear of damnation, could not decide on a formal deposition. Finally, in November 1666, Alexis convened a council attended by the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria to settle the dispute.
The charges against Nikon were presented by the tsar himself. They concerned largely his behaviour in the period of the tsar's absence from Moscow, including his alleged arrogation of the title of “grand sovereign.” Many of the charges were entirely without foundation. The Greek hierarchy now turned against Nikon and decided in favour of the monarchy, whose favours it needed. A Greek adventurer, Paisios Ligaridis (now known to have been in collusion with Rome), was particularly active in bringing about Nikon's downfall. The council deprived Nikon of all his sacerdotal functions and on December 23 exiled him as a monk to Beloozero, about 350 miles (560 km) directly north of Moscow. It retained, however, the reforms he had introduced and anathematized those who opposed them and who were henceforth known as Old Believers (Old Believer) (or Old Ritualists). In his last years, Nikon's relations with Alexis improved. The successor of Alexis, Fyodor III, recalled Nikon from exile, but he died while en route to Moscow.
Nikon was one of the outstanding leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church and an able administrator. His ultimate failure was due to two main factors: (1) his insistence on the hegemony of church over state had no precedent in Byzantine or Russian traditions and could not be enforced in any event; and (2) his uncontrollable temper and autocratic disposition alienated all who came in contact with him and enabled his opponents first to disgrace and then to defeat him.
Richard E. Pipes
Additional Reading
William Palmer, The Patriarch and the Tsar, 6 vol. (1871–76); William-Kenneth Medlin, Moscow and East Rome: A Political Study of the Relations of Church and State in Muscovite Russia (1952, reprinted 1981); Paul Meyendorff, Russia, Ritual, and Reform: The Liturgical Reforms of Nikon in the 17th Century (1991); Paul Bushkovitch, Religion and Society in Russia: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1992).
Romanov Dynasty
▪ Russian dynasty
rulers of Russia from 1613 until the Russian Revolution of February 1917. Descendants of Andrey Ivanovich Kobyla (Kambila), a Muscovite boyar who lived during the reign of the grand prince of Moscow Ivan I Kalita (reigned 1328–41), the Romanovs acquired their name from Roman Yurev (d. 1543), whose daughter Anastasiya Romanovna Zakharina-Yureva was the first wife of Ivan IV the Terrible (reigned as tsar 1547–84). Her brother Nikita's children took the surname Romanov in honour of their grandfather, father of a tsarina. After Fyodor I (the last ruler of the Rurik dynasty) died in 1598, Russia endured 15 chaotic years known as the Time of Troubles (1598–1613), which ended when a zemsky sobor (“assembly of the land”) elected Nikita's grandson, Michael Romanov, as the new tsar. (For the Romanovs' predecessors, see Rurik Dynasty; Troubles, Time of.)
The Romanovs established no regular pattern of succession until 1797. During the first century of their rule they generally followed the custom (held over from the late Rurik rulers) of passing the throne to the tsar's eldest son or, if he had no son, to his closest senior male relative. Thus Alexis (reigned 1645–76) succeeded his father, Michael (reigned 1613–45), and Fyodor III (reigned 1676–82) succeeded his father, Alexis. But after Fyodor's death, both his brother Ivan (Ivan V) and his half-brother Peter (Peter I) vied for the throne. Although a zemsky sobor chose Peter as the new tsar, Ivan's family, supported by the streltsy, staged a palace revolution; and Ivan V and Peter I jointly assumed the throne (1682).
After Peter became sole ruler (1696), he formulated a law of succession (Feb. 5 [Feb. 16, New Style], 1722), which gave the monarch the right to choose his successor. Peter himself (who was the first tsar to be named emperor) was unable to take advantage of this decree, however, and throughout the 18th century the succession remained vexed. Peter left the throne to his wife, Catherine I, who was a Romanov only by right of marriage. On Catherine I's death, however, in 1727, the throne reverted to Peter I's grandson Peter II. When the latter died (1730), Ivan V's second surviving daughter, Anna, became empress. On Anna's death (1740), her elder sister's daughter Anna Leopoldovna, whose father belonged to the House of Mecklenburg, assumed the regency for her son Ivan VI, of the House of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel; but in 1741 this Ivan VI was deposed in favour of Elizabeth, daughter of Peter I and Catherine I. With Elizabeth, the Romanovs of the male line died out in 1762, but the name was conserved by the branch of the House of Holstein-Gottorp that then mounted the Russian throne in the person of Elizabeth's nephew Peter III. From 1762 to 1796 Peter III's widow, a German princess of the House of Anhalt-Zerbst, ruled as Catherine II. With Paul I, Peter III's son, a Romanov of Holstein-Gottorp became emperor again.