The Icon and the Axe

Most important was Nikon's effort to bring order and uniformity to Russian worship through a new series of printed service books. The printing program in the last years of Joseph's patriarchate had already contributed to the sense of special dignity and destiny that Nikon felt about the Russian Church. Publication of a Book of the One True and Orthodox Faith in 1648, an edited version of Mogila's Catechism in 1649, ar,d tne Pilot Book (Kormchaia Kniga) in 1650 provided Muscovy with, respectively, an encyclopedia of polemic materials directed largely against Uniats and Jews; "its first manual for popular religious instruction";32 and its first systematic corpus of canon law. The first two works (and the apocalyptical Book of Cyril, which was also enjoying new popularity in Moscow of the late forties) came to Moscow from Kiev, the Pilot Book from Serbia. Moscow was rapidly becoming the focal point for all the hopes of the Orthodox East. As Muscovy launched its successful attack on Poland in the early years of Nikon's patriarchate, its sense of holy mission and special calling grew apace. Even non-Slavic Orthodox principalities, such as Moldavia and Georgia, began to explore the possibilities of a protectorate status under Moscow similar to that which Khmelnitsky's Cossacks accepted in 1653. Meanwhile the Greek-speaking monk Arsenius Sukhanov, who had accompanied Paissius back to Jerusalem on the first of two lengthy trips to gather books and information from the rest of the Orthodox world, reported that Orthodoxy had been corrupted in the Mediterranean area by Latin errors. He revived the long quiescent theme of Moscow as the third and last Rome, and added that "all Christendom" awaited the liberation of Constantinople by Russian force.33 While Alexis led Russian troops

?

into battle against foreign enemies of the faith, Nikon led his miscellaneous array of editors into combat against alleged corruptions within.

Between his deletions from a new psalter in October, 1652, and the appearance of new service books in 1655-6, Nikon sponsored an extensive and detailed series of reforms.34 He changed time-honored forms of worship: substituting three fingers for two in the sign of the cross; three hallelujahs for two; five consecrated loaves for seven at the offertory; one loaf rather than many on the altar; processions against rather than with the direction of the sun. Nikon eliminated some practices altogether (the twelve prostrations accompanying the prayer of Ephrem the Syrian during Lent, the blessing of the waters on Epiphany eve); introduced textual changes affecting all three persons of the Holy Trinity. He altered the form of addressing God in the Lord's prayer, the description of the Holy Spirit in the creed, and the spelling of Jesus' name (from Isus to Iisus) in all sacred writings.

At the same time, Nikon tried to impose a new, more austere artistic style, ordering the elimination of florid, northern motifs from Russian architecture (tent roofs, onion domes, seven- and eight-pointed crosses, and so on). In their place he introduced a neo-Byzantine emphasis on spherical domes, classical lines, and the use of the plain, four-pointed Greek cross. Two buildings that he constructed in the first years of his patriarchate launched this effort to transplant the imagined glories of the Greek East to Russia: the patriarchal church of the Twelve Apostles, within the Moscow Kremlin, and the ensemble of buildings for the new Iversky Monastery on Valdai Island.

All of this was accompanied by a determined effort to heighten the personal authority of the patriarch and that of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Prior to accepting the patriarchate, Nikon had exacted an unprecedented pledge from the Tsar to obey Nikon "as your first shepherd and father in all that I shall teach on dogma, discipline, and custom."35 This promise was taken from a ninth-century Byzantine defense of separate but equally absolute temporal and ecclesiastical authority. Like matter and form, body and soul, the two realms were supposed to co-exist harmoniously within the Christian commonwealth. Such a strong assertion of patriarchal authority was altogether unheard of in Muscovy. It seemed to challenge not only the Tsar, but the new law code, which had made the monasteries (and thus the church hierarchy) subject to secular jurisdiction. Nor was Nikon's program very securely based in Byzantine tradition. The reforms were rapidly and secretly drawn up, and based on the selective use of Western compilations of Byzantine texts by an inadequately equipped research team.38