Nikita Minov Nikon was patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church from 1652 to 1666. He enacted the reforms of Church books and practices which resulted in a split, or schism, in the Russian Orthodox Church.
Background
Nikon was born in the village of Veldemanovo in the province of Nizhni Novgorod of peasant parents. When he was 12 years old, he ran away from home to escape the ill treatment of his stepmother and entered a monastery. But his parents persuaded him to leave the monastery and to marry.
Career
In 1624 Nikon became a priest in the village of Kolychevo but within 2 years was called to a parish in Moscow. When three of his children died, Nikon sought repentance and solitude. He renounced his wife and family and lived as a monk and hermit from 1634 to 1646. In 1646 Nikon met Czar Alexis, whom he favorably impressed. In the same year Alexis appointed him abbot of Novosparsskii Monastery in Moscow. The strong-willed Nikon exercised a powerful personal influence on the younger and softer monarch. Alexis even gave Nikon the title of Great Sovereign, and his name appeared next to that of the Czar in official documents.
Church reform was among Nikon's main concerns. On his own initiative and without consulting a Church council, he ordered the revision of certain generally accepted Church practices. A Church council in 1654 approved additional reforms in religious texts.
Vigorous opposition to the reforms arose, led by the archpriest Avvakum. The opponents, the Raskolniki, declared that the reforms were a perversion of the faith and that the corrected books were the work of the antichrist. With the enactment of the reforms, the position of Nikon began to deteriorate. His curt and arrogant manner made many enemies. Alexis himself grew tired of the overbearing ways of the patriarch and ceased to invite Nikon to the palace and avoided him at Church ceremonies.
In 1658 a message from the Czar that he was not coming to a Mass that day led to a bitter outburst from Nikon, who left Moscow for a monastery. There he waited to be asked back, but the request did not come. In 1666 Nikon was tried by a Russian Church council for repudiation of patriarchal duties and offense to the Czar. He was convicted, deprived of the patriarchate and the rank of bishop, and exiled to a remote monastery. Alexis' successor, Feodor III, recalled Nikon from exile, but the former patriarch died on his way back to Moscow on August 27, 1681.
Nikon's reforms, however, survived. The Church council that convened in 1666 affirmed the changes. The opponents had to submit or defy the Church openly. Numerous priests and whole monasteries refused to accept them, and the result was a permanent cleavage among the Russian believers.
Religion
When Nikon was appointed, ecclesiastical reform was already in the air. A number of ecclesiastical dignitaries, known as the party of the protopopes (deans), had accepted the responsibility for the revision of the church service-books inaugurated by the late Patriarch Joasaph, and a few other minor rectifications of certain ancient observances. But they were far too timid to attempt anything really effectual.
Nikon launched bold reforms. He consulted the most learned of the Greek prelates abroad, invited them to a consultation at Moscow, and finally the scholars of Constantinople and Kiev convinced Nikon that the Muscovite service-books were heterodox, and that the icons actually in use had very widely departed from the ancient Constantinopolitan models, being for the most part imbued with the Frankish and Polish (West European) baroque influences.
Nikon launched bold reforms. He consulted the most learned of the Greek prelates abroad, invited them to a consultation at Moscow, and finally the scholars of Constantinople and Kiev convinced Nikon that the Muscovite service-books were heterodox, and that the icons actually in use had very widely departed from the ancient Constantinopolitan models, being for the most part imbued with the Frankish and Polish (West European) baroque influences.
Nikon criticized severely the use of such new-fangled icons; he ordered a house-to-house search for them to be made. His soldiers and servants were charged first to gouge out the eyes of these heretical counterfeits and then carry them through the town in derision. He also issued an ukase threatening with the severest penalties all who dared to make or use such icons in future.
Later research was to determine that Muscovite service-books did belong to a different recension from that which was used by the Greeks at the time of Nikon, and the unrevised Muscovite books were actually older and more venerable than the Greek books, which had undergone several revisions over the centuries and ironically, were newer and contained innovations.
In 1654, Nikon summoned a synod to re-examine the service-books revised by the Patriarch Joasaf, and the majority of the synod decided that "the Greeks should be followed rather than our own ancients. " A second council, held at Moscow in 1656, sanctioned the revision of the service-books as suggested by the first council, and anathematized the dissenting minority, which included the party of the protopopes and Paul, bishop of Kolomna. The reforms coincided with a great plague in 1654.
Heavily weighted with the fullest ecumenical authority, Nikon's patriarchal staff descended with crushing force upon those with whom he disagreed.
Construction of tent-like churches (of which Saint Basil's Cathedral is a prime example) was strictly forbidden, and many old uncanonical churches were demolished to make way for new ones, designed in the "Old Byzantine" style. This ruthlessness goes far to explain the unappeasable hatred with which the Old Believers, as they now began to be called, ever afterwards regarded Nikon and all his works.
Politics
Nikon made it his mission to remove the Church from secular authority, and permanently separate the Church from the state. He believed that the Church and state should work in harmony, while remaining separate from each other. He also sought to organize the Church with a hierarchy similar to the state’s – with the Patriarch in complete control.
Membership
Nikon became a member of the circle of the Zealots of Piety. This was a group of ecclesiastical and secular individuals that started in the late 1630s, gathering around Stefan Vonifatiyev, the confessor of tsar Alexei.