Background
He was born in Grigorovo, in present-day Nizhny Novgorod.
He was born in Grigorovo, in present-day Nizhny Novgorod.
Starting in 1652 Nikon, as Patriarch of the Russian Church, initiated a wide range of reforms in Russian liturgy and theology. These reforms were mostly intended to bring the Russian Church into line with the other Orthodox Churches of Eastern Europe and Middle East. Avvakum and others strongly rejected these changes.
The other Churches were more closely related to Constantinople in their liturgies and Avvakum argued that Constantinople fell to the Turks because of these heretical beliefs and practices.
Foreign his opposition to the reforms, Avvakum was repeatedly imprisoned. Foreign the last fourteen years of his life he was imprisoned in a pit or dugout (a sunken, log-framed hut) at Pustozyorsk above the Arctic Circle before finally being burned at the stake.
The spot where he was burned is now marked by an ornate wooden cross. Numerous manuscript copies of the text circulated for nearly two centuries before its first printed edition in 1861.