The Newly Discovered Treatise on Patriarch Nikon in the Cultural and Historical Context of Its Epoch

Abstract

The newly discovered anonymous treatise on the deposed Patriarch Nikon (1652–1656, † 1681) belongs to the short-lived Russian seventeenth-century theological and political tradition inaugurated by Nikon himself, where the place of the Patriarch was considered as incomparably superior to that of any secular ruler including the tsar of the Muscovite Rus’. The written monuments of this tradition are rare and mostly include (rather little-known, too) works by Nikon. In the present treatise, the tsar is accused that he is the main culprit of all contemporary evils fallen on the Russian Church, whereas the so-called “schismatics” (the Old Believers – those who stood against Nikon’s Church reforms) are only a secondary target of anonymous author’s criticisms. The copying of such a dissident work would have become dangerous in the late 17th century under the first Russian Emperor Peter the Great. Therefore, its copy, the uniquely preserved one, was deliberately “concealed” within a manuscript collection of Nikon’s works.