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1648, ordering local governors to ban skomorokhi and suppress the folk cus-
toms associated with them in every village and hamlet in their jurisdictions.
17
Issuing decrees, however, was much easier than changing deep-rooted pat-
terns of behaviour: scattered evidence suggests that the skomorokhi continued
to practise their ancient trade in the remote countryside into the eighteenth
century and many of the agrarian rites and folk festivals survived long enough
for modern ethnographers to record them.
18
The reformers also won their battle for edinoglasie (celebrating the liturgy
with no overlapping or short-cuts). Reversing the decision of 1649, another
ecclesiastical council, in February 1651, made the practice obligatory in parish
churches as well as in monasteries.
19
Not surprisingly, the implementation of the Zealots’ programme aroused
violent opposition among the laity. Avvakum’s hagiographic autobiography,
written roughly twenty years after the events, describes his clashes with a
prominent aristocrat, other local notables, and ordinary parishioners while
parish priest of Lopatitsy. Twice, in 1648 and 1652, in fear for his life, he fled
his parish for the safety of Moscow. The second time, he received a major
promotion to become dean of the cathedral in Iurevets on the Volga, but could
serve only eight weeks until ‘. . . the priests, peasants and their women...’beat
him and drove him out of town. As he recalled them, Avvakum’s methods of
enforcingliturgical and moral order and rebuking sinners werehardlysubtle.
20
Moreover, his clashes with his parishioners took place at a time of extreme
unrest in many urban centres of Russia. Nevertheless, his problems with his
parishioners ultimately arose from his commitment to radical change. Other
reformist priests suffered through similar tribulations. As foot soldiers in a
campaign of reform from above, they took the brunt of parishioners’ anger at
the demand that they abruptly change their traditional way of life.
Legal and economic issues also threatened the reformers’ campaign. The
Law Code of 1649 significantly changed the legal relationship of Church and
17 N. Kharuzin, ‘K voprosu o bor’be moskovskogo pravitel’stva s narodnymi iazycheskimi
obriadami i sueveriiami v polovine XVII v.’, Etnograficheskoe Obozrenie, 1879,no.1, 143–51;
AI, vol. iv (St Petersburg: Tipografiia II Otdeleniia Sobstvennoi E. I. V. Kantseliarii, 1842),
pp. 124–6.
18 Russell Zguta, Russian Minstrels: A History of the Skomorokhi (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), pp. 63–5; M. M. Gromyko, Mir russkoi derevni (Moscow:
Molodaia Gvardiia, 1991), pp. 325–9, 345–60.
19 Pascal, Avvakum,pp.156–8.
20 Archpriest Avvakum, Zhitie Protopopa Avvakuma im samim napisannoe i drugie ego sochi-
neniia, ed. N. K. Gudzii (Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1960), pp. 61–4; Archpriest Avvakum,
The Life Written by Himself: With the Study of V. V. Vinogradov, trans. and ed. Kenneth N.
Brostrom (Michigan Slavic translations, no. 4) (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1979), pp. 45–50.
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The Orthodox Church and the schism
state. It created a Monastery Chancellery (Monastyrskii prikaz) and gave it
authority to try criminal and civil cases involving clergymen and inhabitants
of Church lands except the patriarchal domain.
21
Moreover, under pressure
from urban taxpayers, the government confiscated the tax-exempt urban set-
tlements in whichthe Church’s dependents conducted trade.Although neither
the judgement of churchmen by the secular government nor the confiscation
of ecclesiastical property was unprecedented – the Great Court Chancellery
had previously handled legal cases involving the clergy – the sweeping provi-
sions of the Code made clear that neither the Church’s judicial privileges nor
its lands were sacrosanct.
Patriarch Nikon
When Nikon became patriarch in 1652, many of the latent tensions within
the Russian Church erupted into open conflict. Nikon aroused enormous
controversy in his own day and still fascinates and perplexes us. Born into a
peasant family in the Nizhnii Novgorod area, he served briefly as a parish priest
before taking monastic vows in the Anzerskii Skit on an island in the White
Sea. In this small idiorrhythmic community, he followed a severely ascetic
rule of life. He also displayed great energy and administrative talent, qualities
that ultimately brought him to the position of abbot of the Kozheozerskii
monastery onthecoast ofthemainland. Inthiscapacity,hetravelledtoMoscow
in 1646 and was introduced to Tsar Alexis.
From that moment, Nikon became a favourite of the tsar and an ally of
the Church reformers at his court. Although his long-term relationship with
Alexis was very complex, his meteoric rise to the patriarchal throne unques-
tionably required the unconditional support of the tsar and his advisers. Alexis
immediately appointed him archimandrite of the Novospasskii monastery in
Moscow, a favourite foundation of the Romanov family. In 1649, he was con-
secrated Metropolitan of Novgorod, the second most powerful position in the
hierarchy. In both of these capacities, he carried out the programme of the
reformers with characteristic determination. In 1650, he also displayed great
physical courage and political astuteness in quelling an uprising in Novgorod
with minimal bloodshed.
21 Sobornoe ulozhenie 1649 goda: tekst, kommentarii, ed. L.I. Ivina, G.V. Abramovich et al.
(Leningrad: Nauka, Leningradskoe otdelenie, 1987), pp. 69–70, 242–6; M. I. Gorchakov,
Monastyrskii prikaz, 1649–1725 g. Opyt istoriko-iuridicheskogo issledovaniia (St. Petersburg:
A. Transhel’, 1868), pp. 40–90.
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During his tenure in Novgorod, Nikon made it clear that, in his opinion,
the ecclesiastical hierarchy was the natural leader in the campaign to revi-
talise Russian Orthodoxy. He did everything he could to increase his own
effective power and ceremonial dignity as metropolitan and to emphasise that
the ultimate responsibility for the spiritual well-being of Russia lay with the
Church’s leaders, not the secular ruler. For example, in 1652,aspartofacam-
paign to canonise martyred leaders of the Russian Church, he brought the
relics of Metropolitan Filipp, already recognised as a saint, from the Solovet-
skii monastery to Moscow. While in Solovki, he publicly read Tsar Alexis’s
statement of contrition for the sin of his predecessor, Ivan IV, in ordering Fil-
ipp’s murder. At the same time, it is difficult to be sure how accurately Nikon’s
fullest statements of his theories on the relations of Church and state reflect
his views during his active ministry since he wrote them years later while
in self-imposed exile. For example, in his Refutation, he repeatedly attacked
the Ulozhenie of 1649 for usurping the Church’s legal autonomy and property
rights.
22
In 1649, however, he had signed the new law code – under duress,
he later insisted – and his scruples had not prevented him from accepting
the patriarchal dignity in the hope, he subsequently claimed, of reversing the
policies to which he expressed such strong aversion.
Once enthroned as patriarch with the enthusiastic support of the tsar and
the rest of the reformers, Nikon immediately took steps to assert his authority.
According to his later testimony, at his consecration he made the tsar, the
boyars and the bishops swear to obey him as their pastor. In his capacity as
patriarch, Nikon evidently saw himself as the personification of the Church.
He strove to transform its organisational structure into an effective hierarchi-
cal administration with the patriarch at the top: he reacted with particular
ruthlessness to any sign of opposition from other members of the hierarchy.
Like Filaret, he added extensive lands to the patriarch’s own domain and, in
addition to building or repairing other churches, maintained three important
monasteries– the Iverskii,the Kretnyiandthe Voskresenskii(also knownas the
New Jerusalem) – as his own foundations. A man of imposing appearance, he
impressedvisitingclergymen withhismagnificentvestments,hislong sermons
and his dramatic manner of celebrating the liturgy. Moreover, beginning in
1653, with the tsar’s consent, he began to use the epithet, Velikii gosudar’ (Great
22 William Palmer, The Patriarch and the Tsar, 6 vols. (London: Tr
¨
ubner and Co., 1871–6),
vol. i (1871), pp. 292–548; Patriarch Nikon, Patriarch Nikon on Church and State – Nikon’s
‘Refutation’ (Vozrazhenie ili razorenie smirennogo Nikona, Bozhieiu milostiiu Patriarkha, pro-
tivo voprosov boiarina Simeona Streshneva), ed. Valerie A. Tumins and George Vernadsky
(Berlin, New York, Amsterdam: Mouton, 1982), pp. 351–601.
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The Orthodox Church and the schism
Sovereign), previously used by only one patriarch – Filaret, father of a tsar and
effective head of state.
He also continued the reformers’ campaign to purify Russian Orthodoxy.
Within weeks of his consecration, to protect the faithful from temptation,
decrees prohibited the sale of vodka on holy days and required all non-
Orthodox foreigners in Moscow to move to a new ‘German Quarter’ on
the Iauza River further from the centre of the city.
23
The long-standing campaign to publish accurate liturgical books and dis-
tribute them throughout Russia, however, quickly took a fateful turn. The
tsar, the new patriarch and some of their collaborators decided that the best
way to revitalise Russian Orthodoxy was to forge closer ties with ecumenical
Eastern Orthodoxy, especially the Greek mother Church. In 1649, the latest
of a long line of Greek visitors, Patriarch Paisios of Jerusalem and a scholar
of dubious background, known as Arsenius the Greek, appeared in Moscow
and tried to convince the tsar and Nikon that, in so far as they differed, Greek
liturgical practices were faithful to the Orthodox tradition and Russian cus-
toms were erroneous local innovations. To test this claim, a Russian monk,
Arsenii Sukhanov, made two journeys in 1649–50 and 1651–3 to investigate the
condition of the Greek Church. His findings included a report that monks on
Mount Athos had burned Russian liturgical books as heretical and his experi-
ences led him to conduct a bitter debate with visiting Greeks in Moscowin 1650
on the orthodoxy of Russian practices.
24
Following the advice of the Greeks
took the tsar and Nikon down a dangerous path, for, as their contemporaries
were well aware, it was the Greeks’ apostasy at the Council of Florence that
had thrust Orthodox Russia into the centre of world history. Moreover, in the
mid-seventeenth century, the main centres of Greek Orthodox learning and
publishing were in the Roman Catholic world, especially Venice.
Against this background, on 11 February 1653, the Printing Office published
a new edition of the Psalter which omitted the customary article instructing
worshippers on the correct way to cross themselves. Then, within days, Nikon
filled the gap with an instruction (pamiat’) to the faithful to use the so-called
three-finger sign of the cross, holding their thumb, index and middle fingers
together. Muscovitetradition,embodied in the protocols of the Stoglav Council
of 1551, held to the two-finger sign with only the index and middle fingers
extended. Then, in early 1654, a council of the Russian Church approved the
principle of revising Russian liturgical books ‘according to ancient parchment
23 Zenkovsky, Russkoe staroobriadchestvo,pp.193–5.
24 Kartashev, Ocherki, vol. ii,pp.126–31.
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and Greek texts (po starym kharateinym i grecheskim knigam)’. New editions
followed one another in rapid succession – missals (Sluzhebniki)in1654 and
1655 and, in 1654, the Skrizhal, a treatise on the nature of liturgy along with
Nikon’s justification of his reforms.
In addition to the sign of the cross, the most controversial changes in the
details of the liturgy included the four-pointed instead of eight-pointed cross
on the sacred wafer and on church buildings; the triple rather than double
Alleluia after the Psalms and the Cherubic hymn; the number of prostrations
and bows in Lent; a new transliteration of ‘Jesus’ into Slavonic (‘Iisus’ instead
of ‘Isus’); and small, but significant alterations in the wording of the Nicene
Creed.
As Nikon’s contemporary opponents and the best modern scholars have
argued, the new editions of the service books were based, not on ancient
manuscripts, but on very recent Greek editions and mandated the substitu-
tion of contemporary Greek practices for traditional Russian usages.
25
The
standardisation of Russian and Greek liturgies arose from the desire, shared
byTsar Alexis’s government and Nikon, to build a more united Orthodox com-
monwealth with Russia at its head. The Orthodox hierarchy in Ukraine had
made similar changes decades earlier without significant opposition. Recently,
scholars have also argued that Nikon’s liturgical reforms arose from a new
understanding of the nature and function of liturgy as a commemoration of
Christ’s life, death and resurrection in which words, gestures and ritual objects
may legitimately have several different levels of meaning simultaneously.
26
Whatever their deeper meaning, the new service books altered some of the
most frequently repeated words, gestures and visible symbols in the liturgy.
Even more jarring was the autocratic manner in which Nikon introduced the
neweditions:against theadviceofthe Patriarchof Constantinopleandhis royal
protector, he insisted that only the reformed usage was acceptable. In 1656,
he repeatedly branded the two-finger sign of the cross and other traditional
Russian practices as heretical.
27
25 On the reforms, N.F. Kapterev, Patriarkh Nikon i Tsar’ Aleksei Mikhailovich, 2 vols.(Sergiev
Posad: Tipografiia Sviato-Troitskoi Sergievoi Lavry, 1909–12); Paul Meyendorff, Russia,
Ritual, and Reform: the Liturgical Reforms of Nikon in the 17th Century (Crestwood, N.Y.: St
Vladimir’s Press, 1991).
26 Karl Christian Felmy, Die Deutung der G
¨
ottlichen Liturgie in der russischen Theologie: Wege
und Wandlungen russischer Liturgie-Auslegung (Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte, 54) (Berlin,
New York: de Gruyter, 1984), pp. 80–111; Boris A. Uspensky, ‘The Schism and Cultural
Conflict in the Seventeenth Century’, in Stephen K. Batalden (ed.), Seeking God: The
Recovery of Religious Identity in Orthodox Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia (DeKalb: Northern
Illinois University Press, 1993), pp. 106–43.
27 Kapterev, Patriarkh Nikon, vol. i,pp.192–8; Meyendorff, Russia,pp.61–2.
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Resistance to Nikon’s reforms
The reforms and the patriarch’s intransigence in enforcing them split the
reform coalition. In a series of increasingly agitated letters written in late
1653 and early 1654 to the tsar and Vonifat’ev, Ivan Neronov severely criticised
Nikon’s abandonment of Russia’s heritage and the arrogance with which he
was treating his former friends. The three-finger sign of the cross and the
altered number of deep bows (poklony) in services were specific examples of
these destructive policies. In one letter to Vonifat’ev, he told of hearing a voice
from an icon urging him to resist Nikon’s reforms, a story later retold in his
friend Avvakum’s autobiography.
28
For their outspoken protests, the author-
ities excommunicated Neronov and imprisoned him in a remote northern
monastery and exiled Avvakum to Siberia. According to tradition, the one
bishop who in 1654 openly questioned the reforms, Pavel of Kolomna, lost his
see and his life for his stand.
29
As these examples indicate, resistance to the liturgical reforms began with
individuals and small, scattered groups. Beginning with Spiridon Potemkin in
1658, a few prominent clergymen, members of the ecclesiastical elite, wrote
detailed critiques of Nikon’s reforms. They received valuable support from
Bishop Aleksandr of Viatka who, although he did not write any polemics of
his own, encouraged those who did and collected a library of texts to sup-
port the anti-reform position. Despite some differences in details, the works
of Potemkin, Nikita Dobrynin ‘Pustosviat’, the priest Lazar’ and others all
attacked the internal inconsistencies in the new service books and raised fun-
damental questions about the legitimacy of Russian Orthodoxy. For if tradi-
tional Russian usages were heretical, were all previous generations of Russian
Christians – saints and sinners alike – damned as heretics? Although these
manuscripts had very limited circulation, they served as a valuable resource
for later generations of polemicists against the reformed Church.
Nikon’s critics faced formidable polemical opponents armed with the two
weapons they lacked – the resources of the Printing Office and the support of
the hierarchy and government. In addition to the Skrizhal, Simeon Polotskii,
resident court poet and tutor to the tsar’s children, published Zhezl pravleniia
in 1668. Afanasii of Kholmogory’s Uvet dukhovnyi of 1682 was to be the next in
a long succession of attacks on critics of the reformed Church.
30
28 Materialy dlia istorii raskola za pervoe vremia ego sushchestvovaniia, ed. N. Subbotin, 9 vols.
(Moscow: Redaktsiia ‘Bratskoe slovo’, 1874–90), vol.i,pp.51–78, 99–100; Avvakum, Zhitie,
p. 65.
29 Materialy, vol. i,pp.100–2.
30 Michels, War,pp.112–15.
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Small numbers of uneducated laypeople also expressed opposition to the
reforms.In 1657,theecclesiasticalandgovernmentalauthorities imprisonedthe
Rostov weaver, Sila Bogdanov, and two companions for publicly condemning
the new service books.
31
More radical still were the small groups that made up the Kapiton move-
ment. Beginning in the 1620sor1630s, Kapiton and his followers rejected the
Orthodox Church and its clergy as corrupt and practised extreme forms of
asceticism, such as rigorous fasting in all seasons and, if official accusations
can be believed, some even starved themselves to death. In 1665 and 1666, the
authorities investigated several informal monastic communities that followed
his fundamental teachings. And although not their central concern, these later
followersof Kapitonincluded the newliturgical booksin their listof grievances
against the Church.
In the short run, isolated objections to the newliturgical texts did nothing to
shake Nikon’s overwhelming power over the Church and influence at court.
The only threat to his position lay in his dependence on his royal patron,
Tsar Alexis. Historians have advanced many hypotheses, none completely
convincing, to explain the deterioration of their relationship. Many of the
tsar’s courtiers, much of the hierarchy – and perhaps Alexis himself – had
probably become weary of the patriarch’s imperious manner and jealous of
his influence and wealth. Be that as it may, Alexis and Nikon abruptly parted
ways in 1658. After the tsar refused to settle several seemingly trifling conflicts
to Nikon’s satisfaction, on 10 June, the patriarch withdrew from Moscow to
the New Jerusalem monastery and left the day-to-day business of the Church
in the hands of the usual second-in-command, the Metropolitan of Krutitsy.
At the same time, Nikon still thought of himself as the patriarch. For example,
in 1659, he attempted to anathematise Metropolitan Pitirim of Krutitsy for
replacing him in the role of Christ in the annual Palm Sunday procession.
Nikon’s self-imposed exile without abdicating from the patriarchal office
created an extremely awkward situation. As messages and emissaries shuttled
backand forth betweenMoscowandNewJerusalem, it became clear that there
was no hope of reconciliation, for, in addition to intense personal animosity,
Nikon and Alexis’s government had radicallydifferent ideas about the relations
of Church and state in a Christian monarchy. In his lengthy Refutation of
1664 Nikon insisted in the strongest possible terms on the superiority of the
31 Dokumenty Razriadnogo, Posol’skogo, Novgorodskogo i Tainogo Prikazov o raskol’nikakh v
gorodakh Rossii, 1654–1684 gg., ed. V. S. Rumiantseva (Moscow: AN SSSR, Institut istorii
SSSR, 1990), pp. 29–58; Michels, War,pp.33–8.
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The Orthodox Church and the schism
spiritual power to the secular arm.
32
Therefore, in matters of principle such
as, for example, the complete judicial independence of the Church from lay
justice, the Church and its primate should prevail. Was Nikon, as he claimed,
simply restating fundamental Orthodox principles? Many of his arguments
and examples do indeed come from classic Orthodox texts. Nevertheless,
the vehemence with which he made his case stretched the elastic notion of
‘symphony’ beyond the breaking point. And, as many scholars have noted,
Nikon borrowed some of his most telling images – for example, likening the
Church to the sun and secular government to the moon – from Papal polemics
ofthehighMiddle Ages.
33
Finally, Nikon’sattitudes rancounter to the tendency
of governments and ecclesiastical leaders all across sixteenth- and seventeenth-
century Europe to collaborate in making the Church a force for maintaining
political cohesion and social order.
In this situation, Alexis had no choice but to replace Nikon. But with
what procedures and on what grounds could a patriarch be deposed? It is
a measure of the tsar’s desperation that his most valuable agent in arrang-
ing Nikon’s deposition was Paisios Ligarides, a former apostate to Roman
Catholicism who styled himself Metropolitan of Gaza, an office from which
he had been deposed. After a local ecclesiastical council in 1666 was unable to
reach a compromise whereby Nikon would abdicate the patriarchate, but
maintain his episcopal dignity and administrative control of his favourite
monasteries, the government chose a more radical solution, an ‘ecumeni-
cal’ council of Eastern Orthodoxy with the participation of the other patri-
archs, only two of whom actually appeared. Its decisions were a foregone
conclusion. On 12 December 1666, the council deposed Nikon for derelic-
tion of duty, insulting the tsar and mistreating the clergy, reduced him to the
rank of an ordinary monk, and imprisoned him in the remote Ferapontov
monastery.
Old Belief and the official Church after 1666
Thegovernmentandits ecclesiasticalalliesdealtwiththe criticsofthereformed
liturgyin a similar fashion.Takinga reconciliatory position,the local council of
1666 had proclaimed that the new rites were correct, but avoided condemning
32 Palmer, Patriarch and Tsar, vol. i; Nikon, Refutation.
33 Contrast M. V. Zyzykin, Patriarkh Nikon. Ego gosudarstvennye i kanonicheskie idei, 3 vols.
(Warsaw: Sinodal’naia Tipografiia, 1931–8) with Kapterev, Patriarkh Nikon.
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traditional Russian practices. Several of the leaders of the opposition, partic-
ularly Ivan Neronov and Aleksandr of Viatka, reconciled themselves with the
new dispensation in order not to divide the body of Christ. Others resisted to
the bitter end.
The ecumenical council of 1666–7 settled the issue simply and radically. It
declared that only the reformed liturgy was true Orthodox usage and con-
demned traditional Russian practices and the Stoglav which sanctioned them
as heretical. Simultaneously, its representatives exerted intense pressureon the
recalcitrant critics of the newliturgy to recant.One, NikitaDobrynin, yielded –
temporarily as it turned out. Five others – Avvakum, Lazar’, Epifanii, Nikifor
and deacon Fedor – held out. All were defrocked, two had their tongues cut
out for insulting the tsar, and all were sent to prison in Pustozersk on the Arctic
coast.
The councils of 1666–7 had far-reaching implications for the future of the
Russian Church. They made clear that Tsar Alexis and his advisers – the
secular government and its ecclesiastical allies – had decisive power over
the Church. Thereafter any religious dissenters understood correctly that
the state was also their enemy. Moreover, for better or worse, in exercising
its leadership of ecumenical Orthodoxy, Alexis’s government chose to make
scholars from Ukraine and the Greek world and their local disciples the
intellectual leaders of the Russian Church.
The decisions of 1666–7 appeared to have restored peace and uniformity to
the Russian Church. Reality soon proved to be far more complicated. Even in
disgrace and prison, Nikon retained the allegiance of many of the faithful who
revered him as the true patriarch and turned to him for spiritual counsel. He
remained intransigent in his belief that the state – the agent of the Antichrist –
had trampled on the rights of the Church. Nevertheless, in 1681, Alexis’s son,
Fedor, gave him permission to return to his beloved New Jerusalem although
he died before reaching it.
The enforcement of the reformed liturgy seemed to proceed successfully.
As Michels has shown, the Printing Office quickly sold each printing of the
new service books and, by 1700, the new liturgical texts had spread to even the
most remote parts of the realm.
34
Once again, however, matters were not so
simple.
The determined defenders of traditional Russian practices – the Old Believ-
ers – understood full well that, after 1667, there could be no compromise with
34 Michels, War,pp.28–30, 143–4.
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the official Church or the state. Avvakum and his fellow prisoners smuggled
virulent attacks on the new order to small groups of supporters in Moscow
and elsewhere. Their execution at the stake in 1681 only added the authority
of martyrdom to their teachings. Ironically, they agreed with Nikon, their old
enemy, that the reign of the Antichrist, precursor of the End Time, had begun.
During the 1670s, persecution and intimidation – or widespread indifference
to the liturgical reforms, as Michels argues – limited the number of open
adherents of the Old Belief.
Yet the decisions of 1666–7 had brought not peace but the sword. Outbursts
of violent resistance to the state and the Church became a regular feature of
the Russian landscape in the last decades of the seventeenth century. Local
grievances fuelled each uprising: opposition to the reformed Church and its
new liturgy also played a prominent part in the rebels’ demands. In the most
dramatic instance, the Solovetskii monastery, long a law unto itself, rebelled
against the imposition of the new liturgy and held out against besieging gov-
ernment troops from 1668 until 1676. Even though its surviving defenders were
massacred, its example strengthened the determination of other opponents of
the new order in state and Church. For example, Old Belief was a significant
element in the resistance of the Don cossacks to Moscow’s administrative
control.
The bloody uprising in Moscowin 1682, in which Old Believers led by Nikita
Dobrynin joined forces with the mutinous garrison, made the explosive mix-
ture of political and religious opposition unmistakably clear. When Sophia
emerged from the crisis as regent for her two brothers, her government issued
the decree of December 1684 which mandated death at the stake for all unre-
pentant Old Believers and severe penalties for anyone who sheltered them.
Her government sent troops to enforce the law even in the most remote areas
of the country.
35
The government’s intransigence elicited equally militant responses. Scat-
tered groups of religious radicals had already demonstrated the ultimate form
ofprotestagainst thepowers of this world– suicide by fire.Followingtheir lead,
in the 1680s and 1690s, groups of militants seized isolated monasteries and vil-
lages – notoriously the Paleostrovskii monastery in 1687 and 1689 and Pudozh
in 1693 – and, when government forces attacked them, burned themselves
alive rather than surrender. These episodes of mass suicide which combined
social banditry and religious fanaticism profoundly shocked the government,
35 Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, Sobranie pervoe, 45 vols. (St Petersburg:
Tipografiia II Otdeleniia S.I.V. Kantseliarii, 1830–43), vol. ii,pp.647–50 (no. 1102).
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