Elena Vladimirovna Belyakova,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The Place of the Printed Kormchaia in the Formation of the Ideology of the Old Believers
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2023-2-6
The article considers the importance of Kormchaia for the formation of the Old Believer ideology. Particular attention is given to the Tale of the Establishment of the Patriarchate, which was added to Kormchaia at the last stage of its editing by Patriarch Nikon. For the first time, this text included a letter on the establishment of the patriarchate in 1589 with the well-known words about Moscow as the Third Rome, put into the mouth of Jeremiah II. The legend was used by Solovetsky scribes in the collection of cellarer Gerontius. Quotations from it are also given in the second, third and fifth Solovki petitions. Chapters from the Tale were also included in the Nicodemus collections. Nikita Dobrynin also used it in his Petition, mounting phrases from the Tale of the Establishment of the Patriarchate into his text. The Tale was also used by the monk Avraamy and the deacon Feodor. The Tale was also used in the Answers of Alexander the Deacon and the Pomorskie Answers. For the Old Believers, the very facts of praising Russian piety by Patriarch Jeremiah of Constantinople and Patriarch Feofan of Jerusalem were of particular importance, which weakened the support of Nikon’s reforms by the Eastern patriarchs. The Tale contributed to the creation of a discourse about piety shining in Rus’ before the reforms. And at the same time, the thesis about the death of piety was learned from the initial preface to the Kormchaia. No less important for the Old Believer tradition was the chapter 71 of the Kormchaia on the immutability of tradition and the Instruction to Bishops on the preservation of church rules. The preservation of church rules becomes a justification for the rejection of innovations considered as heretical. With the edition of the Kormchaia, the principle of citing the rules changed: the general statements about loyalty to the rules of the holy fathers were replaced by an exact (up to the list of Kormchaia) indication of the rules. The canons are used primarily in discussions about marriage, the priesthood, and attitudes towards the mainstream church. The Old Believers developed a new, legalistic approach, which largely determined their mentality. This approach developed into a legal one, and there was an assessment of persecuting the Old Believers as violation of the church laws. The residence of the Old Believers in compact groups and the use of communities in the mining industry contributed to the emergence of collective appeals to the government demanding changes in the laws on the Old Believers.
Publishing: 28/02/2023
The article has been received by the editor on 03.01.2023
How to cite: Belyakova E.V. The Place of the Printed Kormchaia in the Formation of the Ideology of the Old Believers // Historical Courier, 2023, No. 2 (28), pp.74–90. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2023/ISTKURIER-2023-2-06.pdf]
Links: Issue 2 2023
Keywords: Kormchaia, Old Believer ideology, preservation of tradition, legalism, condemnation of persecution, petitions to the authorities