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History of the Church of Russia

A. N. Mouravieff, tr. Blackmore, 1842

8. Philaret, Third Patriarch, A.D. 1620

Theophanes, first of all, at the recommendation of the Tsar, and in concert with the synod of the clergy, earnestly entreated the Metropolitan Philaret, who had suffered so much, to undertake the exalted dignity of patriarch. They were long refused by the prelate, who, at the very moment of his liberation, and when he was now within the frontier of his country, had refused to proceed farther, in consequence of having learned that the enemies who had set him at liberty were trying to work upon the filial tenderness of the Tsar, to obtain further concessions, beyond those stipulated for in the treaty. Having been tried by all manner of misfortunes for the space of twenty years, made a monk against his will, banished, separated from his family, torn by force from his Church, insulted, and lastly, having pined nine years in captivity, the old man, worn out, wished only for a quiet life, and was with difficulty persuaded by the Tsar, the patriarch, and the synod, to adorn the throne of St. Peter¹. Thus, for the third time since the institution of the patriarchate, its throne was ascended by a Confessor, and the nine years widowhood of the Church of Moscow was at length terminated. The pseudo-patriarch, the traitor Ignatius, had fled just before the accession of Michael to Poland. The patriarch of Jerusalem himself performed the consecration of the great Philaret, and, by a statutory letter, confirmed for ever the rights granted at the institution of Job by the Most Holy Jeremiah, patriarch of Constantinople. Thus was brought about an event remarkable in the annals of the world, which has in no country nor at any time been repeated, of a father as patriarch and his son as sovereign governing together the kingdom.

The Patriarch Theophanes delayed not to vindicate Dionysius, who was still suffering, before the new primate of Moscow, and promised, in testimony of the justice of his cause, to procure and send letters declaratory, after consulting with the other Eastern patriarchs; and this he afterwards performed. For the Most Holy Philaret continued zealously to apply himself to the correction of the service-books of the Church. The archimandrite was set at liberty, and returned to the Lavra, which his exploits had covered with glory, and there he had the satisfaction of solemnly receiving his deliverer, and of seeing the Lord of Jerusalem humble himself before the relics of the venerable Sergius: he presented to Theophanes the brave monks who had fought together with himself for their country, who found that their wounds received in battle served them still as the best remembrancers for weeping and sighing over their sins.

Carrying with him the benedictions of Northern Russia, the blessed Theophanes departed for the South, and visited Kieff, the ancient mother of Orthodoxy, which had suffered much from the want of governors to her Church. The king, Sigismund, notwithstanding his persecutions, acknowledged Theophanes as a patriarch, and ordered due honours to be paid him, though he afterwards acted inconsistently, and seemed to question his dignity. Being zealous for the promotion of learning among the clergy, Theophanes established, in the name of the patriarch of Constantinople, the Brotherhood of the Epiphany as a Stauropegia, that is, to depend immediately upon the Œcumenical Lord, and gave them his benediction for the institution of a school in it for the Greeko-Slavonic and the Latin-Polish languages, and united to it the Brotherhood of Mercy, a house for the reception of strangers, which was converted into an academical Inn for poor scholars. Sagaidachny, the hetman of the Cossacks beyond the Falls, disposed of all his property in favour of this new house, and himself ended there in prayer a life of military exploits.

When by the long stay of the patriarch in Kieff the orthodox had begun gradually to hold up their heads again, the reverend clergy and the nobility being assembled, with the hetman, from the neighbouring towns, on the festival of the Assumption, entreated Theophanes to give them at length a head to their Church, and pastors, of which Little Russia had been so long deprived. After the example of former patriarchs, he solemnly consecrated in the Lavra Job Boretsky, hegumen of the monastery of St. Michael, as metropolitan of Kieff, and two others, the Archimandrite Meletius Smotretsky, rector of the seminary at Wilna, to be archbishop of Polotsk, and Joseph Courtsevich for the see of Vladimir in Volhynia. He afterwards consecrated to the other remaining Sees, Isaac to Loutsk, Isaiah to Peremuishla, Paisius to Kholm, and Abram, a Greek, to Pinsk. Thus he restored all the vacant dioceses; and having exhorted all to stand firm in defence of the faith, he returned in peace to his own country.

Upon this followed a renewal of the intrigues of the Uniates, and a violent persecution on the part of the government against the orthodox bishops, whose legitimacy it refused to recognise, although it had not interfered to prevent their consecration. The Metropolitan Job was obliged to send the Bishop Joseph to the diet of Warsaw for his own justification and that of all the other prelates; but, notwithstanding that the assurance which the king received from Turkey of the full powers of the Patriarch Theophanes mollified him somewhat toward the persons of the bishops, the persecutions against the orthodox Church did not cease. The Stauropegia of the Theophany in Kieff was destroyed by the Uniates; in Wilna and Loutsk the Orthodox churches were converted into inns; in Orsha, in Mogileff, Mstislaff, Grodno, and other places, the churches were sealed up; in Minsk, they gave the Church lands to a Mahometan mosque; in Lvoff and Khelm the orthodox priests dared not shew themselves with the Holy Gifts, nor openly bury the dead; the monasteries were emptied, the priests and monks tortured, and the new bishops were prevented from having free communication with their flocks. Jehosaphat, the Uniate archbishop of Polotsk, surpassed all others in the atrocity of his persecutions of the orthodox: he even insulted the bodies of those who had been buried; and irritated the people to such a degree, that he was himself murdered in Vitebsk; he was added, by the Romans, to the list of their martyrs: at the same time the Cossacks also of the Horde beyond the Falls, who alone stood firm for orthodoxy, and had put down in Kieff the violence of the Uniates, drowned in the Dnieper Anthony, the hegumen of the Vidoubets monastery, and vicar of the Uniate metropolitan Joseph.

The unhappy end of Jehosaphat cost the orthodox Church one of her most learned pastors, Meletius archbishop of Polotsk, who had distinguished himself by his writings in her defence. He was unjustly accused by the Polish government of having instigated the murder of Jehosaphat, and was obliged to fly into Greece, where he wandered three years, thinking that in the mean time the accusation would die away. At length, moved by fear, he pusillanimously gave himself up to the party of the Uniates, and wrote his Apology in censure of the orthodox Church. The Metropolitan Job convoked a synod in Kieff, and compelled Meletius to perform public penance in the church, and even to tear his own book. But Meletius Smotritsky, as soon as he had returned into his diocese, and settled himself in the Dermansky monastery, which he selected on account of its contiguity to Poland, published a second edition of his first Apology, apostatized decidedly from orthodoxy, and even made a journey to Rome, to do homage to the pope, who conferred on him the title of Archbishop of Hierapolis; from that time Polotsk ceased to be reckoned in the list of orthodox dioceses. Both metropolitans, Job of Kieff, and the Uniate Joseph, convoked synods, the one in Kieff the other in Lvoff, of the bishops of their side; the one for the preservation of his torn and scattered flock, the other for the extension of his; while the royal diet at Warsaw confirmed the rights of both Confessions, though rather in word than deed. The death of the persecutor Sigismund, and the accession of Vladislaff IV., who proclaimed, on coming to the crown, free liberty to all Confessions, did no more than excite short-lived hopes, destined soon to be disappointed.

In the mean time the government of Moscow took advantage of the temporary armistice with Poland, to make reforms in the regulation both of civil and ecclesiastical affairs, under the joint and concordant superintendance of Michael and Philaret, to whom his affectionate son even gave the title of Great Sovereign². The internal order of government was partially changed. The Council of the Boyars remained on its old foundation, that is, as the council of the Tsar in all matters of importance; but the variety of business required more intermediaries between the sovereign and his people, than only the voivodes and deputies, or governors, who administered justice in the provinces in the name of the Tsar. Separate courts were established in Moscow, which were empowered to take cognizance of the affairs of all the towns of the empire, and even to try the governors. The celebrated edict of the Tsar Theodore, by which the peasants were forbidden to change their feudal lords at will, which had been revoked by Godounoff, and re-enacted by Shouesky, was finally confirmed by Michael; and in his time the Census-Books were first established, containing a description of the towns, and of the divisions of the manors. Moved by filial affection, the Tsar extended his father’s privileges, and gave more splendour also to the patriarchal court. Previously to this, in the year 1599, Boris, as a proof of his good will to the patriarch Job, had renewed the patent given by John to the Metropolitan Athanasius, his confessor, to this effect, “That all the people of the Primate, his officers, servants, and serfs, were freed from all dependance upon the royal boyars, governors, and judges; were not to be judged by them for any crimes, except for crimes against life, and those were first to be certified from the patriarchal court; they were also freed from all government imposts.” This ancient right of our clergy to civil immunity remained unchanged, during the reigns of Basil, Michael, and his son, down to the times of Nikon. The Tsar Michael Theodorovich further ordained, that in all country places and towns, the monasteries, churches, and lands, which belonged to the special province of the patriarchs, should have the peculiar privilege of being judged in civil matters only in the Court of the Great Palace, which was supposed to be before the sovereign in person; and that all archimandrites, hegumens, priests, deacons, and clerks, of these houses and parish churches, with their lands and dependencies, should be subject to the jurisdiction of the patriarch alone, except in capital cases; that, in fine, none should interfere with his court, petty court, tithes, and dues, which he according to his own judgment might impose on the clergy and the parishes of his province; while the privilege was reserved to the Trinity Lavra, on account of its services, as well as to two other convents, that of the Ascension in the Kremlin, and of the Novodaëvichy, in which so many royal nuns had gone to their rest, since the time of John, of depending on the jurisdiction of the patriarch alone. But at the same time the Tsar’s edict, in confirmation of the former edicts of John to the same effect, forbade the monasteries to acquire, either by purchase or gift, any new manors or other real property, the quantity of which held by the Church had increased enormously during the years of prosperity.

Russia, confined on the West by the strong hands of Poland and Sweden, extended herself with a gigantic growth towards the East. Siberia, which could scarcely be said to have been more than discovered by Yermak, and that imperfectly, had now, by the end of fifty years, already more than half of it become a Russian province. Adventurers of the Cossacks, and hunters, with little assistance from the government, had continued to subject boundless deserts in the names of Godounoff, the pretended Demetrius, and Shouesky, at the very time that they themselves perhaps were losing their uncertain thrones in Moscow: Altin, the khan of the Mongols, heard at length, in the regions high up toward the sources of the Amour, the name of Michael. Like the Varagians of old, the Cossacks first ascended, and then descended again the courses of rivers to their confluence with others, erecting small forts at their mouths, with two or three armed men as guardians of their new possessions, while the savage inhabitants came to pay them tribute in furs, and bowed before the greatness of unseen Russia, which had awed them by the exploits of her sons. With about as little risk, the New World was subjugated by Cortez and Pizarro. Siberia was in like manner a new world for Russia. By degrees towns arose in it further and further to the East, and in the midst of the uninhabited desert, by that piety which was peculiar to our ancestors, convents were erected at the same time with the towns; first one in Verchotoursk, which was founded by a certain hermit named Jonah, then in Tiumene, and so also in other places. But in the mean time this extensive kingdom had no sort of spiritual government; the fierce Cossacks paid scarcely any obedience to the commanders of the Tsar; they gave themselves up to the grossest licentiousness; and for wives they were used to carry off women by violence out of Russia, or from among the heathens: their disorders attracted the attention of the Most Holy Philaret.

Although, in consequence of the joint recommendation of the patriarchs Jeremiah and Job, the number of the Russian dioceses had before been considerably increased, Hermogenes had still felt the necessity of erecting a new archiepiscopal throne in the distant city of Astrachan, and had consecrated Theodosius as its first occupant: and now again when, during our civil dissensions, the kingdom of Siberia had been conquered, the Patriarch Philaret could not find any better means for its internal organization, than the formation of the new archbishopric of Tobolsk and Siberia. The choice of the patriarch fell on Cyprian, the archimandrite of the Khoutinsky monastery, a man illustrious for his sufferings: he first visited this distant flock, and in the four years that his episcopate lasted, laid a solid foundation for the future. Being urged by the letters of the patriarch to attempt a reformation of the morals of the Cossacks, he began by degrees, with the assistance of the voivodes, to extend over them his beneficent influence, and in order to confirm them in the observance of our divine religion, he founded new convents among them in Neviansk, Tagila, Tara, Tomsk, and Tourouchansk; he beautified the Znamensky convent in Tobolsk itself; and brought into more perfect order those convents both of men and women, which had been previously founded in Verchotoura and Tourinsk; he also obtained a grant of land for the new archiepiscopal residence, in order to make it independent, in that wild region, for the benefit of his successors, he himself being soon translated to Moscow, to be metropolitan of the Steeps, and from thence again to his native city of Novogorod. Cyprian left behind him a memory to last for ever in Siberia, where he collected from the lips of the followers of Yermak, who were still living, their tales of his distant expeditions; and composed from thence a chronicle, which has preserved to posterity the exploits of that adventurous leader.

The cares of the patriarch extended equally to Novogorod in his own vicinity as to the distant Tobolsk. Grieving for, and being anxious on account of the orthodox children of the Church, who had been torn away by the treaty of Stoloboff, and made subjects of Sweden, he wrote to Macarius, metropolitan of Novogorod, to continue to govern them as his spiritual flock; while the Swedes on their part offered no impediment to their keeping up their connection with their former pastor. Thus the bond of ecclesiastical unity was preserved unbroken, in spite of their civil separation, till they were reunited to Russia. To the successor of Macarius was intrusted by the patriarch the charge of destroying certain copies of the Church Directory circulated in all the North, which were full of gross errors, and had been printed without the cognizance of the Most Holy Hermogenes, by the Directory keeper of the Trinity Lavra, a wicked heretic, named Longinus, who had put many personal affronts upon the holy Archimandrite Dionysius on account of his zeal and care for the books. These same Directories were made some time later the pretext for the outbreak at the Solovetsky convent.

Philaret himself was principally occupied with preparing a correct edition of a new Trebnik³ and other service books and books of an ecclesiastical nature, wishing to preserve his flock from the publications of the Western Unia, such as the Evangelical Instructions of the Archimandrite Tranquillion, which were dangerous to orthodoxy. Carried on further by his zeal, and by his sense of those calamities which he had himself seen caused by the innovations of Rome, he decreed in council, on the occasion of certain questions being proposed by Jonah metropolitan of the Steeps, that they should restore the former custom disused by Ignatius under the pretender, of rebaptizing those who were converted from Latinism to Orthodoxy. It was only in the reign of the Emperor Peter, that this custom was done away with, as inconsistent with the ancient canons of the Church; but in the days of Philaret, the persecutions of the Uniates led men to widen the breach with Rome; the orthodox bishops were expelled from their dioceses, and among those who sought refuge in Russia was Joseph, the bishop of Vladimir in Volhynia.

The political horizon of Russia was again overclouded, during the latter days of Philaret, by an unsuccessful war with Poland, after the expiration of the armistice. The invasion by King Vladislaff, and the shameful surrender under the walls of Smolensk of the Boyar Shein, who had formerly distinguished himself by the defence of the same town, cost that commander his life, and Russia many sacrifices. Besides the loss of her soldiers, and of the money, which by the decision of a council had been raised from the monasteries for the use of the government, she was compelled, after a short war, to conclude at Viazura a new treaty still more oppressive than that of Stoloboff, by which she lost not only Smolensk, but also Chernigoff, and other towns of Seversk. But the great authors of her glorious deliverance were not now alive to be witnesses of so humiliating a peace. The Bursar Abram had long since retired, in fulfilment of a vow which he had made, to the Solovetsky monastery, where he had originally received the tonsure, and there he died; and a year before his own decease the Patriarch Philaret interred with due honours in Moscow the holy Archimandrite Dionysius.

The great prelate himself departed this life on the day of the festival of the Protection of the Mother of God, who had given him as a protection to the land of Russia, in the midst of the tears of his country, and to the inconsolable grief of his son; Michael lost in him not only a father and a patriarch, but also an experienced assistant in the government, who according to the testimony of the contemporary chronicle, “rightly divided the word of God, confirmed the orthodox faith, and converted many heathens to Christianity:” he also improved the internal administration of the provinces, by allowing no toleration of lawless violence in any part of the kingdom, while he made compensation to those who had suffered, and had served their country during the interregnum. He was respected by all the neighbouring powers; and received as a present from the Shah Abbas of Persia, then famous in the East, the Seamless Coat of our Saviour, which, according to an ancient tradition, was brought into Georgia by one of the soldiers who parted his garments at the foot of the Cross, and was preserved for many ages in the cathedral of Mtschet⁴. Abbas could not have selected a better guardian for such a holy relic; and the Tunic of our Lord, which was distinguished by the working of numerous cures in the Russian capital, was placed by the patriarch in the cathedral of the Assumption, under the shade of a brazen tabernacle⁵, near which he himself is laid down to his everlasting rest.

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