Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
144
Old Believers
Russian Orthodoxy is among the world's most ritual-oriented religions, yet
almost since its birth more than 1,000 years ago, believers have differed over
which rituals are more spiritually “correct.” In the 1600s, a century after the
Protestant Reformation began sweeping western Europe, the powerful and
popular leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Nikon, introduced
major reforms to church ritual. Ironically, many of the changes were intended
to bring the church back to its earlier traditions, but he set off a furor among
many believers who accused him of tampering with their faith. The period of
reforms later became known as the Schism. Even today, pockets of Old Believ-
ers who refuse to accept the “new” rules can be found in remote Russian forests
and even in a few big-city congregations.
Nikon's reforms eventually gained sway, so that believers now cross them-
selves with two fingers instead of three, and church architecture abandoned
the tent-roofed tower (or
shatyor
) used in St. Basil's Cathedral and other pre-
Nikonian cathedrals. A few decades later, Peter the Great further modernized
and westernized the church by ordering Orthodox men to shave their
beards—previously considered a sin. Peter also introduced the Julian calendar,
which dated from the birth of Christ instead of from creation as the earlier Rus-
sian calendar had. Implementation of the new rules was unforgiving, and
thousands of Old Believers fled into the forests to escape forced conversions.
Those who were caught often burned themselves to death, singing hymns as
they went up in flames. The Old Believers eventually won the freedom to wor-
ship under Catherine the Great in 1771, and some families returned to the big
cities, though they were often marginalized.
The Old Believers (
staroobryadtsy
in Russian), also known as the Dissenters
(raskolniki),
eventually split into subsects, including the relatively liberal
pop-
ovtsy,
who were willing to deal with Orthodox priests; the
bezpopovtsy,
who
totally rejected the official church and the state; the
skoptsy,
who castrated
themselves to demonstrate their faith; and the
khlisty,
who believed in salva-
tion through sin. Grigory Rasputin, controversial advisor to Czar Nicholas II and
his wife, Alexandra, was rumored to belong to this last group.
For a glimpse at the Old Believers' world, visit
Nikolsky Old Believers' Com-
mune (Nikolskoye Staroobryadtsoye Kladbishche)
in eastern Moscow. The
striking Gothic-style church was commissioned in 1790, and its aristocratic
sponsors included the respected Ryabushkinsky and Morozov families. They
spent fortunes acquiring the religious art—dating from before the Schism—
displayed in the church. Its unusual architectural features include sunburst
windows, obelisks, and elaborate reliefs. The commune, at 29 Ulitsa Rogozhskiy
Posyolok, holds services at 8am and 6pm Monday through Saturday, and at
7am and 10am Sunday (
&
495/361-5198;
metro: Ploshchad Ilyicha, Tagans-
kaya).
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