ABSTRACT

As the essentially medieval Muscovite state made its first tentative moves towards modernity during the seventeenth century, it was perhaps inevitable that this process had a knock-on effect on the church. Since the acceptance of Christianity by Prince Vladimir of Kiev in 988, the Orthodox church had held a religious monopoly over ethnic Russian subjects of the tsar. Heresy was a state crime; offenders were liable to be executed.1 The crown gave the church extensive judicial privileges too, and in return the government expected wholehearted support from the clergy. However, the traditional relationship between church and state gradually began to change as Muscovy embarked on the metamorphosis by which it eventually developed into Imperial Russia. This change, detectable from early in the seventeenth century, accelerated after Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich succeeded to the throne in 1645. Modernization is a term which does not easily fit the Russian Orthodox church, an institution notable throughout Christendom for its steadfast adherence to and reverence for tradition. If, however, the idea of modernization is applied in its loosest conception, described by Simon Dixon as “a programme of reform required to bring an allegedly outmoded institution up-to-date and fit to face the future,”2 then the Muscovite church could indeed be said to have undergone a process of modernization during the seventeenth century. Partly in response to changes from without, and partly in response to complaints from within, the Orthodox church itself initiated reforms within its own ranks in order to eradicate malpractice and improve inefficiency in clerical literacy, ordination, remuneration, episcopal supervision and in rules regarding widowed clergy. Some of these reforms were sweeping, others were subtle, but most were undertaken by the monastic elite in response to lobbying by ordinary secular clergymen. This article is not about episcopal reform per se, a subject covered elsewhere,3 but rather considers more specifically how reforms undertaken by both church and state affected the secular clergy. The Russian Orthodox clerical estate consisted of two parallel orders: the secular married clergy, known as the “white” clergy beloe dukhovenstvo), and the so-called “black” monastic clergy (chernoe dukhovenstvo). It is the “white” clergy, who were ordained as priests, deacons and minor clerics

1 PSZ, vol. 2, no. 1163, 647-50 (1685).