ABSTRACT
The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) is a complex institution housing different, and sometimes conflicting, currents of opinion. Many scholars have paid attention to the prevalence of Russian Orthodox trends and consider them as comprising 'reformists' and 'traditionalists', 'modernists and traditionalists', 'reactionaries and progressives' and 'authoritarians and reformists'. The ROC has a formal hierarchy in which the Church leadership is empowered with the authority to canonize saints. In the Orthodox Church, the image of the bishop guiding his flock reflects the Church hierarchy ideal, according to which the enlightened leaders show the way and set the norms. The belief in the superiority of the Russian Church took a serious blow in the middle of the seventeenth century, when ROC entered a period of deep crisis caused by Patriarch Nikon's harshly imposed Church reforms. The canonization of saints thus became a controversial practice because it drew attention to the patriarch's severe persecution of the Old Believers.
