A RUSSIAN BECKET.*
THESE " Replies " are a part of the documents of a remarkable trial which commenced in the year 1660, and resulted in the degradation and imprisonment of the Patriarch Nicon, who bad been a kind of Becket to the Tsar, his patron. This transaction was in itself a revolution, for the position of the acknowledged Head of the Russian Church, incom- patible as Alexis may have deemed it with his own sovereignty, was not to be assailed without an extensive subversion of canonical and constitutional precedents. But for- all common human digestion, these documents require a some- what fuller historical introduction than that with which Mr.
Palmer has favoured us in this volume. His index and appendixes show, nevertheless, the most comprehensive study of his subject, and the deficiencies of his editing seem chiefly attributable to an eagerness to vent his own anti-State-Church opinions, and to write oracularly about the doom prepared for apostacy, Hellenisin, Anglicanism, &c., within the space that he should have used to follow closely the fortunes of the war (between Church and State) in the one particular episode he has brought before us. It will be divined that the disquisitions in Mr. Palmer's nominal introduction are palpably one-sided, and that he has deplored the encroachments of rulers on the autonomy and embryonic autocracy of the Greek clergy, without any considera- tion of the clergy's encroachments in secular polity, or the con- sequences that might have been involved in their proceeding- uuresisted. We must acknowledge that he apologises for all omissions by promising a further publication on the life of Nicon ; and he excuses the absence of such an epitome as we now miss by remarking, that "we have had enough of histories which represent only the views of their writers, and which are the more misleading- the more talent and research are displayed in their composition. We prefer, therefore, to give documents so selected and put together that the history contained in them may stand out of itself The Patriarch and Me Fear: the Replies of Me Rumble Rican, by the Mercy of Gorr Patriarch, against the Questions of the Royer Simeon Streshneff, and the Answers of the Metropolitan of Gaza, Paisius Ligarides. Translated from the Buss by William Palmer, M.A., late Fellow of 31agdalen College, Oxford. London: Trlibner and Co. 1871.
for those at least that are capable of being instructed by it." According to this plan, we are expected to get our first historical
instruction about a trial from the pleas of the defendant, includ- ing only a summary recapitulation of the charges and of the plain- tiff's arguments. The translator has, moreover, remarked, "We are doing like the epic poets who carry their readers at once in medics res." He seems rather to have followed the course Mr. Browning would have exemplified if the first parts issued of the Ring and Ills Book had all represented the same side of the controversy. But the very nature of Mr. Palmer's illustrations betrays an imaginative proclivity, by which his researches in the philosophy
of history seem to us to be too much characterised. We are con- tent, however this may be, to take up the commencement of the "Replies" as passively as we might the most graphic exordium of an epic or dramatic poem :-
"In your preface [Nicon says to his adversaries] it is written, Oar Lord Jesus Christ has said, "I am the way, and the life, and the truth," &e.' Why do ye begin from truth ? Ye have written all that ye have written without regard to truth, as shall be shown farther on. But know that ye are of your father the Devil, and the lasts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abideth not in the truth, because there is no truth ia him. When he speaketh a lie he epeaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Tell me, Simeon, what Scriptures led thee to bear witness against me of things thou knoweet not, though the Lord says, Judge not, that ye be not judged,' &o."
There is an appearance in these sentences of scurrility, irrelevancy, and prolixity which we must own is extensively diffused through the 600 broad pages which contain the replies of the Humble Nicon. Only his scurrility becomes learned when he quotes the fathers and the canons, with their glosses, and the Apostolic Constitutions or the Donation of Constantine as glibly as he has done the above well-known texts ; and this fact is sufficient to make his depositions repay a cursory inspection, as well as almost any antiquarian matter. But the style and temper of the passage remind us forcibly
of the last of several literary verdicts on Nicon, which his transla- tor has had the candour to refer to, as follows :—"Many say that he was deficient in Christian meekness ; others that he was indis- creet, harsh, and impatient ; others, that he was a regular mujik."
After all, however, we are not criticizing an epic poem, nor a personage created by human imagination ; so that we have no particular interest in adhering to our first impressions regarding the hero's character. Let us see how they may be affected by a few memoranda concerning his life and trial which we have put together by comparing our translator's index with Mouravieff's history of the Church of Russia. (We shall not deviate from Mr. Palmer's mode of transcribing Russian names, though we often
had it very irregular, as in " Michaelovich," where ch stands for two different letters, an aspirate and a sibilant ; and in " BaBilivich," where 1, and v stand for the same letter.)
Alexis Michaelovich ascended the throne in 1645, after the long reign of the first Romanoff, being at that time in his seventeenth year. Nicon was the son of a peasant, whose home he once secretly quitted for the purpose of becoming a monk. He was prevailed on to return and marry, was ordained a parish priest, and removed to Moscow. He lost all his children, and within ten years retired to a monastery, having persuaded his wife to do likewise. After connecting himself with three communities in succession (so far as was consistent with his peculiar austerities) he became hegoumen of Kojeozersk, and subsequently undertook an errand in Moscow, where he found favour with Alexis, and was promoted in 1646 to be archimandrite of the Novospas, and in 1648 to be Metropolitan of Novgorod. He had already received many peculiar tokens of the Tsar's confidence, and began to exercise some influence in the civil administration. In the same year Alexis promulgated a new code (professedly a mere digest of the civil and canon law), in which the judicial antonomy of the clergy was invaded by the estab- lishment of a "Monastery Court," consisting of lay members, but empowered to judge "in civil suits against spiritual persons and in mattersconcerningtheirproperty." This code, which we may call the Russian "Constitutions of Clarendon," was subscribed not only among the laity, but by the then Patriarch, and all his clergy, not excepting Nicon, though he pleads subsequently that he was overruled by his superiors in acknowledging laws which were destined to be the principal source of his dimensions with his sovereign. Meantime, he went on rendering the latter important services. In 1650 he appeased, at the risk of his life, a great insurrection in Novgorod ; and in 1652 he suggested and superin- tended the translation of the relics of the Russian St. Philip, thus gratifying the Tsar by making atonement for the violent deed of his ancestor, John the Terrible. He founded the Voskresensk and other monasteries, to which Alexia became a benefactor. In 1652 he was entreated by Alexis to accept the patriarchate, to which he had been elected. He consented only on certain conditions, viz., that the Tsar and the Boyars should promise and vow in the Church to obey him in spiritual matters, and suffer him to govern the Church according to the canons. Here was an ominous trans- action for the Monastery Court, but for a time nothing seems to have been said on that subject.
The new Patriarch had the co-operation of Alexis in his own correction of the Russian canonical books ; and he, on his part, helped the Tsar materially in the negotiations by which the Ukraine was united to Russia. Alexis accordingly treated him at this time with great deference, and pressed him to accept the title of Great Hossoudar or Lord. But Nicon vexed him by refusing to consecrate a bishop for Lithuania, which was a country, he said, beyond his jurisdiction. After this he had to reprove the Tsar for some uncanonical ordinances (as about the burial of impenitent felons), and above all, for setting the Monastery Court in action ; but a deaf ear was now turned to the Patriarch's exhortations. After receiving venoms affronts, he proceeded in July, 1658, to testify in the Cathedral, as before God and the Church, that the Tsar had broken his oath. He then quitted Moscow, relinquishing the performance of his public functions, and "gave place to wrath," as he afterwards represented, by retiring to the Voskresenak monastery within his own diocese. It was now alleged that he had renounced the patriarchate; but in his " Replies " we find him denying that he used any words to that effect ; neither did he, as he here insists, abandon his robe, though he put it aside in the usual manner after the completion of the Liturgy. Alexis received him as a patriarch on one subsequent occasion ; yet he presently convoked a synod to declare the office vacant. Thern prelates were inclined to satisfy the Tsar's desires, but they hesitated to pass sentence on their own ecclesiastical superior (against whom several minor charges had been trumped up). Hereupon they accepted the intervention of Paisius Ligarides, ex-patriarch of Gaza, who was recommended by the Patriarch of Constantinople, but by Nicon's account of his antecedents appears to have been rather a disreputable person. The president of the synod, the Boyar Streshneff, demanded the opinion of Paisius on various points of law, which are comprised in the "Questions and Answers" referred to in the title-page of the volume before us. We have not apace to enter into the history of the synod, or into the results of its decisions for the unfortunate Nicon. We will add only afew words on the" Replies" themselves, in which the Patriarch acknowledges no jurisdiction to which he should submit, and spares the persons of none of his adversaries. He claims an authority higher than the Tsar's, and emphatically denounces the latter as an usurper of the Church's rights and a plunderer of God's inheritance. He shows that Paisius has in- curred the censures and curses of the Church for assuming authority beyond his diocese. He tells Streshneff he is an impious man for teaching his dog to imitate the attitude of a priest be- stowing his benediction. The chief interest of the "Replies "will be found in the resolute and consistent enunciation of a doctrine of theocracy, which would look respectable if we could see an end or limit to its consequences. On the other hand, Paisius feels the need of a supreme secular power in the interests of order, and says, respecting the jurisdiction of the Monastery Court, " the judgments of other men than ourselves are best." But in other places he is too often forced to support his views with far-fetched arguments and frivolous illustrations; his quotations from the classical poets are treated by Nicon with a severity somewhat barbaric. The prolixity of the defendant will be excused when the reader surveys the whole extent and the grave social and political import of his theory of Christianity and Christian government. We must excuse, on the same grounds, the bitterness of the controversy, in which there was some apparent reason to think the most sacred interests of posterity had been invaded. We must excuse even the somewhat narrowminded hints which Mr. Palmer throws out respecting the moral of this trial, in consideration of the large and accurate study of ecclesiastical precedents displayed in his appendix. We must further recommend all possessors of Monravieff's History of the Church of Russia to consult the "Replies of Nicon" as a check upon many paragraphs of that author, in which the fear of the censorship has probably caused him to give a too pleasant account of the personal relations between the Patriarch and the Tsar.
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