The Teaching on Execution

It is rarely spiritually helpful, or politically productive, to dwell or hold on to the sufferings inflicted on a people in the past, so long as these offenses have ceased.

In the case of the Old Believers, tortures, imprisonments, and executions have long since ceased, and the atrocities that were committed can no more be held against the contemporary Orthodox than the most severe reaction to them - the rare cases of self-immolation, can be held against the Old Believers.

It is helpful, though, to reflect upon the past, and to understand its meaning. Its context. In this sense, the persecutions are a very important part of the Old Believer story. Essential, even.

For some, the teachings and actions of the state Church in this matter were seen, themselves, as sufficient grounds for separating from it. Bishop Mikhail (Semyonov), in his apology for leaving the synodal Church for the Old Believers, writes:

The old rite — these are the holy steps by which millions ascended to God… These are the sacred relics of a holy past, as dear as the little grave of a mother or father. And so, if people who cling to these holy relics are brutally persecuted, and their sanctities are deliberately, spitefully thrown into the mud, can there be any doubt that these oppressors are not Christians? I mean the oaths against the rite, the mockery of the old rite, the unwillingness to understand how precious these relics ought to be to everyone. Even if there were no errors at all in the church and only this mercilessness existed — I would say: one must leave such a church. In a church that chops up cemetery crosses for firewood, on the grave of my own mother, there is no God, no Christ. And in addition there is outright cruelty, violence toward those who adhere to the old rite. These Old Believers, frozen like ice statues in episcopal courtyards, burned in log houses, deprived of their tongues…

Are not these acts of violence themselves a heresy — acts that found such a terrible expression in Patriarch Joachim’s admission: “we, they say, burn those who blaspheme us” — or in the conclusion of The Rock of Faith that “it is beneficial for heretics to die, for there is no other cure for them greater than death”?

It may be that this heresy again has no name, but that does not prevent it from being a heresy, a distortion of the holy Gospel — the very kind for which St. Martin of Tours once broke communion with Bishop Ithacius and his supporters. But enough for now. I assert that all Christians who value their soul and its salvation were obliged to separate from Nikon’s church for the sake of self-preservation.

The justifications for, and the use of force against heretics has a long and complicated history that goes well beyond the Old Believer Schism. However, in the history of the Church - there are no instances of such a widespread execution of such a teaching as that used against the Old Believers.

It is admitted today that the Old Believers were not, after all, heretics. Therefore, the proper understanding and context of the synodal support and demands for these actions, can perhaps only be answered by the polemicist. But some things are better left unsaid.

Today’s post (below) is a short article from the Russian website Russian Faith (ruvera.ru), and deals with the topic of synodal responsibility for the violence against the Old Believers.

---

The material published on our website [ruvera.ru] titled “Conversation on Persecutions” caused a great resonance. It described a discussion between Old Believer apologists and Synodal missionaries on the topic: “Examination of the reproach made by contemporary Old Believers against the Orthodox Church for the harsh measures applied to their church in former times.” Among the questions sent by readers, one is frequently encountered: “It is widely known that there were persecutions of Christian Old Believers. Today, New Ritualists assure us that their church had no involvement in the persecutions, and that the persecutions were carried out exclusively by the state. Is this true?” Today we publish a selection of facts and documents on this topic.

Indeed, in recent years the opinion has been spreading that the persecutions of Old Believers were initiated by state structures. The figures of the New Rite church, the Synodal church, were supposedly not involved in them.

Undoubtedly, some representatives of the Romanov dynasty—such as Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, Emperors Peter I and Nicholas I—were obsessed with the idea of eradicating the Old Faith. However, their negative attitude toward the old rite and Old Belief was shaped directly under the influence of figures from the New Rite church. Well-known, for example, are the close spiritual relations between Peter I and Archbishop Pitirim of Nizhny Novgorod (Potemkin), as well as between Nicholas I and Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow (Drozdov), which significantly influenced the mood of these statesmen.

However, beyond this, over the centuries the New Rite church developed a real ideological system justifying these persecutions. This approach received the character of official church teaching at the Council of 1666–1667: “And if anyone does not obey, even in one thing of what is commanded by us, or begins to contradict… we shall punish such persons spiritually; and if they begin to despise even our spiritual punishment, we shall add bodily afflictions to them” [1]. This decision of the council was immediately carried out by the tsarist authorities. The Golovin redaction of the “Siberian Chronicle Compilation,” compiled on the orders of Governor Golovin in the 1680s, reports on the decree of Alexei Mikhailovich: “In the year 184 [1676], on February 19, there came the sovereign’s decree to the boyar and voivodes Peter Mikhailovich Saltykov and companions concerning church schismatics who are found in schism, and those people are to be questioned and brought three times. And if they do not repent, they are to be burned and their ashes scattered, so that not even their bones remain. And those who are found to be of young years, those people are to be forcibly brought and punished, and if they do not convert, they are likewise to be burned.”

The necessity of persecutions was also indicated in the acts of the Council of 1681. Patriarch Joachim and the hierarchs appealed to the authorities: “We beseech and pray conciliarly to the Great Prince Theodore Alexeevich, Autocrat of All Great, Little, and White Russia, that those corrupters and apostates, after much church teaching and punishment and after our archpastoral entreaty for their conversion to true repentance, prove obstinate, disobedient to the holy church; and that such opponents the Great Sovereign Tsar and Great Prince Theodore Alexeevich, Autocrat of All Great, Little, and White Russia, order to be sent to the civil court and, according to His Sovereign consideration, to execute judgment on whoever is worthy of what. And concerning this, to send letters to voivodes and officials in the cities and villages who are now in voivodeships, and henceforth to all voivodes and officials to write this into their instructions, so that this matter be firmly under His Sovereign fear; and to landlords and estate owners, and their stewards who have such opponents or will have them, likewise to report in the cities to the hierarchs and voivodes; and where schismatics appear and, upon the hierarchs’ dispatches, prove strong; then the voivodes and officials are to send servicemen after those schismatics.” This council decreed the burning of the Pustozersk prisoners, which was soon carried out by Tsar Theodore Alexeevich, who issued the corresponding decree.

The Tsar heeded the hierarchs’ request and in 1682 signed a charter: “On the Universal Search and Trial of Schismatics (Old Believers)” [2]. In it, the hierarchs of the dominant confession received new powers in the struggle against the Old Faith, and the Tsar commanded secular authorities to assist the New Rite church in every way in the persecutions.

A new decree was developed by Patriarch Joachim and signed by the tsarist authorities in 1684. It was called “On the Punishment of Those Who Spread and Accept Heresies and Schisms.” People accused of “church contradictions” were to be tortured, but if “from the tortures they begin to stand stubbornly in it, and do not bring submission to the holy church,” then “after a threefold questioning at the execution, if they do not submit, burn them” [3]. Those less guilty, after being punished with the knout, were to be held “with great care” in monastic prisons, given “only bread and water” [4].

An even more large-scale intensification of the persecutions was considered at the Council of 1685. Under the presidency of Patriarch Joachim, the council developed an entire code for the persecution of Old Believers. It was signed by Tsarevna Sophia and contained twelve articles devoted to various executions, tortures, and persecutions: “Those schismatics who oppose the holy church, and lay blasphemy upon it, and do not go to church or to church singing or to spiritual fathers for confession, and do not partake of the holy mysteries, and do not admit priests with sanctity and church necessities into their homes, and among Christians with their unseemly words cause scandal and unrest, and stand stubbornly in that thievery: those thieves are to be tortured as to from whom they were taught there, and how long ago, and whom they name; and those named persons are to be taken and questioned and given face-to-face confrontations among themselves, and from the confrontations tortured; and those who from the tortures stand stubbornly in it, and do not bring submission to the holy church, such for such heresy, after a threefold questioning at the execution, if they do not submit, are to be burned in a log house and the ashes scattered.” Those who decided to baptize according to the old rite with three immersions faced serious punishment: “And those people who went to schismatics and were rebaptized by them themselves, and considered the former holy baptism as improper baptism… those who do not bring submission in this… are to be executed by death.” For those baptizing according to the old rite, the following punishment was prescribed: “Those people who went through the villages, and baptized people who were of full age, as well as their children who were of full and minor years, and called the former holy baptism improper… having confessed and communed them, execute them by death without any mercy.”

Patriarch Joachim signed several personal decrees on the persecutions of the ancient Orthodox Christians. In one of them, he obligated diocesan hierarchs and other clergy: “To watch strictly that schismatics do not live in the volosts and in the forests, and where they appear—send them themselves into exile, destroy their refuges, sell their property, and send the money to Moscow.” In another, he ordered the seizure from Old Believers of peasant households, the shops of townspeople, trades—everything was to be taken, and settlements “burned without remainder” [5]. According to the testimony of foreigners, only before Easter 1685 in Moscow, by order of Patriarch Joachim, about ninety Christians preaching the Old Faith were burned in log houses [6].

At the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century, tortures and executions of Old Believers on the spot took place with the direct participation of New Rite diocesan bishops and their officials.

Thus, Metropolitan Cornelius of Novgorod sent protopope Lev Ivanov with streltsy to the Zaonezhye region to search for schismatics. Armed detachments under the command of priests were sent by Archbishop Athanasius (Lyubimov) of Kholmogory. Bishop Philotheus (Leschinsky), appointed Metropolitan of Siberia in 1702, recommended to Peter I the extermination of church schismatics and the destruction of their homes to the foundations.

It is important to note that executions, torments, and persecutions, beginning with the Council of 1666–1667, received an important ecclesiastical-canonical evaluation. In the time of Patriarch Nikon, repressions against religious dissenters had a precedent character and were connected with the personal malice of the persecutors. However, after the Great Moscow Robber Council, they acquired the form of a completed and integral church teaching, conciliarly affirmed and explained in a number of symbolic, catechetical, and theological texts.

A broad substantiation of the teaching on the “execution of the disobedient” was developed in patriarchal and synodal literature at the beginning of the 18th century. In 1700, on the initiative of Patriarch Adrian, a church document was compiled: “Articles on the Episcopal Courts.” In it, the teaching on the execution of the disobedient, the persecution of dissenters, was defended, and the right of church organs to participate in investigative and repressive processes was specified. In particular, in those years the investigation of “church rebels” was conducted by the Patriarchal Chancery and diocesan church courts, which, after issuing a “spiritual” sentence, sent the condemned for punishment to the streltsy and other chanceries for “civil” punishment [7].

A little later, the Synod published the book The Spiritual Sling (Prashchitsa dukhovnaya), which provided an extensive theological justification for the teaching “on the execution of the disobedient.” In several chapters of the book, numerous examples of the killing of sinners and apostates, recorded on the pages of the Old Testament, were cited. On this basis, the conclusion was drawn: “And according to this sacred scripture, just as in the Old Testament Church it was commanded to kill the disobedient, and they were killed. How much more so in the new grace: those who do not submit to the holy Eastern and Great Russian Church ought to be subjected to punishment, for it is fitting and righteous. For there was the shadow, here is the grace; there were images, here is the truth; there was the lamb, here is Christ” [8].

Old Believers were called criminals worthy of the harshest punishment: “Schismatics are not sons of the church, but true disobedient ones, therefore worthy to be handed over to the punishment of the civil court… worthy of every punishment and wounds. And if not healed, then of deadly killing” [9]. In the book The Rock of Faith, prepared under the personal guidance of the locum tenens of the patriarchal throne, it is stated: “If it is righteous to kill murderers, evildoers, sorcerers, then all the more so heretics, who kill the soul more than robbers and create nationwide unrest in the kingdom.” Addressing Christians who preserve church piety, church hierarchs directly indicated: “The Church will cleanse its weapon, bend its bow, and arouse the hearts of rulers to vengeance against schism… And then you will receive worthy vengeance with a fierce end” [10]. Guided by this teaching, New Rite hierarchs for hundreds of years “aroused the hearts of rulers” to murders, robberies, imprisonments, and exiles of Russian believing people.

An important place is occupied by the teaching on the “execution of the disobedient” in the conciliarly affirmed document of the New Rite church, the Spiritual Regulation. Here, for the first time, articles appear indicating the necessity of depriving civil rights for all persons adhering to the Old Faith: “Throughout all Russia, no one from the schismatics is to be elevated to authority, not only spiritual but also civil, even to the lowest beginning and administration, so as not to arm against ourselves fierce enemies who constantly think evil against the State and the Sovereign” [11].

In the 1720s, the Synod established a system of inquisitorial institutions. The first proto-inquisitor was appointed as the hegumen of the Moscow Danilov Monastery, Pafnuty. On the basis of the “Report Points of the Synod” approved in 1722, the Secret Chancery was obliged to assist the Synod in its struggle against Old Believers. At the insistence of New Rite hierarchs, cases related to confession of the Old Faith were classified as so-called “malicious” or especially dangerous ones, “since,” as stated in the decree, “the schismatic delusion, full of stubbornness, is contrary to orthodoxy and malicious” [12].

In 1721, the Synod issued another work devoted to justifying the teaching on the execution of the disobedient. The Points for the Edification of Schismatics were compiled by Archimandrite Theophylact (Lopatinsky) of the Zaikonospassky Monastery (future Archbishop of Tver) and Archimandrite Anthony of the Zlatoust Monastery. In these “points,” the authors theologized on the sanctity of the “teaching on torments,” referring to the authority of the Rudder (Kormchaya) and patristic writings. The Synod’s “points” demanded strict adherence to the resolution of the church council of 1666/67 and the Ulozhenie of 1649 concerning the punishment of the disobedient. Having already become a hierarch, Theophylact (Lopatinsky) composed an independent anti-Old Believer work, Exposure of Schismatic Falsehood. In 1745, it was supplemented by the famous Metropolitan Arseny (Matseevich) of Rostov (now glorified as a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church). The latter provides in the book a profound justification for the teaching on execution. Citing examples from the Old and New Testaments, as well as from church history, Arseny proved the church’s right to the physical destruction of its enemies. “The teaching of Christ,” said the bishop, “gives sufficient grounds for this” [13].

These efforts did not go without effect. According to Synod data, out of 190 thousand registered in the “schism” from 1716 to 1737, after the application of “executions” and “oppressions,” 111 thousand were joined to the dominant church, fled, were exiled to hard labor, or died as a result of the persecutions [14].

If at the end of the 17th century church authorities mainly exercised spiritual guidance over the persecutions, including search and inquiry, then at the beginning of the 18th century a tendency appeared to concentrate in the hands of church structures the entire sphere of persecutions, from the formation of legislation to the pronouncement of sentences. Professor Zenkovsky notes: “The Synod tried to completely free itself in its struggle against schism from the control of civil authorities, but Peter the First, fearing that the Synod would begin to arrest and persecute schismatics too energetically, left general supervision over the arrested to the provincial administration” [15].

It would be desirable to conclude the answer to this question with the words of the famous Old Believer researcher F. E. Melnikov: “Above all this darkness rises, like the enormous head of a dragon, yet another dogma, the most terrible—bloody and fiery dogma of murders in the true sense of the word, the dogma of execution, according to the definition of this very Church itself” [16].

It is noteworthy that the above-quoted resolutions of councils, the Synod, and quotations from symbolic books have not been canceled or condemned by anyone up to our time. They were also bypassed by the attention of the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1971.

Notes:
[1] Council Acts. Fol. 47 v.
[2] AI, vol. V, No. 100. Cit. according to Grekulov.
[3] Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire. Vol. 2. Pp. 647–650.
[4] “Judicial Processes of the 17th–18th Centuries on Church Affairs” — “Readings of the OIDR,” bk. 3, 1882, p. 15; PSZ. Vol. 2. Pp. 647–650.
[5] “Readings of the OIDR,” bk. 4, 1847. Pp. 27–30.
[6] M. I. Lileev. From the History of the Schism on Vetka and in Starodubye in the 17th–18th Centuries. Kazan, 1895. P. 8.
[7] “Readings of the OIDR,” bk. 2, 1889. P. 81.
[8] The Spiritual Sling. Fol. T, KSI.
[9] Ibid.
[10] A. N. Filippov. On Punishments According to the Legislation of Peter I. St. Petersburg, 1800. P. 142.
[11] Spiritual Regulation.
[12] Collection of Resolutions on the Schism under the Jurisdiction of the Most Holy Synod, bk. 1. St. Petersburg, 1860. P. 3.
[13] A. Sinaisky. The Attitude of Russian Church Authority toward the Old Believer Schism in the First Years of Synodal Administration. St. Petersburg, 1895. P. 136.
[14] M. I. Lileev. From the History of the Schism on Vetka and in Starodubye in the 17th–18th Centuries. Kazan, 1895. P. 291.
[15] Zenkovsky S. A. Russian Old Belief. In two volumes. Moscow: Institute DI-DIK, Kvadriga, 2009. P. 440.
[16] Melnikov F. E. Brief History of the Ancient Orthodox (Old Believer) Church / F. E. Melnikov; Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation. Barnaul State Pedagogical University. Barnaul: Publishing House of BSPU, 1999. P. 91.

Based on materials from the book by G. S. Chistyakov, On the Old and New Faith.