Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11.djvu/104

 NILE

78

NILLES

verts (still a peculiarity of the Russian Church). This aroused a strong party of opposition. The patriarch was accused of anti-national .-icntimpnts, of trying to Hellenize tlie Hiis.-iian Churcli, of corrupting tlu' old faith. Nikon'.s strong will would have crushed the o])- position, had he not, in some way not yet clearly ex- plained, fallen foul of the tsar. It is generally said that part of his ideas of reform was to secure that the Church should be independent of the .state and that this aroused the tsar's anger. In any ease in the year 1658 Nikon suddenly fell. He olTered his resignation to the tsar and it was accepted. He had often threatened to resign before; it seems that this time, too, he did not mean his ofTer to be taken seriously. However, he had to retire and went to his New .Jeru- salem monastery. A personal interview with.\lexis w-as refused. The patriarchate remained vacant and Nikon, in spite of his resignation, attempted to regain his former place. Meanwhile the opposition to him became stronger. It was led by a Greek, Paisios Ligarides, Metropolitan of Gaza (unlawfully absent from his see), who insisted on the appointment of a successor at Moscow. All Nikon's friends seem to have forsaken him at this juncture. Ligarides caused an appeal to be made to the Greek patriarchs and their verdict was against Nikon. In 1664 he tried to force the situation by appearing suddenly in the patriarchal church at Moscow and occui)ying his place as if noth- ing had happened. But he did not succeed, and in 1667 a great synod was summoned to try him. The Patriarchs of Alexandria and .\ntioch came to Russia expressly for this synod; a great number of Russian and Greek metropolitans sat as judges. The tsar himself appeared as accuser of his former friend. Nikon was summoned and appeared before the synod in his patriarch's robes. He was accu.sed of neglecting his duties since 1658, of having betrayed his (3hurch in a certain letter he had written to the Patriarch of Constantinople (in which he had complained of the Russian clergy), of harsh and unjust conduct in his treatment of the bishops. Nikon defended himself ably; the synod lasted a week; but at la.st in its eighth session it declared him deposed from the patriarchate, suspended from all offices but those of a simple monk, and sentenced him to confinement in a monastery (Therapontof) on the White Sea. The archimandrite of the Trinity Laura at Moscow, Joasaph, was elected his successor (Joasaph II, 1667-72). Joasaph con- firmed Nikon's reform of the Service books and rites. The party that opposed it formed the beginning of the Russian dissenting sects (the Raskolniks).

For a time Nikon's impri.sonment was very severe. In 1675 he was taken to another monastery (of St. Cyril) and his treatment was lightened. Alexis to- wards the end of his life repented of his harsh treat- ment of the former patriarch, and from his death-bed (1676) sent to ask his forgiveness. The next tsar, Feodor II (1676-82) allowed him to return to his New Jerusalem monastery. On the way thither Nikon died (17 August, 1681). He was buried with the honours of a patriarch, and all decrees against him were revoked after his death. His tomb is in the Cathedral church of Moscow. Nikon's fall, the ani- mosity of the tsar, and of the synod that deposed him remain mysterious. The cause was not his re- form of the Service books, for that was maintained by his successor. It has been explained as a successful intrigue of his personal enemies at the court. He certainly had made enemies during his reign by his severity, his harsh manner, the uncompromising way he carried out his reforms regardless of the intensely conservative instinct of his people. Or, it has been said, Nikon brought about his disgrace by a premature attempt to free the Russian Church from the shackles of the state. His attitude represented an opposition to the growing Erastianism that culminated soon after his time in the laws of Peter the Great (1689-1725).

This is no doubt true. There are sufficient indications that .\lexis' quarrel with Nikon was based on jealousy. Nikon wanted to be too independent of the tsar, and this independence was concerned, naturally, with ecclesiastical matters. Some writers have thought that the root of the wliolc matter wiis that he became at the end of his reign a l.atinizer, that he wanted to bring about reunion with Rome and saw in that re- imion the only safe protection for the Church against the secular government. It hiis even been said that he became a Catholic (Gerebtzoff, " Essai ", II, 514). The theory is not impossible. Since the Synod of Brest the idea of reunion was in the air; Nikon had had much to do with Ruthenians; he may at last have been partly convinced by them. And one of the accusations against him at his trial was that of Latin- izing. A story is told of his conversion by a miracle worked by Saint Josaphat, the great martyr for the union. In any case the real reason of Nikon's fall remains one of the difficulties of Russian Church history. He was undoubtedly the greatest bishop Russia has yet produced. A few ascetical works of no special importance were written by him.

P.lLMER, The Patriarch and Ike Tsar (6 vols., London, 1871- 76): SuBBOTi.v, The Trial of Nikon, in Russian (Moscow. 1862); Makabios. The Patriarch Nikon, Russian (Moscow. 1881); Philaret, Geschichte der Kirche Russlands, German tr. by Blu- MENTHAL (Frankfort, 1872) ; Mouhavieff. .4 History of the Church, of Russia. EnElish tr. by Blackmohe (Oxford, 1842) ; Nikon in Lives of Eminent Russian Prelates (no author) (London, 1854); Gerebtzoff, Essai sur I'histoire de la civilisation en Russie (Paris, 1858).

Adrian Fortescue.

Nile, VicARi.\TE Apcstolic of the Upper. See Upper Nile, Vicariate Apostolic op the.

Nilles, NiKOLAUS, b. 21 June, 1828, of a wealthy peasant family of Rippweiler, Luxemburg; d. 31 January, 1907. After completing his gymnasium studies brilliantly, he went to Rome where from 1847 to 18.53, as a student of the Collegium Ger- manicum, he laid the foundation of his ascetic life and, as a pupil of the Gregorian University, under the guidance of distinguished scholars (Ballerini, Franze- lin, Passaglia, Perrone, Patrizi, Schrader, Tarquini), prepared the way for his subsequent scholarly career. When he left Rome in 1853, he took with him, in addition to the double doctorate of theology and canon law, two mementoes which lasted throughout his life: his grey hair and a disease of the heart, the result of the terrors which he had encountered in Rome in the revolutionary year 1848-9. From 1853 to 1858 he laboured in his own country as chap- lain and parish priest, and during this time made his first literary attempts. In March, 18.58, he entered the Austrian Province of the Society of Jesus and, in the autumn of 1859, was summoned by his superiors to Innsbruck to fill the chair of canon law in the theo- logical faculty, which Emperor Francis Joseph I had shortly before entrusted to the Austrian Jesuits. Nilles lectured throughout his life — after 1898 usually to the North American theologians, to whom he gave special instructions on canonical conditions in their country, for which task no one was better qualified than he. His "Commentaria in Concilium Balti- morense tertium" (1884-90) and his short essay, "Tolerari potest", gained him a wide reputation.

His literary achievements in the fields of canon law, ascetics, and liturgy were abundant and fruitful. Martin Blum enumerates in his by no means complete bibliography fifty-seven works, of which the two principal are: "De rationibus festorum sacratissimi Cordis Jesu et purissimi Cordis Mariae libri quatuor" (2 vols., 5th ed., Innsbruck, 1885) and "Kalenda- rium manuale utriusqueF^cclesiajorientaliset occiden- talis" (2 vols., 2nd ed., Innsbruck, 1896). Through the latter work he became widely known in the world of scholars. In particular Protestants and Orthodox Russians expressed themselves in terms of