Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 13.djvu/305

RUSSIA the tsars of Moscow masters of Kieff and Little Russia, the Patriarch Joachim named Gedeon Tchetvertinski metropolitan of Kieff, and in 1687 Dionysius, Patriarch of Constantinople, recognized the dependency of the Metropolitanate of Kieff upon the Patriarchate of Moscow.

In the seventeenth century under the Patriarch Nikon a great schism broke out in the Orthodox Church, called the Schism of the Old Believers. The liturgical books in use in the Russian Church were replete with errors. Their correction was an urgent necessity, and had been undertaken in the sixteenth century. The fanatics opposed this "corruption" of the sacred texts, and Maxim the Greek, who had worked upon it, paid for his participation in the work with a long imprisonment. Under Nikon in 1654 a council held at Moscow recognized the necessity of the reform in question. Accordingly the liturgical books were corrected, but many Russians, influenced by the monks, refused to accept the corrected versions. It began to be rumored that Antichrist, personified by the pope, had in view the destruction of the Orthodox Russian Church, through the Latin Catholics of western Russia. But a council held at Moscow in 1666 approved the reform of Nikon, and pronounced its anathema against those who had not accepted his decisions. Anathemas, were however, like the severity of the government, without effect against these deserters from the official Church. The monks who were averse to the reform withdrew to solitary places, and founded clandestine monasteries, among which those of Vyg, Starodub, and Vyatka became famous. The more violent schismatics were burnt alive or decapitated. But persecutions invigorated the schism, called in Russian raskio, whence the name of its adherents, Raskolniki.

The fifth, called the synodal, period begins with 1700, and extends to the present time. At the death of Adrian (1700), Stepan Tavorski, Metropolitan of Ryazan, and a learned theologian, was appointed patriarchal vicar, and charged to reform the entire constitution of the Russian Church. Tavorski found an excellent cooperator in Theophanus Prokopovitch, who was Bishop of Pskof in 1718, and who, although educated at Lemberg, Cracow, and Rome, and according to some, a convert to Catholicism, nourished a bitter hatred for Catholics. Peter the Great gave to Prokopovitch the task of preparing the "Ecclesiastical Regulations" which became the Magna Carta of the Russian Church. This code was finished in 1720. It is divided into three parts, concerning respectively the functions of the synod, the matters put under its jurisdiction, and the duties of its members. The synod was solemnly opened on February 14, 1721. By the "Ecclesiastical Regulations", the tsar is the supreme judge of the ecclesiastical college. His representative in that capacity was a layman, who in a document of 1722 is called the eye of the tsar. This functionary, bearing the title of Ober-Prokuror, was to be chosen preferably from the military class.

The synod in the early period of its existence had ten members, besides the president, and maintained its ecclesiastical character. After the death of Peter the Great, however, that ecclesiastical character was lost by degrees, and the synod became a vast political bureaucracy. The bishops were at the mercy of the procurators-general, who at times, as in the case of Prince Sharkhovski, regarded the synod as a political institution, and sometimes maltreated the prelates who formed that body. There were procurators-general who made public profession of atheism, as Tchebysheff (1768-74), or of rationalism, as Prince A. Golycin (1803). The Russian Church suffered humiliation under the lay rule of the synod (see the important work of Blagovidoff, an ex-professor of the Ecclesiastical Academy of Kazan, on "The Procurators of the Holy Synod"). In 1881 there was called to the government of the synod Konstantin Pobiedonostseff, a man of great culture but of reactionary ideas, who wished to unite all the religions professed in Russia in the Orthodox Church. The epoch of Pobiedonostseff was one of complete thraldom for the Russian Church. His dictatorship however came to an end in 1905, when the edict of toleration was promulgated. The Liberal Russian clergy attacked the synod and the anti-canonical constitution of the Russian Church in the Press, and demanded the reestablishment of the patriarchate. The Government proposed the convocation of a great national synod, to return its liberties to the Church of Russia and to give it a new constitution, but this purpose was frustrated by the friction between the "white" (secular) and the "black" (regular) clergy, by the triumph f the revolutionary parties, and by the outbreak of the revolution. The synod continued to exercise its deleterious authority under various procurators: Prince Obolenski, Izvolski, Lukianoff (a mental specialist), and finally, in 1911, Carolus Vladimirovitch Sabler, a former associate of Pobiedonostseff, but a man of broader and more liberal ideas.

Other changes were made in the eparchies. When the synod was established, there were 18 eparchies and 2 vicariates in Russia; in 1764, the number of the former had increased to 29, and to 36 at the beginning of the nineteenth century; which latter number was increased under Nicholas I, and became 65 in our day. The eparchies are ruled by metropolitans (St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Kieff), archbishops, and bishops. According to the most recent statistics, there were 133 Russian bishops, including the bishop-vicars of the eparchies, and the bishops without a charge. In regard to the moral character of the Russian episcopate, and concerning the various institutions of the Russian dioceses, see the present writer's work "La Chiesa russa" pp. 105-160. The Russian clergy, which is divided into two castes, the "white" clergy, or seculars, and the "black" clergy, or regulars, has not acquired, among the Russians, the moral prestige that the Catholic clergy has acquired in Catholic countries. According to the latest statistics, there are in the "white" clergy 45,000 priests, 2400 archpriests, 15,000 deacons, and 44,000 singers, while there are 60,000 churches and chapels in the country. This clergy exercises its ministry over more than 90 millions of Orthodox faithful; but it is rendered incapable of accomplishing its mission by poverty, want of education, the lack of sound vocations, the oppression of the Government, contempt and social isolation, family cares, and not infrequently by drink. Only in the cities are there to be found priests of culture and in comfortable circumstances; those who work in the rural parishes are deserving of pity and compassion.

In the eighteenth century, the "black" clergy suffered vicissitudes that greatly reduced the number of monasteries and monks. Peter the Great especially and Anna Ivanovna treated the monks with the greatest severity. Nevertheless the "black" clergy preserved the moral and economic superiority in Russia; bishops, rectors, and inspectors of academies and seminaries are taken from the ranks of the "black" clergy, and the monasteries still possess immense riches. According to the most recent statistics there are 298 monasteries that are recognized and subsidized by the Government, while there are 154 not subsidized (zastatnij). There were 9317 monks and 8266 novices. There were 400 religious houses of women, inhabited by 12,652 nuns and 40,275 novices. Many of these religious houses are of the Russian Sisters of Charity, who maintain 184 hospitals, and 148 asylums. The life of the regular clergy, except in a few monasteries of strict observance, is very lax.

The Orthodox clergy receives its education in the ecclesiastical schools, preparatory for the seminaries