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Rh sultation. The moment was critical, as a meeting of the friends under such circumstances might jeopardize all that had been accomplished; to prevent it was, for Nikon's adversaries, a matter of life or death, and their influence prevailed. The tsar refused to go to him, and sent orders that he should retire to the Voskresensk Monastery, and there await the assembling of the ecclesiastical council.

Nikon obeyed the harsh commands. His disgrace was complete, and, despairing of reconciliation with his former patron, he endeavored, but in vain, to make terms with his enemies. He was shorn of all authority, and placed under strict supervision until the council should decide upon his fate.

This assembly, the most august in the annals of the Church of Russia, met in the halls of the Kremlin in 1667. The patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch, eight metropolitans of Greek churches without the empire, the archbishops of Sinai and Walachia, were joined to all the great dignitaries of the Russian hierarchy, and the tsar presided in person.

Cited to appear before them, Nikon, prior to his departure from the Voskresensk monastery, received extreme unction, as if in presentiment of approaching death. Mindful of his dignity and conscious of his innocence, he entered the council-chamber, arrayed in the insignia of his rank, with the cross borne before him; as no seat had been reserved for him with the other patriarchs, he refused to occupy a lower place, and, proudly facing his enemies with unmoved countenance, his gigantic stature towering above all around him, he remained standing to listen to the accusations read out by the tsar.