Page:Russian Church and Russian Dissent.djvu/170

Rh pathy of the clergy and profit by its influence over the people, precisely as he established, or consolidated, serfdom to conciliate the nobility and landed proprietors. The creation of the patriarchate exalted the Church, and increased the dignity and splendor of its position, but, at the same time, it severed its connection with the outer world and left it alone, exposed without allies abroad, without the hope of foreign succor, in the inevitable struggle which was to come for pre-eminence between the ecclesiastical and the civil powers. This struggle was postponed by the political occurrences of the years immediately succeeding. Again the Church proved the saviour of the national life, and rose, by the force of circumstances, and the patriotic devotion of its members, to almost undisputed supremacy in the reigns of Michael and Alexis Romanoff, and during the patriarchate of Nikon.

The fall of this mighty prelate meant the future predominance of the civil power, and the Church submitted with its wonted humility, accepted the interregnum ordered by Peter the Great, acquiesced in the abolition of the patriarchate, and consented to a final reorganization under the Holy Synod.

Its rise at different times, during the extraordinary vicissitudes of its fortunes, to almost supreme control in the body politic, was, on each occasion, the consequence of extraneous and fortuitous circumstances, rather than the result of any ambitious effort of its own. Its elevation was invariably followed, as the especial cause disappeared, by its submission to civil authority, and by harmonious co-operation with it. It is, however, to be observed that this submission related only to the administration of Church affairs, and never affected questions of dogma, nor of doctrine, raised high above the authority of the Church itself.