Page:Russian Church and Russian Dissent.djvu/94

Rh all ecclesiastical establishments appertaining to the patriarchate, with their lands, clergy, and following, were placed under his special charge, and, in the event of civil suits, were to be judged by the court of the Great Palace, that is, before the sovereign in person. The extension of the privileges of the clergy was accompanied by a renewal of the restriction established by Ivan III., rendered advisable by the enormous increase of their wealth; the monasteries were prohibited from further acquisition of landed property without special authorization.

Philaret was as solicitous for the internal discipline of the Church as for its material prosperity, and shared the desire of its more enlightened prelates to free it from superstition and error. Efforts in this direction, led by Dionysius, the celebrated and patriotic superior of the Troitsa monastery, had, immediately prior to Philaret's elevation to the primacy, been checked by clerical intolerance; Dionysius, with his adherents, had been subjected to severe punishment for alleged tampering with sacred mysteries. This persecution was stopped, the reformers were released, and encouraged to persevere in their labors.

The pious zeal of the patriarch, stimulated by the fierce religious struggle in Lithuania and Poland, led him to draw a stronger line of demarkation between the Churches by re-establishing a custom, which had fallen into disuse and was afterwards abrogated, of rebaptizing converts from the Latin faith upon their admission to the Greek communion.

The Church, in remote provinces of the empire, felt his paternal care. The archbishoprics of Kasan and Astracan were reorganized; in them, and in Siberia, regular ecclesiastical administration replaced chaos and anarchy. The savage and predatory population of these countries,