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396 cud of the world; a similar alarm was felt in Russia towards the close of the fifteenth century, on the ground that the seven-thousandth year after the Creation was approaching. Then the boyars showed their zeal by building a number of private churches. A curious result followed. Priests were sent to private churches apart from the parochial clergy. Being responsible only to their patrons who had appointed and who alone supported them, they were indifferent to the bishops and independent of the State, since they did not live upon the tithes. Accordingly, these chaplain priests were charged with insubordination and suspected of laxity of morals due to the absence of ecclesiastical discipline. We must not admit this scandal too readily, knowing the source from which it comes.

Instead of the dreaded end of the world, what Russia now came to experience was a final and victorious conflict with the Mongols. The Church took a leading part in this patriotic effort. An old man, Bassian, archbishop of Rostoff, encouraged Ivan with the utmost enthusiasm, declaring that if the sovereign would not go he would lead the assault; he was seconded by Gerontius the metropolitan, and Ivan set out to attack the Mongols. Their chief Achmed fled without striking a blow, and Russia was free again.

A strange light is thrown on the mind of the Church at this time by the story of Gerontius's successor, the metropolitan Zosimus. This man had been appointed by Ivan without the consent of a synod ( 1491). He was accused of adopting "a blasphemous Jewish heresy which rejected our Saviour Jesus Christ and all His doctrine." A Jew named Zachariah was said to have brought the heresy from Lithuania to Novgorod twenty years before, and to have seduced two priests in that city, Alexis and Dionysius, by magic and cabalistic art. When Zosimus was at Novgorod he met the two priests, and was so drawn to them that he brought them with him back to Moscow, and appointed one to be the chief priest at the famous new