Byzantine Patristics in the Polemic of the initial Period of the Split of the Russian Church

Abstract

The Church schism of the mid- and second half of the XVII century was associated with a number of acute issues and problems of a historical, liturgical and theological nature, which were subjected to detailed research and gave rise to extensive polemics, which were not outlived for centuries. The patristic heritage, mainly of Byzantine church authors, played a key role in the “ideological” struggle between the defenders of “ancient piety” and their irreconcilable opponents from the official Church. With the beginning of the schism the names of one of the greatest representatives of Antiochian theology, Sts. Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, and Meletius of Antioch, also John Chrysostom, Simeon of Thessalonica and others thoroughly entered the manuscript and old-printed book tradition, associated with the Church split. The “Skrizhal” compendium, initiated for compilation and publication by Patriarch Nikon, was intended to be a kind of summary of information about the ecclesiastical practice of the Eastern Church with interpretations as well as a source of correction of various church “disorders”. During the development of the controversy many topics came under such close attention for the first time in Russian church history. The issues of the “visible image” of God, of the time of the coming of the Kingdom of Christ and one of the most controversial ones throughout the second half of the XVII century, and not only within the church schism — the topic of the transubstantiation of the consecrated elements and etc. Patristic heritage and the art of its interpretation became the main “tool” in unprecedented disputes, when both parties of the conflict — Archpriest Avvakum, Simeon Polotsky, Priest Lazar, Nikita Suzdalets and others, were in search of some universal and authoritative sources to prove their right.