from: Serge A. Zenkovsky, Medieval Russia's Epics, Chronicles, and Tales. Rvised and Enlarged Edition. (NY: Meridian Books, 1974). The horizontal lines and page numbers inserted in this version of the text correspond to the page divisions of the original.
THE LIFE OF ARCHPRIEST AVVAKUM BY HIMSELF
Commentary: Born in 1621, Avvakum became a priest at the age of twenty. In the early 1640s he joined the revival movement of the Zealots of Piety, which attracted many representatives of the Russian Church at that time and which tried to breathe new life into Russian Orthodoxy. For several years both the government and the Church leaders supported this movement, but when the authoritarian and unbending Nikon became patriarch in 1652, he moved against this revival because he saw in its activities a threat to the authority of the Church hierarchy. Officially, the conflict arose over the re-editing of the missal and changes in the ritual, both of which Nikon revised to conform to the usage of the contemporary Greek Church. Avvakum and his followers advocated the ancient texts and rites that had originally been introduced into Russia from Greece some seven centuries earlier. The real core of the conflict, however, was different. Nikon sought the unquestioning submission of the Church to the authority of the patriarch, and received the support of Tsar Alexis and the state, since they also desired stronger controls over the Church by both the central ecclesiastic offices and the state itself. Avvakum and his followers, who represented the lower clergy and their parishioners, felt that the parish priests and local laity should have a greater voice in Church affairs. Moreover, in opposition to domination and disciplining of the Church from above, they proposed a genuine religious regeneration of the Church on the local level.
In 1653 Patriarch Nikon succeeded in deporting Avvakum, Ivan Neronov, and other leaders of the reform movement, and thus Avvakum spent some nine years in Siberia. He was permitted to return to Moscow in 1662, but his fierce defense of his principles led once more to his deportation to northern Russia and, finally, to his censure by the Church council. In 1666 he was condemned for his opposition to the ecclesiastic authorities and for upholding the ancient traditions of the Russian Church. The next year this condemnation was reaffirmed by a larger Church council, in which not only the Russian hierarchs participated but also the Greek patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. This time Avvakum and his followers, Deacon Fedor, the monk Epiphany, and the priest Lazar, were deported to Pustozersk, a small settlement and fort in the extreme northeast of European Russia, about a hundred miles from the Arctic Ocean. They remained there some fifteen years, and during that time Pustozersk became the spiritual center of the Old Believer movement, as it was called. It was there that Avvakum's autobiography and his many treatises and epistles were written. In 1682 the government, which was unable to curb the spread of this movement, ordered that Avvakum and his three comrades should be burned at the stake.
The Life of Archpriest Avvakam by Himself is given here in the translation by Jane Harrison and Hope Mirrlees, published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, London, 1924.
Selection 1.
Context: From 1661, while Avvakum is still in his first exile in Siberia; his
main captor had the last name of Pashkov. The intended addressee of this autobiography
is Epiphany, Avvakum's spiritual father.
For ten years he (Pashkov) had tormented me, or I him-I know not which. God will decide on the Day of Judgment.
A change of post came for him (Pashkov), and for me a letter; we were ordered back to Russia. He went away and did not take me with him, for in his heart he was saying: "If he travels back alone, then surely the natives will slay him." He and his guns and his folk, they sailed away on rafts, and, on my own journey back, I learned from the natives that they were a timid, trembling crew.
And I, a month afterward, having assembled the aged, and the sick, and the wounded, whatever there was there of useless folk (there would be ten of them, and I with my wife and children would bring it to seventeen), got into a boat, and, putting our trust in Christ and fixing the cross to our prow, we started on our way, wherever God should lead us, fearing nothing. I gave the book, the Christian's Pilot, to the clerk, and he gave me a fellow for steersman in exchange; and he manumitted my friend Basil, the same that was wont to denounce folk to Pashkov and was the cause that much blood was shed, and he sought my life also. And at one time, having flogged me, he fastened me to the stake, but once again God kept me safe; and when Pashkov was gone the Cossacks wished to flog him to death, but I begged him off for Christ's sake and gave the money for his manumission to the clerk, and carried him back to Russia, from death to life. Poor soul, may he repent his sins!
Aye, and I took back with me another lousy spy of the same kidney; him they did not wish to give up to me, and he fled from death to the forest, and, coming upon me on the path, he flung himself into my boat, for he was pursued and had nowhere to turn. And I, forgive me, acted cunningly. As Rahab, the harlot of Jericho, hid Joshua the son of Nun, so did I hide him, making him lie down at the bottom of a chest, and I flung a coverlet over him, and ordered my wife and daughter to lie on the top of him; they sought him high and low, but they would not disturb my wife from her place, and all they said was, "Rest in peace, Mother Avvakum! You have had enough to endure, as it is, my lady."And I---for God's sake forgive me---I lied that day, and I said: "He is not here"---I was loath to give him up to be slain. And when they had searched, they went away empty-handed, and I carried him back to Russia.
Elder and servant of Christ, forgive me that I lied that day. How think you, it may be that it was not a very grievous sin? It would seem that Rahab the harlot did likewise, and the Scriptures praise her for it; give judgment, then, for God's sake: and if I acted sinfully, then pardon me; but if I acted in accordance with the traditions of the Church, then is it well. See, I have left a space for you, and do you, with your own hand, write in either forgiveness or penance for me and my wife and my daughter, for we all three shared in the cheat-we saved a man from death that he might repent before the Lord.
Judge us then so that we shall not be judged for it by Christ on the Day of Judgment; write in a few words, I pray you:-
God pardons thee and blesses thee in this life and the life to come, together with thy helpmeet Anastasia, and thy daughter, and all thy house: thou hast acted rightly and justly. Amen.1
So be it then, my elder. God bless you for your graciousness. But enough of this.
The clerk gave us sacks of corn to the value of thirty silver pieces, and a cow, and five or six sheep, and dried meat, and this we fed on for the summer, as we sailed on our way. The clerk was a good soul; he had been sponsor to my daughter Xenia, who had been born in the days of Pashkov, but Pashkov would not give me myrrh and oil, so she had to stay long unchristened; but when he was gone I christened her (I myself churched my wife and baptized my children 2), and the clerk and my eldest daughter were the god parents, and I was the parson. In this manner, then, I also christened my son Afanasy, and both confessed my own children and administered the Sacrament to them during the Mass I said at Mezen, and I myself communicated, but I did not administer it to my wife: there are instructions concerning this in the rubric, wherein we are forbade so to do. But as to my excommunication, it came from heretics and, in Christ's name, I trample it under foot, and the curse written against me-why, not to mince my words, I wipe my arse with that; if the heretics curse me, the saints of Moscow- Peter, and Alexis, and Jonah, and Phillip-they bless me; and in accordance with their books, with a clear conscience I believe in and serve my God; but the apostates I loathe and curse: they are God's enemies and, living in Christ, I do not fear them. Were they to heap stones on me then, secure in the tradition of the Fathers, I would lie in peace beneath these stones-how much more so beneath the thorny, knavish curses of Nikon! Tush! Why multiply words? All we need do is to spit on their doings and their ritual, and on their newfangled books, then all will be well.......
XI. MY STAUNCH WIFE
So we reached Russian settlements, and I was informed concerning the Church, and like Pilate, I saw that I "could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made." My mind was troubled and, sitting down, I began to ponder what I should do --- should I continue preaching God's Word or should I hide myself? For I was tied by my wife and children. And seeing that I was troubled, my wife came up to me, timidly, delicately, and said: "How comes it, my lord, that you are troubled?" And I acquainted her with all my thoughts. "Wife! What must I do? The Winter of Heresy is at the door; am I to speak or to hold my peace? I am tied by you!"
And she said to me: "Lord have mercy! What are you saying, Petrovich? Have I not heard, have you not read, the words of the Apostle: Art thou bound unto a wife? seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife? seek not a wife. I and the children, we give you our blessing, continue preaching the Word of God as heretofore, and take no thought for us until such time as shall seem good to God; when that time comes, remember us in your prayers; Christ is strong and he will not abandon us. Get thee gone, get thee gone to church, Petrovich! Unmask the Whore of Heresy!" And I bowed myself to the earth before her, and shook myself free from the blindness of a troubled mind and began once more to preach and teach God's Word in the towns and in all places until such time as I could boldly tear the mask from the heresy of Nikon.
In Yeniseisk 3 I wintered, and having sailed through the summer again I wintered in Tobolsk; and on my way as far as Moscow I cried aloud in every town and in every village, in churches and in marketplaces, preaching the Word of God and teaching and laying bare the snares of the ungodly. And thereon I came to Moscow. .......
XIV. THE CHURCH COUNCIL OF 1667 AND THE FINAL SCHISM
I will tell you yet more of my wanderings when they brought me out of the Pafnutiev Monastery in Moscow and placed me in the guesthouse, and after many wanderings they set me down in the Miracle Monastery, before the patriarchs of all Christendom, and the Russian Nikonites 4 sat there like so many foxes. I spoke of many things in Holy Writ with the patriarchs. God did open my sinful mouth and Christ put them to shame.
The last word they spoke to me was this: "Why," said they, "art thou stubborn? The folk of Palestine, Serbia, Albania, the Wallachians, they of Rome and Poland, all these do cross themselves with three fingers, only thou standest out in thine obstinacy and cost cross thyself with two fingers; it is not seemly."
And I answered them for Christ thus: "O you teachers of Christendom, Rome fell away long ago and lies prostrate, and the Poles fell in the like ruin with her, being to the end the enemies of the Christian. And among you Orthodoxy is of mongrel breed; and no wonder ---if by the violence of the Turkish Mohmut you have become impotent, and henceforth it is you who should come to us to learn.
"By the gift of God among us there is autocracy; till the time of Nikon, the apostate, in our Russia under our pious princes and tsars the Orthodox Faith was pure and undefiled, and in the church there was no sedition. Nikon, the wolf, together with the devil, ordained that men should cross themselves with three fingers, but our first shepherds made the sign of the cross and blessed men as of old with two fingers, according to the tradition of our Holy Fathers, Meletina of Antioch, Theodoret, the blessed Bishop of Cyrene, Peter of Damascus, and Maxim the Greek; and so too did our own synod of Moscow, at the time of the Tsar Ivan 5, bid them, putting their fingers together in that way, make the sign of the cross and give the blessing, as of old the Holy Fathers Melety and others taught."
And the patriarchs fell to thinking, and our people began to howl like wolf cubs and to belch out words against their fathers, saying: "Our Russian holy men were ignorant, and they understood nothing, they are unlearned folk," said they. "How can one trust them? they have no letters."
O Holy God! How hast thou suffered so great reviling of thy holy ones? I, miserable one, was bitter in my heart, but I could do nothing. I abused them as hard as I could, and I spake as follows: "I am pure, and the dust that cleaves to my feet do I shake off before you, as it is written: 'better one if he do the will of God than a thousand of the godless.'"
Then louder than before they began to cry out against me: "Away with him, away with him; he hath outraged us all"; and they began to thrust at me and to beat me. And the patriarchs themselves threw themselves on me; about forty of them I think there must have been. Great was the army of Antichrist that gathered itself together. Ivan Uvarov seized me and dragged at me, and I cried aloud: "Stop, do not beat me!"
Then they all sprang back and I began to speak to the interpreter, the archimandrite, thus: "Say to the patriarch, the Apostle Paul writes: 'For such a high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, ...' but ye, having sorely mishandled a man, how then can ye straightway perform your office?" Then they sat down. I went away to the door and lay down on my side. "Ye sit down," I said to them, "but I lie down." At that they laughed.
"The archpriest," said they, "is a silly fellow, and does not show honor to the patriarchs."
And I said: "We are fools for Christ's sake. Ye are great and we without honor; ye are strong and we are weak."
After that, again, the authorities came to me and began to talk with me on the question of the Alleluias: Christ put it in my heart and I put them to shame for their Romish heresy through Dionysios the Areopagite, of whom mention has been made before. And Euphemy, the cellarer of the Miracle Monastery, spake: "Right art thou," said he, "there is no more to be said." And they took me along to chain me.
Then the tsar sent an officer with musketeers and they took me to the Vorobiev Hills 6.
There was the priest Lazar and the monk Epiphany, an elder. They had been shorn and were ill treated as though they were village peasants, my dear ones. A wise man when he did but see them must needs fall aweeping when he looked at them. Well, let them suffer! Why grieve for them! Christ was better than them, and against him, Our Sweet Lord, evil was wrought by the forebears of the Nikonites, Annas and Caiaphas. No wonder, for they followed after an exemplar---we must grieve for them, poor things! Woe to the hapless followers of Nikon! They have perished of their own wickedness and their stubbornness of soul!
Then they brought us from the Vorobiev Hills to the guesthouse of the Andreevsky Monastery to the Savin suburb, and as though we were robbers, followed after us and left us not, nay, even when we relieved ourselves. It was both pitiable and laughable, as though the devil had blinded them.
Then again we were taken to the St. Nicholas Monastery at Ugresha. And there the tsar sent to me the officer Yury Lutokbin, that I might bless him, and we had much converse concerning this and that.
Then again they brought me to Moscow, to the guesthouse of the Nikolsky Monastery, and they demanded of us yet again a statement of the true faith. After that there were sent more than once to me gentlemen of the bedchamber, diverse persons, Artemon and Dementy. And they spake to me in the name of the tsar. .... The envoy wept as he spake, and for him I weep always. I was exceeding sorry for him. And again he spake: "I beg of thee, hearken to me. Be thou reconciled with the patriarchs." And I said: "Even if God will that I should die, I will not be joined together with apostates. Thou art my tsar, but they, what have they to do with thee? They have lost their tsar and they have come here to gobble you up. I-say I-will not cease to uplift my hands to heaven until God give thee over to me."
The last word I got from the envoy was, "Wherever," said he, "thou shalt be, do not forget us in thy prayers." And I, sinful one, now, as far as I may, pray to God for him.
1. This last passage is written into the manuscript by Epiphany, who read the manuscript and made some addenda.
2. Under ordinary circumstances, it was prohibited by the canons of the Orthodox Church to baptize one's own children.
3. Nikonites: refers to the supporters of Nikon.
4. Yeniseisk: A Russian outpost and merchant city in central Siberia on the Yenisei River.
5. This refers to Tsar Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible), and the Church Council of 1547, which addressed questions of liturgy, pious practices, etc.. The Council's decisions were written up in a 100 chapters of questions and answers, and so the Council became known as the "100 Chapters" or Stoglav in Russian. The council also officially recognized the sanctity of many Russian national figures thereby increasing the number of recognized national Russian saints.