Church of Russia
| Patriarchate of Moscow | |
| Founder(s) | Apostle Andrew, St. Vladimir of Kiev |
| Autocephaly/Autonomy declared | 1448 |
| Autocephaly/Autonomy recognized | 1589 by Constantinople |
| Current primate | Patriarch Alexei II |
| Headquarters | Moscow, Russia |
| Primary territory | Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, some former Soviet republics |
| Possessions abroad | United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, China |
| Liturgical language(s) | Church Slavonic |
| Musical tradition | Russian Chant |
| Calendar | Julian |
| Population estimate | 90,000,000[1] |
| Official website | Church of Russia |
The Church of Russia is one of the autocephalous Orthodox churches, ranking fifth after Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. It exercises jurisdiction over Orthodox Christians in Russia and surrounding Slavic lands, as well as exarchates and patriarchal representation churches around the world. It also exercises jurisdiction over the autonomous Church of Japan and Orthodox Christians in China. The Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia is currently His Holiness Alexei II.
Contents
History
According to tradition, St. Andrew the First-Called, while preaching the Gospel, stopped at the Kievan hills to bless the future city of Kiev. But it was Photius Patriarch of Constantinople (858 – 886) who first initiated missionary work on a large scale among these Slavs.
Conversion of the Slavs
The south of Russia was blessed with the work of Sts Cyril and Methodius Equal-to-the-Apostles, the Illuminators of the Slavs. Although their work was around 863 in Moravia (roughly equivalent to the modern Slovakia), the benefit was to all the Slavic lands (particularly Bulgaria, Serbia, and Russia).
The Kiev period (988-1237)
They not only brought Christianity in a common language, they brought Byzantium. The Slavs received a fully articulated system of Christian doctrine and a fully developed Christian civilization. The age of the Seven Councils was complete and the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation had already been worked out. Because people were preached to in their own tongue, and of taking services in Slavonic, they truly could make Christianity their own.
Around 864 Patriarch Photius sent a bishop to Russia, but this was stopped by Oleg, who assumed power at Kiev (the chief Russian city at this time) in 878. Christian ideas from Byzantium, Bulgaria, and Scandinavia, still came into Russia.
In 954 Princess Olga of Kiev was baptized. This paved the way for what is called the greatest events in the history of the Russian, the baptism of Prince Vladimir and the Baptism of Russia in 988. Olga’s grandson Vladimir (reigned 980-1015) was converted to Christianity and married Anna, the sister of the Byzantine Emperor. Orthodoxy became the State religion of Russia, and remained such until 1917. (Russia was not completely converted to Christianity at this time, and the Church was at first restricted mainly to the cities, while much of the countryside remained pagan until the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.)
The 10th and 11th centuries majestic churches and monasteries were built. St. Anthony of the Caves brought the traditions of Athonian monasticism to Russia in 1051.
The Russian Church during the Kievan period was subject to Constantinople, and until 1237 the Metropolitans of Russia were usually Greek. The Russian Church continues to sing in Greek the solemn greeting to a bishop, eis polla eti, despota ("unto many years, O master") in memory of the days when the Metropolitan came from Byzantium. Most of the rest of the bishops were native Russians.
Mongol Tartars over Russia (1237-1448)
In the 12th century, the period of feudal divisions, the Russian Church remained the only bearer of the idea of unity of the Russian people, resisting the centrifugal aspirations and feudal strife among Russian princes. Even the Tartar invasion, this greatest ever misfortune that struck Russia in the 13th century, failed to break the Russian Church. The Church managed to survive as a real force and was the comforter of the people in their plight. It made a great spiritual, material and moral contribution to the restoration of the political unity of Russia as a guarantee of its future victory over the invaders.
The Russia which emerged from the Mongol period was a Russia greatly changed in outward appearance. Kiev never recovered from the sack of 1237, and its place was taken in the fourteenth century by the Principality of Moscow. It was the Grand Dukes of Moscow who inspired the resistance to the Mongols and who led Russia at Kulikovo. The rise of Moscow was closely bound up with the Church. When the town was still small and comparatively unimportant, Peter, Metropolitan of Russia from 1308 to 1326, decided to settle there; and henceforward it remained the city of the chief hierarch of Russia.
(This period in the history of the Russian Church had Alexander Nevsky and Sergius of Radonezh, both saints. )
During these years, Russian painters carried to perfection the iconographic traditions which they had taken over from Byzantium. Icon painting flourished above all among the spiritual children of Saint Sergius. The finest of all Orthodox icons, from the artistic point of view, the Holy Trinity Icon, by Saint Andrei Rublev (1370?-1430?) is from this period.
Autocephalous Russian Church
Liberating itself from the invaders, the Russian state gathered strength and so did the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1448, not long before the Byzantine Empire collapsed, the Russian Church became independent from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Metropolitan Jonas, installed by the Council of Russian bishops in 1448, was given the title of Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia. Russian Church gained its independence, more by chance than from any deliberate design. Hitherto the Patriarch of Constantinople had appointed the head of the Russian Church, the Metropolitan. At the Council of Florence the Metropolitan was a Greek, Isidore. A leading supporter of the union with Rome, Isidore returned to Moscow in 1441 and proclaimed the decrees of Florence, but he met with no support from the Russians. He was imprisoned by the Grand Duke, but after a time was allowed to escape, and went back to Italy. The chief see was thus left vacant; but the Russians could not ask the Patriarch for a new Metropolitan, because until 1453 the official Church at Constantinople continued to accept the Florentine Union. Reluctant to take action on their own, the Russians delayed for several years. Eventually in 1448 a council of Russian bishops proceeded to elect a Metropolitan without further reference to Constantinople. After 1453, when the Florentine Union was abandoned at Constantinople, communion between the Patriarchate and Russia was restored, but Russia continued to appoint its own chief hierarch. Henceforward the Russian Church was autocephalous. After the taking of Constantinople in 1453, there was only one nation capable of assuming leadership in eastern Christendom. The growing might of the Russian state contributed also to the growing authority of the Autocephalous Russian Church. To the Russian people, it was a sign from God, that at the very moment when the Byzantine Empire was ending, they themselves were throwing off the few remaining vestiges of Tartar control. To them, Moscow had to be the Third Rome.
The Non-Possessors
Saint Nilus of Sora (Nil Sorsky, 1433?-1508), a monk from a remote hermitage in the forests beyond the Volga, launched an attack on the ownership of land by monasteries. Saint Joseph, Abbot of Volokalamsk (1439-1515), replied in defense of monastic landholding. This became known as the dispute between the "the Possessors" and the "Non-Possessors
