August 15, 7533
“And a heavy darkness… then covered Russia.”— Andrey Denisov, Funeral Oration for Peter Prokopyev Ты была ХристоваДо шездесят шестова… (You were Christ’sUntil sixty-six…)— Old Believer spiritual verse, “On the Nikonians” Long before the onset of Nikon’s “ventures” in Russia, when nothing seemed to foreshadow the impending catastrophe that would befall the Russian Church, the first…
At the start of the 21st century, no one disputes that the church schism of the mid-17th century was one of the most tragic and bloody chapters in Russian history. The church reformation, initiated 350 years ago by Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and Patriarch Nikon, not only split the Russian Church but also divided Russian history…
By Roman Atorin The origins of the Christian faith in Rus’ should be sought long before the enlightening mission of the holy equal-to-the-apostles Prince Vladimir. Christian tradition holds that the very hills upon which the magnificent city of Kiev would later rise were visited by the holy apostle Andrew the First-Called when he preached the…
By the 17th century, messianism had fully taken shape as a fundamental part of the Russian mentality, crystallized through the terror of Ivan the Terrible and the Time of Troubles that inevitably followed. The sense of a providential mission before the whole world shaped key features of the Russian national character, including (1) isolation from…
Why did God allow the trials of the 20th century to befall the Orthodox state (godless rule, execution of clergy, destruction of churches)? For what sins? What needed to be corrected? “For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.”(Hebrews 12:6) When we are ill, we go to a doctor…
The medieval Russian concept was slightly different and more comprehensive in its original form. Its essence can be summarized as follows: the First Rome, the Orthodox kingdom, fell into heresy; the Second Rome (Constantinople) fell to the Turks; now the last Orthodox kingdom is Moscow, the “Third Rome.” If Moscow were to fall, there would…