Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [232]
While historians may argue about the origins of the cataclysm that was to mark the end of old Muscovy, there is no doubt that for many Muscovites, it began in the year 1653.
It began with the Church reforms of the mighty Patriarch Nikon. And, most visibly, it concerned the way that the Russians made the sign of the cross.
If this seems strange, it must be explained that the Russian Orthodox was unlike other Orthodox Churches. Over the centuries, isolated from the rest of Christendom, it had developed its own spirit and its own practices which, as Patriarch Nikon had correctly seen, were out of line with the Orthodox mainstream. At certain points in their service, Russians sang two Hallelujahs instead of three; they used a different number of Communion loaves and made too many genuflections. They misspelt the name of Jesus in their texts, along with sundry other errors. And of all these differences, none was more obvious than their manner of making the sign of the cross.
The Orthodox did not make the sign of the cross in the manner of the Catholics. Instead of touching their forehead, chest and then crossing their hand from left to right on the chest, as did the Romans, the Orthodox with great care and solemnity touched first their forehead, then the middle of their chest, and then swung their hands first to the right and then to the left breast – in the opposite way, that is, to the western churches.
Further yet, however, the Russian Orthodox in crossing himself, or making the sign of benediction, held his fingers in a special way. For instead of closing the thumb against the fourth finger and raising the other three, the Russian would place his thumb against the fourth and little finger, raising only two fingers, the index and third.
This was the famous two-fingered sign – ‘the single hand’ as they often called it – which the Russians believed to be the pure and ancient practice. And it was this, together with his textual and liturgical corrections, that the Patriarch Nikon had set out, back in 1653, to change.
Like many Russian reformers, the tall austere Patriarch, who had so impressed Andrei, was in a hurry. He began to build a great monastery outside the capital which he called New Jerusalem. The river beside it he renamed the Jordan. Its architecture was massive, plain and severe. He planned five thrones there on which, one day, he hoped to see sitting all five Patriarchs of the Orthodox Church, with the Russian Patriarch at the centre.
His lust for ecclesiastical power, however, was his downfall. For Tsar Alexis, often away on campaign, had left Nikon in charge in his absence and even given him the highest title of Great Sovereign; and it was not long before Nikon had started to suggest, like a medieval Pope, that the Patriarch and the Church should have authority over the Tsar and the state – an idea which neither Alexis nor the boyars would tolerate. Mighty Nikon was exiled: his rule was over.
But his Church reforms remained.
At first, even in 1653, there had been opposition. A small group of conservative clergy – the best known of whom was the Archpriest Avvakum – had opposed the changes. At once the Patriarch had crushed them, and exiled Avvakum to the far north; but the opposition had continued.
In 1666 the great Church council called to settle the dispute agreed that, while the over-ambitious Nikon should be deposed, his reforms should stand and, amongst other things, three fingers should be raised in making the sign of the cross, instead of the traditional two. Those who refused to follow the new practices were to be