Alexander Schmemann

6. Russian Orthodoxy (41 pages)

From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox Church

Page 26

The Seventeenth Century.

The seventeenth century, the last century of pre-Petrine Russia, must be interpreted in the light of this crisis. It began with the time of troubles and ended with Peter.
It is frequently contrasted with the following era as the “dark background for great transformations, a stagnant century.” There is very little truth in the characterization. Certainly many were still living in the old ways and customs; many felt an increased need to fix their whole lives in a sort of solemn ritual, sanctified if not sacred. But it is precisely when their way of life is breaking down that men begin to be upset by the indestructibility of their fathers’ principles and traditions. So in the intensity of the seventeenth-century search for a definite pattern of life we sense rather a delayed self-defense against the decay of the old pattern, a depressive “flight into ritual, rather than the immediate integrity and strength of their way of life.”[63] In the seventeenth century the crisis in Muscovite Orthodoxy was revealed and exposed, and Moscow’s way became the dead end that made Peter’s breakthrough inevitable.

Two main themes defined the life of the Russian Church in the 1600’s. These were its encounter with the West by way of Kievan Orthodoxy, on the one hand, and the schism of the Old Believers, on the other. Both were of immense historical significance.

 

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Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/schmemann-orthodoxy-6-russian-orthodoxy.asp?pg=26