Alexander Schmemann

6. Russian Orthodoxy (41 pages)

From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox Church

Page 30

At last it was decided to correct the books according to the Greek models. This Greek theme stemmed from the tsar and a circle of “zealots” close to him. But unfortunately in accepting the Greek model those in Moscow did not specify or distinguish the quality of it, which was often no less defective than the Russian, and the whole correction took place in the complete absence of cultural and theological perspectives. Too frequently the authorities were questionable migrants from Greece seeking charity or profit in Moscow, who became teachers by chance. The correction of the books was inspired not so much by a return to the spirit and truth of Orthodox worship as by a drive for uniformity, and often by thoughtless Grecophilia.

The role of Patriarch Nikon was particularly crucial. He had “an almost morbid tendency to remake and shift everything in the Greek way, as Peter later on had a passion to remake everything in the German or Dutch way. They also shared this strange readiness to break with the past, this unexpected lack of an established pattern of life, this premeditation and artificiality.”[65] Too many anathemas and curses were immediately imposed, too much carried out by order and decree. But what was worse, the Greek liturgical books printed in Venice were frequently suspected by Russians to be Latinizing, like the Kievan editions of Peter Mogila. This does not mean that the adherents of the “Old Belief” were right — Avvakum and those like him — but they were indignant at this “wholesale denial of every old Russian ceremony and rite,” this general leveling according to the dubious Kievans and the no less dubious Greeks, many of whom had indeed studied in Rome and in order to do so had temporarily even accepted the Latin faith. Hence the schism acquired unfortunate depth as a dispute over history, and especially over the meaning of Russian Orthodoxy in it.

 

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