NIKON (MININ)

NIKON (MININ), Patriarch of Moscow, liturgical reformer (1605–1681 ). After a monastic education and life, he became abbot of the Koyozerski Monastery (1642), archimandrite of the Novospaski Monastery in Moscow (1646), Metropolitan of Novgorod (1649), and Patriarch of Moscow (1652) by order of Tsar Alexis, over whom Nikon had great influence in his early episcopal years. As patriarch, Nikon immediately initiated liturgical reforms that resulted in the Old Believer (q.v.) schism for which he was famous-or infamous. Initially Nikon’s program was rigorously enforced by civil authorities. But as early as 1653, other respected clerics (Neronov, Avvakum, etc.) who supported an awakening of faith in the Russian Church accused Nikon of heresy (q.v.). The prospect that Church and state had erred in their overly zealous reform policy-which they well did-called into question the whole premise of an infallible symphony of “God-appointed” institutions that comprised “Holy Russia.” Scholars inside and outside of Russia continue to debate the “rightness” of Nikon’s reforms (especially Makarii Bulgakov [q.v.], and recently Paul Meyendorff), in the last centuries with more objectivity when the political question of the Old Believers became less pressing.

In 1658 Nikon himself rendered the “symphony” of Church and state a cacophony. He not only claimed complete independence in ecclesiastical matters, having been given the title “Great Sovereign” by the tsar, but also claimed primacy over the tsar-an attitude that caused him to fall into disfavor. It should be observed that Nikon asserted himself in direct imitation of the Roman papacy (q.v.), and that this prerogative was not in keeping with Orthodox tradition. As a result, he resigned the patriarchate (q.v.) and retired to a monastery, but then attempted to regain his office. Due to this attempt he was deposed and banished by the Councils of Moscow (1666–67), though his reforms were accepted and remained. After suffering fourteen years in a distant monastery, he was recalled by Tsar Theodore II, but died on returning and was posthumously reinstated and buried with honors. He has been recognized as “perhaps the greatest bishop of the Russian Church” (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, page 976) by very few in the Orthodox world since the time of William Palmer.