Schism of the Russian Church

Common card · No. 261985

The Schism of the Russian Church, also known as raskol (Russian: раскол, pronounced [rɐˈskoɫ], meaning 'schism'), was an era of religious and social turmoil in Russia spanning from the late 1660s to the early 1690s, during which dissenters opposing the authority of the Russian Orthodox Church appeared in great numbers, and were persecuted and suppressed by the ecclesiastical hierarchy and secular government. The schism followed the liturgical and ritual reforms enacted by Patriarch Nikon at the behest of Tsar Alexis from 1652 to 1657, which aimed to remove all difference between the Russian rite and that of the Greek Orthodox Church, from which Christianity was imported to the nation. Both the Tsar and the Patriarch were convinced that local practices diverged from the Greek ones due to faulty transmission and scribal errors throughout centuries of Russian parochialism. Nikon's reforms engendered opposition from within the church in defense of traditional custom, voiced first by relatively...

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