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History of the Church of Russia

A. N. Mouravieff, tr. Blackmore, 1842

The Author’s Preface

The History of the Orthodox Church of our country which I now present to the Public, is merely a cursory glance at the great events that have marked the plantation and gradual development of this flourishing branch of the Universal Church. By the wise providence of God it was ordained that when the Church of Jerusalem, the Mother of all Churches, was overwhelmed by the invasion of barbarians, the Church of Constantinople should shine out with peculiar lustre in the East, and spread her scions into all the North. And when she again in her turn, though she lost not her inward purity, fell under external calamities, then suddenly, as a sea that bursts its bounds, the Orthodox Faith overflowed and spread itself over the boundless tracts of Russia; and the Eastern Catholic Church may now count her children from the shores of the Adriatic to the bays of the Eastern ocean on the coast of America, from the icefields which grind against the Solovetsky Monastery on its savage islet in the North to the heart of the Arabian and Egyptian deserts, on the verge of which stands the¹ Lavra of Sinai.

This picture, consolatory to every Christian, is more especially calculated to rejoice the heart of a Russian, on account of the mighty destinies which the Church of our country has either already accomplished, or is still accomplishing, over so vast a field. Let him but cast a look of tenderness on the cradle of our Faith, the ancient City of Kieff; or on Moscow, the elder of our two capitals, the heart of Orthodoxy; let him trace in thought the acts of Prelates such as Cyrill, Peter, Alexis, Cyprian, Jonah, Philip, Job, Hermogenes, Philaret; of Monks and Hermits, like Antony and Theodosius, Sergius, the Zosimi, the Cyrills, and others without number, whose names live in that monastic world which has peopled the repose of our forests; of Princes, such as the Vladimirs, the Michaels, or Alexander Nefsky, whose earthly diadems beamed in anticipation of the crowns which they were to receive in Paradise. Then what an army of Martyrs! what a company of women and of men of every age and calling, who, by the holiness of their lives or by their sufferings, have been confessors for the Name of Christ! And in the midst of all these varied scenes, how striking is the unity of the Faith, which has been preserved in such constant purity, that in spite of all circumstances which may have temporarily interrupted external communication between the Churches of Eastern Orthodoxy, they all constitute together in spirit but one whole! When the Church of Georgia², now only a short time back, became an integral portion of the Russian Church and Empire, after having stood alone, cut off and isolated from all other Churches ever since the fourth century, there was not found to have arisen in the course of fifteen hundred years any the slightest difference between them in doctrine, no, nor even in ceremonies; but they agreed in all points with us and with the other Œcumenical Thrones of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, and with the Churches dependent upon the first of them in Moldavia, Wallachia, Servia, Montenegria, Transylvania, Illyria, and in a word, throughout all Sclavonia.

In a rapid sketch like the present, which professes only to mark the general outline of the course of Ecclesiastical affairs, I have not thought it necessary to weary the reader with perpetual references to authorities, which for the most part are well known to all; such as The Annals of Nestor and his continuators, collected together by the Patriarch Nicon; The Books of the Genealogies of our Princes, by the Metropolitans Cyprian and Macarius; and The Lives of the Saints. The Church Histories of Plato and Innocentius, the valuable Dictionary of Russian Authors, by the Metropolitan Eugenius, with his Hierarchy of Kieff and all Russia, and the work of the immortal Karamzin, so rich in proofs of the close attention which he had bestowed on Russian history, together with those of other living authors on the same subject, have served me for authorities, and supplied me with most of my materials, down to the times of the Patriarchate.

From this point I have chiefly had recourse either to MSS. which are preserved in the Patriarchal Library at Moscow, or to books published by the Patriarchs. Thus the description of the coming of Jeremiah Patriarch of Constantinople, in order to raise Job to the Patriarchal dignity, with all the circumstances of this event, has been taken from contemporary Acts; and in like manner the whole affair of the trial of the Patriarch Nicon. The different steps successively taken for the correction of the Church books, have been accurately described in the Prefaces to the Office-books of Philaret, the Tablets of Nicon, the Staff of Rule and Instruction of Joachim. The Ancient Russian Library, composed almost entirely from MSS. of the Patriarchal Vestry, which had been carefully collected by Nicon; The History of the Unia, by Kamensky; Roumanzoff’s Collection of Letters; The Archæological Acts, full of matter which has been only recently rescued from obscurity; and the most useful Collection of the Laws of the Empire, shed abundant light on the century during which the Patriarchate lasted, and leave nothing to be desired by the historian.

Such are the sources of this imperfect work, which I cast as my mite into the Treasury of the Russian Church.

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