The topic of my conversation today is the policy of the church and the state regarding sectarians in the 18th-19th centuries.
By sect (from the Latin “secta” — teaching, school, direction) it is customary to understand a religious group, a community that has split off from the dominant church. That is, sectarianism arises as an opposition to the official religion, and most often, to the state that supports it. Sects have always existed, at all times, but only in critical periods does a special situation take shape and religious dissent becomes a mass phenomenon.
So, in due time, Christianity was also perceived by the authorities as a sect. Time passed and the next wave of protest arose from Christianity, which became the state religion. The Reformation shook Europe, numerous Protestant denominations separated from the Catholic Church ...
For the time being, Russia has passed such global unrest,
despite the fact that alternative exercises existed in our country
from time immemorial. It is worth recalling, for example, strigolnikov. However, in the second half of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries the soil was formed for the emergence of sectarianism as a mass phenomenon.
The first and one of the most important events that prepared this ground was
Split. Previously indivisible, united, without any doubt in the truth
the system of dogmas of the Orthodox Church, has been shaken.
Nikon carried out the reform, and the church split into Old Believers and accepted corrections. And in that and in another camp there were noble people, scientists and respected. The people suddenly realized that there were at least two truths and it was still unknown where the truth was. Thus, in the depths of national consciousness, the very possibility of a different path arose.
However, the split should not be equated with sectarianism. Long time in
pre-revolutionary literature, as well as in official documents, these concepts were mixed: sectarians were called schismatics and vice versa. There is a significant, global difference between these phenomena.
The Orthodox researcher of sects very precisely defined it in due time.
D. Graziansky: “... When there is separation from the church, primarily on the basis of dogmatic, with a distortion of the dogma of the church, is heresy. When separation from the church arises due to temporary, everyday manifestations of church life ... when the dogmatic teaching is recognized as correct, it is called a schism, ... When separation from the church is accomplished because of a lack of understanding of its spirit, its internal, moral life ... it [evasion] is called a sect “.
He believed that sectarianism arises from dissatisfaction with the moral level of the environment. The first separation from the church is done on theoretical grounds, the second on household grounds, and the third on moral grounds.
What was wrong in Russian life? Why did mass
“Moral” protest?
In order to understand this, you should take a closer look at the local,
parish clergy, as the main teacher of the Orthodox people.
The opinion of contemporaries and researchers on this issue is practically the same: the level of education of the parish clergy left much to be desired.
“The word “pop” was synonymous with ignorance, contempt, material
poverty ...” complains Reisner M. William Cox, traveling around Russia in the 70s years of the XVIII century, he notes that many parish priests were not able to read the Gospel. The landlords treated local priests as serfs, often subjecting them to corporal punishment. A.A. Papkov wrote, the parish clergy was obliged
“to watch on the moving yards, to come to the officers for work and parcels, to fix the fire service and go to outfits with slingshots.”
All this did not add to their authority among the peasantry.
Hieromonk Plato rebuked the white clergy in the 50s of the XVIII century
in laziness and negligence, as well as in ignorance of the most elementary truth's theology.
According to the testimony of many authors and parishioners themselves, the priesthood, distorting and simplifying the service, took more care of its wallet, and strove for maximum profit. And this is not surprising, because it lived on what it gave the parish, paid most of the taxes, while having a lot of burdensome duties imposed by state power.
At this, many parishes were very large up to 10,000 people, the villages defended from each other for many miles and often children were even buried without a funeral service, and the priest then simply censed the grave.
“There is no teaching in the churches, the truth of Christ is not preserved, Christian herds go poor as a shepherd, there is no one to put, to exhort, to console, to convict, but there is someone to collect, to seduce, to deceive,” Plato writes.
Naturally, the formation of the flock was not worse than the shepherds. Here is what the Chief Prosecutor of the Synod of Pobedonostsev wrote at the end of the 19th century:
“The pastor should know that the vast majority of Orthodox Christians have almost no historical or dogmatic knowledge, no figurative representation of the face of Jesus Christ, and His face in the church and on icons, etc. do not distinguish; and indeed no faces on the icons, etc. they don’t distinguish: according to the popular notion “God mustache” ... they don’t know what kind of faith they are”.