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Nikon's public demonstrations against
western influences seemed mild and hardly sincere to the conservative zealots,
who already feared his corrections of books and reforms of the Church ritual.
Indeed, Nikon often displayed inconsistences in hi condemnations of the new
style and was ready to accept part of it if he could adjust it to his reforms.
The most vehement attacks came from the "Fanatical Herculean
Archpriest" Avvakum, as historian S.M. Soloviev called him, who was ready
to die for the preservation of the old rituals. Avaakum was an exceptional man
of tremendous energy and determination, whose deep faith eventually enabled him
to overcome great suffering. He was very eloquent for his time, and a true
master of the Russian language. The writings he left, particularly his
auto-biography, earned him a place among the prominent ancient Russian authors.
In the late sixteen forties Avvakum, at that time Archpriest in the provincial
town of Yuryevets on the Volga river, was a member of a small fraternity of
influential men, mostly clergymen, who realized the necessity of reforming
certain parts of the Church service, raising the educational level of the
clergy and correcting obvious mistakes in sacred texts made when they were
re-written or translated from the Greek originals. Other prominent members of
the circle were Fedor Mikhailovich Rtishchev, chamberlain and close friend of
the young Tsar Aleksei who founded a new school at the Andreyevskii Monastery,
near Moscow, where former Kievan monks, educated under western influence, were
principal teachers; Nikon, who as Patriarch used these same teachers to
propagate his reforms; and Ivan Neronov, a favorite preacher of the Muscovites.
At the head of the fraternity was Stefan Vnifantiev, the Archprest of the
Cathedral of the Annunciation and confessor of the Tsar. The members of the
circle became known as "God-vovers," but the trouble was that each
eventually found his own way to love God. One man turned against the other; and
Nikon and Avvakum became arch-enemies.
In his letters Avvakum directed his accusations against Nikon, whom he called a
dog and a heretic, and all those who followed him. He used the language of the
simple people, the "Prostorechie," combined with sarcastic remarks
and proverbs. In one of his epistles he scoffed at foreign and domestic
painters for "Painting the image of the Savior with a plump face, red
lips, golden curls, fat fingers and hands, also fat thighs, and all made to
look like a fat-belied German, only forgetting to paint a sword at his hip..
And all this was made by the wolfhound Nikon to look lifelike. But (everything)
is contrived in the Friaz and German manner. Nikonians will start to paint a
pregnant Virgin at the Annunciation, as the vile Friazhi do. And Christ all
swollen on the cross: a well-fattened darling, his legs just like little
stools. Oh, Oh, poor Rus! Why for you need German customs?"
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