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The first to sound the alarm against future
shaping of iconography and art in general by foreigners was Nikon, a son of a
peasant, who happened to occupy for a while the throne of the Russian
Patriarch. Though without formal education, Nikon took the monastic vows, and
owing to his adamantine will, forceful personality and insatiable ambition
managed soon to become first, the Abbot of the Novospaskii Monastery, then
Archbishop of Novgorod, and in 1652, the Patriarch of all Russia. Profiting by
the great esteem in which, the young Tsar held him in the beginning, Nikon
wanted to re-establish the supremacy of the Church over the secular power, and,
imitating Patriarch Filaret and his diarchy, also assumed the title of
"Velikii Gosudar" (majesty). The number of those who feared this
power and ruthlessness grew rapidly, and he invited their opposition. They were
joined by many churchmen who refused to follow Nikon's Church reforms, aimed at
correcting religious books and bringing certain ceremonial rites into line with
existing Greek Church practices. Then he launched his campaign against icons
that showed Western influences, and issued regulations condemning all
deviations from the official style in icon painting. When this failed to work
he excommunicated all those who painted "After the western fashion,"
and ordered that houses be searched to confiscate and publicly destroy all
icons in which religious subjects were treated in un-orthodox way. The
Patriarch himself often was present when heretical icons were paraded through
Moscow and then cut into pieces or burned. On one occasion, in the Tsar'
presence, after the Liturgy Nikon first showed to the congregation some of the
confiscated icons and then with all his force threw them on the floor and
ordered to them to be taken out and burned. The indignant Tsar could do nothing
but propose to Nikon to bury them instead. By 1658 the Tsar had had enough of
Nikon"s despotic interference in state affairs. Counting on the Tsar's
continuous affection Nikon took a trivial incident at a court reception as
reason to leave Moscow and resign as Patriarch in the hope that he would be
urged to return. Instead, after prolonged conflicts which lasted several years.
The Church council was summoned in 1666, to try Nikon. He was brought to Moscow
from his Voskresenskii Monastery, found guilty, deprived of his patriarchal see
and exiled to the Ferapont Monastery. He died in 1881 on the way to his
Voskresenskii Monastery, after being permitted to return to it.
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