www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Old-Ritualists Forum Unrelated Contemporaneous Movements (#5 of 5)

This is the final piece in the catalogue

Unrelated Contemporaneous Movements is a phrase that I've used to group Churches, religious, and quasi-religious sects which were active in Russia, within a timeframe stretching from a few centuries prior to the Nikonian reforms which sparked the birth of the Old Believer movement to the Bolshevik Revolution. The relationship between these bodies and Old Belief varied significantly; a few unquestionably had their origins with the Old Believers, albeit tangentially; some others may have, although it is less certain.

The majority were connected to Old Believers only insofar as they represented a religious mode of expression that was at odds with the traditional Orthodox faith of the Russian nation and peoples; however, awareness of their existence helps to understand the religious atmosphere of Russia during the times in which Old Belief was born, nutured, and flourished.

These churches, cults, denominations, sects, and movements represent the gamut of religious expression. Some cannot realistically be described except as “cultish”; others were secular in nature and a few represent examples of the earliest Protestant incursions into Russia. Invariably, the names of various of these groups arise in any discussion of the Old Believers and the most tenuous of ties are often cited as evidentiary in linking some of them to the Old Believer community.

I am listing them here to acknowledge the few relationships that actually did exist, while distinguishing and distancing them from Old Believers for the reader.

• Catholics Conversion of Russia to Christianity was accomplished by missioners dispatched from Constantinople and came relatively late, within a generation of the so-called Great Schism of 1054. Thus, throughout its entire ecclesiastical existence, the nation and its rulers had been within the Eastern ecclesiastical sphere of influence.

• Latin Catholicism, consequently, had little presence in Russia, neither at the time that the Old Believer movement began nor for close to three centuries thereafter. There were no canonical jurisdictions (it would be 1921 before the first was erected) and Latin clergy in the country were either present to serve the pastoral needs of resident foreigners and a small coterie of “westernized“ nobles and intelligentsia or, in the case of the Jesuits, had been invited to educate the children of nobility and the wealthy.

• Uniates or Greek-Catholics did not appear in Russia until the late 18th century.

• Byzantine Melkite Catholics, now Melkite Greek-Catholics, had no presence in or involvement with the Churches of the Byzantine Slav Tradition, yet it was to the Melkites that Father Nicholas Tolstoy, a Russian Orthodox presbyter who traveled to Rome in 1893 and entered into communion with the Catholic Church, was incardinated. The most likely explanation is that the sole Byzantine hierarch in Rome at the time of Father Nicholas’ visit was Melkite. There is no indication that Father Nicholas served according to the Melkite Rescension or that the Melkites ever deemed Russia as within their ecclesial sphere. (Although it's notable that the Melkites resurrected a relationship with their Russian brethren in the diaspora during the past half-century.)

• Byzantine Russian Catholics, now Russian Greek-Catholics, ordinarily are dated to the return of Father Nicholas from Rome. Indications are that, except in two instances, their clergy, initially all former Orthodox presbyters, served according to the Nikonian usage.

• Katolicheskaja Stariobriodtsi (Catholic Old Ritualists) or Old Ritualist Usage of the Byzantine Russian Catholic Church appeared early in the 20th century when Fathers Patapy (Emilianov) and Eustachy (Susalev), together with the faithful of their Old Rite communities from the area of Nizhnaja Bogdanovka, entered into communion with the Byzantine Russian Catholics. (Some sources suggest that these congregations were descended from Raznordiki, one of two Popovtsy factions that separated from the Beilokrinitskaya Ierarkhiya in the wake of a dispute involving the 1863 encyclical mentioned elsewhere.)
  
  Russian Catholics generally were in disfavor with the authorities at the time that the Katolicheskaja Stariobriodtsi congregations came to being, but it was a period of benevolent tolerance toward Old Believers on the part of the Tsar. After their first public celebration of a Divine Liturgy, Saint Petersburg’s Catholic communities sent Paschal greetings to Nicholas II, noting that some among them were Stariobriodtsi. Apparently, the sentiments were welcomed, despite the Catholic affiliation of the senders, and the Tsar responded with warm thanks. His reply, prominently displayed, ended harassment by the authorities for some time thereafter, effectively extending the good-will toward Old Believers to the entire Russian Catholic community.
  
  The question as to whether Russian Catholics would to be permitted both the Synodal (Nikonian) and Old Ritualist usages (or required to conform to Latin usage) was answered affirmatively by Pope Pius X in response to Mademoiselle Ushakova, an influential member of the Russian Court. Subsequently, Metropolitan Andrij (Sheptytsky) clarified that the two liturgical forms - Synodal and Old Ritualist - were not to be mixed and that each was to be served according to the received traditions of the respective Orthodox Sluzhebnik.
  
  Whether these small communities of Katolicheskaja Stariobriodtsi were instrumental in attracting other Old Believers into communion with Rome is unknown. They did not fare well under Communism; some fled through Harbin, China, eventually arriving in the northeastern US, where substantial numbers of Orthodox Stariobriodtsi also settled. The Catholic community there was short-lived, ultimately subsumed back into its Orthodox origins. A single remnant parish survives in modern-day Russia, according to reports.

• Cults

• Mormonstvo (Mormons), also Russian Mormons, are not who or what the name suggests, It is a classic example of a body being styled based on an element of observed praxis; the striking and unique difference here being that the resultant misnomer evokes a whole other identity (or mis-identity in this particular instance).
  
  The sects (research suggests that two distinct, identically-styled, bodies arose, essentially simultaneously) had their origins in the mid-nineteenth century and likely developed from the seemingly incompatible intermix of Khlyst and Molokan beliefs.
  
  When these people first came to public notice in the late 20th century with the opening of the former USSR to the West, CoJCoLDS missioners were, understandably, intrigued and there was significant speculation as to the body’s origins. The far-fetched notion of a parallel prophetic institution was briefly raised by some fanciful persons but never seriously entertained and immediately dismissed by serious researchers.
  
  American Mormons undertook a series of visits to the regions in which the sects were prevalent, in an effort to obtain insight into the history of their Russian namesakes. Unknown missionary activity in the region or emigration of faithful were the most obvious explanations, unlikely as either seemed to be. The conclusions to which the researchers came suggest that there was likely a small body of persons that might actually have been exposed to and influenced by American Mormonism, but the vast majority had no ties to or even knowledge of those with whom they shared a name in common usage.
  
  Although Mormonstvo have generally come to accept the styling, it is not their name for themselves and there appears to be little to suggest that they have a formal name to which they subscribe as a body. Several works document the fact that they routinely use as names for themselves the same titling that is also used by various other sectarian bodies, especially those of the Khlysts, Gnostics, and other among those I’ve classified as Radical Sectarians. These may, in some instances, represent clues to the origins of particular Mormonstvo sects.
  
  Descriptions of the early encounters between faithful of the American and Russian bodies make it obvious that there was curiosity on both sides and Mormonstvo were as interested in learning about the Americans’ beliefs and praxis, as vice versa. An amusing, but understandably frustrating, roadblock was encountered when CoJCoLDS members declined to share details of secret Temple ceremonies with their new-found brethren; the Russian response was to immediately invoke corresponding secrecy as to their own praxis - although, in fairness, it isn’t clear that such would have been revealed anyway, given that little to nothing was publicly known about it prior to this (as, for instance, in Russian literature on the body).
  
  To understand how these sectarians came by their popular name, one has to realize that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was much more widely known in 19th century Russia than might be expected, given the time of its formation, the state of communication in the era, and the fact that it was a strictly American institution. It’s almost a certainty that Mormonism’s notoriety outside the United States was attributable to its embrace of polygamy, a virtually unknown practice among western cultures for centuries by the time that Joseph Smith formed the CoJCoLDS in 1830. Brigham Young’s westward journey occurred mid-century and it was only a quarter-century later that an Orthodox Archpriest, Khristian Rohzdestvenski, was applying the name Mormonstvo to certain Russian sectarians because they practiced polygamy.
  
  That now-abandoned (in the US body) practice, and an outlook that emphasizes a communal approach to societal functioning, are the sole known commonalities between the American and Russian sects, distinct entities with no common history. The (American) Mormon studies of the Russians have, however, produced a sizeable body of English-language information on the various groups into which the two original sects have divided and I’ve relied on that as a principal source in naming, delineating, and describing them.

(I'll add particulars to this later; my notes on them are a bit disorganized at the moment.)

• Orthodoxy was never confronted with the same type of situation that Catholicism encountered in the Protestant Reformation. Other than the Old Believer movement, there were relatively few instances of organized opposition to the established Church. What there were tended more to the schismatic than heretical and all except the Old Believers were relatively short-lived, with none ever gaining the momentum that characterized the Protestant Churches and allowed them to gain footholds and flourish in Europe.

• Imenopoklonniki (Name Worshippers), also Imyaslavtsy (Name Glorifiers) [3 of 3 by this name], Iisusane, Jesusites, Iisusiki, and Jesusniks

• Khlebopoklonniki (Bread Worshippers)

• Sorskyites (Followers of Sorsky), also Non-Church Disciples

• Strigolniki (Cutters)

(I'll add particulars to this one later also, as my notes need some work.)