www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Reinstitution of Russian Patriarchate?

Christ is risen!

I have been reading about the Orthodox saints in America from the Antiochian Orthodox website ( http://www.antiochian.org/north-american-saints ) and read about how St. Tikhon was the first Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia in 217. I had no idea that after Russia was recognized as a patriarchate that status was taken away. Can anyone give me the history of what happened that made Russia lose it's status of Patriarchate? Also, why did it only take an All-Russian Church Council to re-establish it? Did not the Ecumenical Patriarch and a council have to re-acknowledge it? Just curious about this history as I read these brief biographies about these awesome saints.

Kyrie eleison,

Manuel

I believe Peter the Great had something to do with it. I am not super sure of the history behind it (but I think Peter wanted power and control of the Church) but I am sure many here can offer more information.

Nelson is correct.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_reform_of_Peter_I

I can only assume that because the Ecumecnial patriarchate never denied the church patriarchal status it never had to reinstate it?

Thank you thus far for your help. In the wikipedia link you provided I had a question on a few things in the last sentences.

.

How were women allowed to participate in Church governance?

And why were priests and laity would have a voice in church councils alongside bishops?

And how were the the Petrine Synodal higher church authority and the Ober-Procurator abolished forever?

Kyrie eleison,

Manuel

This isn't really my area of history, I am sure others are better able to answer this than me. But I would suggest that these reforms were related to the coming Living Church schism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Church

Remember though, that in general the Russian Church of the times would be considered very "liberal" by today's standards in Orthodoxy.

Peter I had one overwhelming connection with the Moscow Patriarchate - he got rid of it. It was restored about 200 years later, just after the Russian Revolution. Saint Tikhon of Moscow was the first Patriarch of the new, restored line, not of the original line.

There was, of course, no Russian Patriarchate in the third century A.D. Where that misconception came from I cannot imagine.

To obtain the needed recognition from the Ecumenical Patriarchate the Russian Tsars bribed the sultan. Bizarre; the sultan was never a canonical authority for the Church. But the hare-brained scheme succeeded. Money talks, they do say.

Fr. Serge

I think Peter I had a love with all things Western European and borrowed a lot from the western Protestant national church model. Seems like he wanted something like what the monarch in the English church had after the schism from Rome by Henry VIII.

By the way the Moscow Patriarchate was a 1589 introduction (only about something more than hundred years before Tzar Peter I)

The 1589 story is the following:
The patriarch of Constantinople Jeremias Tranos in 1588 organized a travel in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (which included also Ukraine) and in Russia, which at the time were under his jurisdiction. The aim of this travel was simply to raise founds (needed because of the vexations from the Turkish Sultan).
So Jeremias Tranos arrived also in Moscow, where he was simply put in captivity still he granted the autocephaly (indipendence) of the Russian Church. He was kept for six months in captivity because he by first refused, than suggested a compromise (ok autocephaly but with himself as patriarch) and at the end he surrendered to the blackmail. So after six months he was allowed to return in Constantinople, also with a great amount of money !

About Tzar Peter I, it is true that he eliminated the title of Patriarch and restored the ancient title of Metropolitan of Moscow, but for sure he cared about his own Orthodox Church: it is for example remembered when on 11 July 1705 in Polotsk he killed with own hands 5 Greek-Catholic Basilian monks who refused to be forcedly converted to his Moscow Orthodox Church.

Let's study history...

Next thing you'll be putting him up for Sainthood with Rasputin and Ivan the Terrible

Let me understand this. You express care for your Orthodox Church if you kill 5 Catholic monks who refuse to be converted to Orthodoxy?

Oh dear... Never in my life have I felt better about being so careless!

Shalom,
Memo