The Monk Joseph Volotsky, like the Monk Nil of Sorsk, lived in Muscovite Rus' in the 15th century. Although both were monks, their paths to God were different: they answered some questions of life in different ways. But the Church accepted both of these paths: both Neil and Joseph were canonized as saints.

Saint Nile strove for an in-depth, contemplative life. He wanted to follow the ancient reverends. In order to comprehend the science of spiritual warfare, he studied and copied the writings of the Fathers of the Church and did not settle in a crowded monastery, but found a place for himself in a deep forest on the banks of the Sorka River. That's why they called him Sorsky.

There he founded a new type of monastery - the so-called skete, consisting of several houses - cells. Very few brothers settled in the skete. But they were striving for one thing—spiritual life, prayer. Because their economy was minimal, only to live. There was no property at all. Saint Nilus believed that any possession binds a person’s thoughts and attention to earthly affairs, and this distracts from prayer and generally prevents living exclusively for God.

The monastic charter, written by Nil for his monks, says practically nothing about the external life of the monastery, but teaches purity of thoughts and unceasing prayer.

Saint Joseph was a supporter of another ideal of monastic life. The monastery should be large and arranged on the basis of a hostel. Strictly statutory service should be performed in it and at the same time a developed, extensive economy should be maintained. The monastery must own lands and all kinds of land that would bring him a large income. From such a monastery - the benefit of the state and people.

An important aspect of the activity of such a monastery is charity. Saint Joseph himself was a disciple of another glorious Russian ascetic, the Monk Paphnutius of Borovsky. After the death of Saint Paphnutius, Joseph was elected hegumen. But in the Borovsky Monastery he failed to implement his charter.

Then Joseph left the monastery and founded his own monastery near Volokolamsk. And during the life of the saint, and after his death, the Joseph-Volokolamsk monastery, thanks to the exemplary order of life in it, was the leading among Russian monasteries.

Saints Nilus and Joseph agreed on one important issue - their attitude towards heretics. At that time, the so-called heresy of the Judaizers appeared in Moscow and Novgorod. Heretics denied the Holy Trinity, church sacraments and priesthood, were fond of magic.

The life of Saint Abba Joseph was not easy and peaceful. In a difficult time for the Russian Church, the Lord raised him up as a zealous champion of Orthodoxy to fight heresies and church disagreements.

The greatest feat of St. Joseph was the denunciation of the heresy of the Judaizers, who tried to poison and distort the foundations of Russian spiritual life.

Just as the holy fathers and teachers of the Ecumenical Church expounded the dogmas of Orthodoxy, raising their voice against the ancient heresies — Dukhoborist, Christoclastic, iconoclastic — so Saint Joseph was proclaimed by God to resist the false teaching of the Judaizers. And to create the first set of Russian Orthodox Theology - the great book "Illuminator".

Preachers from Khazaria also came to Saint Equal-to-the-Apostles Vladimir, trying to seduce him into Judaism. But the great baptizer of Rus' angrily rejected the claims of the rabbis.

After that, St. Joseph writes: The great Russian land remained in the Orthodox faith for five hundred years. Until the enemy of salvation, the devil, brought the bad Jew to Veliky Novgorod.

With the retinue of the Lithuanian prince Mikhail Olelkovich, the Jewish preacher Skharia (Zakharia) arrived in Novgorod in 1470. Taking advantage of the imperfection of the faith and learning of some clerics, Skhariya and his henchmen instilled in the faint-hearted distrust of the church hierarchy. They persuaded them to revolt against the spiritual authorities, they tempted them with "autocracy", that is, the personal arbitrariness of each in matters of faith and salvation.

Gradually, those who were tempted were pushed to complete renunciation of the Mother Church, desecration of holy icons, and rejection of the veneration of saints, which is the basis of popular morality.

Finally, they led the blinded and deceived to the denial of the saving Sacraments and the fundamental dogmas of Orthodoxy, outside of which there is no knowledge of God. There is no life, no salvation - the dogma of the Holy Trinity and the dogma of the Incarnation.

If decisive measures had not been taken, “all Orthodox Christianity would perish from heretical teachings.” This is how the question was posed by history.

Grand Duke John III, seduced by the Judaizers, invited them to Moscow. He made two of the most prominent heretics archpriests - one in the Assumption Cathedral, the other in the Archangel Cathedral of the Kremlin. Called to Moscow and the heresiarch himself - Skhariya.

All those close to the Prince, beginning with the clerk Feodor Kuritsyn, who headed the government, whose brother became the leader of the heretics, were seduced into heresy.

The daughter-in-law of the Grand Duke Elena Voloshanka also converted to Judaism.

Finally, the heretic Metropolitan Zosima was appointed to the chair of the great Moscow hierarchs Peter, Alexy and Jonah. St. Joseph and St. Gennady, Bishop of Novgorod, led the fight against the spread of heresy.

Assumption Volokolamsk Monastery from the very beginning became the spiritual stronghold of Orthodoxy in the fight against heresy. Here are written the main theological works of St. Abba Joseph. Here the "Illuminator" arose, who created for him the glory of the great father and teacher of the Russian Church. Here his fiery anti-heretical messages were born.

The confessional labors of the Monk Joseph of Volotsk and the holy Archbishop Gennady were crowned with success. In 1494, the heretic Zosima was removed from the hierarchical chair.

In the years 1502-1504, the worst and unrepentant Judaizers were condemned in a council - blasphemers of the Holy Trinity, Christ the Savior, the Most Holy Theotokos and the Church.

Both Neil and Joseph spoke in their writings about the falsity and danger of this teaching. But if Joseph stood for severe punishments and the execution of heretics, then Neil believed that it was necessary to correct them with meek persuasion.

In 1503, a Church Council was convened, which supported the ideas of St. Joseph and did not accept the opinion of the Trans-Volga elders. Church external life followed the path proposed by Joseph Volotsky. But implicitly, a stream of contemplative life, which Nil Sorsky preached, also flowed in it. He laid the foundation for a whole tradition in Russian monasticism, to which later belonged St. Paisius Velichkovsky, the elders of Optina Hermitage, as well as St. Tikhon of Zadonsk and St. Seraphim of Sarov. Both ways turned out to be righteous before God.

Bachinin V. A. Joseph Volotsky and Nil Sorsky // Questions of History. - 2008. - No. 10

Joseph Volotsky and Nil Sorsky

V. A. Bachinin

In Russian social and church life, there have always been various ideological and religious currents, trends, trends, representatives of which conducted either discussions hidden from prying eyes or open debates. One of these discussions unfolded at the turn of the 15th-16th centuries. Its main participants were Joseph Volotsky and Nil Sorsky.

Both of them were striving towards a common goal - to bring the Orthodox Church out of a state of spiritual trouble. This brought them together and united them, despite the fact that they were opponents on many issues of church and public life. “Everything in them,” wrote Father John (Kologrivov), “was different - the character, the direction of their religiosity, behavior, methods of action - everything except the goal they pursued. If the Nile sought to reform from within, to conquer the world by transforming and educating a new person , then Joseph wanted to achieve the same result by means of external influence and public service. They were opponents, but both of them were revered as saints during their lifetime and both were glorified by the church as saints after their death "1.

If we try to succinctly outline those trends represented by Joseph Volotsky and Nil Sorsky, then the concepts of Byzantism and Evangelism would be most suitable for this. In the history of Russian socio-religious thought, Byzantism usually meant a vast cultural and historical complex of religious, state-political, philosophical, moral, artistic and aesthetic ideas and their corresponding forms of social practice, genetically ascending to Byzantine models and causing differences between Russian civilization and the European West. . As for evangelism, it is a movement in which the spirit of religious and socio-moral quests clearly emerges. Its representatives rely on the ideas and principles of early Christianity and strive to preserve them in the form in which they exist in the biblical text.

For centuries, evangelicalism was a constant internal opponent of Byzantism. Both sides of the opposition "Byzantism-Evangelism" represented two living streams of religious life, two interconnected and at the same time independent trends in Russian religious history. The relationship between them was not equilibrium-symmetrical.

Under the dominance of the Byzantine paradigm in Russian historical and religious literature, the figure of Joseph Volotsky has always received much more attention than Nil Sorsky, who was even canonized much later than his opponent, only in 1903, almost four centuries after his death.

The figures of Joseph Volotsky and Nil Sorsky personify not only the general historical antithesis of Byzantism and Evangelism, but also a more particular opposition of an internal church nature: Josephism-non-possessiveness. G.P. Fedotov managed to clothe the essence of the relationship between Joseph Volotsky and Nil Sorsky, Josephites and non-possessors, in an extremely concise and at the same time almost exhaustive antithesis formula that deserves to be quoted in full: is enormous, both in the very direction of spiritual life, and in social conclusions. Some come from love, others from fear - the fear of God, of course - some show meekness and forgiveness, others are strict towards the sinner. In the organization of monastic life on one side - almost anarchy, on the other - strict discipline. The spiritual life of the "Zavolzhtsy" proceeds in detached contemplation and intelligent prayer - the Osiflyans love ritual piety and statutory prayer. The Zavolzhtsy protect spiritual freedom and stand up for persecuted heretics, the Osiflyans betray them to execution. Non-possessors prefer labor poverty estates and even alms, Osifyans seek wealth for the sake of socially organized charity. Zavolzhtsy, with all the indisputability of their Russian genealogy - from Rev. Sergius and Cyril - feed on the spiritual currents of the Orthodox East, Osiflyans show vivid religious nationalism. Finally, the former cherish independence from secular power, the latter work to strengthen the autocracy and voluntarily give under his care both their monasteries and the entire Russian Church. The principles of spiritual freedom and mystical life oppose social organization and statutory piety."2 This antithesis captures the internal spiritual schism that formed in Orthodoxy long before the external, Nikonian schism, and which the Orthodox Church has never been able to overcome.

John Kologrivov noted that the opposition did not arise immediately, that in the history of Russian Christian spirituality there was a period when both tendencies personified by these personalities had not yet become isolated and existed together, united in the figure of Sergius of Radonezh (c. 1314-1392), who combined in his personality traits of an active figure and contemplative. After him, among his students and followers who did not possess religious genius, such an organic and powerful synthesis of these two principles was no longer found. Moreover, due to social, historical, ethnographic and other reasons, religious activism and religious contemplation were distributed geographically, each in its own way. There were more supporters and bearers of the contemplative spirit in the Russian north, and those who gravitated toward active church and social activity were much more numerous in the southern parts of Ancient Rus'. But now “the day is coming when both tendencies, both theological schools that originated from St. Sergius, become completely alien to one another and collide in an open struggle. This is a conflict in which St. Nil of Sorsk and St. tragic for Russian monasticism and for all Russian holiness ... Two different religious concepts collided: the ideal of social influence on the world and the ideal of renunciation of the world for the sake of spiritual perfection - a refusal that in most cases reached a complete and unconditional denial of the world and its needs "3 . If Fedotov portrayed the confrontation between Joseph Volotsky and Nil Sorsky as a static, fixed opposition that has its own source, a characteristic logic of deployment and a climax, expressed in a direct collision. Such a sociodynamic approach confirms the idea that the emerging antithesis was not limited to the figures of Joseph and Nile, and that with their departure from the historical stage, both trends continued to exist and give rise to no less sharp and dramatic collisions in the religious-spiritual and church-political life of Russian society.

There is rather scarce and contradictory information about the origin of Nil Sorsky. According to some data, he came from peasants, and according to others, he came from the boyar-noble family of Maikovs (his worldly name is Nikolai Maikov). Prior to his monastic vows, he served as a copyist of books. Becoming a monk and taking the name of the Nile, he went on a journey to the holy places, was in Palestine, Constantinople. On Athos, he was deeply imbued with the teachings of Gregory Palamas, the ideas of Hesychasm 4. Returning to his native places, he founded a skete on the Sora River, not far from the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery, choosing something between the solitary life of a hermit and the usual monastic life as part of a large community. Living in a skete with two or three brothers made it possible to provide oneself with everything necessary and at the same time created an opportunity for solitary labors, spiritual freedom and deep reflection. In the skete of Nile, the thoughts that formed the basis of his teaching matured. Soon he had a small circle of like-minded people, who were later called non-possessors, as well as "Zavolzhsky elders."

Neil instructed the monks in the spirit of hesychasm, demanded that they concentrate on their inner life, participate in productive work, taught moderation, discipline of the spirit as conditions for moral perfection and monastic achievement. He saw the source of spiritual strength for such a feat in the Holy Scriptures and imputed to each monk to study the Bible with concentration and tirelessly.

Distinctive features of the writings of Nil Sorsky ("Charter of the skete monastic life", "Traditions to his disciples about the skete life", "Testament") are religious and moral pathos and subtle psychologism. In them, he tirelessly preached the idea of ​​observing the measure in everything, advocated abstinence from excesses, non-possession and humility, called on the clergy to give up luxury, land ownership and peasants, advocated strict restraint in the external design of worship, condemned all types of church luxury, including the golden sheen and splendor of the brocade vestments of the clergy. Temples should not distract the eyes of believers with collections of architectural, sculptural and pictorial decorations. Not only the private life of a Christian, but also the public life of the church should testify to their adherence to the ideals of humility and non-covetousness.

Believing that life is transformed from within, and not from without, Neil refused the high church positions that Ivan III offered him. Supporters of his ideas called Neil "the great old man." And Ivan IV subsequently expressed his respectful attitude towards the deceased elder by ordering a stone church to be erected on the site of his skete.

Joseph Volotsky was the opposite type of personality, inclined not to contemplation, but to vigorous activity. He was born in Lithuania and had the secular name Ivan Sanin. Under the name of Joseph, he was tonsured a monk at the Borovsky Monastery. His brother Akaki became Bishop of Tver, an associate of Maxim the Greek. Another brother, Vassian, became Archbishop of Rostov and Yaroslavl. Brother Eleazar died a monk. Nephews Dositheus and Vassian were icon painters, assistants to the famous Dionysius, a student of Andrei Rublev. Joseph himself, distinguished by outstanding organizational and leadership skills, managed to found a new monastery in the Volotsk principality and become its abbot. He managed to create an exemplary monastery with a good organization of daily life, the tireless work of the monks, harsh morals, long services, and strict fasts. Thanks to his efforts, an extensive complex of monastic buildings was built, a library was created. The main church was decorated with icons and frescoes by Dionysius. Joseph's clearly expressed interest in the social side of church life forced him to give manifestations of his own piety most often a social character. This allowed him to constantly focus on charity issues, open a monastery school, a shelter for the poor and sick, help the destitute, the poor, the starving, the victims of fire, orphans.

Joseph was a supporter and conductor of the idea of ​​the strictest, inflexible order. The monastic charter regulated all aspects of the inner life of the monastery, down to the smallest detail. The monks existed under the supervision of the "watchful eye" of the monastic authorities and were subjected to punitive sanctions for any, even the smallest violation of the established rules. During the meal and in the evenings in the cells, conversations were forbidden. The gates were always locked, and outsiders were not allowed to spend the night within the walls of the monastery. Violators of the monastic charter were punished by dry eating, temporary excommunication from communion, and in special cases by chaining and beating with iron.

The requirements of order and discipline were the main conditions of the monastic community, suggesting the complete obedience of the monks, their unconditional subordination to the authority of the mentor. If Nil Sorsky put the tasks of internal improvement in the first place, then Joseph Volotsky was dominated by orientations towards purely external perfection, understood by him as following disciplinary requirements.

In Joseph's view, "the ideal of community life is not a small group of brothers freely united by prayer and love (as with St. Nil), but a disciplined detachment of spiritual fighters fighting sin under the guidance of an experienced leader. As in a detachment of warriors, all the behavior of monks was regulated in the most precise way Even in the refectory, even in the church, everyone was bound by a charter that indicated to each a certain place: even the doors through which to enter and through which to exit were indicated in a special article ... A monastery should be a precisely organized society, where rights and obligations are evenly The exception is made only for monks experienced in monastic life, but they are also obliged to obey those general rules of life, according to which no one owns his own will. more exact fulfillment of all his prescriptions, he is sure that this is enough and that external splendor, being the result of a common and at the same time conscious effort, will itself lead to the perfection of the inner life. Between the one and the other there is a complete correspondence and interaction. According to Joseph, a monk who is constantly engaged in common prayer or work cannot deviate from the true path, because he has no time to indulge in harmful thoughts, nor to carry them out ... Joseph's ideas turned out to be very vital, but this does not prove absolutely anything about their intrinsic value. For them - the discipline needed everywhere, and in Russia in particular, organization and order. Their main drawback is that they are not engaged in the education of souls, but in their training. The monk they create is the "standard type". The Josephite school will produce many bishops who will saturate the official Russian Church with their spirit. She will hardly give saints: exactly two" 5.

The imperious abbot divided all the monks into three categories. Those who belonged to the lowest category were used for the most difficult, "black" work and received only bread, shabby clothes and bast shoes. Monks of the second rank had hot food, wore a cassock, and in winter a fur coat and leather shoes. The highest rank allowed the monk to have two sets of clothes, to receive fish food and rolls. Those who were weak in body and spirit could not stand such a harsh order and ran away from the monastery. But the rest, who withstood all the tests, formed a single whole and showed amazing stamina in any tests.

Among the characteristic features of the religious and social thinking of Joseph, which determined his church-social, pastoral and writing activities, the appeal to fear as the main religious-psychological regulator of the monk’s relationship with God, the monastic authorities and the highest church hierarchs should be put in the first place.

Joseph had a tendency always and everywhere to be guided by motives of a practical nature. He even made attempts to adapt the entire system of dogmatic Orthodoxy to the practical needs and vital interests of the church-political struggle. What went beyond utilitarian requirements interested him little. This feature of his character was accompanied by very negative factors, one of which was the displacement of a number of moral principles into the background, their subordination to the principle of practical benefit.

The Josephite model of the social world was black and white. The abbot was inclined to divide any integrity into opposites and, through the prism of this division, to consider everything that exists and should be in the monastic, general church and state spheres. The logical consequence of such oppositions was the rationale for the need for an uncompromising struggle against everything that did not fit into the circle of norms, meanings and values ​​acceptable to him. So, he considered it absolutely necessary to repress all dissidents. As a contemporary of N. Machiavelli, Iosif Volotsky independently came to the conclusion about the need to use many of the principles that brought gloomy glory to the author of the treatise "The Sovereign". Thus, the principle "the end justifies the means", unknown to Joseph in his theoretical, Machiavellian version, regularly served him as a trouble-free repressive tool in the practical struggle against ideological opponents - "Judaizing" and non-possessors.

The personal principle was in the eyes of Joseph such a small social value that it could not be compared with the social principle. The will of an individual, his interests and desires meant nothing to him and could not serve as an obstacle to achieving corporate goals. This was reflected even in liturgical practice: in the monastery of Joseph, preference was given not to individual prayer, as in the case of Nil of Sora, but to prayer in the cathedral, church-liturgical.

Joseph was characterized by the predominance of interest in external forms to the detriment of attention to the internal, spiritual content of church and public actions. Joseph's biographers left practically no information about his inner life. And this is an extremely revealing fact, indicating that he was most likely an extrovert, not an introvert. Being a man of not contemplative, but mainly external life, he was created for active practical activity and saw his destiny in it. Even his writings do not provide much for understanding the psychology of the abbot, since they are mainly focused on solving purely external problems of church and public life. And only indirectly, through the analysis of Joseph's actions, the study of the results of his practical efforts, one can come to some conclusions regarding the characteristics of his personality and inner world. "The Volotsk Monastery reflected the personality of its founder. The leader's efforts were aimed at maintaining external piety and unconditional obedience. The monks were under the vigilant supervision of the abbot and diligently watched each other ... Wherever the fate of the pupils of the monastery, the Josephites, threw them, they invariably supported each other friend, tried to occupy high positions in the church hierarchy. Two well-known metropolitans came out of the Josephites - Daniel and Macarius, who ruled the Russian church in the 16th century. Joseph's disciples learned and brought to the extreme limits such a feature of their teacher as dogmatism and dogmatism "6.

Joseph compared royal power with the power of God, and court service with worship. In these identifications, he moved in line with the traditional Byzantine canons, which equated the civil laws and decrees of the Byzantine emperors with the decisions of church councils. Consciously implemented Byzantism forced Joseph to surround with a divine halo everything that comes from the sovereign, to recognize his right to unlimited, absolute power. Such a position met the requirements for the creation of a centralized Russian state, as Joseph understood them, and therefore was in demand both by court circles and by the higher clergy dependent on them.

An important place in the church and social activities of both Joseph Volotsky and Nil Sorsky was occupied by a religious and ideological conflict associated with the so-called "Novgorod-Moscow heresy." When a new religious movement declared itself in the 1470s, it began to spread first in Novgorod and Pskov, and then in Tver and Rostov the Great. In Moscow, he was joined by the grand ducal clerks Fedor and Ivan Kuritsyn, the scribe Ivan Cherny, who enjoyed the patronage of Ivan III, and the daughter-in-law of the Grand Duke Elena. His supporters were found among the lower and middle clergy, broad urban strata, merchants, and service people. The Novgorod leaders of the freethinkers, the priests Alexei and Denis, were invited by the Grand Duke to Moscow, where they were entrusted with the Archangel and Assumption Cathedrals. They were sympathized with the Metropolitan of Moscow Zossim and part of the Moscow clergy. But soon a turning point followed in relation to the secular authorities. In the midst of an intensified struggle, adherents of the Novgorod "charm" received from their opponents the insulting nickname "Jewish" 7.

It was no accident that Novgorod became the cradle of the "Novgorod heresy". Novgorodians of that time were perhaps the most "advanced" part of the Russian people. Widespread literacy, active trade contacts with the civilized West and the Byzantine South, happy ignorance of the horrors of the Tatar yoke, the preservation of cultural values ​​accumulated over many years, including book, manuscript and chronicle wealth, stable traditions of folk-veche self-government - all this raised their self-consciousness an order of magnitude higher than the self-consciousness of Muscovites and all other Russians. Their high spiritual activity was evidenced by their sincere concern for the purity of morals in religious and church life, which they considered the most important of all spheres of human existence. Their reform initiatives were by no means aggressive or rebellious. So, for example, while showing their dissatisfaction with bribe-taking priests, they, however, did not attack church institutions.

The Novogorod-Moscow doctrine was theologically more mature form of that early evangelism, which in Rus' was first identified in the strigolnik movement. An episode from the life of Archbishop Gennady points to the connection of this teaching with strigolism. A high-ranking clergyman discovered that the monk Zakhar, who was subordinate to him, rejected the holiness of the church hierarchy and the appointment of priests "on a bribe", that is, receiving a promotion for an appropriate bribe. Gennady's verdict was unequivocal and categorical: Zakhar is a hairdresser and should be exiled to the desert. However, at the behest of the Grand Duke and the Metropolitan of Moscow, who learned about this case, Zakhar was sent to Moscow, where he was received very cordially, and where he gained the patronage of the authorities.

The lively religious and civic life of the Russian north, the Novgorod-Pskov lands is a remarkable phenomenon in Russian history. The end of the 15th century became a period of open religious discussions among priests, monks and laity. God-seeking moods, as well as intentions aimed at transforming many aspects of church life, ceased to be the lot of individuals, but embraced significant sections of the population of the northern lands. Those who asked sharp questions were much more than those who were able to answer them. Among the Orthodox hierarchs, there were not many who could oppose serious theological objections to the reformist mentality.

The initial premises of the doctrinal position of the Novgorod-Moscow God-seekers were formulated by Fyodor Kuritsyn. In his "Laodicean knowledge" the connection of the new generation of freethinkers with strigolism was clearly visible, from which the pathos of denunciation of the dominant church was perceived. Ideas were circulating that could well be considered reformatory: 1) criticism of the spiritual monopoly of the church, church tradition and the conviction that individual faith should not be based on church traditions, but primarily on Holy Scripture; 2) the rejection of icon veneration and worship of relics; 3) denial of most Orthodox church rites; 4) the conviction of the importance of direct prayerful communication with God, that there should be no intermediaries between Him and man s; 5) the idea of ​​the inexpediency of the existence of monasticism and monasteries; 6) ideas of the high dignity of the human person and the equality of all people and peoples.

The similarity of these ideas with the ideas of the early predecessors of European Protestants (Czech Hussites, etc.) is explained by at least two circumstances. On the one hand, it was a consequence of the internal logic of the development and spread of those God-seeking initiatives to which the Russian religious consciousness has always been inclined, and which have already managed to be clearly identified in strigolism. On the other hand, their undoubted connection with the practice of multifaceted trade, economic, political and socio-cultural contacts of the Russian north with Europe is obvious. The same Hussite influences were strong in Lithuania and Poland, from where it was a stone's throw to Novgorod, and for the Novgorodians the essence of the ideas of the Czech reformers was no secret.

Among the Muscovites there were also people whose awareness of the problems of the religious life of Europe played an important role in spreading reformist sentiments. They belonged to the political elite, were part of the closest circle of grand dukes. This is primarily Fedor Kuritsyn, an educated diplomat who traveled around Europe and even lived there for several years. As a clerk of the embassy department, he was the first adviser to the Moscow prince on international relations and foreign policy. Knowing Latin, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Tatar, he actively participated in establishing contacts between the Moscow principality and the Western powers. Kuritsyn was well versed in theological issues. The fact that Ivan III and his daughter-in-law reacted with understanding and sympathy to the second wave of strigolism is largely due to the influence of Kuritsyn.

Ivan Cherny, a copyist of ancient religious manuscripts, also belonged to the Moscow circle of Kuritsyn's like-minded people, accompanying his works with notes of a theological nature. From these notes it is clear that Cherny condemned icon veneration, monasticism, the greed of priests, opposed the complicated pomp of the Orthodox liturgy, stood up for the strict simplicity of worship, and at the same time found justification for his thoughts in the Gospel and Old Testament verses.

In an atmosphere of constantly flaring theological disputes, an urgent need arose for constant references to the primary source - the biblical text. It was felt by both sides - both God-seekers and their opponents. This need forced the Novgorod Archbishop Gennady to initiate the translation of the missing books of the Bible. Thanks to him, a complete corpus of the text of the Holy Scriptures in the Church Slavonic language appeared - the so-called "Gennadiev Bible".

During his trip to Novgorod, Ivan III wished to meet with the most prominent representatives of the Novgorod God-seekers, archpriests Dionysius and Alexei, and was impressed by their spirituality, intellect and simple way of life. Inviting both of them to Moscow and handing over to them the two main cathedras of the Kremlin, he shared their views for some time. So, he sharply condemned the ignorant and rude priests, prone to drunkenness, money-grubbing (“simony”), considered them unworthy of the believers going to confession to them.

However, the attitude of most of the clergy to the innovators turned out to be purely negative. Joseph Volotsky, being a staunch supporter of the unity of church and state, an apologist for the sovereign and intra-church order, proved to be one of the most active fighters against manifestations of dissent. Relapses of strigolism, wherever they were found, provoked the most violent written and oral attacks on his part. He was outraged by the slightest attempt to go beyond the established Orthodox canons and rituals. He could not accept the fact that the Novgorod-Moscow reformers insisted on the right of parishioners to read and study the Holy Scriptures on their own, believed that this was unacceptable, since it was impossible for a layman to understand the Bible "with his own mind", but it was necessary to be guided by the interpretations of the clergy, otherwise they would "be fruitful heresy."

In 1489, Joseph's associate, Archbishop Gennady of Novgorod, sent a message to the Rostov Archbishop, in which he asked to involve the "Volga elders" Nil Sorsky and Paisiy Yaroslavov, who lived in his diocese and were known for their learning, in the fight against church dissent. Gennady suggested that the learned elders come to talk in detail and discuss all urgent issues. However, the meeting did not take place, since Neil and Paisios did not consider it possible for themselves to take the side of the "Josephites". Subsequently, neither Gennady, nor Joseph, nor their supporters ever again turned to Nil Sorsky and his associates for advice or any other help in the fight against the Novgorod-Moscow freethinkers.

In 1490, the hierarchs succeeded in convening a church council, hoping to consolidate their efforts. Before it began, Gennady sent a message to the invited participants, in which he proposed to apply the inquisitorial method of solving the religious and social problem that had arisen - to burn all "heretics". Iosif Volotsky also demanded "terrible torments, flogging with a sword, burning in cages." He argued that in the search for and denunciations of "heretics" denunciations are not only permissible, but also desirable. The same governors who hide the guilty, save them from execution, doom themselves to eternal torment.

However, the repressive plans this time were not successful. During the debate, the "Josephites" even had fears that the council could legalize heretical teaching and thereby open up wide opportunities for undesirable internal church transformations. The reason for this was the position of Nil Sorsky, who opposed the plan of cruel reprisal. The spiritual leader of the "Zavolzhsky elders" demanded that the church refrain from using violence against dissidents. He believed that the aggressively repressive ardor of Joseph Volotsky was far from the true Christian spirit, since the Son of God, who shed His holy blood on the cross, taught to forgive repentant sinners.

Neil resolutely opposed those who demanded the adoption of a decree on the betrayal of all heretics to death by burning. He believed that heretics who repented should be forgiven. He was supported by Metropolitan Zosima, and this led to a significant mitigation of the final sentence. It was decided to confine ourselves to an anathema in relation to the three freethinking priests 9. At the same time, most of the heretics were sent for punishment to Gennady - he got the opportunity to supplement the conciliar sentence in his own way. The "good shepherd" (as his admirer Joseph Volotsky respectfully called Gennady) did not want to be content with the modest role of an observer for a representative of secular power this time. He developed a complex ritual for the execution of his enemies, who had recently accused her of heresy. The heretics sent to Novgorod were dressed in special clownish clothes, they were put on horses facing backwards "as if they were seeing the fire prepared for them to the west", they were wearing special pointed birch bark helmets with the inscription "Behold the army of Satan!" In this form, amid abuse and abuse, this procession was carried through Novgorod, and then birch bark helmets were burned on the heads of the executed. Whether this ceremony was borrowed by Gennady from his Western teachers, or whether it was the fruit of his own vindictive ingenuity, in any case, the Novgorod inquisitor did everything in his power not to yield to the "Spanish king" 10.

The abbots of most monasteries were especially furious at the denial of the institution of monasticism by freethinkers. At that time, almost a third of all agricultural land used in Rus' belonged to monasteries. The results of their active economic activity were twofold. On the one hand, they contributed to the growth of the wealth and power of the Orthodox Church, making it an influential force in the life of the people and the state. On the other hand, the active involvement of the monks in production and trade, in the sphere of economic calculations and finance became a serious obstacle to the fulfillment of their monastic vows and the observance of the commandments of Christian piety. Economics and holiness, wealth and piety, market relations and prayerful work turned out to be difficult to reconcile things. As a result, in the sphere of monastic customs, signs of obvious trouble appeared more and more noticeably. This forced him to look for a way out of the current situation. One of them was proposed by Nil Sorsky, who insisted that the monasteries give up land ownership and engage in direct economic, trade and economic activities and devote themselves entirely to the cause of spiritual service 11. His program boiled down to several basic requirements. The first is the monks' refusal from large-scale production and economic activities focused on trade in manufactured products. The second is complete self-sufficiency by the monks of their primary life needs through their own labor and acceptance of alms. The third is the striving of all the forces of monastics for spiritual nourishment, systematic reading of the Holy Scriptures, help to the brothers, consolation of their sorrows with spiritual reasoning. These provisions echoed the "Charter on Skete Life" compiled by Nil Sorsky, which stated that the acquisition of property is not compatible with a monastic vow obliging to renounce everything worldly, and a strict, ascetic lifestyle and personal labor were put in the first place as a source of food.

The main arena for the clash of opposing positions on the issue of church land ownership was the cathedral of 1503. The work of the gathered Orthodox hierarchs went on as usual and was already approaching its completion, when the speech of Nil Sorsky blew up the situation. The leader of the "Zavolzhsky elders" suggested that "there should be no villages near the monasteries, but the blacks would live in the deserts, and would be fed by needlework." The boyars, close to Ivan III, were satisfied with this proposal, since they expected to redistribute the monastery lands in their favor. Joseph Volotsky by this time had already managed to leave the cathedral and was heading to his monastery. The alarmed opponents of the innovations proposed by the Nile urgently sent messengers for Joseph, so that he would return and intervene in the open discussion. They hoped that his authority and eloquence would help turn the tide.

The returned Joseph spoke out against the nonpossessors and presented arguments proving that all the property of the monasteries does not belong to people, but to God, and therefore cannot be taken away. He argued that monasteries needed land like air, so that they could build churches, maintain them in proper condition, and perform divine services in them, testifying to the greatness of the church, and not to its poverty and squalor. Land ownership, according to Joseph, never hindered the salvation of the brethren, and the monastic environment has always been a worthy place where archpastors were trained and great ascetics were announced. Land ownership is the main source of funds that monasteries can use for "charity to the laity", the maintenance of clergy and their families in need of shelter and food. The elimination of land ownership will lead to the decline and disappearance of many monasteries, and this will adversely affect the state of the Christian faith among the people.

After a heated debate, most of the participants in the cathedral went over to the side of Joseph Volotsky. The grand ducal entourage was forced to humble their claims and compromise, leaving the church the right to land ownership and receiving from it assurances of active support for its political course.

Thus, the period of a distinct presence of evangelical-hesychast mentality in Russian church and public life did not bring any tangible social fruits and actually ended with the death of Nil Sorsky in 1508. The priority is not the distance of the clergy from the state, but, on the contrary, their proximity to it and the fulfillment of its requirements. The institutions of power turned out to be extremely interested in attracting such a powerful force as the church to the cause of state building. The state was not interested in "non-possessors", since there was almost no practical benefit from them. Very few representatives of the clergy were able to see the value and importance of their teaching for the spiritual health of the church organism. Most of them preferred to follow Joseph Volotsky.

The victory of the Josephites was of fundamental importance for Russian history and culture. From it, from the Russian Christian consciousness, the process of displacement of the internal by the external, the spiritual by the social, the Christian by the secular, morality by politics, etc., began.

The followers of the teachings of Nil Sorsky began to be perceived by the Byzantine Josephites as oppositionists, who must be fought by all available means. And this despite the fact that the spiritual experience of the Nile was extremely valuable and could serve to strengthen the moral health of both the church itself and the entire people. The monasteries of nonpossessors were something like experimental laboratories, where projects were developed to solve important spiritual, moral, and church and social problems, including those that neither the state authorities nor the Orthodox hierarchs were able to cope with. However, the subsequent widespread dominance in all spheres of Russian life by Byzantine-oriented church and public figures led to the fact that the religious and moral potential of the teachings of Nil Sorsky was forced to remain in a state of practical unclaimedness. The spiritual, evangelical principle, oppressed by the Byzantine principle, could not take its rightful place in Russian religious and church life.

Summing up what has been said, it must be admitted that the Josephite type of value orientations led to the fact that over the following centuries in Russia, the main attention of church and secular authorities was directed to the reproduction of predominantly one type of consciousness - the Byzantine one. This type is cultivated to this day. It is characterized by several significant features. This is, first of all, the conviction that the identity of the Russian consciousness is acquired solely on the path of recognizing its genetic ties with Byzantine Orthodoxy. If for the Catholic and Protestant consciousness the foundations of its self-identification are rooted in the depths of historical reality, denoted by the well-known symbolic triad "Athens - Rome - Jerusalem", then for the Orthodox consciousness, the basis of its identity is mainly the monad "Constantinople".

The second feature, directly related to the first, is isolationism, distrust of spiritual and social forms that are of Western European origin and demonstrate their links with "non-Orthodox" forms of Christianity - Catholicism and Protestantism. After the European Reformation, in addition to the traditional hostility of the Orthodox towards the Catholics, their negative attitude towards the Protestants was added. As a result, confessional xenophobia, a negative attitude towards all, without exception, forms of religious dissent have become stable characteristics of the Russian Orthodox consciousness. The third characteristic feature is the unstable balance between theocentric and "state-centric" structures of consciousness and the almost universal willingness to sacrifice the former for the sake of the latter. And the fourth is the absence in the Orthodox consciousness of a clearly expressed need for spiritual freedom. Despite the active social functioning of the Josephite paradigm in the Russian public space, the spiritual legacy of Nil Sorsky is alive. It continues to exist in those areas of Russian religious, spiritual, cultural life, which, although they are not at the forefront of this space, are of undoubted social value.

Notes

1 John (Kologrivov). Essays on the history of Russian holiness. Brussels. 1961, p. 168.

2 Fedotov G.P. Saints of Ancient Rus'. Paris. 1985, p. 176-175.

3 John (Kologrivov). UK. op., p. 194.

4 Gregory Palamas (1296-1359) - Byzantine theologian, one of the founders of hesychasm. At the center of his teaching is the idea of ​​the unity of man and God. Palamas argued that God is inherently incomprehensible to the human mind. It is not God Himself that is accessible to the perception and understanding of people, but only individual manifestations of the divine essence. But there are circumstances under which the path of direct knowledge of God opens up to a person. This requires a special state of mind - inner peace, freedom from passions, prayerful concentration. As a result, a person can enter into such a state of mind that the divine light will shine before him, which will be evidence that the "Jesus Prayer" has been heard by God. What is impossible for the mind (to see God in the shining light and talk to Him) becomes accessible through the sacrament of prayer. God, inaccessible in His essence, is revealed to man in His energies, in His grace descending upon people. Palamas argued that manifestations of the essence are inseparable from God Himself. The Eastern Orthodox Church accepted Palamas' hesychasm and incorporated it into its theological doctrine, while the Western Church rejected it. The divergence of positions on this issue has become one of the points of theological differences between Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

5 John (Kologrivov). UK. op., p. 200, 214, 216.

6 Skrynnikov R.G. State and church in Rus' in the XIV-XVI centuries. Novosibirsk 1991 p. 182-183.

7 There are several explanations for the origin of the word "Jewish". According to one of them, this movement was oriented towards the dogma of the Old Testament and especially the books of the Hebrew prophets. There is another explanation, indicating that the nickname arose on the initiative of Joseph Volotsky and Novgorod Archbishop Gennady. The basis for this was Joseph's assertion that a certain Jew named Skhariya stood at the origins of the current. However, no reliable sources confirming the reality of Shariya's personality have been found.

8 This purely Protestant idea of ​​abandoning the institution of professional clergy, which in Russian vernacular is called priestlessness in various variations, subsequently runs through all Russian God-seeking literature. Thus, for example, in the Trifonov Collection it is said that the laity themselves can be promoted to teachers of the faith if they are at the proper spiritual height. They also spoke of the right of Christians to gather outside the church in order to listen to teachers from the people. About the right of the laity to preach sermons, the author of the "Sermon about the False Teachers" wrote: "It is absurd to glorify God and preach his teachings to everyone." Cit. Quoted from: Buganov V.I., Bogdanov A.P. Rebels and truth-seekers in the Russian Orthodox Church. M. B. g., p. 16.

9 Only 14 years later, when Nile was already overcome by senile infirmities, and he could not take an active part in the activities of the council of 1504, the position of the Josephites won and many freethinkers were sentenced either to imprisonment or to death.

10 Kazakova N.A., Lurie Ya.S. Anti-feudal heretical movements in Rus' in the 14th - early 15th centuries. M.-L. 1955, p. 130.

11 This idea was not new to the Russian Christian consciousness. Theodosius of the Caves, Sergius of Radonezh, Kirill Belozersky, Dionysius Glushitsky, Pavel Obnorsky and others spoke out against the practice of monastic land tenure.

TOZR: The Monastic or Skete Charter of Nil Sorsky and the treatise of Joseph Volotsky against the Judaizers "Illuminator" are the first Russian theological works. It is paradoxical that the first Russian theological treatises were the beginning of two diametrically opposed currents in Orthodox ecclesiology that have survived within the Church to this day. In the 16th century the line Volotsky won by staying ideology of the ruling circles pre-revolutionary Orthodox Church and a significant part of the episcopate and clergy of today. Hesychast-Nilovskoye doctrine preserved in remote monasteries, sketes and in the teaching of the new Russian theology- from the Slavophiles to the religious and theological revival of the 20th century and the successors of this teaching: St. Sergius and Vladimir theological academies, which gave rise to the New Greek theological school. The introduction and spread of Josephism in official Orthodoxy is connected with the great schism of the 17th century and, in the end, the enslavement of the Church by the secular empire of Peter the Great. St. Nilus (1433-1508) was a contemporary of close relations between Russia and Constantinople, despite the unilateral Russian autocephaly. This is the heyday of the Eastern Pre-Renaissance in Rus'. Nile descended, apparently, from a peasant family Maikov, Neil himself called himself a peasant. He received a good education, was a copyist of books, then spent several years on Athos. Having become an ardent supporter of hesychasm, he carried on its traditions into Russian monasticism, creating his Trans-Volga hesychast-type skete. Little is known of Neil's personality, as in his humility Neil refused to compose an autobiography or expound it to his students. According to Orthodox teaching, Neil considered pride and vanity among the eight most important sinful temptations. In his will, he requires his disciples to throw his body into the desert after his death, i.e. in the thicket of the forest, to be eaten by beasts and birds, for this body has sinned much before the face of the Lord and is not worthy of burial. The teaching of the Nile is remarkable for its recognition of the original freedom of the individual since Neil invites a person to find his own way of salvation, not to give himself blindly to anyone. Working on the lives, Neil is correcting them according to the mind . those. recognizes the principle of critical analysis and warns. He is a supporter of small monastic communities of three or four monks, including the elder. He teaches inner or “intelligent” prayer, tears and the memory of death, training the body and subordinating it to prayer, sobriety of the heart, the ability to distinguish good books from bad and empty ones. He opposed the possessions of the monasteries, and not church property in general. Monks, on the other hand, should have nothing and eat the fruits of their labor, accepting alms only as a last resort. There are few formalized rules and strict requirements in its charter. Heretics who have repented must be received with love as brothers, and those who have not repented must be exhorted and enlightened, and only in extreme cases isolated in monasteries, but not executed by death.

The opposite was the teaching of Joseph, hegumen of the Volokolamsk monastery. His statute regulates life in the monastery to the last detail: attending services, eating, observing fasts.

Joseph and Neil were great ascetics and supporters of physical labor as a monk. Joseph worked at the most menial jobs But if Neil said that each person finds his own way to salvation, Joseph introduces strict universal rules. True, he makes exceptions for monks from the boyars, who are not accustomed to hardship. Such monks, says Joseph, are necessary, because only bishops from the aristocracy can influence state policy, only the sovereign and the boyars will reckon with them. And if the monastery imposes the same strict requirements on them as on the rest of the monks, then not a single boyar will go to the monastery. History, unfortunately, will confirm the correctness of Joseph's words many times, at least in the case of Patriarch Nikon, who was killed primarily by the boyar camarilla, who did not want to put up with the power of the Mordovian peasant over them.

Preaching the personal poverty of the monks, Joseph defended the idea of ​​monastic possessions:

1. rich monasteries and a rich hierarchy can have weight in the state;

2. a wealthy monastery can attract boyars and rich people into its brethren, who are needed by the Church for the above reasons;

3. Wealthy monasteries will be able to engage in charity and education, create schools and almshouses.

Joseph paid much attention to charity. In his own monastery, he opened a shelter for orphans and the elderly and in a famine year fed 700 nearby residents, orders his monks to buy bread so that not a single pilgrim leaves the monastery hungry. The inhabitants of his monastery rebelled against him, accusing him of devastating the monastic bins, bringing him to starvation. Joseph ordered everyone to pray, carts with grain appeared and the bins were filled. The monastery is a source of help not only for those who work in the monastery fields, but also for the entire surrounding population. The applicant was provided with monetary or material assistance. He wrote letters to the boyars and landlords, advising them to be fair to the peasants, otherwise the peasants would work poorly. In Josephus, extreme asceticism and social activity take the place that Neil assigns to prayer. By the way, Joseph was a student of Pafnuty Borovsky, who was a student of Sergius of Radonezh. It was from Sergius that he inherited a craving for personal humility and physical labor, but not cruelty towards his opponents. As for the attitude towards heretics, Neil adhered to the Athos tradition. Joseph was a descendant of immigrants from Catholic Lithuania, from where he could inherit the emphasis on social Christianity, the desire for an active role of the Church in state affairs and the idea of ​​cruel corporal punishment for heretics. However, since his parents were already Russian service landowners, his kinship with the West was spiritual and information about the West came from the Croatian Dominican monk Benjamin, a translator from Latin from Gennady, Archbishop of Novgorod, friend and like-minded Joseph. Concerning heretics Joseph argued like this: if they are punished by death for the murder of the human body, then all the more should those who kill the soul be executed.

After the victory of the Josephites, many heretics fled to the Trans-Volga sketes, hiding from persecution, i.e. to the disciples of Nil Sorsky. By the way, the Trans-Volga north in a hundred and fifty to two hundred years will become the center of the most stubborn Old Believers - the Bespopovtsy, from whom, according to some researchers, Khlysts, Dukhobors, Molokans, etc. will come.

As for the nonpossessors - the disciples of the Nile, then in the 16th century, the triumphant Josephites accused them of heresy. The accusation turned out to be not groundless: the most brilliant and creatively prolific of the disciples of the Nile, Vassian Patrikeyev, second cousin of the Grand Duke Vasily III and friend of the Greek scholar non-possessor, the Monk Maximus the Greek, fell under the influence of heresy: at a trial in 1531, he showed himself to be a Monophysite, asserting divinity the body of Christ from birth, denying the fullness of the human nature of Christ along with the divine.

There is duality in the political ideas of the money-grubbers: Joseph is the author of the theory about the theocratic nature of royal power, - kings and princes are God's vicegerents on earth. On the other hand, realizing that centralized autocracy could lead to the liquidation of monastic estates, in practice he supported the specific princes. Joseph formulated the doctrine of disobedience to tyrants. The teaching was developed in the writings of Joseph's disciple, Metropolitan Daniel of Moscow, who emphasized that kings and princes have power only over the body, but not over the soul of a person. Therefore, one cannot obey the ruler if he orders to kill or do something harmful to the soul. It seemed that the doctrine of freedom of conscience had to come from nonpossessors. In fact, the statements of nonpossessors are ambiguous. The autonomy of the individual in the civic-political sense is denied and it is argued that - if God had created a person independent, he would not have given him kings. At the same time, the nonpossessors defend the independence of the Church from civil authorities. Vassian - supporter of strong autocracy: only with the help of such power could one hope to deprive the monasteries of the estates. Vassian demanded to deprive the land allotments and parish churches. He allowed an exception for cathedral churches, which need estates for the maintenance of the clergy, services and educational activities. According to the publicistic work of the beginning of the 16th century, “The Word is Different”, Ivan III wanted to liquidate the monastic estates and replace them with state salaries for monasteries and the episcopate.

One of the most important works of Vassian is the processing « Pilot books. He rearranged its order from the chronological arrangement of articles to thematic, in order to facilitate the argumentation on it. He then subjected it to critical analysis. Using Greek primary sources, he argued that the primary sources are not talking about monastic villages, but about the fields given to monasteries to feed the monks. For Maximus the Greek, the ideal is a king with full power, but ruling according to the law and from the council of priests (monarchy, or what?).

Initially, Joseph was under the influence of the circle of Archbishop Gennady of Novgorod, where the papist theory was widespread, according to which the power of the king is a secondary reflection of the power of the patriarch. Subsequently, the Josephites asserted the primacy of royal power in administrative matters and the punishment of heretics.

ideological the victory went to the josephites. Since Josephism preached the active intervention of the Church in state policy, and the partnership between the spiritual and material swords inevitably leads to the victory of the material on earth, then in practice the worst aspects of Josephism triumphed. The church, subordinate to the state, was fettered by it both in civil and social terms, and in the field of church activity. The doctrine of disobedience to heretical sovereigns gave the Old Believers the basis to declare the kingdom of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich the kingdom of Satan and not submit to him. In addition, both sides fought not only for the right to their existence, but also for the position of the state religion, for direct participation in state politics. Hence the fierceness of the fight.

At the beginning of the 16th century, even the direct appointment of metropolitans by the Grand Duke (under the guise of choosing bishops by the Council) did not guarantee the subordination of the metropolitans to the sovereign. The non-possessor Metropolitan Varlaam criticized various actions of Vasily III (including imprisoning his barren wife Solomonia Saburova in a monastery). Under pressure from the prince, he retired, his successor is Daniel, a disciple of Joseph, who asserted freedom of conscience and freedom from a tyrant. But as an administrator of the Church, he put public policy first. He justified all the actions of the sovereign, even luring the last specific princes to Moscow, where they were then killed. Daniel allowed Basil to tonsure Solomonia forcibly as a nun and marry another. And this is despite the fact that the Patriarch of Constantinople, the Athos monasticism and all the Russian bishops before Daniel had previously refused the prince, for Orthodoxy does not limit the concept of marriage to only childbearing and does not consider childlessness a reason for divorce.

The prestige of the Church as an institution, due to the lack of principles of leadership, fell to an unprecedented low. But soon everything changed. After the death of Basil, the court camarilla, acting on behalf of the nine-year-old heir Ivan IV, agreed to install the strict non-possessor Joasaph as metropolitan. Unfortunately, three years later, in 1542, he was overthrown by the same camarilla for refusing to serve those who appointed him metropolitan.

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Reverend Nil Sorsky

Question about monastic estates. Monastic landownership was a doubly careless sacrifice made by a pious society to the insufficiently understood idea of ​​monasticism: it interfered with the moral well-being of the monasteries themselves and at the same time upset the balance of the economic forces of the state. Previously, his inner moral danger was felt. Already in the XIV century. Strigolniki rebelled against contributions to the soul and all sorts of gifts to churches and monasteries for the dead. But they were heretics. Soon the head of the Russian hierarchy himself expressed doubts whether it was appropriate for monasteries to own villages. One hegumen asked Metropolitan Cyprian what he should do with the village that the prince gave to his monastery. “The holy fathers,” answered the metropolitan, “did not betray the monks to rule people and villages; when the blacks own the villages and are bound by worldly cares, how will they differ from the laity?” But Cyprian stops before a direct withdrawal from his positions and makes a deal. He offers to accept the village, but not to a monk, but to a layman who would bring everything prepared, livestock and other supplies from there to the monastery. And the Monk Cyril of Belozersky was against the ownership of villages and rejected the proposed land deposits, but he was forced to yield to the insistence of depositors and the grumbling of the brethren, and the monastery already began to acquire estates under him.

But the doubt, once aroused, led to the fact that the vacillating opinions were separated into two sharply different views, which, having met, raised a noisy question that worried Russian society almost until the end of the 16th century. and left bright traces in the literature and legislation of that time. In the dispute that arose, two directions of monasticism were identified, emanating from the same source - from the idea of ​​the need to transform existing monasteries. The hostel took root in them very tightly; even in those of them that were considered cenobitic, the common life was destroyed by an admixture special. Some wanted to radically transform all monasteries on the basis of non-possessiveness freeing them from their fiefdoms. Others hoped to improve monastic life by restoring strict community life, which would reconcile monastic landownership with monastic renunciation of all property. The first direction was led by the Monk Nil of Sorsk, the second - by the Monk Joseph Volotsky.

Neil Sorsky. A monk of the Cyril Monastery, Nil lived for a long time on Athos, observed the sketes there and Constantinople, and, returning to his fatherland, founded the first skete in Russia on the Sora River in the Belozersk Territory.

Skete residence is an average form of asceticism between a hostel and a solitary hermitage. The skete is similar to a mansion with its close composition of two or three cells, rarely more, and to a hostel in that the brethren have food, clothes, work - everything in common. But the essential feature of the skete life is in its spirit and direction. Nile was a strict desert-dweller; but he understood desert life more deeply than was understood in ancient Russian monasteries. The rules of skete life, extracted from the works of the ancient Eastern ascetics, which he studied well and from observations of modern Greek sketes, he outlined in his skete charter. According to this charter, asceticism is not a disciplinary restraint of a monk by prescriptions for external behavior, not a physical struggle with the flesh, not exhausting it with all sorts of hardships, fasting until hunger, super-strong bodily labor and countless prayer bows. "Whoever prays only with his lips, but neglects his mind, he prays in the air: God listens to the mind." The skete feat is a smart, or mental, doing, a concentrated internal work of the spirit on itself, consisting in “watching the heart with the mind” from thoughts and passions that are cast in from the outside or arising from the disordered human nature. The best weapon in the fight against them is mental, spiritual prayer and silence, constant observation of your mind. This struggle achieves such an education of the mind and heart, by the power of which the random, fleeting impulses of the believing soul add up to a stable mood, making it impregnable for worldly anxieties and temptations. The true observance of the commandments, according to the rule of the Nile, is not only in not violating them in deed, but in not even thinking in your mind about the possibility of violating them. Thus, a higher spiritual state is achieved, that, in the words of the charter, “indescribable joy”, when the tongue falls silent, even prayer flies away from the mouth and the mind, helmsman of feelings, loses power over itself, guided by “another force”, like a prisoner; then “the mind does not pray with prayer, but it is higher than prayer”; this state is a premonition of eternal bliss, and when the mind is able to feel it, it forgets both itself and everyone who exists here on earth. Such is the skete "smart doing" according to the rule of the Nile.

Saint Joseph Volotsky.

From an ancient icon kept in the temple of the Volokolamsk monastery, founded by the Monk

Before his death (1508), Neil bequeathed to his disciples to throw his corpse into a ditch and bury it "with all dishonor", adding that he tried his best not to receive any honor and glory either during life or death. Ancient Russian hagiography fulfilled his testament, did not constitute either his life or his church service, although the Church ranked him among the saints. You will understand that in the then Russian society, especially in monasticism, the direction of the Monk Nilus could not become a strong and broad movement. It could gather a close circle of like-minded disciples and friends around the hermit, pour a life-giving stream into the literary currents of the century without changing their course, throw a few bright ideas that could illuminate all the poor of Russian spiritual life, but were too unusual for her. Nil Sorsky and in the Belozersky desert remained an Athos contemplative wanderer, laboring on "smart, mental", but alien soil.

A page from the handwritten manuscript of St. Joseph of Volotsk, kept in the sacristy of the Volokolamsk Monastery

Joseph Volotsky. On the other hand, completely native, native soil was under the feet of his opponent, the Monk Joseph. Contemporaries left us enough features to define this completely real, completely positive personality. His disciple and nephew Dositheus, in his funeral oration for Joseph, depicts him with portrait accuracy and detail, although in a somewhat elevated tone and refined language. Passing through the harsh school of monasticism in the monastery of Pafnuty Borovsky, Joseph towered over all his students, combining, like no other in the monastery, various spiritual and physical qualities, combining sharpness and flexibility of mind with solidity, had a smooth and clear pronunciation, a pleasant voice, sang and he read in church like a vociferous nightingale, so that he brought the listeners to emotion: no one anywhere read and sang like he did. He knew Holy Scripture by heart, in conversations it was all in his language, and in monastic work he was the most skillful of all in the monastery. He was of medium height and handsome in face, with a round and not too large beard, dark blond, then graying hair, he was cheerful and friendly in manner, sympathetic to the weak. He performed the church and cell rule, prayers and prostrations at the proper time, giving the rest of the hours to monastic services and manual work. He observed the measure in food and drink, ate once a day, sometimes every other day, and the glory of his virtuous life and the good qualities with which he was filled spread everywhere.

It can be seen that he was a man of order and discipline, with a strong sense of reality and human relations, a low opinion of people and a great faith in the power of regulations and habit, who better understood the needs and weaknesses of people than the lofty qualities and aspirations of the human soul. He could conquer people, straighten and admonish them, referring to their common sense.

Joseph Volotsky

Joseph Volotsky (in the world - Ivan Sanin; 1439-1515) - a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church, is revered as a saint. Patron of Orthodox entrepreneurship and management.

Joseph Volotsky - the head of the church-state movement, which defended the right of monasteries to land ownership. The Josephites acted as the official ideologists of the Orthodox Church and monarchical power. The doctrine of the Josephites was based on the theological justification for the emergence of the state and the "divine origin" of royal power, as well as on the assertion of the continuity of the Russian state, which remained the only stronghold of Orthodoxy after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. On this basis, the Josephites demanded that the Moscow Metropolis be granted the status of patriarchy (this happened only in 1589 ). The Josephites advocated the openness of the monasteries. The main task of the monasteries was missionary activity and providing the population with food during a crop failure. The Pskov monk Philotheus belonged to the Josephites, who popularized the concept of the Moscow Metropolitan Zosima "Moscow is the Third Rome", on which the official ideology of the Russian tsars was built.

Neil Sorsky

Nil Sorsky (in the world - Nikolai Maikov) is an Orthodox saint, a well-known figure in the Russian Orthodox Church, the founder of skete residence in Rus', the author of "Tradition", "Charter of skete life", as well as a number of messages.

Nil Sorsky - the head of the non-possessors, the church-state movement, whose representatives were against monastic land ownership. However, this concept is broader and is not limited to the question of monastic estates. Likewise, the difference in views between the nonpossessors and the Josephites opposed to them is not limited to property issues. In particular, the differences in views concerned the attitude towards repentant heretics, the attitude towards the local (national) and general church tradition, and a number of other issues.