Paissius told of the horrors he had seen in the Balkans and the Ukraine, pleading for "a new Moses" who would "liberate pious Orthodox Christians from unclean hands, from wild beasts-and shine like a sun amidst the stars."29 The call for deliverance was addressed to the Tsar, but he-like his father before him-felt the need amidst widespread social unrest and intrigue to lean upon die Patriarch. Thus, in November, 1651, the Tsar began pairing his own name with that of Patriarch Joseph in official charters, while commencing a theatrical transfer of the remains of past patriarchs to the Moscow Kremlin for reburial. The remains of Patriarch Hermogenes were exhumed and venerated; and Alexis sent Nikon to Solovetsk to bring back to the Cathedral of the Assumption the remains of Metropolitan Philip, whose murder by Ivan the Terrible had given an aura of holy martyrdom to the ecclesiastical hierarchy. While Nikon was still gone, Patriarch Joseph died; and within a few weeks Alexis wrote Nikon a long, half-confessional letter of grief addressed to "the great sun" from "your earthly tsar."30 Clearly Nikon was some kind of higher, heavenly tsar, and it is hardly surprising that he was appointed Joseph's successor as Patriarch in July. For six years, Nikon became the virtual ruler of Russia, using the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the printing press to extend the program of ecclesiastical discipline he had developed at Novgorod.
In the far-flung see of Novgorod, Nikon dealt not only with a rebellious, Westward-looking city, but also with the chaotic and primitive northern regions, where he had previously served as a monastic administrator. There Nikon became attached to ecclesiastical splendor and magnificence as a kind of compensation for the bleakness of the region and the asceticism of his personal life. As Metropolitan of Novgorod, he was able to extend and even tighten central control over the monasteries of the north by securing
from the Tsar complete exemption from subordination to the new governmental department created by the law code of 1649 to regulate monasteries.
As patriarch, Nikon not only shared with the Tsar the title "Great Sovereign," as had Philaret, but in fact exercised sole sovereignty when the Tsar went off to lead the battle against Poland. Nikon used this position to set up a virtual theocracy in Moscow with the aid of visiting Greek and transplanted Ukrainian and White Russian prelates. Not just the Patriarch, but the entire episcopal hierarchy was given a new aura of majesty. Theatrical rituals were introduced, more elaborate vestments and miters required, and elaborate church councils held with foreign Orthodox prelates participating. The traditional Palm Sunday procession, in which the Tsar led the Patriarch on a donkey through Red Square in imitation of Christ's entry into Jerusalem, was instituted in the provinces, where local civil authorities were encouraged also to humble themselves in this way before local metropolitans and bishops.31
Most important was Nikon's effort to bring order and uniformity to Russian worship through a new series of printed service books. The printing program in the last years of Joseph's patriarchate had already contributed to the sense of special dignity and destiny that Nikon felt about the Russian Church. Publication of a Book of the One True and Orthodox Faith in 1648, an edited version of Mogila's Catechism in 1649, ar,d tne Pilot Book (Kormchaia Kniga) in 1650 provided Muscovy with, respectively, an encyclopedia of polemic materials directed largely against Uniats and Jews; "its first manual for popular religious instruction";32 and its first systematic corpus of canon law. The first two works (and the apocalyptical Book of Cyril, which was also enjoying new popularity in Moscow of the late forties) came to Moscow from Kiev, the Pilot Book from Serbia. Moscow was rapidly becoming the focal point for all the hopes of the Orthodox East. As Muscovy launched its successful attack on Poland in the early years of Nikon's patriarchate, its sense of holy mission and special calling grew apace. Even non-Slavic Orthodox principalities, such as Moldavia and Georgia, began to explore the possibilities of a protectorate status under Moscow similar to that which Khmelnitsky's Cossacks accepted in 1653. Meanwhile the Greek-speaking monk Arsenius Sukhanov, who had accompanied Paissius back to Jerusalem on the first of two lengthy trips to gather books and information from the rest of the Orthodox world, reported that Orthodoxy had been corrupted in the Mediterranean area by Latin errors. He revived the long quiescent theme of Moscow as the third and last Rome, and added that "all Christendom" awaited the liberation of Constantinople by Russian force.33 While Alexis led Russian troops
?
into battle against foreign enemies of the faith, Nikon led his miscellaneous array of editors into combat against alleged corruptions within.
Between his deletions from a new psalter in October, 1652, and the appearance of new service books in 1655-6, Nikon sponsored an extensive and detailed series of reforms.34 He changed time-honored forms of worship: substituting three fingers for two in the sign of the cross; three hallelujahs for two; five consecrated loaves for seven at the offertory; one loaf rather than many on the altar; processions against rather than with the direction of the sun. Nikon eliminated some practices altogether (the twelve prostrations accompanying the prayer of Ephrem the Syrian during Lent, the blessing of the waters on Epiphany eve); introduced textual changes affecting all three persons of the Holy Trinity. He altered the form of addressing God in the Lord's prayer, the description of the Holy Spirit in the creed, and the spelling of Jesus' name (from Isus to Iisus) in all sacred writings.
At the same time, Nikon tried to impose a new, more austere artistic style, ordering the elimination of florid, northern motifs from Russian architecture (tent roofs, onion domes, seven- and eight-pointed crosses, and so on). In their place he introduced a neo-Byzantine emphasis on spherical domes, classical lines, and the use of the plain, four-pointed Greek cross. Two buildings that he constructed in the first years of his patriarchate launched this effort to transplant the imagined glories of the Greek East to Russia: the patriarchal church of the Twelve Apostles, within the Moscow Kremlin, and the ensemble of buildings for the new Iversky Monastery on Valdai Island.
All of this was accompanied by a determined effort to heighten the personal authority of the patriarch and that of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Prior to accepting the patriarchate, Nikon had exacted an unprecedented pledge from the Tsar to obey Nikon "as your first shepherd and father in all that I shall teach on dogma, discipline, and custom."35 This promise was taken from a ninth-century Byzantine defense of separate but equally absolute temporal and ecclesiastical authority. Like matter and form, body and soul, the two realms were supposed to co-exist harmoniously within the Christian commonwealth. Such a strong assertion of patriarchal authority was altogether unheard of in Muscovy. It seemed to challenge not only the Tsar, but the new law code, which had made the monasteries (and thus the church hierarchy) subject to secular jurisdiction. Nor was Nikon's program very securely based in Byzantine tradition. The reforms were rapidly and secretly drawn up, and based on the selective use of Western compilations of Byzantine texts by an inadequately equipped research team.38